My Little Monsters, Inc. - Friendship is Our Fuel Economy · 6:45pm Sep 1st, 2022
Blog Number 187: Monsteritis Edition
Idle thought for the day (I'm not promising ANYTHING, mind...):
Has there ever been a Monsters, Inc. pony crossover?
It makes way too much sense, the more you think about it...
One thing that kinda bugs me with regards to the crossover genre is how arbitrary the crossover mechanics (and motivations) usually are. It seems to me people just smash 'em together any old how. But this could be a crossover with a franchise that A) actually has an in-universe mechanic to justify it, and B) has a thematically strong motivation to do so.
I mean, think about it. The whole premise of Pixar's Monsters, Inc. franchise is that monsters are a bunch of emotion-consuming working joes with a form of interdimensional science. They invade the human world via advanced closet door technology to scare children, collect their screams, and then use it to power Monstropolis, their monster city. And at the end of the movie (SPOILERS), the heroic monsters James P. "Sulley" Sullivan and Mike Wazowski discover that laughter is much more powerful, so they switch the factory to this new source of energy.
In other words, they already have the technology to go to another world, and they want laughter.
Well, suppose the stocks dry up because human kids are harder to amuse than to scare in the long run, which means Sulley, Mike, and the others have to go looking for a new power source. So the company commissions a bunch of monster door-ologists to research new locations where they can go to get more energy. They invent and test some next-gen closet doors, then finally locate a world rich in laughter and start sending some workers there as a test run. And whose bedroom should they end up in but Pinkamena Diane Pie's?
And then things get chaotic from there.
I haven't worked out all the details yet, but I feel like this is one of the few crossovers which shockingly makes more and more sense the more I think about it.
Only I can't find any evidence that it's been done before (a quick search on-site for "Monsters, Inc" doesn't yield anything much). But you lot collectively have way more experience with fanfics than me, so that's my question:
Has anyone else stumbled across this particular crossover before? I'd be very intrigued to know.
Allow me to put on my intrigued hat.
In the meantime, minor news items to go.
Word count for August 2022: 21,527 words, of which 5,058 were written in the first half, and 16,469 were written in the second half. Looks like the numbers are going the right way again.
My highest this year, as it turns out. I'm hoping that's a very, very good sign. 🤞
Also, turns out I got 108 completed stories as of today! (Oh, and why is 108 such an interesting number again?)
Yes, my blogs officially have continuity now. 
Lastly, this month I'm hoping to kickstart that blog series I teased way back, which was the (firmly casual chat about, not in-depth analysis of) Gravity Falls.
Yes, I really want to stress this is going to be just a casual discussion series, not My Ultimate Take on Gravity Falls: A Comprehensive History of Disney's Animated Programming. There's been a ton of talk about all the show's production and secrets and hidden messages and so on, and I'm simply not aspiring that high. I just really don't want to put too much on my plate, so I want to make that clear in advance, OK?
In short: Elaborate fan theories, prepare to be ignored! 
(Minor note: I think I'm going to tentatively call that kind of blog series "Ep-By-Step". In the end, I have to admit I like the odd uniqueness and the way its rhyme is so short and sweet.)
So, something to look forward to, maybe.
Also, the shorts are really freaking funny.
Well, that's all for now. Hope to keep a good thing going. Till next time: Impossible Numbers, out.
While it's not my favourite Pixar film, Monsters, Inc. is, by a wide margin, the one I have seen the most times (thank you, battered VHS), so I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of it. Thus, I am obliged to point that Sulley's fully name is James P. Sullivan.
Bugger if I know where you got Victor from. 
Anyway, that really is quite the "writes-itself" scenario, so it is a little surprising there's nothing around for it? Hmm, maybe I should…
I suppose, from there, the main decision one faces is whether to be play the story straight and sincere, much like it's namesake movie, or just to use the crossover concept as a gimmick for a brief lark. I mean, I know where I'd stake my preference…
[I briefly glanced at fanfiction.net to see if the two properties were crossed over there. They were, once, but for an incomplete fic not even 50 words long, and a premise not even close to this. So, nitto.]
I have a funny history with the number 108; I was first turned onto it by the Pokémon Spiritomb, a spirit bound to a stone it has to lug around. It's #108 in its debut region's Pokédex, is encountered there and in several games since by obtaining/doing something 108 times (even its weight, bizarrely), has some stats at 108, and is formed from 108 spirits. This is because 108 is the number of temptations one must overcome to get to Nirvana in Buddhism.
And from there I was turned onto the mathematical significance, the spacial distance instances, the body temperature… the list goes on and on.
And Gravity Falls, even in casual discussion form, is bound to be an interesting one. A show doesn't generate that kind of fandom without being interesting on both the light and hardcore levels. Looking forward to it!
5683416
Goddamn my memory! That'll be the Uncharted influence. Corrected!
EDIT: Oh, and the spelling of "Sulley" too. Curse this grey matter of mine...
I'm going to leave this one a wide open question, as I'm simply curious if anyone at all has ever picked up on it. Preference, even though I definitely have one and it exists, is currently a secondary issue.
Myself, I really like it - it's definitely one of my Top Ten, and possibly Top Five - though whether or not my rewatch rate qualifies for "battered VHS" levels of commitment also remains an open question.
The golden ratio connection stunned me back in the day, because - while I'd been vaguely aware of what the ratio represented - I'd never sat down and considered what it actually was.
Or does it!? I smell a weird conspiracy goin' on here...
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[Forgot to reply properly, darn it!
You just want me to say what I think of it and other Pixar takes, don't you? I need hardly say Monsters, Inc. would crack my top ten (the top half of my Polar ranking is basically all their first 11 films, sans Cars, and a few ones since – so pretty standard other then getting A Bug's Life in there), and it's almost a dead certainty for their top five too.
Honestly, though, Cars excepted (and I still like it more than most), everything they did from Toy Story-Toy Story 3 is a 9/10 or a 10/10 for me, so my favourites shift around a bit, depending on my mood, even if there are some I'd pick more often than others. Though given the state of their slate recently, especially in the last three years (of which only Soul gets above "passable diversion", and some don't even reach that), I don't think about them as much as I might these days. At least, I try not to. Lightyear was… well, let's just say large chunks of it were the worst feature material Pixar's made. Yes, worse than Cars 2.
To counteract all that boring standard opinion with a hot, controversial take: I prefer The Good Dinosaur to Coco.
Not by much, being fair, but yes, I'm 100% serious.
That is an interesting concept!
Just so you know: the site's adware is serving up plugs for Monster.com at the end of your post. Hey man, I thought that you were dead! I thought you crashed your car!
5683434
Honestly didn't cross my mind. I tossed in that particular response pretty much on reflex. Not that I object to a tangent. Or a sine, or a cosine.
🤓
My own candidate for "Pixar film that's not my favourite but which I've rewatched a bunch" would be Finding Dory. I find the film's structure and some of its creative decisions clumsy, but it's got a gooey centre that suddenly and simply speaks to me, especially once Hank shows up and is totally NOT the crotchety old grump who's going to reveal a soft side later, wink wink
.
I regret that I still haven't seen Soul yet, despite its being directed by Pete Docter, my consistently favourite Pixar director. And Lightyear I never watched either, though there it was because the premise looked Dead On Arrival and I've heard nothing since to convince me otherwise.
I suspect The Good Dinosaur is one of those polarizing films where most people either really click with its "all-over-the-map" tumbler of decisions or find the whole thing a completely broken mess. I incline more towards the latter camp, though I'm not technically in it (there's enough fragments of a fascinating, even good, movie in there that I can't condemn the thing outright).
Whereas I guess Coco would provoke more across-the-board agreement that it's decent-to-good, but maybe not quite great? Although I personally find it so charming, committed, and even clever that I end up mostly overlooking its obvious flaws (the anti-music premise at the start is a tough sell, especially).
As for the rest of Pixar's output... hmm, I'd have to sit down and look at it properly first.
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Especially given the cutesy or simple designs of many of the monsters, they'd feel right at home in an Equestrian setting. I think even the artwork could translate across 2D/3D lines quite well, maybe.
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It's all a scam: the monster plugs are no good without the monster sockets. Don't buy. I repeat: Do. Not. Buy.
Er... "no, I just crashed someone else's"?
Or am I missing a reference here?
I've seen one shots of it around the site. Nothing too memorable, inventive, or well written, as I recall though.
I think maybe there was some fluff under 'Boo'?
Kingdom Hearts crossovers have been a thing for a while, so that might be a source for more appearances.
Can't think of anything else immediately though.
I do have questions on the consistency of Bill Cipher's abilities.
So it should be nice to talk about that (and be promptly ignored by everyone on the internet over it).
Either way, looking forward to what you come up with.
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Good catch! I should have thought of that after Kingdom Hearts III, really.
Well, for what it's worth, I always thought it was obvious (if a necessary fudge to give the heroes any kind of sporting chance) that Bill was being held back by the writers in the finale. Someone at his power level who didn't muck about would have won instantly with a snap of his fingers.
I'll save it for the blog post proper, but hopefully that suggests a tentative "I agree!" on my part (still like the finale, mind, for lots of reasons).
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I don't blame you for not thinking of it though.
Kingdom Hearts has always been kind of a odd property, even when it was first starting out.
It's basically one big massive crossover event. It's hard for anyone to remember all of what went down with it, unless they were actively thinking about it.
Honestly my issue isn't even with his additude during the final, it's with his mind powers being inconsistent.
Arguably the very thing that made him such a great character in the first place.
Supposedly he can't enter Ford's mind and aquire the equation he needs to escape Gravity Falls unless he makes a deal with Ford.
This is what the tension of the climax, and the key to his downfall is built on.
And yet he both enters Ford's mind through his dreams, and reads Stan's memories in previous episodes, all without a deal with either one of them at the time.
It's less Bill Chipper mucking around, and more the lore being completely inconsistent.