appears that when you load things, they are a loader object.
you may know you loaded a movie, but flash just stops at “it’s a loader”

I was having a problem recently where: I imported a bunch of .swfs into an array; when little buttons are clicked I wanted to display a certain .swf (from this array). Problem is, they were all displaying at the end of their animation.

I dimly remember a similar problem last year, where I loaded in a bunch of .swfs with sound, and this cacophony of noise blared out while they were loading. it seems they were all playing the moment they were loaded.

Is this a loader thing? or a mistake on my part?

Well,
the solution I’ve found is that you have to make the .swf go to it’s 1st frame and play (at the same time you are making it visible). like this:
MovieClip(myLoader.content).gotoAndPlay(1);

Note that I have to ‘typecast’ it as a movieclip, or else it won’t let me use this gotoAndPlay function.