cute as a button in the eye

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other than listing petitions, places to donate, and where to call/text, it also compiles resources such as threads debunking misinfo, education on black history, and information for protestors. it's being updated regularly

this movie is so fucking creepy jesus fuck

It’s by Tim Burton, what did you honestly expect?

Actually, it’s Henry Selick, who was the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas. The book was written by Neil Gaiman, though, and is far…far….worse.

Sorry, I’m about to geek the hell out.

The movie is captivating, but the book is twenty kinds of terrifying, even now, ten years after I first read it. As disturbing as the movie may have been to some, the things Selick added really serve to cushion just how horrific the story really is.

First of all, the character of Wybie does not exist in the book. Coraline is facing all of this nearly alone, with her only help coming from the sly comments of the cat, a warning from the circus mice, and the stone given to her by her neighbor, presented with no comment but that it “makes the unseen seen.”

Second, the Other Parents are never quite as warm (and, dare I say, normal) as they are in the gifs above. They’re described as having paper-white skin and the Other Mother’s hair is said to move on its own, and her long, red, claw-like nails don’t ease any uncertainty that she is absolutely, positively up to no good. The first time Coraline meets them, they (and the rest of the Others) seem to be playing roles (for whatever reason, Coraline does not seem to pick up on this), like they all know what to say and what to do and are simply waiting for Coraline to make her move in their terrifying play world. This is shown to be partly true when the Other Parents tell her they know she’ll be back soon after she refuses the buttons - this time, to stay.

Third, the Other Mother commits atrocities that really should not have been in a book for anyone not fully grown up. She physically deforms the world around Coraline to slow her progress in their game beyond any mild traps the movie portrays, and, instead of turning the Other Father into the wandering pumpkin-thing seen in the film, she simply ceases to use him and throws his body away in the cellar, leaving him to rot with whatever bit of sentience he has left. She begins to lose her touch, as Coraline gains the upper hand. Her world doesn’t just become a nightmare - it falls apart completely. No creepy but oddly cool bug furniture here, just the house that now appears to be a child’s drawing. Whatever the Other Mother is (a beldame, but something tells me she’s much more ancient and powerful than that), she does not give half a hump about what she has to do to ensnare Coraline. Destroy the supporting characters of her twisted creation? Done. Allow herself to be dismembered to ruin Coraline’s life in the normal world? Not even gonna bat an eyelash.

On a final, personal note, imagine eight year-old me, ignored by my parents, absorbed in the story and identifying with Coraline from the start. Imagine me finishing this bloodcurdling book and immediately thinking of my basement, where there is still a locked door that my grandmother swears up and down is nothing more than a storage room, but has not once in my (or my mother’s) lifetime unlocked.

Can you see why this book still scares me?

Fun fact I learned from seeing neil gaiman speak: when he first wanted the book published, his editor said it was too scary. He suggested she read it to her young daughter, and then decide. So she did, and her daughter wasn’t afraid, and it was published. Years later, Gaiman was sitting next to that daughter at an event and told her this story, and she said “oh I was terrified I just didn’t want to tell my mom”.

Coraline WAS too scary to be published, but exists anyway because a girl lied to her mother.

@neil-gaiman, is this true about the publisher’s daughter?

It was my literary agent, Merrilee Heifetz who read it and said “you can’t seriously expect this to be published as a children’s book.” So I suggested she read it to her daughters. And she called me back a week later and said “They love it and they weren’t scared at all. I’ll take it to Harper Children’s.”

A decade later, at the Opening Night of the Coraline musical, I was sitting next to Morgan, Merilee’s youngest daughter, and told her how her not being scared had made the book happen. And she said “I was terrified. But I needed to find out what happened next. So nobody knew.”

So, yes.

I lent my sister my copy of coraline; and she asked me to draw her Spink and Forcible so... here they are!

"They say even the proudest spirit can be broken... with love."

Coraline (2009) by Henry Selick

Coraline | Game Over - “No matter what… you can’t make me love you”

“Hungry, aren’t you?”

The Other Father is the only character from the Other World who is shown eating. Despite the Other Mother’s clear passion and talent for cooking, during meals, her plate is always empty.

In the Dinner Scene (shown above) she doesn’t eat, but instead simply offers Coraline more food. In the Dinner/Breakfast/Food? scene she’s seen feeding scraps to the snapdragon plants on the table instead of eating food herself. Throughout the movie all the Other Mother eats is half a beetle, which alludes to her inhuman - and spiderlike - nature.

That being said, the Beldam does have the ability to swallow objects (the key) and cough them back up almost instantly as if they were simply at the back of her throat. This led me to wonder - does she even have a stomach? Or any kind of digestive system, that is? The key should have been in her tummy by then. And I think there is evidence, and reasons, to support my idea.

As you probably know the Beldam feeds off the souls of kids, or as the Ghost Children put it, eats up their lives. This would mean she’d have no reason to eat real food as the souls keep her alive. In her true form (needle hands, spider legs, exoskeletal white face and all) her waist is stick-thin, with obivously no room at all for any kind of internal organs. There’s no way you could fit an entire digestive system in her, well, backbone. She only ate the beetle because she liked the taste and not because she was hungry.

However, the Other Father eats during the mealtime scenes, and he shouldn’t have to; as he himself put it, “[The Other Mother’s] strength is our strength” (meaning the inhabitants of the Other World depend on the Beldam’s consuming of souls to keep her, and them, alive). But since he was an exact replica (save for the button eyes and orange monkey slippers) of the real Charlie Jones, he’d have a digestive system and would be able to eat. But this is probably for the sole purpose of making Coraline feel more trusting and comfortable when eating with the Other Parents; I mean, imagine sitting down to dinner with two button-eyed people saying they’re your other parents… and then they just stare at you for the entire meal. You’d probably think the food’s poisoned, wouldn’t you? But the Other Father eats to reassure Coraline this is not the case.

Though she looks very similar to Mel Jones, the Beldam is not a replica but is simply disguised to look like it. She wouldn’t inherently have the same anatomy as Mom #1, therefore she wouldn’t have a digestive system.

This is why the Other Mother does not eat.

— Coraline, Neil Gaiman

In my humble opinion, Coraline is one of the best movie adaptations out there because it actually strays away from the book a lot and adds/changes several different things, but it does so all for the sake of a visual medium which is exactly what a movie adaptation should do!

There’s nothing showing the Beldam making the doll but darn it if that’s not the most aesthetically pleasing scene in stop motion animation:

The appearance of the tunnel is never described (other than it being musty and her feeling a force behind her) so they made a psychedelic tube: 

In the book, she meets the three ghost children at a generic picnic but the movie, for reasons I will always love, decided to show them against an animated, interconnecting, version of the Starry Night:

The blue hair, the garden, the world falling apart—

Everything is tweaked to be more visually pleasing.

Which is the point of turning a book into a movie in the first place!

Coraline (2009), dir. Henry Selick.

Coraline + Text Posts

I just love this movie so much, okay!!

Neil Gaiman, Coraline (via hellocoraline)

Peace.

Pink Palace Apartments (Coraline)

Still need to add some details, but pretty ok with this Used 3Ds Max

This is amazing!