the bathroom window

After the house ate itself into nothingness and the eyes cracked open to release their souls and the door clicked closed, there was just a white plane, just a white ghost where her world had been. She tapped her fingers - now five less - and threaded a needle. Her den was just a stretch of blankness - But that was a perfect canvas for her next masterpiece.

"When you're a teenager it's true: Life is hard. You're beginning to see how profoundly you can be disappointed or disappoint others yourself; you can be taken aback by cruelty, both that of others and, shockingly, that of yourself; you feel the pressure of the future as you're pressed about colleges, about majors, about extracurriculars; you begin to keep secrets about your thoughts, about what you do; and sex! my god, sex is so confusing." Shining Light on the Demons of Adolescence by jdeguzman

Thought a lot about Coraline this weekend, as per usual. In the book and movie, she's twelve, maybe eleven - But not a teenager, and certainly not 16 or 17, when concerns about college and sex grow prominent.

I like thinking and writing about Coraline as a kid or as an early teenager, but shit gets real when she's a bit older.

Ok, tangent: I was talking to The Boy the other day about how I don't like the "oops I fell onto you" trope that pops up in (or "oops I fell into" hur hur hur) fiction. Crappy romance novels love this: the heroine accidentally trips and lands on the hero, tee hee hee, and they realize how physically attractive the other is. I don't like how it strips the characters of choice. Characters, especially adult characters, shouldn't have interaction forced upon them because they're too immature to initiate something themselves.

I think Coraline has a clear image of what she wants. She thinks she's independent because she's often alone - her parents are too busy to attend to her. It's only at the end that she realizes how she can be truly independent. Coraline's an instigator, too.

Tangent again: In my mind, Wybie's mother was a single parent. I like the idea that Wybie's always been around independent women, that all his role models are strong and female. He's more than content to follow Coraline - He learns to trust her (even though she's batshit insane as far as he's concerned) and willingly puts himself in danger because he so strongly believes in her (and his Other version even SPOILER! diesfor her).

What I like about her (and Yuffie, too, actually; in my mind they share a lot of characteristics) is that Coraline is bold and confident in her actions and decisions. There's a scene in the movie where she runs up a flight of stairs with (Other) Wybie behind her. He holds onto the railings; she doesn't. Coraline's movements are certain, unlike Wybie's, which needs support. (Coraline could totally be a meme like Chuck Norris. Coraline doesn't run up stairs, stairs run from her! ...Let's pretend that made sense.) That's a very telling scene.

Where was I going with this...

The quote is taken from a post about YA literature and teenagers' experiences in general. And hell yeah do I agree. Those years were hard and confusing and painful - I still am baffled by a lot of what happened, by a lot of what I did. I read YA novels as a kid and teenage, though I don't think I actively searched for them or even realized that I was reading in the YA genre. When I got older and started to differentiate between YA and adult novels, I moved away from the former. But now I think I'm becoming enamored with them.

Stole this meme from nagia. Post one sentence from your current Works-in-Progress.

Fanfic
He'd only seen her natural hair color once: after two weeks at sleep-away camp, she came back with stripes her brown hair peaking through the faded blue, kind of like she was molting or something. When he said she looked like a mixed-up skunk, she chased him around the Pink Palace. (Coraline - "Birds & Bees")

It had been hot work, pulling weeds, and boring, too, even when she pretended she was Godzilla and the plants were unfortunate bystanders meeting their untimely demise. (Coraline - "Wrapped up in Clover")

"We don't have to watch any movies," I said hurriedly. "We can go to bed, like, right now so we can wake up at the buttcrack of dawn and get you to your interview. Or maybe I'll stay up all night reading your notes out loud to you so you can learn them by osmosis or something. I don't know. But I'm staying and I need a toothbrush." (Digimon - "Fine Art")

Original
As soon as she figured out who she was, she'd chase the little harlot right out of town. (TTBtM)

When Lest tugged at buttons that ran along her back like a second spine, she had to close her eyes and lock her jaw so that confessions and vomit didn't spill out. ("Masca")

(I posted this to my other journal; I apologize to those seeing it twice! Anyway, I'm working on a follow-up post that takes into consideration the comments my first post received - Hopefully I'll be done with that soon.)

There is a strange phenomenon in the Coraline fandom: portraying Wybie as white. For those who didn't see it, Wybie, Coraline's friend and (possible) love interest, is black. I've seen at least three pieces of CoralinexWybie fanart where he's clearly white (white with red hair, no less) or he's tan.

I've been talking it over with my boyfriend (who saw the movie with me multiple times), and he thinks that it's not a purposeful change: Wybie's race didn't leave a big impression on him (or me either), but we have terrible memories and the second time we saw Coraline, it was actually like we were seeing it for the first time because we didn't remember, like, half the movie.

Here's the scene where they meet for the first time:


I think this is incredibly, incredibly interesting. Around the same time the movie was out, RaceFail was all over LJ, and I followed it through various journals. The observation about lack of minorities in fantasy made a big impact on me -- And it relates to this white-Wybie thing.

So there are two things about white-Wybie: Are people being intentionally racist (in that Wybie should be white since he's being paired with [a white] Coraline)? Or does Wybie not act "black" enough and thus they don't notice that he's not white? (Do white and black Americans in the same economic sphere act that differently?) I'll agree with my boyfriend that it might not be immediately obvious that Wybie's black, but I find it hard to believe that someone drawing pictures of him would simply not notice it (I mean, if you didn't remember exactly what he looked like, you'd find a picture of him as reference, right?). His race isn't important to the story - there's no racism that he has to overcome, etc - but I think it was a deliberate choice of Henry Selick (who adapted and directed the film) to make him (and his grandmother and great-aunt [who appears as a child-ghost]) black. Gaiman wrote Coraline for his daughter and Selick said that Coraline was a "girls film" (here) -- This is just my assumption, but I can see them trying to engage a minority race, too.

For reference, some of the white/tan fanart are here, here, and here.

Of Being a Superhero

Coming up with a good superhero name was the hardest part. She thought The Beldamnation! was pretty good, but Wybie pointed out that the only ones who'd understand was him, Cat, and some ghost-angel-kids who were totally dead anyway. Next was The Crushinator, which probably the coolest superhero name in existence. When Wybie said that it sounded like a monster truck, she crushinated him. His sidekick name was easier to think up: Slugzilla Boy, with the power of a dozen slugs! They both wanted to be able to fly and that was definitely share-able. He wanted superspeed, but slugs were totally slow (duh, sluggish?), but she graciously allowed him to have superslime. She got superstrength and superintellect, and also a pair of giant pruners to trim the branches of evil from the tree that is society. He got laser swords that she could use if she asked nicely, and his new bike that he just finished that morning with a seat big enough to fit both of them was their official supermobile. SuperAWESOMEmobile.

Evil nemeses included but were not limited to the vile Homework Enforcer, the mutant twins Lady Naked and Lady Nude, that big tree-stump-thing that looked like a giant lobster from certain angles, and the VW Beetle OF DOOM!. They stood at the fairy circle at the well, wondering if the needle-hand was still swimming, still searching for the key, or if it was climbing out with it… And Coraline could still see her – see it – if she closed her eyes, and she started thinking about the Other Wybie and how she hadn't been the hero he needed… So they agreed, with a handshake that went on for a long time until it was basically just handholding until ew, why would she ever hold holds with Wybie, to leave the Beldam and/or any of her parts out of the game.

So: The newly dubbed The Crushinator and Slugzilla Boy's first mission was to get to the moldy old cinema in town to see Space Squids 2: The Bloodbath or all life as they knew it would come to a violent and explosion-y demise. The Crushinator said Slugzilla Boy should sit in the back because who ever heard of sidekicks getting to drive? But Slugzilla Boy said that it was his bike and he made it and besides, who ever heard of driving a bike? So then The Crushinator said that was just semantics anyway and Slugzilla Boy said no one who wasn't crazy said things like semantics.

Deceit and treason among the ranks! The Crushinator knew that her faithful sidekick had fallen to the dark side and it was up to her to save the day. So she chased him around the Pink Palace until he tripped over Cat, and she climbed up onto the wall to laugh the laugh of justice but then jumped down to hoist Slugzilla Boy back to his feet. The Crushinator graciously announced that she'd ride in the back and Slugzilla Boy could drive, but that meant that he had to buy the popcorn.

[Cross-posted to my IJ.]