The Eldritch Horror of Coraline

gaze upon the skeleton see how he dances mocking you look i care about halloween spooks spooky i just moved into a new apartment there's still [ __ ] everywhere boxes i've almost got everything done we're down to a few boxes you know the ones filled with miscellaneous [ __ ] that you just too lazy to throw in the garbage oh it's halloween spooky season the fear before the cheer a socially acceptable excuse for you to try out your gender non-conformity historically i don't like halloween i don't like horror movies i fail to see the utility in increasing my general levels of stress and paranoia so insofar as topical properties for me to analyze in an effort to capitalize off of this tradition is a slightly unsettling stop-motion film for children fanciful classical tales filled to the brim with buttons and rats and ungrateful brats why is cracking cats and children and hats demons with dastardly dangerous traps coraline is a horror story for children penned by neil gaiman that's equal parts surprisingly disturbing and familiarly heartwarming initially conceived as a novella it's a perfect hero's journey wherein a little girl moves to a new house and discovers an alternate mirror dimension where everything is better and then finds out that actually in the mirror dimension it's spooky and then she has to uh fight fight the mirror dimension she's whisked away from her dreary life into a wish fulfillment pocket dimension and then eventually has to go fight the demon of wish fulfillment in order to reclaim the normalcy that she once abhorred she emerges from this fantasy slash nightmare wiser more capable and more grateful for the magic in her day-to-day life her parents are just as boring and loving and reliable as they should be and her neighbors aren't weird and strange they're eccentric and wonderful god calls you towards humility and responsibility to your community and fulfillment is begotten from this but demons will stroke your ego while severing your connection to the world around you patience love and gratitude are not glamorous they are work but they will allow you to cultivate meaningful relationships alternatively getting everything you want being worshiped and shirking responsibility is very fun and flashy but it costs you your soul and will leave you rotting inside a slave to the cult of pleasure and self instead of a servant to a higher good this has something to do with coraline let's talk about the world building part one world building and magic systems i love world building the clock work of a fictional universe functioning smoothly makes me froth at the mouth thinking about world building and fictional universes always remember that the highest watermark of world building known to humankind is real life the reality you currently exist inside of look around you it comes with lore the joy derived from an excellently world-built universe is when the imagined makes as much sense as reality that's what a story having a consistent internal logic is when the fake universe make as much sense as real universe world building is the craft of recreating fantasy in reality's image in real life everything is interconnected everybody has a backstory everything is a causal explanation you may not have all the information but you know it is out there the internal logic of our universe is incredibly consistent we are always finding out new things about why [ __ ] is [ __ ] in the manner that it does evoking the same sense of sense in our stories makes brain go feel good and tingly it heightens an audience's ability to escape into a fictional universe and feel like it's real suspend their disbelief and really care about it because the human brain likes doing exercises and imagining and creating but it also relies on the familiar when you make a universe make sense then it's speaking the language of the human mind even if there's magic in your universe the magic has to feel real in a recognizable way brandon sanderson is a science fiction and fantasy novelist that has contributed a great deal of analytical tools towards the idea of magic systems he's most famous for his three laws of writing magic which are on screen and they're correct and it's not what this video is about now when we say magic we're not just talking about when it's literally called magic like in harry potter you can point out that when people are doing magic and be like that's probably the magic system and you'd be right but magic can also be a stand-in for any abnormal augmentation of regular life that finds its way into our stories in science fiction futuristic technologies or imagined new laws of physics can be the magic system in miraculous tales of ladybug and cat noir their superpowers and the interaction between all the different powers are the magic system sanderson's three laws of magic are useful in incorporating magic into a story that keeps the narrative compelling and reaps the most value out of what magic is foreign stories but another contribution for analyzing magic systems case by case that he has provided is a spectrum between hard magic and soft magic a well-constructed hard magic system is likely the one you're most used to hearing about that's your full metal alchemist [ __ ] that's when there is a very strict set of laws that govern the magic and those laws are followed and negotiated with to solve problems in creative ways hard magic is when the universe has clear rules for the magic that can be understood and followed so on the spectrum a hard magic system is where everything has an explanation and a strict set of rules that must be followed and then on the other side of the spectrum there's soft magic whereas when you don't know what the [ __ ] going on the magic is kind of unknowable and that's part of what's cool about it is they're delving into this magic but it's it's related to ancient things it's related to myth and fairy tales and we're never quite sure why it's doing what it's doing but it always leaves us with a sense of wonder when it happens soft magic systems don't fully explain the laws of their magic fundamentally they allow the magic to be wondrous and unknowable this can instill a greater fear and respect and awe for magic but it also has the risk of being annoying you can ruin tension and rattle suspension of disbelief by just introducing new [ __ ] when it's convenient or making something occur without any setup or payoff but soft magic systems are valid in real life there are tons of things that are uncertain and unknowable and out of our control but we must contend with regardless like bathrooms is anyone else scared of them i use a phone and a laptop every day i don't know how those [ __ ] work i rely on those things i've learned how to bend them to my will to do stuff that i want them to do but i have no [ __ ] clue how it does it sometimes you're just trusting that things work in ways that you don't understand and you're navigating through those things with your limited perspective on them laptops are soft magic century so that's how to make soft magic systems feel real you have to create a kind of metal logic that governs the magic even though none of the characters or the audience or even you the author may fully actually know what the laws are all stories with the magic system will likely fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum because life is non-binary and biracial coraline leans heavy on the soft magic which contributes to the horror part two the unknowable power of the beldum the antagonist of coraline is [ __ ] scary at first she looks like coraline's mom and she calls herself coraline's other mother from a different dimension but we find out later that she's actually a demon named the beldum there are many levels to the horror of her existence one of the biggest and boldest ones is how she duplicitously refuses to explain her world intentions or powers her strength is our strength [Music] mustn't talk when mother's not here she's lying to coraline the whole time with unknown methods and unknown goals so coraline as well as the audience and the other victims of the beldum have to piece together these things without her help the one thing that becomes pretty clear pretty quickly is that her main mission is to try to kidnap and manipulate a child away from their family so that they belong to her now her apparent method to do this is to create a doll that looks like the child that has special secret spy eyes and then send that doll to the real world and then have the kid carry the doll around with them and then she spies on their boring shitty life through the doll then she creates a mirror dimension of the life that she is observed wherein she imitates her their mother and recreates fantasy fulfillment versions of the other people and things in her life once she's done all of her spying and construction of this wish fulfillment pocket dimension she lures the kid in with mind-shatteringly blissful experiences claiming to simply be their other mother i'm your other mother silly the implication here being that they are an equally valid version of their family just a better one would you go fetch your father you mean my other father your better father dear he's out in the garden if the child then believes this false equivalency they will be harshly tempted to live exclusively in the fantasy fulfillment universe that has been engineered to compete with the reality specifically existing as a comparison to any dissatisfaction or annoyance the child has day to day the thing is a kid is not a developed brain what they want moment to moment is not what is best for them what makes them kids and not yet adults is that they don't understand moderation or value judgments or impulse control their long-term thinking and planning and they're stupid kids are stupid if you really love a child if you're their guardian and you actually care about them you don't just give them what they want you help them learn difficult lessons and keep them safe and teach them how to be part of a community and not a self-centered little monster you try every day to make them less stupid the so-called other mother's version of quote unquote love is just to overload the kid with dopamine and familiar images so that they indulge on their bases most immature impulses you know i love you you have a very funny way of showing it coraline of course as our aries ass protagonist is a little too smart to fall for this i think i should get to bed she leaves the fantasy to go to bed there's something important about sleeping at night time that she can't quite articulate but has been taught for a reason there's also another subtle sign that something's wrong in the universe which is that everyone has buttons sewn into their eyes immediately in the other dimensions all the abundance and cheer and joy and love and excitement is kneecapped by the fact that their eyes have been violently mutilated the mundane nature of buttons being the selected item with which to gouge your own face makes it creepier and pointedly it's never explained why buttons don't worry about it's not a big deal when eventually and inevitably the other mother propositions coraline to stay in her fantasy forever the only contingency is that she allows the beldum to so buttons in her eyes why you just have to if you want a perfect life it's part of it these two things come together they're connected trust me soft magic soft deeply uncomfortable vague magic we're not allowed to truly understand it we have to just understand things around it so instead of learning y buttons we discovered the consequence of what being smothered by the other mother does to a flustered [ __ ] that makes that bummer of a blunder if you let her sew buttons into your eyes she takes your eyes they're hers now your eyes evidently manifest as a single sphere that can take the form of any spherical object and that little orb is your eyes and it's also your soul find our eyes mistress and our souls will be free meaning if you can save the eyes from the other mother you also save the soul of the person that it belonged to the demon that could explain these things is withholding the information actively because they chiefly want the little kid to forget about their original world and accept the little fantasy as their new normal she wants you to love her and not think about the demonic ritual she's enacting upon you evidently once the other mother has sewn buttons into your eyes she now controls you ostensibly the beldum will continue to pose as your mother and slather you with her version of love and affection while she consumes your soul slowly the more souls she has in her possession the greater her powers of illusion and spontaneous creation it is with these powers that she makes herself look like your mom it's with these powers that she creates more tangible actual land and reality in structures within her void that she lives in as the climax of the story plays out her powers are waning and the world is becoming deconstructed revealing itself to be in its original state without manipulation just a blank void with this miserable disgusting creature inside of it it is specified in the novella that the belgium cannot truly create anything from scratch she can only pervert and twist things from the real world that already exist this follows the mythic logic that the devil cannot actually create but can only corrupt whereas god can truly create out of joy and imagination so the belgium at its basis state is just a wretched creature in a complete void but with the power of the souls of children she's able to create mirror dimensions and modify them to resemble the world of their victim when the belgium isn't actively attending to her creations we can see her fantasy fulfillment magic break down and the building blocks of what she's done reveal themselves cute little mice are actually vicious rats the furniture is bugs the replica family members are existentially horrified dolls that she's created that don't want to cause harm but are terrified of the beldum as she mutilates them and controls them to our own ends without her illusory magic actively disguising it her world is constructed entirely of symbols of decay and consumption the more of her magic is robbed from her the more the other mother ceases to look like coraline's mother at all however in accordance with sanderson's second law of magic the most compelling parts of the beldum soft magic system are the enigmatic limitations on them firstly there's only one key to the door that separates her world from the real world and apparently she doesn't want people to know that she can't make a copy and if it's locked from the other side then she can't get out why don't you have your own key [Music] secondly she only has the creative power to disguise her corrosive world as pleasant and inviting when she already has a child's soul to exploit hurry on girl her web is unwinding that's where her illusions come from when she doesn't have them they fall apart the more souls she has the more capacity she has to gain more victims accidental metaphor for capitalism she says she'll die without them which i don't think is literal because if she literally dies without any children's souls how'd she catch the first one more likely it's a figurative death as she's forced to sit in her lack of power in lonely empty universe as her authentic filthy self she needs souls because without their souls she has none of her own she has nothing to offer no imagination no joy evil is a corruption of beauty and love evil hates itself the only thing evil can do to feel alive is latch onto something beautiful and then drag that thing down feeding upon it to fill that empty space where evil's heart should be misery doesn't love company so much as it hates to be alone because misery sucks and it knows it so she spies and she lies and she manipulates but how does she actually get a soul once the kid is physically in her dimension the belgium can do brute force she has like scissors for hands she could probably physically slit the throat of any of the humans she's interacting with whenever she feels like it but that's not enough and she does eventually go into the real world to kidnap coraline's parents and put them in a snow globe she doesn't remark upon that as being a big task that she has to do she just does it she could have done it the whole time but imprisoning someone and capturing their soul are two different things obtaining a soul requires someone to surrender it to you willingly she can't hold coraline down and sew buttons under her eyes coraline has to consent consent queen that's why she has to coerce the child into comfort with familiarity and flattery she wants the child to love her because if the kid never willingly embraces her she will never get the soul and killing the kid will do nothing for her it won't satiate this need you're not throwing buttons in my eyes oh but we need a yes so instead she has to make her world inviting and the kids world unappealing until the weak mind of the child is convinced that receiving the buttons is the best recourse to happiness and comfort we could extrapolate from this that the only reason the beldum goes after children souls specifically and not adults is not that the soul is different somehow but that adults would be impossible to convince to do this because they've lived longer and kids can be deceived with these childish impulses that's implied by the magic system of her powers and methods but another part of the magic system is what character flaws does an immortal malevolent demon have demons don't exist in real life so the typical ornamental attitudinal values of a demon are part of the world building we are constructing something that feels real within fantasy so we want to world build the nature of a demon we abstract it and then we take it to our world and try to find an analog the closest most useful one probably being something like a serial killer or an abuser from the perspective of their victim when they're in the thick of it in that they are an unknowable violent force but also they're not a perfect unstoppable wave of destruction they're slave to their passions their desires are twisted up with their fears they're lying to you and themselves so sure the beldum wants to be powerful the belgium wants the souls the beldum wants to exist and to be able to create but also she seems to actively genuinely not want to be alone it seems like when she does get the kid she actually will play house with them until their bodies wither away you could stay here forever if you want to consent queen really sure we'll sing and play games and mother will cook your favorite meal she has this irrational desire to be part of a family but she has a [ __ ] up idea of what family would be and of course she has one other irrational passion the one that would be her downfall it's a common monomythic and archetypical trait of a demon or a god to have an irrational love of games they often have the power to win a conflict unequivocably in an instant if they decide to lift their pinky to do so but their passion for games costs them victory when the beldum captures coraline's parents and locks them in her nightmare dimension she is already won her ideal series of events may have not played out coraline was not deceived cleanly into going to the other dimension deciding yeah i like you guys more and sewing buttons under horizon living happily ever after but she has still exercised her power to the fullest and pushed core line right to the wall if you won't willingly love me despite everything i've done for you then i'll simply make your other world unbearable to exist in now that her parents are gone coraline's only choices are to live in a fantasy world with her other mother and some hopes of being around her parents or to accept a world where her parents are vanished from reality she's completely alone and she's just gonna be raised an orphan haunted by this other universe see rendered in heartbreaking detail that this is not a choice coraline is not willing to exist in a universe where the beldum has taken her parents forever she must confront the fantasy land and either be destroyed by it or emerge victorious so she arms herself with a rock and garden cheers and marches into chaos she walks into the other mother's kitchen where she is simply cooking and acting chill because she's stolen the parents and is just waiting for this [ __ ] to play out coraline's gotta give in eventually the moment that coraline challenges the beldum to a game we see the demon's composure slip why don't we play a game there's a pause that the beldum doesn't want coraline to notice this irrational demonic passion for games i think is probably best understood as a kind of sexual arousal she's got a thing for games a primal desire a titillating pleasurable itch that can distract you from your goals and pull you into risky behavior for asexuals watching this sorry for the freudian verbiage think of like the temptation to go on twitter instead of start your essay the beldum gets horny at the mention of games but tries to play it cool she deflects her weakness to this concept with a platitude i know you like them everybody likes games but when coraline bets her own soul making this a high-stakes wager the beldum simply cannot resist if i lose i'll stay here with you forever and let you love me and i'll let you sew buttons into my eyes hmm if coraline wins at this ridiculously high-stakes game of hide-and-seek she can take all of the lost children's souls and her parents back into the real world leaving the beldemon or nothingness forever but if coraline fails then the beldum gets to sew buttons into her eyes which she seems equally horny for the demon doesn't truly stand to gain much from this she's already got coraline back in her dimension she has her parents hostage she could just wait this [ __ ] out on top of that the game itself is actually coraline going out and looking for the lost souls of the children so she's playing with the very source of her power but the stakes being high makes it so much more fun for her the only thing more orgasmically satisfying than stealing a human soul and consuming it for eternity is defeating them in a game before you do it it's that hubris and fervent desire to be the victor of a game that eventually leads to her demise she takes such satisfaction in the game to the point of opening the locked door back to the real world that she had locked and swallowed the key of opening herself up to so much vulnerability just to win at the mutual agreed upon parameters of a competition it's one of the many things in this universe that we cannot possibly understand like what's going on with the mice coraline's eccentric upstairs neighbor keeps saying that he's teaching mice to dance and that he speaks with them and they're saying [ __ ] and it seems like he's crazy except for the fact that what he says the mice say is addressed to coraline and this oracle of delphi snippet of cosmic truth the mice ask me to give you message they are saying do not go through little door you know such a thing and what's with the ladies downstairs crushing up candy until it's a rock through which coraline can look and discern the true nature of the alternate dimension what they're good for bad things sometimes no they're good for lost things why can cats speak in the alternate dimension you must be the other cat i'm not the other anything i'm me why does the other mother consider cats to be vermin she hates cats and tries to keep me out but she can't of course the other mother hates cats how does the cat find little wormholes between the different universes when the beldum itself cannot actually get through without the door the power and nature of the demon are unknowable to us the sheer weight of its presence in this area is causing all this phenomena to happen around it the soft magic system guides us to emotionally be afraid of the power and influence of the beldum and admire the bravery of coraline for contending with such dark unknowable forces part three horror for kids i used to work as a counselor at a summer camp for kids no part two let's get it second act is always darker as a summer camp counselor you get hyper familiar with sets of children for eight weeks then you don't see them for a [ __ ] year at the end of an eight week season the kids are crawling all over you they know your name they know things about you they trust you their parents would let you babysit them then a full year passes with no contact it's weird until day one of the next summer comes and the kids walk in again and they're shy now it's been a year the comfort has been eroded so you as a zany camp counselor are coaxingly exciting but they're not crawling all over you anymore not yet so the campers came back after a long year away and they're sitting in little circles chatting lightly but being shy i sat down with them and was being crazy because that's what you have to do as a camp counselor you just be wild put on a funny hat and make a weird noise it's just your job so there's one kid i really got along with last year that i was looking at that wasn't even making eye contact with me they were being very shy when i know them to be a [ __ ] so eventually i say hey name redacted don't you even remember me and she got this look on her face caution and hesitation being tamed by the forces of familiarity and the temptation of fun and she said you remember my name i said yeah of course then she got shy and started looking at her hands again and i just kept being crazy because that's your only job is to entertain them and make sure that they don't die in this little circle of preview best in conversation at some point she blurts something out and as she does she throws her whole hand right on my leg i remember what she was saying because they were eight and it didn't matter but i do remember being like geez just a couple minutes ago this kid was treating me like i was a complete stranger in actuality i'm not that much more than a stranger i'd known them only for eight weeks a year ago now they're just breaking the touch barrier completely thoughtlessly because i'm an adult my face was familiar i knew her name and i was fun that's all it takes for children to just start trusting you implicitly and i am haunted on re-watches of this film to recognize that face that caution that weariness that fear that shyness being melted away by the promise of fun and certain reliable familiar things to hold on to one of the scariest things about the coraline story is how believable it is for something that looks like your mom and sounds like your mom and is fun and knows your name and warm and kind and is an adult in a place that looks like your home but better could convince you that having buttons as eyes and another mother isn't that weird i didn't know i had another mother of course you do everyone does really the horror of coraline is whether or not kids can rely on adults and whether or not adults will keep them safe y'all know i [ __ ] with magic systems in world building inherently but a fleshed-out universe that isn't meaningfully tethered by character and theme is wasted alone it's just an indulgent intellectual exercise that'll be hard to convince other people to care about you know like lord of the rings [ __ ] you the soft magic system in coraline induces fear of the unknowable and uncontrollable and the story mimics this in coraline's experience of powerlessness at the hands of adults coraline's journey is sparked by a move into a new home where her main problem is boredom not being able to be the center of attention not being able to make a mess and do whatever she wants not knowing her surroundings not having her friends nearby not knowing what the [ __ ] to do in essence having to trust her parents that they're doing this for a reason and wait around powerless in her discomfort the demonic temptation that then visits her is that of wish fulfillment constant intrigue and attention an adult that wants to use their power over her to give her everything she says she wants then the slow brewing horror is the incoming realization that this other adult is not worthy of her trust this person looks like someone who loves you they say they love you they do whatever you want done and they tell you that that's love but although you're a kid and you can't pinpoint what love is you have this lingering concern that this is not love this is something else when coraline realizes this in earnest she flees back to her original reality to appeal to her original authority the one that will keep her safe even if she doesn't like it and the thematic horror gets even more bleak because the beldum took her [ __ ] parents coraline right after experiencing the horror of implicitly trusting an adult that is lying to you and trying to take something from you then experiences the double down horror of realizing your parents aren't all-powerful and yeah they love you but they can't save you from everything the ones that are supposed to make sure she's okay aren't okay now she spends the night alone and it's the saddest thing i've ever seen in my [ __ ] life it's even worse than the graphic novel eldritch is a word that means otherworldly and sinister in modern conversations when you see it thrown around it's likely in reference to eldritch abominations which are a horror monster genre concept pioneered by h.p lovecraft full name hot potato lovecraft honorable peacock lovecraft ham-fisted paradox lovecraft hack penmanship lovecraft horror person lovecraft that one's boring lovecraftian horror is centered on the terror of something being so inconceivably large it wouldn't know you exist more than you notice that a might exist beneath your foot what we don't understand scares us feeling small and insignificant scares us eldritch abominations and lovecraft literature are not comprehensible by our limited human minds they are outside of space and time and beyond our dimension they are so big they will never know we exist often witnessing their beings or learning some of their godlike knowledge drives us to madness or death this is in the dna of the beldum her universe and the soft magic system that coraline has flung into but the more emotional horror for the children is losing the safety of adults adults keep children safe and protected they care for their kids they love them realizing although that thing looks like your mother and it says it's your mother and it's trying to be your mother it is not your mother and it does not love you being a scared and confused child with no one there to comfort you or tell you what to do your parents can't save you you have to save your parents the horror is specifically engineered as a cathartic exploration of fear from a child's perspective dealing with powers beyond their control not just aesthetically and technically but emotionally part four the inevitability of god people i was talking about lipstick stained wine glasses as though it's a sexy thing it's not it's actually just a little gross i don't normally make reference to my previous videos in my videos because i feel like that's detrimental to the posterity of my individual installments i want each episode to be a satisfying autonomous creature capable of standing on its own two legs without a hand on any shoulder and reliance on the rest of the cannon allowing an emergent meaning of the full body of the work to be additive rather than a requirement i want these things that i make to be valuable on their own even if they were found on an mp4 on a flash drive and youtube didn't exist but i'll break tradition briefly just to discuss the title of one of my previous videos i did an analysis of the tv show wanda vision mostly through the lens of addiction it's titled wanda vision addiction abuse and the fear of god don't bother watching it it's demonetized because i use copyrighted music in it so i won't make money if you watch it i don't care and also remember if you never want me to ever make money off of anything that you watch of mine make sure just to download adblock it's easy it's free and convenient in that analysis i never directly explain what i meant by the fear of god i just used the phrase a few times one valued viewer was displeased with this choice the fear of god huh the show is about griv of course i respond to this because i never respond to comments because that's not my [ __ ] job i created and curated a whole analysis and presentation my job's done it's your job to talk about it i provided the raw materials for a discussion i put a modicum of effort into it i thought about it and then i did it and i didn't slow down and i didn't explain everything because i [ __ ] believe in you just watch the video again and think about it for a sec you're very smart so this poor fellow was confused as to what i was talking about because they had heathertune only computed the absolute most basic surface level interpretation of the media they consumed and i wasn't regurgitating the wikipedia page of the show back to them but like i said audiences are smart give them a sec let them talk about it it's their job they'll figure it out another commenter cleared things up for them i think the fear of god is a stand-in for wanda's fear of reality there's something more powerful than her and it's the fact that her power has limits in the real world she fears what's real compared to what she created because what's real won't let her live peacefully the way she wants to good job you got it the here with a thousand faces is a book written by a man named joseph campbell who has traveled across the world and researched many cultures and societies and religions and come to the conclusion that all of our myths follow an essential similar story structure all across time and all across the planet different sectors were independently coming up with the same eternal story that they were negotiating with of change and becoming greater than oneself i haven't read the whole original text of hero with a thousand faces because that [ __ ] is dense as the [ __ ] but famously dan harmon of community and rick and morty fame abstracted and compressed the monomyth structure that campbell set out into a circular eight-step process for storytelling you need to go search for something find it take it and then return changed and so it was actually just me kind of wanting to dilute campbell and find the simplicity you'd probably recognize campbell's monomyth if i started explaining it to you with the wise mentor and being called to action but refusing the call and then crossing the threshold to enter into chaos and seek adventure and do stuff and then paying a price for obtaining what you went out looking for and coming home having changed you know when i say all that you're probably thinking about like star wars or frozen or dune you know star wars frozen dune but if you start to abstract these story beats and concepts you can begin to apply them on any classically well-written narrative that you can conceive of these are the emotional beats of change and challenge that are the shape of the information that the human mind enjoys it's the shape of information that affects us once upon a time things were the way they were but for this impulse for this white rabbit that you follow this this idea this this god speaking to you this accident can't bell posits even deeper than that it's the way that we tell ourselves stories to create meaning out of the chaos that we exist inside of and when we're talking about story structure we're talking about campbell and we're talking about meaning god is gonna come up myth is that field of reference metaphors referring to what is absolutely transcendent and the ultimate word in our language for that which uh is transcended is god stories are about a person a person who needs something a person who crosses a threshold to try to obtain that thing they seek it they find it they pay a hefty price for it and then they return home a different person what is this force that demands we change what is this thing greater than ourselves pulling us towards a destiny that we haven't even dreamt of what is this need that reveals itself to be greater than our want a hero in a story that follows this structure is not necessarily a big boy with a sword that goes and slays a dragon and gets a princess although you can see how easily these beats would map onto a story like that rather as we apply this structure onto more nuanced than complex narratives a hero becomes anyone that follows the call of god into chaos to achieve some destiny they need to seek something different discover what they're willing to fight for what are they willing to sacrifice for what they value what do they value what are they lying to themselves about what do they need to become what higher truth must be learned and contended with where is destiny pulling them what in them is gonna change this is what character development is someone getting pulled like gravity towards something eternal god is the inevitability of the story arc god is the story arc god is whatever truth a story will demand its hero contend with so what's the voice of god telling our protagonist in coraline what's inevitable what's the eternal truth that the story is telling us the gravitational destiny in coraline is like kingdom hearts it's darkness with a spot of pure blinding light in the center supreme darkness you're wrong kingdom hearts is light the algae tour of coraline begins from the very first sequence of the film the beldum creates a doll replica of her newest victim beginning the tried and true process of pulling these helpless kids into her depth something far beyond coraline's control and understanding is already preparing to steal her life away from her coraline's call to adventure is a predator luring her into a trap she thinks she's in control of her interactions with this new strange world the first two times she falls asleep in the other dimension she wakes up in her own bed showing that these adventures may be strange but once she decides to sleep she can end them until on her third visit when she's confronted with the nightmarish twist of button eye gouging she refuses the pull of her plotted demise and runs up to her bed exercising her will in defiance of the beldum scheme she sleeps comfortable with the knowledge that when she awakes she will be back home in a safer more familiar place but she awakens to discover the truth she was never in control for a [ __ ] second while she was in the other world the beldum allowed her to go back to her home universe overnight on purpose to ease coraline into a sense of autonomy the truth coraline is being awoken to is that she's not in control she's not safe and her parents can't protect her her frustration with her real world parents is centered around the frustration that her dependence on them has taken her away from her school from her old home into this new place where she's deprived of entertainment they're forcing her to entertain herself with limited resources they're not paying enough attention to her she's surrounded by neighbors that she finds fundamentally uncool then she's called away from that boredom and lack of control into a world where it seems like she's in control of everything everything is constructed as wondrously and thrillingly as she would have asked for but therein is a realization that she's in even less control than she initially thought she's been damned to a fate that three souls previously have already suffered she's part of a long story that ends in destruction it's not just that she's a kid that something wants to consume it's that she's the fourth kid first she was dragged by her parents to a boring black hole where a demon lives and now an evil greater than any mortal power is going to drag her to eternal hell once she realizes how precarious of a position she's in and escapes back to a real world it gets even worse her parents arbitration of her fate has been trumped by the demon she has no choice but to walk back into the chaos of hell negotiating with an eldritch abomination she doesn't understand and can't compete with her only recourse is a few pieces of information that her soft magic ass wise mentor cat has given her challenge her then she may not play fair but she won't refuse so she challenges the demon to a game have you ever noticed that the climax of this movie is constructed suspiciously like a video game she has two items two moves a button and b button you got the garden shears and you got the looking glass she has to use her weapons to fight minor mobs she has to go to three different levels and fight three mini bosses when she beats a level she obtains a new item as a trophy and the stage dissolves forcing her to the next zone as she defeats the third stage everything in the universe has collapsed except for the location of the final boss where she is now forced to go coraline was never in control of where this was going an incomprehensible god has repeatedly pulled her closer to the beldum taking away all of their paths until the only one is directly to the demon that decided our hero's fate before we even knew this world existed so is god the beldum or is friendship even more powerful than demons my friends are my power what is the utility of employing eldritch horror while telling a story to children here is the point of it in neo-homosexual man's own words penned in a response to an ask on tumblr.com the point of it was to write a story for my daughters to tell them that being brave didn't mean that you weren't scared it meant that you were scared but you did the right thing anyway that people who give you lots of attention sometimes do not have your best interests at heart while people who give you less attention than you would like may still love you that it is a good thing to save your family from the darkness and that you have to forgive your dad if he's writing things and can't always stop to play with you in other words maybe the power that outranks the eldritor of a child eating demon is bravery love and a sense of responsibility to your community that's how you snatch a meaning out of the maw of hell the dark god that was calling coraline was a demon that lusted for her soul the eternal all-powerful god that was pulling her through the story was passion for the family and community she's been blessed with early in the movie coraline's father feeds her a sloppy gross little dinner while singing her a stupid little ditty he made up for her and it's not even worthy of comment to work my twitchy witchy girl i think you are so nice i give you bowls of porridge and i give you bowls of eyes cream so the other mother constructs another father that sings a much more fun and involved tune it's more catchy and complimentary towards coraline it's more exciting [Music] but by the end of the movie after being put through dark trial by dark trial and discovering an inner truth greater than herself when coraline has to do something scary she does it by remembering and singing to herself that boring stupid little ditty that her real dad's saying twitchy witchy girl i think you are so nice i give you bowls of porridge and i give you bowls of ice cream she doesn't roll her eyes at the thought of hanging out with her neighbors she defends her crazy neighbors to her mom why don't you go visit downstairs but you said they're dingbats i did not call him crazy coraline he's drunk mr b's not drunk mom he's just eccentric and she pets that mangy thing of a cat you scared me to death you mangy thing [Music] oh and she like hugs her parents she she appreciates her parents her love and appreciation for things that once bored her grows throughout the film at that moment at the end of the video game where she has to walk down the corridor to the final boss she's not just doing it because she's scared and wants to survive she's not just doing it because she's bored and wants excitement equally guiding her to confront the beldum or the fracturing reality around her providing no place else to go the schemes and machinations of the belgium itself and her newfound sense of responsibility to everything the beldum has consumed and threatens to consume she is not only fighting for her own happiness anymore she's fighting to end the beldum's reign of terror over her community let everyone go my real father and mother the dead children everyone you've trapped here she's fighting to put an end to generational trauma at the hands of a higher power and the way she defeats this ancient unknowable power is by manipulating it with her limited knowledge of the soft magic system we may not understand why these things are true but we know them to be true the other mother hates cats and thinks they are vermin there is only one key to the door the belgium has locked that door and swallowed the key the beldum loves games irrationally so coraline uses all of this information to take charge of her own destiny and escape hell with everyone she loves be clever miss even if you win she'll never let you go instead of making a real guess of where her parents are to try to win the game she baits the beldum into coughing up the key and unlocking the door i already know where you've hidden them they're behind that door oh they are are they her final guest is decidedly incorrect and obnoxiously confident teeing yourself up for a shameful fair and squared defeat by a smug opponent go on open it they'll be there alright the belgium simply cannot resist the theater of winning the game while the beldum gloats but the door is now unlocked coraline throws vermin in her face in the ensuing chaos coraline grabs her parents and bolts out the door when the other mother tries to drag her back she kicks that [ __ ] in the face she with the help of the lost children pull with all of their might to shut the door on this monster and her world forever she is responsible to her community and she relies on them god is friends [ __ ] god is celebrating those around you and taking care of them and accepting them because they're yours and love isn't always exciting it's not always colorful and sometimes you have people in your life that aren't cool but those are the people that you love it doesn't [ __ ] matter they're not cool and that will allow you to confront the fallibility of your parents and the most dastardly of demons that will allow you to walk into hell to fight that which you don't fully understand emerging victorious over the dark nonetheless all you need is to be brave enough to love those who love you back and wise enough to know that love is not always exciting but there is one eldritch abomination that is more powerful than love part five something very old and very slow in the film as coraline escapes the other dimension for the final time the belgium screams and bangs on the door terrifyingly [Music] it's very viscerally scary very anxiety-inducing but as scary as that adaptation of the final escape from the other dimension is it's got [ __ ] nothing on the book i employed lovecraft earlier to explain the impact of soft magic in coralline on the themes of the story but the truth is a genuine eldritch abomination is not something that is seen or speaks or has a goal an actual eldritch abomination would be so massive and inconceivable and horrifying that it wouldn't even notice you existed as it destroyed the fabric of your reality the idea of them learning your name and speaking to you would be as absurd as us reasoning with a gnat you don't speak to a gnat you kill a nat you accidentally kill a nat if there's too many gnats you're noticing around you you set up a little trap that they could never understand that they are drawn into by forces that are beyond their comprehension and then they die horrible deaths and you dump them out in the sink when core line first opens the corridor in the novella it's not all incandescent shifting violet lights like a youtuber's bisexually lit streaming studio it's dark and cold and musty there's no visibility it smells like something very old and very slow we don't hear much about it for the rest of the book except for it being dark and musty and cold until coraline has finally saved the lost children and her parents she's escaped but the cat says ominously come on this is not a good place to be in quickly well what do you mean by that she runs her hand along the wall to make sure she doesn't get lost in the pure pitch black darkness as the corridor seems to stretch along forever longer than it has in any of her other trips the wall turns furry and warm like it's breathing she yanks her hand away because yuck but after a while she gets scared that she's gonna run into something again so she puts her hand back on the wall to get her bearings this time what she touched felt hot and wet as if she had put her hand in somebody's mouth um whatever that corridor was was older by far than the other mother it was deep and slow and it knew that she was there then coraline escapes and the epilogue begins but what the [ __ ] was that thing the other mother is scary but whatever's in that corridor is an eldritch abomination coraline defeated a run-of-the-mill demon but if she didn't get out of that corridor i don't know what would happen i don't i don't want to know the film does an excellent job of adapting the spirit and soft magic and eldritch horror but neil homosexual man is next level i initially was going to include the entire [ __ ] extra universe of soft magic and world building that's included in the novella but i had to not because i needed to make a video to pay for rent for this place i just moved into rent crisis is the real eldritch abomination maybe next halloween two hours of literary analysis you believe i can do it i bet i can or maybe next halloween i'll do whatever the [ __ ] i want you [ __ ] leeches you have but one promised subject for my future deceptions one million subscribers miraculous is genius and here's why that one will be fun miraculous is so much better than coraline stop motion can go [ __ ] itself all eyes are buttons if you're brave hey oh don't be scared i'm your other cj everyone has one i just wanted to remind you before you go that art is subjective these are just my feelings about this movie yours are equally valid it's the best thing about art it's a mystery we like what we like so don't overthink the things you love try to just enjoy them sometimes explaining something ruins it maybe not understanding is what makes it magical oh and there's one other thing i saw something that made me sad earlier i was looking at my youtube analytics and i saw that only half of the people that watch my videos are subscribed that's awful please subscribe

Channel: CJ The X

Views: 619,489

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Id: WeEH21NYJMU

Length: 46min 20sec (2780 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 01 2021