Coraline is a masterfully made film, an amazing piece of art that i would never ever ever show to a child oh my god are you kidding me
Nothing wrong with a good dose of sheer terror at a young age
“It was a story, I learned when people began to read it, that children experienced as an adventure, but which gave adults nightmares. It’s the strangest book I’ve written”
This is a legit psychology phenomenon tho like there’s a stop motion version of Alice and Wonderland that adults find viscerally horrifying, but children think is nbd. It’s like in that ‘toy story’ period of development kids are all kind of high key convinced that their stuffed animals lead secret lives when they’re not looking and that they’re sleeping on top of a child-eating monster every night so they see a movie like Coraline and are just like “Ah, yes. A validation of my normal everyday worldview. Same thing happened to me last Tuesday night. I told mommy and she just smiled and nodded.”
Stephen King had this whole spiel i found really interesting about this phenomenon about how kids have like their own culture and their own literally a different way of viewing and interpreting the world with its own rules that’s like secret and removed from adult culture and that you just kinda forget ever existed as you grow up it’s apparently why he writes about kids so much
An open-ended puzzle often gives parents math anxiety while their kids just happily play with it, explore, and learn. I’ve seen it so many times in math circles. We warn folks about it.
Neil Gaiman also said that the difference in reactions stems from the fact in “Coraline” adults see a child in danger – while children see themselves facing danger and winning
i never saw so much push back from adults towards YA literature as when middle aged women started reading The Hunger Games. They were horrified that kids would be given such harsh stories, and I kept trying to point out the NECESSITY of confronting these hard issues in a safe fictional environment.
SAGAL: No. I mean, for example, your incredibly successful young adult novel “Coraline” is about a young girl in house in which there’s a hole in the wall that leads to a very mysterious and very evil world. So when you were a kid, is that what you imagined?
GAIMAN: When I was a kid, we actually lived in a house that had been divided in two at one point, which meant that one room in our house opened up onto a brick wall. And I was convinced all I had to do was just open it the right way and it wouldn’t be a brick wall. So I’d sidle over to the door and I’d pull it open.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
SAGAL: Right.
GAIMAN: And it was always a brick wall.
SAGAL: Right.
GAIMAN: But it was one of those things that as I grew older, I carried it with me and I thought, I want to send somebody through that door. And when I came to write a story for my daughter Holly, at the time she was a 4 or 5-year-old girl. She’d come home from nursery. She’d seen me writing all day. So she’d come and climb on my lap and dictate stories to me. And it’d always be about small girls named Holly.
SAGAL: Right.
GAIMAN: Who would come home to normally find their mother had been kidnapped by a witch and replaced by evil people who wanted to kill her and she’d have to go off and escape. And I thought, great, what a fun kid.
“Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What fairy tales give the child is his first clear idea of the possible defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.” – G. K. Chesterton
I was reading my writing today, and let me tell you, it may not be good, plot is not the best, and characters are a bit stereotypical, but boy do I have fun writing it
This is such a good mindset to have. There is positive energy in this post
also consider: LOTR but hobbits have Tapeta Lucidum
Boromir gets the fright of his life their first night on the road
Boromir: *glances over his shoulder* ??!!!!???!!
Hobbits:
Hobbits: what
i will never get over that you used an image of raccoons for this purpose because it is incredibly accurate
LOTR au but instead of hobbits literally raccoons
Gandalf: well this raccoon found the ring and has been carrying it around. unfortunately we can’t take it off him or he gets very bite-y. so I figure, the raccoon is the ringbearer now
Elrond: what are those other three raccoons doing here
Gandalf: he brought his buddies. I call this one ‘Merry’
Aragorn: *watching Frodo & Sam scamper off in the direction of Mordor* our hopes lie with those raccoons now
Legolas: do they… know where they are going
Aragorn: I sure hope so
Faramir: father why is this raccoon in the livery of the citadel
Denethor: haha doesn’t he look precious
Elfhelm: Dernhelm, is that a raccoon in your bag?
Dernhelm: *sweating nervously* Uh no, sir.
Eowyn, later: And I said no, you know, like a liar.
Denethor: WHY did you let a raccoon go off with the Ring??
Faramir: ….it just seemed like the right thing to do
Gandalf: he scratched you up real good huh
Faramir: ……………gouged my FUCKING arm and bit me on my face
Witch King: no living man can kill me – AUGH FUCK, RACCOON, RACCOON ON MY LEG ARGHHHH
Eowyn: *stab*
Wraiths break into the room at the prancing pony: *UnHoLy ScReEcHiNg*
Trash Panda Hobbits:
Wraiths: Oh, what the fuck, whAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!
Treebeard: Baroom, humm, where are my small, impatient friends?
Merry and Pippin:
Don’t go where I can’t follow, Mr. Frodo.
~~~~~~The Hobbit interlude~~~~~~
Thorin:
You’re the burgular.Go on and…burgle something! Bilbo:
Saruman: Well since some fucking TREES took over Isengard I guess I’ll take over The Shire. Farmer Maggot and ever other Halfling down to the Sacksville-Bagginses:
ok [LONG POST; APOLOGIES FOR PUTTING THIS ON YOUR LOVELY ART]
this made me wonder what happens to like
the players who go godtier in a dead session
because, like, they’re immortal, and with everyone else dead there is no way they CAN die, because suicide is neither heroic nor just, so they will simply continue to reincarnate forever
until they start to go insane from lack of human contact and anomie
and although sburb keeps them from dying, i imagine that there’s some sort of degeneration going on, maybe every time they die they come back slightly wrong in some way, their speech becomes garbled and they slowly start to look less and less human or whatever
and eventually
inevitably
the only voices left for them to hear are the whispers from the furthest ring
because with all of the time in the universe, even prospit dreamers visit Derse eventually, and as the incipisphere ages the boundaries between universes start to weaken
and it’s so hard not to just give up and accept the invitation, shuck off one’s mortal bonds and leave the session for good, sliding into the many-tentacled embrace of the horrorterrors as your body fully degenerates into madness and lines of code, no longer yourself anymore
just a whisper of what once was but is no longer human.
What if that’s where horrorterrors come from? The mutated god tiers from failed sessions.
ps im crying
This is terrifying
NOTE TEAM MISFAIL: WE ARE ALL TO GO GODTIER AND KEEP EACH OTHER SANE OK? OK.
NOTE TAKEN CAPTAIN’
Your name isn’t important. Nothing is anymore. After all, the clouds block out the heavenly light above and below you, leaving nothing but gray and red.
Gray and red and the cacophony of bleeding colors, the torn rags of your friends as they lie cold and lifeless, no more sentient then the ground you kneel upon. Locked forever in time, doomed to be nothing but dolls of the monster that created you all. They will never return to the soil, will never have the dignity of death, as the game that is not a game will not allow it. You never were religious, but you have prayed. Let there be a messiah, two, three, thousands of them. Let there be something, you think every time with hands clasped tightly before ramming another victim’s weapon into your chest.
Each time, you pray a little harder, stay a little shorter. You were a player, but the outfit you have fastened yourself from the clothes of the deceased leaves even you unsure of what kind. Perhaps time, as you can see hundreds of timelines, hundreds of death of hundreds of innocent lives. You sew your rags because after the fifth time you try to release yourself your robes do not regenerate. You sew yourself but the thread is missing and the fabric is missing and your brain is only just beginning to realize the meaning of eternity.
You play with your friends. A flick of their hair here, a halfhearted hand-holding there grows to hugs and empty sobs. A tango for one and a slow degeneration into the madness you welcome.
You lose track of the holes in your robes and in your soul. The tallies blur together. Names and dates and lives fade as the clouds shudder, the ground quaking and Skia itself weeping for the victory you will never see.
You cannot speak.
You fumble with whatever you can find, play card games that cannot be won against yourself. You try on their clothes and find they fit. You have shrunk. The coding decrees it. You shed your rags and gain new ones. You grow and cycle out the last choices of the dead. You can still hear the screams no matter how much you silently shriek for anything you can repent. Nothing obeys you.
You cannot see.
You thrive on touch and thought, but thought cannot be relied on. Puzzles and riddles have long since ceased to matter, and you wonder if you exist. A living thing reaches into your mind, twists it and molds it and you do not notice.
You cannot hear.
You find a sword after seconds and days and millennia of searching and stab the pain away again and again. There is nothing left to touch, nothing to maim, nothing to live for as there was nothing to live for in time long since lost. Your spirit is gone.
You do not exist.
You are one of many.
You are the Dead Souls that will never truly be free.
Eternity is but a breath in your lifespan, and your dearest wish is death. No one will give it to you.
There is no one left to.
I’m sorry but I need to reblog this again
I’m reblogging this again in honor of 4/13 because it is still my absolute favorite writing I’ve ever done, even nearly a year later.
[Sorry, but as much a you guys seem to think eternity means eternal solitude I don’t really think that’s how things would go. Hope you guys don’t mind if I add to the story a bit…]
You’ve long since given in to the eternity you feel you finally begin to understand. Your skin has greyed and become slick though you’ve barely taken notice. You let the grim darkness eat at you.
At least until you heard something, or you believe you heard something. You’re eyes look around you for a second at the worn out land around you, which has mostly crumbled into what could be considered an asteroid due to the spacial winds and other phenomena you have now barely taken note of.
You hear the noise again. It was a ring that had once been familiar. You didn’t realize that anything in your modus would still work after eternity. After some fumbling with the controls you manage to take out your ringing smart phone. Pesterchum seems to have been attempting to grab your attention.
HD: Hello
HD: Is anyone there?
You don’t recognize this person, though you suppose you could have simply forgotten.
HD: If you are still out there please say something
HD: If you have horrorterrorified then I don’t think you can actually respond.
No, you are quite sure you’ve never met this person. Either way you try to type something to them but your stupid fingers have gotten slick and don’t want to make it easy.
ST: Hi
You would have said that you waited an eternity but your time powers let you know it’s been a total of 5.something or other seconds.
HD: Oh
HD: Wait right there
HD: Or do whatever space-time lets you do there
ST: WAIT
The person on the other side doesn’t respond. Hopelessness threatens to engulf you again.
HD: Sorry
HD: Had to let my folks know about you
Folks?! There’s more?
HD: You still there?
ST: Ya
You take a moment to curse at your current condition.
SD: Can you two keep chatting. It’s difficult to see the signal.
HD: Sure
ST: OK?
HD: Oh yeah!!! Guess I never asked.
SD: smooth
HD: Shut up
HD: Do you want someone to fetch you or are you doing fine over there?
They could fetch you? Or could try to. How they would do that doesn’t matter. You are done with being alone, you have been for an eternity.
ST: Please
And so a millenia passes, with you chatting and waiting for these people to come after you. You re teach yourself how to speak, for your voice has gotten dry and raspy through lack of use. You learn of a universe they promise you. You believe you have friends again and it has gotten you nervous for the first time you meet.
HD: Hey!!!
ST: What is it?
She sounds excited.
HD: Turn to your left
Your heart speeds up and hands slicken, but this time it’s from nervous sweat. Your skin had returned to it’s original state a while ago. You turn slowly but surely till you see what looks like a bright golden dot. It appears like any of the prospit ships only someone has renamed it and decorated it with various welcome signs. Your eyes finally spot someone on the deck waving frantically. She is wearing a maid of hope getup, though it seems she’s made some extra embroidery adjustments that looked unfinished. Behind her was another seer like you, but he was of space. He looked exhausted, probably having to attempt to find you through the void and space. There was another creature there which you suspect had been the player since they had thief of mind pjs.
You stand for a moment in shock. No matter how long you’ve waited, you were in no way prepared.
“You ready to come with us? It’s a bit of a long drive but we’ll get there,” the hero of hope beckoned you forward to the deck. You can’t help but cry. It had been so long since you’ve last done so but unlike the last time, these tears feel good as they run down your cheeks. You drift to the deck.
“You okay?” she asks with a concerned look. How would you be able to explain the pain that you’ve gone through. How could you explain that you had nearly gone to a point of no return. You simply nod your head.
Time goes on as it wishes. The void makes sure of that. Your new group finds small and large civilizations of failed and successful sessions. How you missed so many of them as your asteroid drifted, you’ll never know. Eternity allows you to make an infinite amount of friends and enemies. Infinite possibilities makes sure that you never know everything. While it is possible to be bored and hopeless for long periods of time, eventually some new experience has to show up to change things around.
“Alright, we’re here,” you friend of hope states drifting to a horrorterror. You’ve come to learn how each is an individual who had lost all hope. You can’t quite understand them and you’ve wondered if they feel better now that they meet all these knew people and creatures. Your attention returns to the hope player. She seems to whisper something that you can’t hear. The horrorterror blows a bubble that engulf you and the new gang of close friends you’ve made. The scene is familiar to you. It’s one you’ve always seen when passing the bubbles. Usually the final battlefield of your session is empty and for a second you think this one is too. Forms start to come from behind rubble. Their eyes are blank but that hasn’t mattered to you for a long time. This was your team. The team you had gone through the game with. The team you lost. You were finally back with them.
The game is difficult to understand. There are many rules which can be broken and many ways that things can go wrong. There is only one limit you think you’ve come to realize about the game and that is that
you can find a download of the zine’s FREE PDF here!! I’d definitely encourage taking a look; working on this project with everyone loving & interpreting these two wonderful characters in their own way was just…. really delightful~
Absolutely! Sorry for the delay, Anon. I have a cold and am a lot slower at basically everything, writing included, right now. I’m going to try to play catch up a bit today and tomorrow though~
Shouto goes everywhere with Izuku. This isn’t because he doesn’t trust Izuku, it’s just the nature of their lives at this point. Yuuei decided to keep their dorm program even though the war is over. Being neighbors with Izuku, sharing classes with Izuku, having mostly the same friends, and spending time together in the common area. There isn’t much that Shouto and Izuku don’t do together and Shouto has to admit that it’s nice. He feels lighter, somehow, when Izuku is around and Izuku always has this special smile just for him. This is the closest to happy and content that Shouto’s been for a very long time.
Maou Ryuushin is a bit of a snag in Shouto’s otherwise content life. He’s a grade below them, wide eyed and bushy tailed and completely obsessed with Izuku. He’s tall enough to loom, produces water from his mouth that freezes on impact with objects, and he pops up at Izuku’s elbow all the time. Izuku smiles at Maou, because of course he does, and it makes Shouto feel sick and dark whenever he thinks about it for too long.
Maybe Shouto is being ridiculous. He lets it get so bad that he grandstands his power in front of an underclassman, making it quite clear where he and Izuku stand with each other and where Maou stands in relation to that; which is nowhere. He’s embarrassed by his own actions and Izuku forgives him, Izuku always forgives him. Shouto is content to think that now that Maou knows that Izuku is taken that he will be free of the constant irritation that is Maou’s presence.
He, apparently, underestimated Maou.
Shouto cuts back across campus in the fading light of sunset after running some forms to the administration building for Snipe. He spots Izuku a little ways ahead and the warm happiness that usually settles in his chest at the sight of his boyfriend is put on hold because Izuku is talking to Maou. They’re alone, a backdrop of orange-red trees and mood lighting, and Shouto isn’t stupid enough to not recognize the romance of the moment. Kirishima cried last week at a movie that had a scene just like this.
That hot, sick, darkness is back in Shouto’s gut. He’s frozen mid step, watching the scene play out like a horror movie.
Maou leans over Izuku’s shorter frame and says something that makes Izuku laugh. The wind picks up and shakes a few leaves from the trees. Izuku bundles a little deeper into his hoodie. His curls are tousled everywhere by the wind and Maou reaches a long fingered hand towards Izuku’s face, to brush one out of Izuku’s eyes like Shouto does sometimes.
Shouto moves, he has to move. It’s like when he sees a villain about to strike, slow motion with nothing but the sound of Shouto’s heart beating. He barely gets a few steps, he won’t make it in time. He’s not sure why he has to, he just knows that he does. Maybe it’s irrational but some small part of him that sounds like his father still tells him that if Maou touches Izuku in a situation like this that Izuku could fall in love with Maou Ryuushin. Shouto doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do if that happens.
He doesn’t make it. He doesn’t have to.
Izuku moves, fast as green lighting. His hand shoots up and catches Maou’s wrist before Maou can touch him. There’s something hard in Izuku’s expression, hard like when Izuku killed All for One, and Shouto’s body and mind automatically react to the danger that Izuku must be facing. It’s only lasts an instant, barely a glance, before Izuku lets Maou go and steps back. His face is serious but not so serious that Shouto panics.
“-not really interested, sorry Maou-kun.” Izuku is saying as Shouto gets into hearing range.
“I don’t want to accept that,” Maou says.
“Please try,” Izuku says, gentle and yet firm.
Shouto stops only a few meters behind Maou. “Izuku.”
Maou stiffens. Izuku looks at Shouto and smiles that soft smile that’s just for him. “Shouto.”
“Are you ready to go?” Shouto asks, unable to stop himself from glancing at Maou’s back. “Satou and Bakugou are having their bake-off today.”
Izuku’s face goes slack and then brightens in excitement. “That’s right, I forgot.” With that, Izuku walks. He passes Maou right by and walks to Shouto’s side and Shouto’s chest feels warm.
“Midoriya-senpai,” Maou calls, turning quickly. Izuku glances over his shoulder at Maou and Shouto can’t stop his glare. “I’m not going to give up.”
“You really should,” Izuku says. He sounds annoyed. He rarely sounds as annoyed as he sounds now. “I’m not going to change my answer.”
With that Izuku leads the way back to their dorms, muttering the entire time about guys who won’t take no for an answer. With every word Shouto feels himself relax back into contentment.
Ho boy Anon this is a doozy of a prompt, very full of long fic potential. Also tragic as hell. I mean, I’m not gonna go for broke with the angst but I’m not going to shy away from it either. Hopefully this is something like what you were looking for. I’m sorry about this, by the way. It kinda meanders about and reads like a prologue.
Todoroki Shouto met Midoriya Izuku at the tail end of spring during the heart of the decade where magic became a myth. When they first met Shouto was older than Izuku. Not by a lot, just by a few years. That didn’t stop Shouto from falling for Izuku, for his smile and his bravery and his selflessness. For Shouto, Izuku is the brightest star.
Time, though, has no hold on witches. Izuku had understood from the beginning. The world of magic was dying out from public memory but Izuku accepted it as part of Shouto anyway. For a while, life was wonderful. Shouto would make sculptures of living ice in the summer for Izuku to marvel at and in the winter the fires would dance at his word. In their house the dishes do themselves, mirrors double as secret passageways, and the basement gives you whatever you ask for as long as you’re polite. Izuku never lost his childlike wonder at all things magical, at all things Shouto, even as his hair streaked gray and his freckles became harder to see thought the wrinkles.
Izuku grows old and Shouto stays a young man, forever twenty-three. Izuku calls him a miracle.
Magic is still as thick in the air as ever but with few and fewer people attuned to it Shouto finds himself unique where he was once one of many. Izuku’s right knee becomes weak, sometimes giving Izuku so much trouble he struggles to walk. Shouto watches Izuku deteriorate and he wishes that he had the skills to fix it, to make it painless. Shouto is not that kind of witch and once upon a time he knew someone who was but they were burned away. Izuku starts to age, starts to say things like “when I die you should get a pet so you’re not lonely”, and Shouto is gripped by fear. He starts looking for a witch that can turn back time on Izuku, that can make him young again.
He finds no such witch. He keeps looking away.
“Have you talked to your mortal about this?” Asks Nedzu when Shouto finds him. He’s an old man, tiny and wrinkled, but Shouto knows better. As old as he looks Nedzu is actually much older and much more powerful.
“I did,” Shouto admits.
“And what did he say?”
Shouto wrings his hands. “He said that he doesn’t want to live forever, that cheating death will do more harm than good to him in the long run.”
Nedzu chuckles. “He’s right, you know. Mortal bodies can’t take the strain.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?” Shouto demands.
Nedzu eyes him, tiny black eyes under large white eyebrows. “You could try letting him go.”
Shouto looks away. “That’s not possible.”
Nedzu sighs. “Young love is so earth-shattering. What are you, two hundred years old? You’ll fall in love many more times, young Todoroki.”
“I’d burn myself away without Izuku,” Shouto says and Nedzu falls quiet enough that Shouto looks back at him. The old man looks serious.
“There is a way. It’s not very wise, though, and completely irreversible.”
“Anything,” Shouto says.
“You’d even kill your mortal?” Nedzu asks and Shouto is taken aback.
“What?”
“The process will kill him,” Nedzu says, “but I can help you link his soul to yours. He will always return to you, across time and space and death itself. I cannot guarantee that he will love you, only that you will share your fate with him.”
Shouto hesitates, but only for a second. Killing Izuku once pales in comparison to the horror of existing in a universe without him. Shouto imagines Izuku, strong and passionate and kind, disappearing for good from the world and finds the strength to say, “Okay.”
Nedzu sighs. “Young love is so earth-shattering. Let me draw up a list of supplies and you can return to me when you’ve gathered them all, but you must return before your mortal dies. If he dies on his own there’s nothing I can do.”
Shouto nods, Nedzu grows a list from the bamboo plant in his living room, and then it’s a race against the clock. Some ingredients are easy, Shouto is a witch after all. His garden already has a lot of the herbs and his basement can conjure up some of the creature parts. Other things, though, are hard. Izuku’s blood is probably the hardest, not because it’s hard to get but because it’s hard to get without Izuku asking any questions. Shouto doesn’t want to tell him what he’s doing, doesn’t want to hear Izuku’s objections. He doesn’t want Izuku to change his mind.
Finally Shouto brings the ingredients to Nedzu and the old witch gets to work. Shouto hovers anxiously, doing everything he’s asked promptly. In the end, Shouto sits in Nedzu’s back yard in front of a dish of water, still and reflective as glass, within which Izuku sleeps. His hair is nearly white now and his chest rattles with snores he didn’t used to make. Shouto watches him, perfectly still as Nedzu paints a script on Shouto’s chest in Izuku’s blood and runs the herb mixture down from it to the wedding ring on Shouto’s finger. Shouto breathes slowly and Nedzu pulls a spike made of moonstone and jade from the earth. He positions the point of it carefully over Shouto’s heart.
“Ready?” Nedzu asks. “Once this is done we can’t take it back.”
Shouto breathes out and watches Izuku sleep in their bed through the scry. “Yeah.”
Nedzu starts the chant. Izuku blinks awake as though he can hear it.
“Forgive me,” Shouto whispers to him and Nedzu drives the spike into his heart.
It hurts, of course it hurts. It burns through his blood vessels, curling around inside him until he thinks he might die from it, and someone screams. It might be Shouto, it might be Izuku, and the sound of it knocks Shouto out.
He comes to only a few minutes later, slumped over on the grass. Nedzu drinks tea under the setting moon ten feet away, completely unconcerned.
“Did it work?” Shouto croaks.
“I would call it a success, yes,” Nedzu says, eyes falling to Shouto’s left hand.
Shouto looks down to his ring to see it sparkling unnaturally in the moonlight, as if it’s been dusted in a very fine glitter.
“Izuku?”
“Is being born again somewhere as we speak,” Nedzu says. “Congratulations.”
just moving along like everyone else 