i’m literally in tears i’m so high right now so i thought “oh man does this really work” so i went to grab my uno cards and held one under the water stream and it didn’t work so then i realized maybe it only works with blue cards so long story short i’m left with wet uno cards and a broken heart so don’t do this at home kids
i’m gonna b real i made this image using groupchat.me or whatever YESTERDAY and i really wasn’t expecting it to resonate to stoners
Cat’s inner monologue: Just…just grab the toy you tit. You absolute walnut I don’t even…why are you making this so hard it’s a TOY, I…man, why are you like this…
my fav trope is like, nonhuman characters not understanding human needs/customs but still being super supportive of their human companion
“look what I found while exploring this planet’s surface!” “kilrak please I’m trying to sleep” “ah yes your human circadian rhythm. *stage whispering* I am supposed to be quiet during this time in your rhythm, yes?”
“the book I purchased on ragnok V says humans require physical touch when upset. therefore, I shall engage in a ‘hug’ with you.” *supremely awkward five-armed hug ensues*
*human sneezes* “OH MY GOD SIL’EEN GET THE MEDIC OUR HUMAN IS DYING”
“this pamphlet I received recently says that humans require companions and packmates in the form of small earth creatures. you should have told me this before we departed earth, but it is no worry. we will have to stop at the next trade planet to get you one of these ‘cats’ or ‘dogs’.”
imagine the aliens really purchasing a kitten for one of their rough and world-weary scifi badass human companions and watching in helpless wonderment what ensues
“she’s been cuddling that small animal for the past fifteen minutes just going ‘kitty, kitty’. did we – did we break our human?”
a more seasoned alien puts one of their tentacles around the younger one as the rest of the team gathers to watch their human make kissy noises.
“no, kilrak,” the alien says. “we did good.”
“Human-Steve! I have heard that today is the anniversary of your hatching! According to my human culture pamphlet, it is customary to set a sugary pastry on fire while chanting your species’ growth incantation and presenting sacrifices wrapped in shiny paper. I am afraid to ask, in case this ritual is sacred and this request therefor insensitive… but may I be allowed to participate? It sounds much more fascinating than molting.”
“Human Steve, I have read about your ritual dance called ‘The Hokey Pokey,’ performed mostly at mate-bonding celebrations after the guests reach an elevated level of intoxication. But Human Steve, how do I know WHICH left foot to put in, put out, and shake all about? I do not… Human Steve, why are you laughing?”
“Human-Steve, you are… you are eating, but it is not one of your ritual fueling times. Are you dying? Is everything alright? Have you not been receiving enough sustenance? Do I need to get you better things to eat? Human-Steve, why are you trying to hide that food?”
“Human-Steve, my research has informed me of a grave oversight in your care that I, as your companion, have made! Thus, I have gathered collections of fictional human literature to read aloud at the time of your bed. Which is more to your liking: “The Care and Keeping of Cacti” or “1001 Crossword Puzzles?” Human-Steve? Human-Steve, I am serious.“
One of the things I love the most about this post is how “Human-Steve” makes me think that there is also an alien called Steve in the squad, and I just imagine the first meeting and introduction where there is the human guy introducing himself as Steve and then there is this huge blue guy with like 5 legs and bug eyes and apparently Steve is like a completely regular name on his planet too in some intergalactical coincidence
that was off topic sorry.
that was the best possible tangent, thank you for this addition
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.
It’s anxious adults who desperately want to “soften” stories. Kids prefer the real thing: with monsters, bloodthirsty ogres and evil murderous stepmothers; where the littlest brother always wins and all the villains are horrendously punished in the end. The world is threatening to the eyes of a child, so they need a fictional universe where the little people have a fair chance against the big and strong.
This isn’t specifically about stop motion but it is about how sad or scary parts of movies aren’t really all that bad- IE the 80′s movies, particularly Don Bluth’s films. (X- The Melancholy of Don Bluth, by Meg Shields )
How the children’s animation of the 80’s made room for sadness, and what that taught us.
There was a time when McDonalds used to give away VHS tapes with happy meals, and by some stroke of luck, one day my mom picked The Land Before Time. It
was the first film to etch itself onto me ‐ the way film tends to with
kids. I would recreate the plot with stuffed animals and parrot the
lines to whoever would listen; I pawed that VHS box until the cardboard
went soft.
A couple years ago, I saw that Land Before Time
was playing on t.v. and couldn’t remember the last time I’d watched it
all the way through. Within five minutes I was completely obliterated
and sobbing into a throw pillow. This is a shared experience for
children raised with Don Bluth: that as a kid, I could only clock a hazy sense that his films felt different
from Disney fare, but that the articulations of this difference, and
their ability to emotionally floor me, are something I’ve only become
aware of in retrospect.
There was a regime change in animation
during the 80’s. Quite literally in the form of Bluth’s official break
with Disney in ’79, but in a more elusive sense with the landscape of
what children’s animation during that decade felt like. For
whatever reason, be it Bluth’s departure or a diseased managerial ethos
in the wake of Walt’s passing, the 80’s were a mixed bag for Disney.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re amiable and charming films, but The Fox and the Hound and The Great Mouse Detective are not classics. And for all its ambition, The Black Cauldron cannot be redeemed on technical merit. Disney would eventually yank itself out of its slump in ’89 with The Little Mermaid ‐ but animation during the 80’s, along with the childhoods of a slew of millennials, were definitively shaped by Bluth.
That there is a dark tenor to Bluth’s work has been thoroughly, albeit perhaps vaguely, noted, often citing individual moments of terror (cc: Sharptooth, you dick). While I don’t doubt that frightening and disturbing scenes contribute to an overall sense of darkness in Bluth’s work, I’m unconvinced that they’re at the root of what distinguishes his darker tone. There is, I think, a holistic sadness to Bluth films; a pervasive, and fully integrated melancholy that permeates his earlier work.
These stories are full of crystalline moments of narrative sadness; specific story moments at which I inevitably mutter a “fuck you Don Bluth,” and try not to cry. There’s Littlefoot mistaking his own shadow for his dead mother; Fievel sobbing in the rain (a Bluth mainstay) convinced that his family has abandoned him; Mrs. Brisby shuddering helplessly after she and the Shrew temporarily disarm the plow. Other plot points are less tear-jerking so much as objectively miserable: the cruelty of the humans in The Secret of NIMH; An American Tail’s intelligent allegory for Russian Jewish pogroms and immigration; Carface getting Charlie B. Barkin drunk and murdering him at the pier.
You know — FOR KIDS!
Thematically, there is an ever-present air of death about Bluth’s work that is profoundly
sad. Bones litter certain set-pieces; illness and age are veritable
threats (shout out to Nicodemus’ gnarly skeleton hands); and characters
can and do bleed. Critically, Bluth films don’t gloss over
grief, they sit with it. From Littlefoot’s straight up depression
following the on-screen death of his mom, to Mrs. Brisby’s soft sorrow
at finding out the details of her husband’s death.
There is a space for
mourning in Bluth’s stories that feels extra-narrative, and
unpretentious. Critically, this is distinct from, say, wallowing.
Bluth’s films have a ridiculously productive attitude towards mourning,
most lucidly articulated through Land Before Time’s moral
mouthpiece Rooter: “you’ll always miss her, but she’ll always be with
you as long as you remember the things she taught you.” Disney
meanwhile, tends to treat death as a narrative flourish, or worse, a
footnote. And in comparison, even notable exceptions like Bambi and The Lion King seem immaturely timid to let palpable grief linger for longer than a scene, let alone throughout a film’s runtime.
Look at all the fun times they’re missing.
Musically, James Horner and Jerry Goldsmith’s impossibly beautiful scores are laced with a forlorn undercurrent. In particular, Horner’s tonal dissonance in The Land Before Time theme punches the Wagner-lover in me in the throat (admittedly, a good thing). Further to this, the first half of Goldsmith’s “Escape from N.I.M.H,” is reminiscently Tristan and Isolde-y. And while I’m here, I would also like to formally issue a “fuck you for making me cry in public” to American Tail’s “The Great Fire,” which when combined with visuals, is nothing short of devastating.
Speaking of visuals, backdrops of grim and vast indifference dot Bluth’s work; from the twisted Giger-esque caverns of the rats’ rosebush, to the urban rot of a thoroughly unglamorous New York and New Orleans. That these landscapes are in a state of decay is particularly dismal; there is a tangible barrenness, a lack of the warmth our characters are desperately hoping to find by their film’s end. These are depressed and morose spaces ‐ and that they are so seemingly unnavigable and foreboding makes them all the more compelling, and narratively resonant.
The way Bluth uses
color is also notable, with dark, earthy tones prevailing throughout
only to be blown out quite literally with the golden light
characteristic of Bluth’s hard-earned happy endings. Before Littlefoot
and friends reach The Great Valley, an event marked by gradually
illuminating god-rays, they must slug it out through the parched browns,
blues and pitch of their prehistoric hellscape. Like Charlie’s final
ascendance into heaven, Fievel must endure similarly muted shades until
he is finally (finally) reunited with his family and soaked in
glitter ‐ a level of Don Bluth conclusion-sparkles perhaps only rivaled
by the radiance of Mrs. Brisby’s amulet as she Jean Grey’s her homestead
to safety at the end of NIMH. Because Bluth leans into darker,
less saturated tones, these effervescent conclusions are all the more
impactful, which speaks in part to the methodology of Bluth’s
melancholy.
The plucky leads of Bluth’s early films are all
fighting for the same thing: family. From Mrs. Brisby’s persistence to
protect her children, to Charlie’s (eventually) selfless love for
Anne-Marie, these are characters in search of home. Invariably, each of
these characters gets their happy ending, but they have to go through
hell to get there, literally in Charlie’s case. In a recent interview,
critic Doug Walker asked Bluth if there was any truth to the rumor that
he thinks you can show children anything so long as there’s a happy
ending, to which Bluth replied:
“[If] you
don’t show the darkness, you don’t appreciate the light. If it weren’t
for December no one would appreciate May. It’s just important that you
see both sides of that. As far as a happy ending…when you walk out of
the theatre there’s [got to be] something that you have that you get to
take home. What did it teach me? Am I a better person for having
watched it?”
Melancholy isn’t just a narrative device
for Bluth, it’s a natural part of navigating life, of searching for
wholeness, and becoming a better person. Bluth acknowledges sadness in a
way that never diminishes or minimizes its existence; he invites
melancholy in, confesses its power, and lets it rest. Sadness is, for
Bluth, an essential characteristic of the world and living in it. That
is a wholly edifying message for kids, delivered in a vessel that is
both palatable and unpatronizing. For this reason, among innumerable
others, Bluth’s work has immense value as children’s entertainment…even
if it means crying into a throw pillow twenty years later.
There’s a very distinct pattern in what one might, if one were being… incautious, name “Internet horror-speak,” a particular patois that’s arisen in the latest years of this very era, a peculiar dialect lashed together from the flesh of Lovecraft and the sinew of internet culture and the bones of… something bony. Okay so I’m probably not going to be able to keep that gag up. It’s the language of Dread Singles
HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA, TRAVELING THE SUNKEN WAYS, DRINKING FROM THE LIPS OF THE LOW ONES, WISHING THEY’D WORN MORE SENSIBLE SHOES
and Welcome to Night Vale
Mayor Pamela Winchell The fences in the caves. A heart throbbing for what it cannot have. A heart not having what it needs to throb. The fences in the caves. Heat from below and above, but all is cold betwixt. The fences in the caves. The fences in the caves.
to which I refer.
What interests me though is that’s there’s a very distinct pattern and sort of grammar to how this Internet Horror-Speak (hereafter IHS) works, one I’ve been trying to work out for a while now. There are some very obvious patterns, as well as some subtle ones I’m not sure how to put into words. These are the rules I’ve sussed out, though:
One of the most important rules, and I think the one that might be the most surprising to a lot of people, is to use simple, mundane language. Empurpling the narrative with gratuitous polysyllabisms and grandiose prose is actually wholly deleterious to the desired effect. This actually makes a lot of sense. Purple prose has a serious abstracting effect, in that it draws the audience away from the action and makes it sound more like they’re listening to a story. So using purple prose to describe your indescribable horrors can make them feel less real, where using everyday language helps connect the audience and make them feel more like there’s some grotesque violation of normalcy going on
Use fewer ‘s-constructions. Say “the blood of the fallen,” not “the fallen’s blood;” “the intestines of dawn” not “dawn’s intestines.” This is a less solid rule, and it’s still possible to have a powerfully creepy effect with the ‘s-construction, particularly if the construction comes sentence-finally: “They beat them with sticks around which were wrapped dawn’s intestines,” but “They wrapped the intestines of dawn around thick oaken sticks.”
Use older words. “For” instead of “because,” “kin” for “family,” etc. If this makes them shorter than their modern counterparts, all the more effective.
Don’t use commas with conjunctions, just string conjunctions together. So “They laughed and writhed and screamed and died in the gaze of a smiling god,” but not *”They laughed, writhed, screamed, and died in the gaze of a smiling god.” This one’s variable, but I see the former more than the latter and to me it feels like it has more impact and is more visceral. The latter sounds more planned out, more official, more normal.
Use old-fashioned constructions. “The”+[adjective] constructions are a favorite, as are “the [adjective] one(s).” “The laughing ones steal away the dreams of the hopeful and feast on the teeth of the indolent,” “There are no innocent in this place, for to gaze on the Ancient Ones is to know that innocence is a lie, that blood and fear and corruption are the engines of all that breathes.”
Break word associations. If I start a sentence with “The toaster,” you’re probably going to expect something like, “the toasted fell off the counter,” or “the toasted exploded,” not “the toasted laughed” or “the toaster bled.” There are words we associate with animate things and words we associate with inanimate things, and mixing them up can lead to weird mental reactions. It’s why things like “SPANK HAIR — LICK EYES — WHISPER INTO ASS” are so funny. They make us build associations that we didn’t have previously. A toaster isn’t a thing that bleeds, and hair isn’t something you spank, so putting those words together tends to slightly mess with people and throw off our reading. Welcome to Night Vale does this SO MUCH.
Cecil Wednesday has been canceled due to a scheduling error
Cecil Here’s something odd: there is a cat hovering in the men’s bathroom at the radio station here
Cecil Alert! The sheriff’s secret police are searching for a fugitive named Hiram McDaniels, who escaped custody last night following a 9 PM arrest. McDaniels is described as a five-headed dragon
Last but not least, be vague. Let your words imply terrible and alien machinations at play, let them hint at vast supernatural tableaux of incomprehensible splendor and horror hanging just out of sight waiting to be glimpsed, but don’t ever explicitly tell anybody what’s going on. I put this one last because even though it’s the most important, it’s the most obvious, and I think everybody already knows this about horror. But it’s worth noting that IHS generally dials this up way higher, to the point where it’s hard or impossible to tell what parts are literal or metaphorical. Take this sub-par example:
Moving through the ashen ways of eons past, realms of fire and smoke and emptiness rising up and twisting around its path the beast walked on, burning all it perceived.
One on level, it’s possible that we’re talking about a minotaur arsonist who’s taking to the backroads during a forest fire to avoid the cops. On the other, we could be talking about some incomprehensible eldritch abomination warping its way through infernal dimensions outside space and time, ravaging worlds at its passing. Or anything between. I think this is probably the single most salient feature of IHS: its utter vagueness, and lack of proper context to distinguish the metaphorical from the literal.
But anyway. This is a fascinating memetic phenomenon and one I’d love to see some proper research done on this, beyond the idle musings of a lazy linguist with too much on her hands to spend time analyzing hard data.
Relatable FE Quote or Something 