theloststarboy asked:
Mr. Gaiman, my friend is claiming that a coralline two is in the makes, am I living under a rock or am I being lied to, misinformation sucks. Thank you :D
You’re being lied to. Or at least, being told something untrue.
So this is what we in the fiction trade call a lie, a made up story, and not true. In case anyone ever tells you they read it online.
I’m not linking to it because I won’t give them the clicks.
fragileandendless asked:
Hi Neil! (Apologies if you’ve already received this— resending bc our wifi was in and out last night). You recently responded to an ask that I sent of my now 4 year-old’s drawing of Coraline and said you loved her art (something she tells everyone now (and us too)).
On Tuesday we took her to see Coraline for her first ever movie theater experience. She loved every second of being there and asked if she could watch Coraline again as soon as we got home. Her outfit was a big hit with the other attendees, too. We think she encapsulated Coraline’s personality perfectly in this photo, and she asked that we share this with you. As always, thank you for all you do and especially for helping us create these joyous memories with our little one!
Perfect! I’m so glad Laika have re-released it into cinemas, for people like her. She looks fabulous.
thewonderfulplacesmymindgoes asked:
I recently got struck with the urge to read Coraline again, and stopped by my local library on the way home from work to see if they had a copy available. They did, the 10th Anniversary Edition as a matter of fact. I felt this was fitting, since it's been almost exactly 10 years since I've read it.
A lot of things have changed for me since then, namely that I was a 13-going-on-14 year old girl and now I'm a 23-going-on-24 year old man, but the story was still so impactful in such a way I didn't even realize until I started writing this.
When I was 13, I lived in a small town in Central Florida. Things weren't great for me, and I was about to go to an entirely new school with new people, and I was alone. It's not that I moved away, but all the people I'd considered my friends wanted nothing to do with me after I was outed to my whole school. My parents were great, but they couldn't help if I didn't tell them I needed it, and I never did. I was embarrassed and scared, and reading Coraline helped me more than I realized. Being brave didn't mean I wasn't scared, it meant I did it anyways in spite of it. I went to a new school, and I made new friends, and we're going on 10 years of friendship in September.
Now, I'm 23. I live halfway across the country, and I'm happy. It was terrifying making this move on seemingly a whim, but it's been better than I could've ever imagined. Nothing feels quite as scary anymore.
Anyways, I apologize for rambling, but I wanted to thank you for sharing this gift you made for your daughters with all of us.
I’m proud and happy that Coraline helped you when you needed it. That was what it was for.
theeyecrab asked:
Hi mr. Gaiman, I really love your books and short stories! I just read Coraline yesterday and was wondering about it.
So, I read the book in English, which is not my native language, so it could be me misunderstanding whatever is written, but I am really curious and wanted to ask you.
So in the book, when Coraline is in the room behind the mirror she meet 3 ghosts. When Coraline asks one of them if they're a boy or a girl, the ghost answer is "when I was small I wore skirts and my hair was long and curled, but now that you ask, it does seem to me that one day they took my skirts and gave me britches and cut my hair", and the the same ghost says "I believe I was once a boy". The other two ghosts say they're girls, and later, when Coraline finds the 1st soul it's confirmed that this is in fact a boy.
What I wanted to ask is, is the ghost boy trans? I'm asking because I really don't know if I misunderstood or that this is true, and I would really appreciate a honest answer.
Also I don't know if someone already asked you about it, so I'm sorry if you've already answered this question.
Thanks anyway, for everything you've written!
It’s a good question.
If you want to read it as the ghost having been trans, you certainly could.
When I wrote it, though, I was thinking of the rite of passage known as breeching. That was the custom of taking a boy around the age of 6 or 7 out of the skirts he would have worn until then, and giving him breeches, what the English might call trousers. They made an event of it. Often the boys would have their long, curly hair cut at the same time, but not always. Hair could be cut before breeching, or after.
Let’s look at fashion for boys in England…
The custom lasted longer than you might imagine. This is Franklin D Roosevelt in 1884…
and an English boy in 1871…
…and breeching continued in many places until the early 20th Century.
I’ve read in many places that boys were dressed as girls when small to somehow protect them from the evil eye, but most of the history of fashion articles I’ve read maintain there wasn’t boys’ and girls’ clothing, there was children’s clothing, and it was more about the complexity of how you did up adult trousers and the ease of small kids being able to go to the toilet. I post anything to do with fashion and history on Tumblr a little nervously, knowing that there are people out there who REALLY know their stuff, and will take enormous delight in explaining this a great deal better than I can.
In the meantime, here are a few links.
darkmoonstruck asked:
..Oh good lord a video just popped up in my sidebar entitled The TRAGIC and UNTOLD Love Story in Coraline - it has a picture of the other mother and the cat with a broken heart emoji between them and the words "they were married" underneath. X_X I just....Really??
Are we missing some serious subtext here?
Everything you have ever wondered about Coraline theories is answered here:
crystallisedmoon asked:
Mr. Gaiman, I watched coraline when I was 13 and it scared the shit out of me. Now that I've grown older I realised I'm too scared to read the book but it's still in my 2023 tbr. Wish me luck!
Good luck! You’ll be fine.
From the distant past. Buttons, and what a good thing they are and why they aren’t scary at all not even a little bit, really, trust me on this.
a-walk-around-the-block asked:
There's something I've been interested in but find quite difficult to find: The original draft of a story. There's a lot of history and research into how painters pain: the techniques, the material, the time spent, and the sources. Writers, on the other hand, seem to be seamless when it comes to showing their process. It made writing harder, not near impossible, but hard to create a relationship without seeing a writer's original notes. Could you kindly show some of your writings, revision-less?
Here are some notes to myself on Coraline, with a path to the end of the book, and then some handwritten Coraline manuscript in first draft, and then the equivalent bit of it from the finished published book.