Flower Princess

+Bonus

So two firefighters came into my store this morning. Now, we get firefighters in the store once in a while, probably because our complex is perpetually setting off the fire alarm, and every time they show up my whole team fawns over them like they’re walking sex gods and I don’t really Get It.

But y’all. Two firefighters came into my store this morning, and I Get It. Because that woman was so goddamn attractive, with her dark eyes and her muscles and her strong hands and her charming smile and her casual confidence just lounging around like she owned the place and a;dlfghadfghdfg I have never looked at ANYONE and immediately stopped breathing but y’all it HAPPENED. This woman was so stunningly handsome that I literally cannot tell you what the other female firefighter in the room looked like beyond “I think she was blonde.”

But you know what, I’m BoH so I didn’t have to talk to the stunningly handsome firefighter, and that was fine. I minded my business and tried (and failed) not to look at her. Until the next guests came in, and I said “Hi, welcome in!” reflexively like I’m supposed to.

And this firefighter. She looked at me with this cheeky little smirk, and she said, “Hey now. You didn’t welcome me in.”

And instead of saying something coy, or charming, or clever, the words that actually came out of my mouth were: “Well, you’re very attractive, and it threw me off.”

Y’all she chuckled and she WINKED AT ME. And I’m pretty sure I died on the spot.

“It’s for you,” my boss says, with that look on his face like he’s trying not to give away the punchline of a joke.

And y’all, it’s relatively early in the morning. I haven’t been getting a lot of sleep lately. I haven’t had my coffee yet. So forgive me, because my dumb gay ass asks, “What for?”

Which it turns out is exactly what he wants me to ask, because he says with a big grin, “Heard you wanted to get someone’s attention at the fire department.”

All day long at regular intervals he points out flammable objects around the store.

The movie is captivating, but the book is twenty kinds of terrifying, even now, ten years after I first read it. As disturbing as the movie may have been to some, the things Selick added really serve to cushion just how horrific the story really is.

First of all, the character of Wybie does not exist in the book. Coraline is facing all of this nearly alone, with her only help coming from the sly comments of the cat, a warning from the circus mice, and the stone given to her by her neighbor, presented with no comment but that it “makes the unseen seen.”

Second, the Other Parents are never quite as warm (and, dare I say, normal) as they are in the gifs above. They’re described as having paper-white skin and the Other Mother’s hair is said to move on its own, and her long, red, claw-like nails don’t ease any uncertainty that she is absolutely, positively up to no good. The first time Coraline meets them, they (and the rest of the Others) seem to be playing roles (for whatever reason, Coraline does not seem to pick up on this), like they all know what to say and what to do and are simply waiting for Coraline to make her move in their terrifying play world. This is shown to be partly true when the Other Parents tell her they know she’ll be back soon after she refuses the buttons - this time, to stay.

Third, the Other Mother commits atrocities that really should not have been in a book for anyone not fully grown up. She physically deforms the world around Coraline to slow her progress in their game beyond any mild traps the movie portrays, and, instead of turning the Other Father into the wandering pumpkin-thing seen in the film, she simply ceases to use him and throws his body away in the cellar, leaving him to rot with whatever bit of sentience he has left. She begins to lose her touch, as Coraline gains the upper hand. Her world doesn’t just become a nightmare - it falls apart completely. No creepy but oddly cool bug furniture here, just the house that now appears to be a child’s drawing. Whatever the Other Mother is (a beldame, but something tells me she’s much more ancient and powerful than that), she does not give half a hump about what she has to do to ensnare Coraline. Destroy the supporting characters of her twisted creation? Done. Allow herself to be dismembered to ruin Coraline’s life in the normal world? Not even gonna bat an eyelash.

On a final, personal note, imagine eight year-old me, ignored by my parents, absorbed in the story and identifying with Coraline from the start. Imagine me finishing this bloodcurdling book and immediately thinking of my basement, where there is still a locked door that my grandmother swears up and down is nothing more than a storage room, but has not once in my (or my mother’s) lifetime unlocked.

A decade later, at the Opening Night of the Coraline musical, I was sitting next to Morgan, Merilee’s youngest daughter, and told her how her not being scared had made the book happen. And she said “I was terrified. But I needed to find out what happened next. So nobody knew.”

or david bowie

or tilda swinton

Or doctor who

Or Lewis Capaldi