#Victorian stories

[princess-ibri]

So @rainyearthquakestudent asked if I had any ideas for a backstory for The Other Mother from Coraline for the spooky season...

I don't have a whole story, sorry, but I have had one little thought floating around my head for a while, and figured it would work to share it now.

So longtime fans of Coraline will likely know that a big inspiration for the book was a short story published in 1882 by Lucy Clifford called "The New Mother"

(Also retold in the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series as "The Drum")

In the tale of two sisters who meet a strange young girl who plays an instrument called a pear drum, that creates wonderful and strange music. The girl says she will give the pear drum to the sisters--but only if they are very very naughty.

The mother of the sisters warns them that if they continue to misbehave she will have to leave, and a New Mother will come and live in the house, one with glass eyes and a wooden tail.

The sisters visit the pear drum girl three times, and each time tells them they haven't been naughty enough. At last they push too far and their mother leaves. The strange girl laughs at them, says they'll never earn the drum and that their New Mother is waiting for them.

The sisters return home to find that the New Mother with her glass eyes and wooden tail is indeed there, and though they try to keep her out she manages to push in. The girls flee into the woods, forced to live on what they can scavenge, while the New Mother takes up residence in their old home...

So my thought for the backstory of the Other Mother we meet in Coraline, is that she is the strange girl with the pear drum in the story--and daughter of the New Mother.

We know from the Coraline book that the Beldam canonically once had a mother:

"How do I know you'll keep your word?" asked Coraline. "I swear it," said the other mother. "I swear it on my own mother's grave." "Does she have a grave?" asked Coraline. "Oh yes," said the other mother. "I put her in there myself. And when I found her trying to crawl out, I put her back."

I wouldn't want to explain everything, I think that the mysteries of Coraline are part of the fun, but my thought is that these Beldams are a type of malignant fairy type being. They prey on children, getting them to make deals with them in order to draw them into their web and eat up their lives, using various modus operandi. But they always have something about the eyes that give them away, and they're always looking to replace someone in the human world.

The house that the New Mother gained from the two sisters is the house that Coraline would eventually move into. By then of course the Other Mother has usurped her own mother, and been somehow locked away into that pocket dimension attached to the house, so she can't move in the human world as she once did, having to rely on her rat spies. (Possibly, her imprisonment is due to her having eaten a fairy child in the book, I could see magical repercussions coming down for that). But she's still doing her best to push on with the Beldam life cycle.

[idrawprettyboys]

When writing historical fiction, especially when doing so in a comic/manga format, I’m always conflicted as to whether to make the dialogue historically accurate or to modernize it. I prefer a mid-ground level of speech that’s understandable to a modern audience but still a little old fashioned sounding, but it’s hard to find the right balance. This is specifically in regards to Victorian stories, where it’s not like it’s a different language than modern English, but it’s just very lengthy, and there are a lot of words or phrases that would be used differently today. Especially considering I’m writing from an American English standpoint. I’ve tried writing an adaptation of the Picture of Dorian Gray a couple times, and I was extra conflicted, because of course, Oscar Wilde’s dialogue is extremely iconic, but at the same time, that’s way too much to fit naturally into a comic panel (although I’ve seen people do it). If I’m making a manga adaptation, I feel like it would be wise to paraphrase, but… paraphrasing or summarizing Oscar Wilde? That feels like sacrilege. However, I’m currently working on an original story that’s not meant to be historically accurate, so I think I can be quite a bit more lenient with this one. Especially since it involves a melding of time periods.

[bl00dfroma-fairy]

[erynies]

Definitely in the realm of things people I know might like. (=

Saving for further examination

[gothic-allegory]

“I am a cemetery by the moon unblessed.” ― Charles Baudelaire, Paris Spleen

[tremendously-crazy]

Sherlock Holmes fans don't want much. They just want to see a universe where Holmes and Watson actually get to be together.

[ghouljams]

no thoughts just simon roughly undoing your corset at the end of the night. idk how he'd be there without it being seen as improper or whatever or maybe hes your husband but i feel like it'd send me into subspace so quick.. kinda similar to shibari? idk.

The times when he's rough with your stays are few and far between, mostly he unlaces the (newly) double stranded thing with blunt nails that slip against the laces. His own knots so carefully tied keeping you held tight in what may as well be his embrace. His signature is already neatly embroidered on your modesty panel, his words neatly penned in bleeding ink professing all the places his lips would touch. Scandalous delivered before he ever made it to your marriage bed, you might add.

Oh no, Simon is very... deliberate with your stays. Possessive, even. His knot is one you can't undo, one that even he sometimes resorts to pulling between his teeth. It's a security you can't go against, a lock whose only key is held by Simon. He won't even let your maid touch your laces. You sit for him and arch into his touch as he threads one line, then another, and another. His fingers skim your chemise, his breath just barely even. You hang your head to feel his teeth graze the top knob of your spine as he pulls you tight, and takes the first swell of your breath between his fingers.

It's a beautiful thing. A second spine borrowed from your husband's hand. How each crossed thread holds its own knot at the center, how each lace ladders itself to climb up the looping of Simon's signature, his name just barely visible under the knots and laces. No, he doesn't tear at your stays. Swear at them maybe. Tell you he won't tie them so tight next time, a lie. But never tear.

Cut? Well, now that's another thing entirely. And you'd be lying if you said the press of his blade along your spine, slowly carving out your trapped breath, didn't make you squeeze your legs around the hand he'd already buried between them.

[countesschocula]

[weirdlookindog]

"Rose carried of by Count Lerno"

"The hag and her victim"

"The murder in the green-room"

"The murderous attack"

"Found dead"

"The crime"

"Digging the grave"

"Clara and the ruffians"

"The lost one"

"The murder by poison"

"The sweep and his victims"

"Selling a wife"

"The bodysnatchers"

"ROSE MORTIMER; OR, THE BALLET-GIRL'S REVENGE"

by a comedian of the T. R. Drury Lane, London, c. 1865

source

[fiuworks]

one of my favourite things about tma is that Annabelle is described as ‘looking like a film student’ and as someone who went to a dedicated film college it gets a laugh out of me because she could look anywhere from crawled out of the incinerator from Toy Story or look like something that would result from dropping a Japanese fashion subculture in joker acid

[isabelleadjani]

SOOYOUNG on Hyo's Level Up

[kambriel]

Dracula author Bram Stoker's long lost ghost story Gibbet Hill has been found in an 1890 Christmas supplement of a Dublin newspaper!

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g9119l64qo

~Kambriel

[Kambriel.com ~ Etsy ~ Bluesky~  Twitter ~ Tumblr ~ Dreamwidth ~ Facebook ~ Instagram]

[fictionadventurer]

Maybe the problem with Christian fiction is that it's non-denominational. People are just "Christian", with no effort put into showing what practicing that religion looks like for them specifically. No indication that there are other Christians who could have different beliefs. No wrestling with differing ideas and the struggle of how one should live out their Christian faith. And that makes it unrealistic and unrelatable.

[hollybrookee]

Wrote a silly little story about geopolitical conflicts using minecraft mechanics <3 Can confirm it’s better than the minecraft movie xoxo.

“Being taken under a weathered skeleton’s wing and moving into one of the last mob cities free from the Brine family’s chokehold on society was supposed to be a clean slate for Steve. It was supposed to be his only chance to lead a normal life (sort of). And it was, for a while. Between the human village just above them reporting suspicious mob behavior, Enderian soldiers acting out of turn, whispers of the Nether’s involvement, and Oceanic tribes wreaking havoc on the surface, It seemed his past was starting to run faster than he was. And It certainly didn’t help that the son of the End’s most decorated general got framed in an espionage scheme to undermine Overworld political barriers. Now the guy was digging into Steve’s past to open up old wounds and Steve had no choice but to help him do just that.”

[nocnitsa]

William Ladd Taylor- The Old Clock on the Stairs

[vinceaddams]

People don't blame ghost sightings on indigestion like they used to.