#read this and imagine me pacing and stumbling over random objects as i explain because that would be um accurate

[lilacerull0]

husband, one night stand, best friend: chase, dan and laurie

for laurie i don't even have to think it through he's definitely: best friend first and foremost. but listen, husband is the best friend ideally. obviously not the only best friend, but definitely a best friend. this is the perfect ask game for those who love to see me struggle with ~stuff like this~... who is the one night stand....... i guess it COULD be dan if we're both in a self-destructive state of mind. that still doesn't ring entirely true tho because having me and dan in the same room feels very wrong for some reason, like a complete paradox... chase is the husband (well he already was according to cindy) because he's that person who tried marriage and went ummm no, this is not for me. so i guess we can work in a highly unconventional marriage AND we're insufferable in a different way, unlike me and dan. ok, sticking to laurie as a best friend, dan as a one night stand and chase as the husband because those choices beat some of the allegations directed towards their characters and i'm obsessed with how punk that is. why am i taking this so seriously, why am i like this grrr

[script-a-world]

The Nightmare Before Christmas: Worldbuilding Discussion

Just in time for Christmas, mods Miri and Werew have written up some thoughts about the movie The Nightmare Before Christmas and the worldbuilding within. We hope you enjoy!

The world in Nightmare Before Christmas is an interesting one from  a world building perspective. (And one that goes along with several questions we’ve received over the last year.) Here you have a world, the human world, and you also have these separate, town sized holiday worlds. Each of these holiday worlds is completely different. Different climates, vegetation, animals, people. Each world is accommodating to the populace that lives within it. 

Halloween Town is just what its residents need. There is an appropriate level of darkness, pools are the right toxic contents that they aren’t toxic to the locals. Ceilings are high enough to pass beneath. An outsider in Halloween Town is going to have trouble finding the things they need to survive. When Jack falls into Christmas Town, he reacts with amazement at how different everything is. He wonders at why things are what they are. He searches for monsters under the bed and is surprised to find none. He makes a lot of comparisons to how things are different. That is often how we relate to new things. When Jack tries to explain Christmas Town to the people of Halloween Town, they have trouble imagining anything but what they know. They try to rationalize the objects with what they would expect. A box they understand. The look of it is unfamiliar, but surely what is inside is what they would expect to find in a box. Jack decides to approach Christmas from scientific means, taking it apart to try to reconcile it with what he knows of the world. He learns as much as he can but still can’t understand the meaning of it all. Eventually he decides that he doesn’t have to understand it to believe in it. He takes what he has learned and tries to apply it in his terms. The results are not recognized or welcomed by the residents of the human world on Christmas Eve. It is. It what they have been cultured to expect and they react with both fear and violence. In the end Jack realizes that Christmas is not where he naturally belongs, and really, it isn’t where he wants to be. He’s had his look at the other side and chosen his path.

The Nightmare Before Christmas is a yearly staple in my household, both for the movie itself and the incredible stop motion work. Not to mention the sing along aspect of it. It’s worth a watch if you haven’t seen it, and worth another if you already have.

Happy holidays, and may one of your gifts in the coming year be the answer to all your world building dilemmas.

Mod Miri

Let me start out by saying that I LOVE this movie. It was a staple of my childhood, and it’s an all-around awesome movie. Honestly, even when looking with an intentionally critical eye, I didn’t see much that I thought should be improved. I hope you enjoy this analysis!

The Nightmare Before Christmas is set in a very fantastical world, and one that isn’t really like anything else in mainstream media. This originality is great, but with unique worlds there comes the problem of trying to convey the basics to the audience without getting in the way of the story. Because TNBC is a musical, it allows for a certain amount of suspension of disbelief and a certain amount of exposition by song. It uses the opening number in a particularly effective and believable way to introduce the world, by starting off on halloween and showing us the celebration that the residents put on; this introduces all of the characters (at least to our sight), explains the basic premise of the world, and shows off a lot of the settings and themes.

The introduction of the world by the first song allows the story to get right underway immediately afterwards, with the audience happily on board. Because the setting is introduced so quickly, the movie doesn’t have to waste dialogue time explaining the world, and this allows Jack’s motivations to be introduced within the first ten minutes of the film. This isn’t really worldbuilding, but I think it’s related and I also think that it’s a great and effective way to get the audience hooked right away. Wow, this world is so cool! What, the ruler of it is unhappy with his unchanging life? It’s an immediate, relatable look into his character and drives the rest of the story.

One thing that really sells Halloween Town as being very different from the real world is the culture. This is shown in small, subtle things, especially the idioms and phrases that the people use in ordinary conversation. A few examples that I enjoy:

“Curiosity killed the cat, you know!” -said in a delighted tone rather than a reproachful one.

“Like a vulture in the sky”

“This fog's as thick as, as... Jelly brains!”

There is also an obvious, recurring cultural tendency to see a lot of somewhat negative things associated with Halloween--death, fright, dark themes, and even violence--as positive. This makes it obvious that the world is very different and that the scary themes of Halloween are commonplace and positive to them. It’s a little bit tricky to pull this off in normal conversation without making the audience feel like you’re beating them over the head with it. It’s also tricky to make sure that no idiomatic or cultural phrases that don’t apply end up in your world! Sometimes the things that we think and say are so ingrained that we don’t even register that they might not make sense in a different context.

There are only a few things that I found to be critical of. Most of them aren’t very plot-relevant, and are honestly unimportant to the story. Still, there are a good handful of odd, unexplained things that don’t make logical sense.

The population of Halloween Town doesn’t seem to be very large, yet they have two rulers--Jack Skellington the Pumpkin King (also referred to as the King of Halloween) and the Mayor. These two do not seem to conflict, and the Mayor definitely defers to Jack. In such a small community, it doesn’t really make sense to have two different ruling parties, one elected and one not.

For that matter, the Mayor IS an elected official--or at least he says he is. Yet not once, even as a throwaway line, is anything about an election or voting mentioned. His character is presented as being The Mayor, as though that is the majority of his identity. He’s not just a random citizen who happens to have been elected; he Is The Mayor. That’s his entire being.

Halloween Town seems to be in some kind of limbo as far as its relation to other worlds goes. They seem to be at least aware of the real world, but don’t appear to interact with it; their Halloween celebration takes place in their town and they never talk about traveling outside of it until Jack does. They also clearly have never heard of or seen the other holiday worlds, which Jack stumbles upon completely by accident. Yet, when he sets off to do his own version of Christmas, he doesn’t seem to have any question in his mind about how to get to the real world, or how to get back. While this isn’t really that important, I kind of wish it had been explained.

One last thing that struck me as a little odd is how different Sally is culturally, as compared to the others. She seems to be more aware of the world as an outsider might see it, and she doesn’t use as many Halloween-ish phrases. Her sense of beauty is unique in her world, yet there is no indication that she has ever been outside of it.

Though I discuss these things as problems, I honestly do not think that it’s a bad thing that they went unexplained. The movie’s runtime is fairly short, and the pacing is excellent. Sometimes the world and the explanation of it needs to fall by the wayside in order to tell the story in the best way possible, and that’s fine. The only time when world problems bother me is when they are inconsistent AND directly influence plot events, but all of the idiosyncrasies I noticed in this movie were in the background.

All in all, I think that The Nightmare Before Christmas is a fantastic example of a unique, fantasy world that is presented in a fun and effective way.

Thanks for reading!

Mod Werew