Contemporary Urban Fantasy

Although high fantasy is my favorite fantasy subgenre, contemporary urban fantasy is always fun as well and I enjoy it immensely, well, of the probably small amount I've actually watched and read, that is. I didn't get a chance to read Coraline yet but I've watched the film multiple times which I love. I've heard the book is much darker than the film, so this actually makes me want to read the book even more as I thoroughly enjoy dark and creepy things, hence my previous mentions of my adoration of the horror genre. When it comes to the story in general, I had never seen or heard anything like Coraline before I was first introduced to it. The concept of this "other mother" who entices children into her midst by granting their simple wishes and fulfilling their dreams for a happier life is intriguing, and I can understand why children would get sucked into all this. Children and young teenagers can be pretty easily tricked and made to believe false promises. This can be unfortunate in real life when adults take advantage of this and kidnap children, but that's getting off topic.

One of the things you mentioned in class about urban fantasy is a common theme of people or kids in the modern era going into a fantasy world, often through some kind of portal. This of course fits with Coraline pretty well since she quite literally goes through a portal-like tunnel into the realm of the "other mother." It's interesting that it's right in her house whereas I feel like in many other stories similar to this where the portal is in a seemingly random and often odd, creepy place away from the main character's house. There are of course other kinds of portals that can transport characters back and forth between worlds, some of these portals can be vocal in a sense. 

Having watched Coraline, now I'll discuss something I actually read, like actually words on paper in a book. In the past I've read the young adult novels Inkheart and Inkspell by Cornelia Funke. The concept in these books was unique to me as well when I read them, I'm sure you know about them and have very possibly read them but just in case you're unfamiliar, basically one of the main characters, the main young girl's father, Mortimer, when he reads stories aloud he literally brings characters to life, but they also can be transported into the world from which he's reading. I'm pretty sure these books qualify as "contemporary urban fantasy" since the main characters live in the modern world and interact with people from another world. These stories also fit into the structure of characters being taken into another world similar to how Coraline goes to the realm of the "other mother." When I mentioned the portal idea you had brought up in class, in this case I was referring to Mortimer's voice as the portal in a way since the characters are literally brought to life by his voice. 

A big theme I've picked up on with these two works and other works in the genre is that these journeys to other worlds or the meeting of people and figures from other worlds who travel to your own, although these events are very real they all seem to share the feeling of being dreams. After all, dreams are basically you traveling to another world while you sleep, though it's all in your head whereas in these tales it's not just in the characters' heads. Coraline goes to the realm of the "other mother" which she thinks is a dream at first, and who could blamer her? Her other mother is kind and makes her everything she could ever want, but this is not in fact a dream. So although the concept of the dream is very prevalent, it seems to be just that, a concept or theme, it's a cool theme, but a theme nonetheless. As for other works in this genre, I still plan on reading Coraline and I also would like to watch Pan's Labyrinth, I'm probably the only person who hasn't seen it, haha.