D-P Filippi and Terry Dodson's Muse was not quite what I was expecting. I was expecting a story about a woman hired as governess to a young boy with a vivid imagination, who finds herself drawn into said imagination, either metaphorically or literally. And the story does have that.
What I wasn't counting on was Coraline, the governess, would find herself having to escape being assaulted in each of these fictional worlds. An unexpected turn, but that's what happens, repeatedly. She wakes up in the middle of the night, finds a strange room with two men who give her outfits which show off her figure (if you're familiar with the women Terry Dodson draws, Coraline may be the apex of his style) in the back of her dresser, and is sent off into some fantasy where there's always a guy trying to get her clothes off. It's like Bizarro Chronicles of Narnia or something.
Oh, and during the daytime, Vernere is always trying to get her to drink some 'special brew' of his. Not drinking it seems to grant her more control in the dreams, or lets her wake up, I'm not clear which. Either way, yikes. And one of his two servants is constantly playing Peeping Tom on Coraline.
You might wonder why Coraline doesn't hightail it the hell out of there. If not after the first time, when she might be able to write off the thing with pirates as just an odd dream, certainly by the second, when some Tarzan analogue tries to cop a feel. Or the third, where Prince Charming asks her to give the sleeping princess a kiss, only for the princess to turn into him, wide awake and trying to kiss her. (She gives him five upside the head instead, which is her entirely appropriate reaction each time to this crap.)
Coraline took the job because she's looking for someone, so she has to stay until she can find them, but Filippi doesn't reveal that until 80% of the way through. He does drop plenty of hints that Coraline is far from the first governess, and that things with her aren't going as usual.
The conclusion is kind of odd. It basically suggests that, since Vernere was orphaned at a young age, he's trying to be an adult, but without parents around, he's emulating male protagonists in adventure novels? Especially in terms of how they get women? Is it a commentary on what fiction teaches men in general, about "winning" women, or about how people who retreat into fantasies are stunted and have unrealistic notions about interpersonal relationships?
You can certainly see Vernere does his best to avoid acting as a child might. He doesn't see the point in games. When Coraline suggests they build a treehouse, he trots out a treehouse-building machine he built some time ago to do it, but then is offended at the idea he might want to actually play in the treehouse. When he tries to dance with her on his birthday and she picks him up to make it easier, he gets completely embarrassed and storms off. He has a notion, maybe because of his intelligence, that he needs to be seen as an adult, and when Coraline tries to do otherwise, he gets angry. But he's still acting like a boy, in that he's trying to impress her to get her to like him. Showing off his inventions and trying to be cool instead of showing how he can do a handstand or whatever.
Which still doesn't explain how readily everyone seems to forgive and forget his repeated attempts at dreamworld date rape. That seems like something that needs correcting, but I guess we're meant to make allowances for grief.
In the comic adaptation of The Rocketeer movie, I think there's an entire page where Peter David just lets Russ Heath draw Betty (or Jenny, I guess in the movie) pulling on nylon stockings. Just absolute male gaze. This comic is that page, but basically nonstop for 100+ pages. Coraline in outfits that show off her chest. Coraline in lingerie. Coraline in the shower. Coraline with strategically torn "sexy" outfits. On and on, whether in the waking world or the dream world.
You'd think the servants, if they're so intent on having the old Vernere back, would try to discourage his libido during the daytime, instead of handing Coraline outfits that would seem to play to exactly that part of him, but I don't know. They also never bother to explain to Coraline what they're hoping for her to accomplish, or what's going on with Vernere, so quite how they expected her to fix things I don't know.
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