"Little Nemo in Slumberland" dated February 28, 1908:
Transcript of Tweets by @LittleNemo1905 (SEPTEMBER 28, 2020):
First, I just wanted to say a really huge #ThankYou to @Totter87 who has done a fabulous job helping us navigate the architectural and formal complexities of Befuddle Hall over the last few days! - 1/19
The good news is that he nailed all the architectural nuance that I would absolutely miss in any reading that I present (which I'm very grateful for)! The bad news is we aren't quite out yet, so I'll do my best to guide us through the remainder! - 2/19
Thankfully, this one is sort of a carbon copy of yesterday's strip, just… sideways. - 3/19
The same spatial and visual gags that @Totter87 discussed yesterday are at play here too and they more or less function in the same way. - 4/19
My favourite thing about these three strips (including tomorrows) is that through their absurdity, they remind the reader that they're reading a fiction by forcing them to challenge notions of what's "real". - 5/19
If I seem obsessed with this notion of "the real" through Befuddle Hall, please forgive me. It's just what my education in postmodernity has trained me to see… I can't help it and BH really seems the perfect place to explore those notions… - 6/19
It feels as though they will also soon peter out (particularly once we leave BH) and we'll go back to our regularly scheduled #LittleNemo programming, but I'll be interested to see how many of the implications move forward throughout the series. - 7/19
Of course, one thing that this strip does differently from that last one is utilize the wake-up gag to justify it's spatial reasoning. I think this means Nemo fell out of bed and didn't immediately wake up from it? - 8/19
Panel 8 depicts him saying, "Huh! I was wondering why everything was so side wise like!"… to me this reads as though he was surprised to find himself laying sideways on the floor and had to renegotiate the spatial orientation of his dream with the new information. - 9/19
It's neat (and something takes taken even farther next week) that McCay continues to find innovative ways to blur the waking and dreaming world through the wake-up gag. - 10/19
I don't really know where mean Nemo comes from all of a sudden in panel 4… I guess, he could be chastising Impie playfully, but I didn't read it that way; it reads mean to me. - 11/19
I thought this was really strange and really outside of Nemo's character… which made me wonder if it was originally intended to be a line for Flip, but ended up having to go to Nemo because the characters were drawn first? I don't know… - 12/19
That also feels like I'm trying to "apologize" for McCay giving Nemo an unflattering moment… which I guess every character is allowed to have every once in a while… maybe Nemo had a bad day or something? - 13/19
I'll end just by questioning how it's possible that entry into Befuddle Hall so dramatically impacts the actual outside world as to turn it sideways… yet, that assumes the outside world of BH is the same as the outside world of Slumberland? - 14/19
Again, we're forced to ask… is that the "real" outside (which is, of course, a dreamworld itself and not "real"). More and more, it seems as though BH is a portal into a deeper part of Nemo's consciousness… - 15/19
If the imagination belongs to the subconscious mind, could it be possible that BH is the subconscious visualized as a Slumberlandian location? It is, most certainly, an imaginative and unrealistic place, right? - 16/19
The trio also seems to fear getting lost or going deeper into BH… they want *out* and are cautious and uncertain within… could this be representative of getting lost in the subconscious or delving so deep as to become forever trapped in the dark of the unconscious? - 17/19
I'm not sure… but it's fun to consider, isn't it? - 18/19
This is my reading of "Little Nemo in Slumberland" #124. What's yours? - 19/19