The worlds he creates are liminal and populated by megalithic structures and conscious beasts. They're ruled by ordered chaos that outsiders have no hope of figuring out. As a kid, what always scared me most was imagining how I would survive in the Suess-iverse and knowing I didn't have a chance
4 weeks ago | 40
When I was little, it was one of the first times I remember feeling a story was about something else. Not thinking it was about something else or told it was about something else but really feeling it. And sometimes those feelings were ominous - specifically I remember the Butter Battle Book giving me chills.
4 weeks ago | 9
The older I grow the darker the stories seem. Not because they're secretly evil or something, but because they highlight deep truths of humanity that are often ignored by many. Especially those in power.
4 weeks ago | 7
@AlexanderFromTheStarDimension
I honestly believe "Oh, The Places You'll Go!" to be a precursor of the "liminal space" aesthetic. I mean, more than half of that book is literally JUST liminal spaces with little context. I think it's hauntingly beautiful.
3 weeks ago | 2
Very specifically: the way the drawings include small eyes, fluffy fingertips, folds of skin, and exaggerated facial expressions (especially angry ones). All those features made everything very uncanny valley. Not a single one of their humanoids were recognizable in nature but definitely close enough to human.
4 weeks ago | 12
the sharp points on 'fuzzy' characters, stark black linework & shading, and, above all, the sometimes surprisingly dark and desolate landscapes in Dr. Seuss' picture books always felt sort of dreary to me when i was a kid, almost hopeless. the feeling i got when looking at, for example, the wasteland of the ruined forest in The Lorax is vaguely reminiscent of the overwhelming sense of impending doom i felt pretty much all the time before i was medicated for GAD. oddly enough, i was also a huge Seuss fan. i think it was just an odd manifestation of my morbid curiosity and a way to take control over my constant fear of everything by selecting what unsettled me. edit: Fox in Sox was the fucking GOAT
4 weeks ago (edited) | 4
Some of the character designs are a bit creepy; they hit that uncanny valley feeling of not being completely human. The backgrounds also often look like hell worlds of their own - especially whichever book has the colorful spiral background, iykyk!
4 weeks ago | 14
I always felt strange. Seuss has a way of truly transporting me in that way of Miyazaki. Not to the same depth as Miyazaki, but I get the same feeling of some lived in other world. The strange liminal architecture and furry beasts. The stairs going nowhere. I felt like I'd truly been elsewhere by the end. Like I got a nice glimpse someplace
4 weeks ago | 1
The butter battle book always freaked me out as a kid because I watched the animated version of it with all the creepy music and dark lighting I didn't even know it was an analogy for the Cold War until I looked it up again when I was like 15
4 weeks ago | 4
As a kid , there was a particular scene from a doctor Seuss film that would keep me out , I can’t even remember exactly what it sounds like or what that still frame looked like . But I remember how it felt
3 weeks ago | 0
Everything felt nonsensical but in the uncanny way rather than silly and childish to me. I had the Oh The Places You'll Go book and always got caught up on how freaky the scenery is.
4 weeks ago | 2
When I was little, a part in "HOP ON POP" that I found creepy was the 2 pages that went "We play all day, We fight all night," and on the "play all day" page it showed 2 who's all cute and happy with big eyelashes and smiles and the "fight all night" page had them all angry looking in a dark room, eyes narrowed all wickedly. I used to think that meant they were always trying to unalive each other at night when their parents were asleep but during the day would hide their evil rivalry with big happy smiles until nobody was looking again.
3 weeks ago
| 0
Depends on the book and it’s not really the characters themselves but the surrounding world.
3 weeks ago | 0
For some unknown reason to my older self I was deeply terrified of hop on pop when I was younger I remember when he got angry at his kids I didn't like that part. Older me now recognizes the slight Eldritch horror present in all of his books.
3 weeks ago | 0
It kind of reminds me of Lewis Carroll. In one way or another, depending on what source you consult, he experienced the world very differently from the vast majority of people, and it bled into his creations, from the characters and worlds to the language and style of writing itself. Dr. Seuss's books give me the same vibe: you just know this person had a really, really unique experience, whether internally alone or in his relationship with the external environment and the people within it. Maybe the genre I'm brushing against is surrealism or whatever; idk, I'm not a proper artist or writer.
3 weeks ago | 0
He wrote about the most destructive tendencies of human society in the same way Jonathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal.
3 weeks ago | 0
His characters are overly animated humanoid monsters and the backgrounds are hauntingly void
4 weeks ago | 0
Oh the places you'll go has always freaked me out a little bit. I think it's the environments that seem never-ending and how things just don't make sense.
4 weeks ago | 0
The Widdershin Bros from the animated Horton Hears a Who really scared me as a little kid, and I don’t know why!
4 weeks ago | 0
Clark Elieson
If you find Dr Seuss books creepy or unsettling, what about them makes you feel this way?
4 weeks ago | [YT] | 229