#Books > Everything else

[ajaxgb]

Okay no I need to talk about the book version of Howl's Moving Castle. I love the movie but the book has such a different vibe and you, yes you, should read it.

Movie Howl is a soulful and quiet. Book Howl is a drama queen and Causing Problems and has a long string of jilted exes and couldn't shut up if you paid him.

Sophie and Howl drive each other up the wall at the beginning and it's really funny. Sophie and Howl are (despite themselves) very much in love by the end and they still drive each other up the wall and it's even funnier.

In the movie, Howl has been ordered by the king to participate in The War, and Howl is avoiding it because he is a brave conscientious objector. In the book, Howl has been ordered by the king to rescue his lost brother from the Witch of the Wastes, and Howl is avoiding it by any means necessary because he is a cowardly weasel who wants to stay as far from the Witch as possible.

In the movie, the Witch cursed Sophie because she was jealous about Howl speaking to Sophie for five minutes. In the book, the Witch cursed Sophie because Sophie had been doing surprisingly powerful magic for years without knowing it and it was actually starting to cut into the Witch's plans. (Sophie does not discover any of this until nearly the end of the book, but the reader can start to pick it up much earlier and the way Sophie's magic works is pretty darn cool.)

In the movie, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens, but this is implied to be nothing but nasty fearmongering. In the book, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens because Howl started the rumor so people would stop asking him to do wizard junk all the time.

The book lightly parodies a couple of tropes from Western fairy tales. In particular Sophie has internalized that, as the eldest of three sisters, her "destiny" is to fail so that her younger sisters will look cooler when they succeed, which is why she's so resigned to the hat shop at the beginning. (Sidebar: Sophie's sisters come up much more in the book and they're great.) There's also a really funny bit where Sophie attempts to operate a pair of seven-league boots.

In the movie, the fourth and final location that the magic door connects to is some sort of black void / mindscape / time portal dealy. In the book the fourth location is Wales, in the UK, on Earth, so that Howl can visit his family, because from Howl's perspective this is an isekai story.

[riddhisnook]

Books > Everything else, always and forever! 📚❤️ What would you choose? #TeamBooks or #TeamAnythingElse? Let's settle this! 👀✨

[suddenly-frankenstein]

his guardian angel

[clarisimart]

Everything about The book of Bill and Journal 3 and Stanford Pines' backstory fascinate me, because WDYM the lore and backstory for this children's show where two siblings have Scooby-Doo style mystery adventures all summer and there are multiple gags about the town making it legal to marry animals, is a Sci-fi psychological magnus archives/return to night vale style horror about one isolated barely restrained mad scientist with good intentions and a list of baggage a mile long who gets into metaphorical (and maybe literal(!!!!!)) bed with what is basically an eldritch horror-beyond-human-comprehension being, literally worships and devotes himself to that horror as his god at times, and sorta even loves him, until he realizes that the god he made his house and body into an an altar for is not a benevolent one, and he tries to severe ties with him.

But it's too late, the god is equally as obssessed with him, he made a home of his mind, and he's not letting him go, and even though the horror might even love him back, and in a twist it might even be the one of the most horrifying cases of the "one fell first, one fell harder" trope, it is still cruel and not above unleashing torment on his former devotee to get what he wants.

And then looking back on the scientist life, you also see that he's been haunted by symbols of what would become his god and betrayer literally since birth.

AND WDYM THE WHOLE THING IS (rightly, because it's a children's show and they are not the main characters) BARELY HINTED IN THE SHOW

I AM BITING THE DRYWALL

someone give me a horror podcast about Ford's time with Bill and later his life dimension hopping is what I'm saying

[turtletoria]

the krampus incident from the book of bill if it was out of character and stupid

[starridge]

More Mabel‼️

But seriously I love the way you draw her : )

lol ty!!!! im glad!!! mabel is really fun to draw (and technically write ig?) as someone who was also a preteen twin in 2012 LOL

i’m back to working after spending a six hour session just drawing brainrot so ive got nothin new to offer til i’m caught up with work (i’ve got a few posts of art from that night queued up though!) but here’s a mabel doodle from then that isn’t queued up <:)

[egophiliac]

like mother, like son, but less wholesome this time?

(I couldn't decide whether or not to put them together, so have them in all the different ways!)

[soracities]

i dont know how else to put this but to approach books (or any media, really) solely for the sake of relatability is genuinely incredibly heartbreaking......to have such little (or such unwilling) imaginative scope that you cannot stretch yourself, even marginally, in a different direction to what you’ve known or are used to knowing when the very POINT of stories is to transport you somewhere else, into someone else, so you can do just that........when fran lebowiz said a book “is supposed to be a door!” and george saunders said good prose “is like empathy training wheels” they were right!!! they were so so so SO absolutely entirely right!!!!!

[agoddamnrayofsunshine]

You can tell that aftg is insane because in his backstory Andrew literally committed first degree murder and it’s like. a footnote. Like I literally forget he did that

[suntails]

echo

[gentrigger]

Friend was talking to her student about our upcoming ttrpg game where we were going to do a murder mystery. The student, who was used to playing D&D asked how she planned to soft railroad us into contributing to the mystery instead of going off and doing something else and she had a hard time understanding that we all got together and agreed upon the social contract of "we want to do a murder mystery and will abide by the fictional and in-character limitations of the scenario"

[adragonthatwrites]

A quick message to everyone out there who hasn't read TGCF, but is considering doing so; may I take a moment to pitch the series to you? Ahem,

An actual, canonical thing that happens in the books:

Our protagonist Xie Lian is on the run from a bunch of angry priests and monks. Said priests and monks are after him because his Ghost Boyfriend beat them all up in the past, and they've come to take advantage of the fact that this Ghost Boyfriend is stuck in the form of a child for reasons to get revenge.

At some point, they get cornered in a clothing store, and are about to get caught. Xie Lian's solution to the problem? Put on a dress, hide behind a curtain, and then scream really loudly while clutching at his skirts when the monks pull it to the side. The monks sputter at having peaked on a lady changing, and quickly close the curtain while apologizing profusely. As they're distracted, Xie Lian grabs his boyfriend turned child and books it out the back, getting confused for a mother and her child at least once.

I'm not joking, I'm not exaggerating, this actually happens in the book. A straight up Looney Tunes skit, starring Xie Lian as Bugs Bunny, happens in the book.

Thank you for listening to my pitch, have a lovely day!

[aroaceleovaldez]

Nico and Percy's dynamic through the series is eternally funny to me, because it's just. like.

Percy's having a constant mental struggle between his fatal flaw of loyalty with a promise he made to Bianca to protect Nico, versus his Big 3 kid desire to maim other Big 3 kids / Poseidon descendant urge to totally maim Nico specifically. He hates Nico so so much. He thinks Nico's annoying and weird at best, and creepy/sketchy when he's older. The only positive thoughts Percy has towards Nico are "He's Bianca's brother and Bianca was my friend and I owe her/He's Hazel's brother and Hazel is my friend and would kill me if I was mean to him," "He's a powerful asset and useful ally (if questionable)," and "He's kinda pathetic and I feel maybe a little bad about it." Percy has multiple occasions throughout the series where he strongly considers - and on one occasionally actually goes through with - throttling Nico.

Meanwhile, Nico is following around Percy like a lost puppy. He explicitly can never bring himself to even dislike anything about Percy no matter how hard he tries. He has a whole bit in BoO where he's mentally going "UGH he's so stupid BUT IT'S ENDEARING HOW DARE HE." He's totally smitten. He's making deals with his dad for Percy. He's making convoluted plans to help Percy stand a chance against Kronos. During the entirety of BoTL it's like he's playing tsundere - "I'm helping NOT PERCY SPECIFICALLY with this quest! Me helping Percy would be SILLY because I DEFINITELY HATE HIM." Then he proceeds to show up to Percy's birthday party to basically ask him on a weird date and spend the entire next book scrambling around trying to help him or protect him or impress him. And Percy could not give less of a shit.

Just. That dynamic is so funny to me. Percy is the founder of the Nico Protection Club in that he's the one they're all protecting Nico from and meanwhile Nico is throwing himself at Percy to the point where the literal god of gay love calls him out on it.

[theexorcistiii]

Cant believe I never posted my guitar! I covered it in cutouts from my moms big old anatomy book :)

[itsajollyjester]

"...I had to forgive Finnick for his role in the conspiracy that landed me here. He, at least, has some idea of what I'm going through. And It takes too much energy to stay angry at someone who cries so much." -Mockingjay, pg 12

[lovely-v]

This is so legendary Tolkien cannot help being hilarious he tries to be this serious dry narrator but I see you Mr. Stand up comedy