#they just cant give them a character without taking away player agency

[animentality]

Larian has some kind of beef with the dark urge and I wish they'd just stop talking about them at all.

I can talk about them. People who write fanfic can talk about them. People who draw depraved art can talk about them.

You need to stop.

Please just keep adding Astarion lines, don't give anyone else any, and let the game be.

It's past the point of fixing, simply adding scenes won't fix the structural problems, and there's no use in being bothered by any of that now. Best selling game, and it's deserved and all, but.

This is your bed.

Lie in it.

And leave the dark urge be.

[lavenderek]

Why were you disappointed by the Howl's Moving Castle movie? I think I read the book years ago, but I don't remember much about it

i'm gonna critique the gibbly movie and it's my understanding that it's a special movie for a lot of people so if that's you feel free to skip this one

so i was delighted and enchanted by the book, which has only twice to date not made the movie a devastating letdown, so my dear friend sending me this book was pretty much signing a contract in her own blood accepting that i would be cranky about the movie. i'm not really a ghibli person either, like i can appreciate the artistry and value in them, and i'll watch it if the people i'm with really need to watch princess mononoke or whatever, but i just don't go out of my way to watch them. (i like reading meta about spirited away, though.)

i did go out of my way to watch this one because i loved the book so much.

it's important to remember the culture in which the movie was made as opposed to the culture in which the book was made. howl is welsh, if that says anything to you. (his name is howell, and he adopted the name howl to run from himself and seem more magical. i love him and movie howl had none of those elements except for when he told us he was a coward and i was like. ok lol, i'll jot that down because i didn't see it in the text)

so i'm not necessarily surprised by the creative changes they made, but i am confused, because those changes drastically affect the characterization, the character motivations, and the pacing of the story.

(i also was only able to get my hands on the dub and i loathe and detest christian bale as howl lmfao but that's subjective)

so first of all, does movie sophie, like, want anything? she's flawless as a character. even though she has a completely different personality as an old lady than she does as a young lady, there's nothing wrong with her. everybody is fond of her, she's shy, she's gentle, she's beautiful, and she's kind, and her only motivation in the whole movie is this vague desire to cure the curse, but even then she doesn't work on it much at all. her life before howl is about being buffeted around like a leaf in the wind, and her life after howl is about being buffeted around like a cow in a twister. sophie in the movie is a blank slate. she is insecure about her looks (seriously, they couldn't even give her like a crooked nose or something, only doll-faced, thin, pale women over here), and her confessing this and crying about it for about four seconds was the first truly deep emotional response i had seen of her. i cried when she cried, who doesn't grapple with feelings of inadequacy? then the kid came out and she was like, okay, i'm done being upset now :)

second of all, howl is a little eccentric, but mostly he's just a glorious gentleman who has a messy room and one (1) overly dramatic depressive episode. it was disturbing to me as a viewer because it was violent and came out of nowhere, and it never comes back again lmao. it was so bizarre, he's introduced as this suave, debonair man in a cape, and he stays that way the entire movie, except for a weird moment in the middle where he screams at sophie naked and then lists the character flaws that we the viewers have never witnessed. why does he like sophie? why does sophie like him?

why did they turn michael into a child? i just don't see what that added to the story lmao. i get them taking out the complexity of secrets involving sophie's decidedly interchangeable sisters and their mystery beaus, it's a lot to fit into a little movie; but like, why did they turn him into a child though lmao

there's a lot of fatphobia in the movie too.

the change that upset me the most, though, was that the element of sophie having the ability to influence things without her knowledge was totally abandoned. like i said, things just sort of happen to her. in the book, her hats are the most lovely because she's inadvertently cast spells on them to make whoever wears them seem alluring or mysterious to people. the witch curses her because she recognizes these little spells and believes sophie's trying and failing to trick her (and also because sophie snaps at her lmao, why is movie sophie only an asshole when she's old? leave my daughter alone).

book sophie unknowingly protects howl by worrying over his cape (which she previously shredded because she got mad at him, i love her), she unknowingly enchants the scarecrow by helping it stand and complimenting it. she does that the entire book. she also starts the book already feeling sort of dull and trapped, and spends the story trying desperately to solve mysteries and protect loved ones. movie sophie doesn't like, sit around and knit demurely, don't get me wrong; but all the major plot points are things that howl makes happen to her lol.

i think the scarecrow is an excellent representation of book sophie's inner struggles. it's something she inadvertently enchanted, and she doesn't understand it, so she runs from it. she's terrified of the thing. in that way it kind of stands in for her own agency: only when she was forcibly in disguise did she feel free to find out what she wants her life to look like, and that kind of power is foreign and frightening to her. i loved that for her.

and very late in the book, howl reveals that he knew all along she was under a spell, that he tried to get rid of it out of curiosity (book howl doesn't seem to notice that he's just as imperious and nosy as sophie is), but she resisted it. he couldn't get the spell off. so he assumed she wanted to stay that way and let her be about it. so basically it's very huck finn on the raft, she realizes that in running to get away, she was already away. she had that agency all along.

all of that was missing from movie sophie. the idea of her inadvertently hanging on to the curse is still there, we see that she sort of fades back to her young self while she's asleep (not the case in the book, we know this because howl doesn't know what she looks like until she turns back in the end); but she doesn't seem to gain any knowledge about herself because of this. the only time she seems to have any personal drive, it's to learn about and help howl. her inner struggles are about howl. and i hated movie howl lmao, i hated his design and i hated his voice and i hated how like, patronizing he was to everyone around him. book howl was a condescending dick at times and just weird and distant at others, but he never came across like he was absolutely positive he was seducing sophie at any given moment. it was clear that he was the star of the movie and sophie was just the audience stand in to be like 🤩🥸🧐

the scarecrow who is a prince was the most hilariously egregious moment in the entire movie. in the book, the missing prince is introduced as a plot in the beginning and is referenced repeatedly throughout. and he's a major player in the climax. in the movie, it's the last like five minutes of the film and the scarecrow turns into a dapper boy with bread for hair and is like, "you've cured me! i'm a prince who went missing from a nearby kingdom and i was cursed but now i'm free." and i was like NICE, so we just found out there's a nearby kingdom that has a prince who's been missing. love that for us

the book had a lot of themes that i don't often encounter in fantasy novels - themes of female agency, of disguise, and of chaos. the chaos is my favorite part, every chapter is equally chaotic at various levels. you'll have michael fretting over some spell, sophie fretting over her own spell, howl trying to get someone in disguise to fall in love with him, THAT someone pining over michael, and all the while sophie and howl are bickering because she is cleaning (it seems like she cleans to clean up her mind) and he doesnt want her to (he is afraid of change and of reality), and he needs a huge favor of her, and she needs to wheedle out of it, and she promised calcifer she would free him, and calcifer is repeatedly promising to die of not being appreciated enough, and everybody is having three arguments at once. it's like that in every chapter, culminating in the moment howl and sophie realize they're in love, and they stand clasping hands and sort of smiling at each other in the middle of a room full of panicking and perplexed people just yelling over each other lmfao. surrounded by chaos and no longer thrown by it, rooted there in the middle of it, stabilizing each other in a way. i loved that. i actually flipped back a few pages so i could read that moment again.

and it seemed to me that the movie tried to imply that with visual chaos, but everything else was really quite linear and simple. everything was very airy. and since the conflama and the general atmosphere and character dynamics of the book is what made me fall in love with it, the movie didn't work for me.

tumblr user door pointed out that the book and the movie are extremely different and she appreciates them both as separate entities, and she's wise and correct; i knew this and i tried so hard to engage with the movie on its own terms. but i couldn't divorce them in my mind. i felt the same way about ella enchanted and practical magic. i cant stop thinking like, i wish they hadn't gotten rid of x, i wish they hadn't added this weird element of y.

also it was boring. i checked to see how much more was left three times. sorry. i can't express enough how little i cared about the plot with the witch and somebody's secretly evil boss and time traveling to yell at howl or something, because i didn't connect with the characters. and the feathers growing out of howl triggered my weird phobia about things being embedded in skin. i'm skeeved just remembering it.

anyway, yeah. the movie was beautifully animated and whatever atmosphere they were going for was pretty consistent throughout. oh and i LOVED calcifer. he was my favorite in both the book and the movie. in fact, he was the only character in the movie who they didn't really change, he was petty and bitchy in both versions. i loved him. he's like, "SHE FED ME SOMETHING YUCKY" my perfect, horrible boy.

oh and. book sophie was a redhead. that's all.

after i finished the book i tried to draw how imagined them:

couldn't finish it though, i wasn't super jazzed about how it was coming out.

she's sitting in like, a window well altering a coat of his without permission. and he's like, i guess i'll have to wear this one instead, and she's like, i guess you will

[therewas-a-girl]

What do u like about Wildqueen?

Anon i love that u asked me this question (i cant sleep so this is great).

Rene is ex military; he was dishonorably discharged for doing sth morally questionable because of something he believed he had to get done. He regrets that deeply (though im not sure he regrets what he did as much as the results of it), as seen in the episode after he was tortured, and he is haunted by his failures , which he sees as a sort of chain that make up his life.

now, thea knows how that feels. She would be able to relate to the discipline, to the dedication that might be ingrained into someone from a military background. and also to bending of general morals to get shit done and/or compromising herself and her integrity for something. (Because she did go with Merlyn, compromising herself cause she wanted to be stronger) I don’t think she would hold what he did against him, or judge him; nor would he hold it against her that she did sth very daring to get control of her life again.

Both Rene and Thea tried doing good with what they were left with, after their failures/tragedies/disappointments. Here is where Rene and Thea might have interesting discussions though, because the WHY of this varies for them. Thea’s morality is much more fluid than Rene’s, I feel. Rene seems to have the whole ‘this is right and this is wrong’ thing going on, while Thea seems more of a ‘this is right for now cause it gets the job done or works for me’ kinda girl. (she has limits obviously) She is not really a joiner or a by-the-system kind, while Rene was military. [what could have possibly prompted a man with such contempt for anyone telling him what to do, to join the military? maybe he was running away from something  - his family situation  - and saw the military as his only escape?] I don’t think he really like being within a structure that tells u what to do, though he could have made friends and found a family of his own there. After his discharge and what prompted it, its also just as probably that he is very disappointed/disillusioned by it. (Personally i doubt that he likes being part of a hierarchy because he has serious authority issues which thea shares and in both cases it stems from parental abuse). Anyway i just know that when it comes to why they do the stuff they do, or why he does and she stopped, those two could have some interesting conversations.

Not to mention that they both would totally relate to each other when it comes to the fuckton of trauma they have been through. Just once i would like to see someone react humanly - as in, the way I do, not the way arrow characters react to fucked up shit that happens to that - to what Thea has been through. I mean, can u imagine? Rene would lose his shit if he knew that

‘yeah i was stabbed through the heart with a sword and almost died and then took a dip into a magic hottub and then got super bloodthirty and THEN ALMOST DIED AGAIN FROM THAT SAME WOUND". ‘u were stabbed.’'Yeah’'Through the chest’'Yup’'By an actual sword? ’*a beat* 'what kind of fucktard psycho uses a sword? ’'oh u would be so surprised. Actually thats bad. With the kind of record the team has, u need to learn to handle one.’'A sword? o_O R u shittting me??’'I shit u not’'Wait wait wait. You took a dip into this pit and now youre like… alive. ’'Yeah’'…dude… thats way weirder than im prepared to handle.’'I KNOW RIGHT!!! ’

(Idk what that up there is, ignore it. Itbsounds more like me talking to thea 😂)

Rene is instinctively protective of those that he percives as needing protection. He went against olivers orders to help a little girl who was in danger in the II ep; because he probably didnt even think about what the Green Arrow would say or do to him. But he also treated Evelyn as an equal and never babied her. (Cause arrow forgot she was a kid but anyway). Thea would most definitely apriciate that and also find it highly refreshing after olivers constant worrying about her and malcolm taking away her agency at every point.

Not to mention that Rene is exactly the kind of dude to find Thea’s ability to kick his ass with one hand behind her back incandescently hot. U gotta respect a guy who respects and is turned on by female power.

He fights hard for what he wants - he is determined and Thea would respect that cause so is she.

Also notice how he always kept his flirting very casual, never pushy never putting anything on her, mostly fun. Cause thats a good point in his favour and would be in Thea’s books too. And how she dismisses him but in a kinda half amused half annoyed way. Its rather hilarious. And i love that despite her shooting him down he never gets bitter about it. Those two times he just kept on smiling. I bet their flirting would be so agressively playful.

He is very observant (as far as I’ve noticed he is the only one that brings in the evidence for felicity) and im thinking he is very good at noticing when ppl change patterns of behavior. he didnt realize what the change meant in Evelyn, in terms of emotions, but he was able to pinpoint exactly /when/ it had happened: after they learned oliver was a the Hood. —> Thea is super smart emotionally and has this amazing radar about when ppl’s *feelings* shift. Oliver and moira never fooled her with their 'were gonna pretend for theas sake’ shtick. She didnt know why but she knew sth is up. That’s great material there. Id be willing to explore that. The good and the bad. The way they might pick up on each other’s moods, tendencies. Good and bad days. The different ways they would notice stuff about each other: Rene by noticing when she does things differently, when she deviates from her routine. Thea noticing when he is angry or happy or annoyed about something, learning how to associate his expressions with his feelings. The two of them baffling each other on how they notice these little things that the other wouldn’t think to notice about anyone, or that they didn’t think anyone noticed about them.

It’s fun to think about.

Rene is exeptionally straightforward and honest. Thea would love that about him. Both would speak their mind frankly to each other since neither is more sensitive than the other.

Rene seems to concentrate on things he does well - mostly physical stuff, stuff with his hands (i noticed this in the crosover. While the nerds were doing their own thing rene was calmly sitting down doing his own thing, handling his weapons i think). He’s probably a kinetic learner, like Oliver. And is very comfortable around ppl who do well with their own things, which Rene might have no idea how to do. I just mean that he is comfortable in his own skin and isnt threatened by other people's power or inteligence. (That moment when Felicity delegated to him and Rory to do that analysis thing, and Rene was totally chill admitting he had no idea what felicity had been talking about and that he Rory and Curtis were the smart ones). And this brings me back to Thea being absolutely charmed by this kind of quality because Rene can manage to be sure in himself without being arrogant.

Also circles back to him loving that he can actually learn stuff from her, fighting-wise. And that would really boost Thea’s selfconfidence because i can just see Rene being flirty about it at first and then surprising her by taking her very seriously and truly wanting to learn.  And in turn she would be a good teacher because though not always the most sensitive, Thea is patient. She would love it that he is sure in himself that he would think nothing of asking her to teach him. And that he respects her and her skill to want to learn from her. Something that nobody has asked her before. And in turn, she would notice that he is an amazing team player and that she can actually play off of him when it comes to having a laugh or teasing the other team members cause theyre both sich little shits. (im also thinking that Rene’s specialty in the field would be recon - because he is so good that noticing when the environment changes, and keep track of patters and routes and stuff like that)

Rene was physically abused by his father. Thea was psycologically abused by hers. They would be able to regognise each others hurts and false-steps naturally and it would add another layer of understanding to their relationship but also a kind of tenderness and protectiveness for each other. I feel like neither of them is much of a cudler in the traditional sense of the word but they would be able to understand each others need for affection and the occasional fear of it. I mean - their scars are symetrical in some way so they would understand each others impulses a lot better than most have before them.

Despite his history tho, rene loves kids and seems hopeful about having kids (abused children will tell u that growing up into that kind of person takes strength and most certaily, goodness), which tells me that there is a lot of hope inside that man. Thea seems to be struggling to grasp onto some kind of hope, for a normal life, a normal self, something to give her meaning. They could help each other find that hope within themselves. Rene could have a positive thing or two to share with thea even, since she is more of a stark realist while rene seems to be more positive.

He is so fucking upbeat about things he actually enjoys. Like the christmass sock that evelyn gave him. Remember that smile? How eager he was and how he tore into that gift - that was precious and so pure, in the real sense of the word, not the tumblr one. I think even after all hes seen rene - and i think this is his best character trait - still has that boyish wonder intact. What makes him an idealist no matter how hard he protects himself with that jaded attitude. Hes not jaded - hes pragmatic and has issues.

And thea, oh my god, she needs someone who can really just have fun with her again. Someone who would delight in having a good time, who would love to laugh with her. Who would teach her how to see the wonderous and the joyous in the world again because i think she is having such a hard time this year. (Im very suspitious of the extreme change she has made from last year to this year and how stubborly she clings to this new status quo. Not that she shouldnt want to get away from the violence - that is an a+ reasoning for her. But her stubborness to keep away feels like fear. And i want to know what she isafraid of and why. Why she doubts herself) Im not at all convinced she is doing as well as she fronts and even if she is, she seems so serious all the time. She used to love parties - not the drug and alcohol kind but the 'together with my family and friends’ kind and rene dies too. They would have the most outrageous christmass ever. Thea would totally spoil him with all these eccentric gifts that are rpobably super inner jokes between them and rene would have a blast decorating the tree with her.

The fights would probably be very explosive cause theyre both hotheaded ppl and where thea can admit she was wrong, rene would need a little more work but im willing to bet that it wouldnt be so hard in the face of someone he loves and considers equal to himself (it was harder for him to apologise to oliver cause its a power thing and a dick measuring thing and a pride thing - elements that would be a non issue cause there would be no such disparities with thea)

Theyre also both very physical ppl and very expressive ppl so im guessing sex would be such fun for them and theyd love to try new things and just go for whatever they want.

Look i could go on. But these are all the surface level stuff i could think of. Im sure there is more. For the most part, what got me into thinking i could rly like the idea of them is the fact that around her, rene is a total goofball (i just love how sincere he is in his admiration without once seeming creepy) - i like seeing him like that and i would love to see thea laugh more. I just think they could be good to each otherband that there is a story there.