#And then it was like oh. they're behaving in typically cishet patterns of Romance

[whoviandoodler]

(this is a ramble and isn't complimentary, so if you're in this tag purely for positive stuff, please swerve around this post; you have been warned, so pls don't add negativity to this post either, thanks)

Just finished hmc (book) and i have so many conflicting thoughts about it. Like it was obviously very well written in terms of the worldbuilding and the characters and the plot but then with the romance it felt,,, so odd to me.

Maybe it's the fact that it's decades old, but it has that feeling of vagueness that classics and stuff often do, where I don't feel at all invested because it all feels surface level. Like Sophie and Howl clearly have a connection, but I felt like it was never explored in a way that tugged at my heart strings, it was more like they had the grounds for friendship and then bippity boppity they held hands and were getting married.

Which gets me to another thing- this felt very much like someone had taken a very interesting queer character and put them in a very heteronormative romance plot??? Like howl has such major queer vibes, but then he interacts with sophie and vice versa like they're the protags of every heteronormative straight romance book (if there weren't even making out to keep your attention on SOMETHING), and it just feels like they were done dirty even tho they are as the author intended them to be and saw them as.

Idk just... They're such interesting characters and I would have loved to see their love story if it weren't trapped in a heteronormative cage.

The rest of the story is just so incredibly fun and engaging that whenever this stuff popped up and they were forced to play into these roles it felt jarring and left me at the end wondering if I'd just ruined the experience I knew from the ghibli movie and wasted hours just to end up feeling neutral about the story.

#dan talks #hmc book #hmc #howls moving castle #I mean ig thats rly it im just the shrugging emoji #And its incredibly disheartening bcs i truly loved a lot of the story #Most of it i was like oh its howl!! Its sophie!! #And then it was like oh. they're behaving in typically cishet patterns of Romance #Why why why #Someone in a hundred years might write them properly