mycroftrh:darkmagyk: a-bold-move: I feel the need to point out that the moral of the book has NOTHIN
mycroftrh:darkmagyk: a-bold-move: I feel the need to point out that the moral of the book has NOTHING to do with war and is in fact: making yourself an old lady will not protect you from falling in love with a Hot Wizard, or the Hot Wizard from falling in love with you. One of the things I love about Diana Wynne Jones’s books is that, while they may have a theme along the lines of “this sort of behavior tends to lead to problems”, they would never have a “moral” as simple and, frankly, preachy as “beauty is a selfish pursuit”. Because every character - including, vitally, the “hero” - will end the story still (or newly) very much a dick, bastard, and/or asshole. Character development and growth, for DWJ, isn’t about getting rid of your flaws. It’s about learning to manage them, about learning to use them as strengths, and about finding people who love you not in spite of them but because of them.None of her central characters are Good People. Some of them start out appearing to be, to be sure. But, eventually, those characters all turn out one (or more) of three ways.1) They turn out to be a villain, or otherwise untrustworthy character, putting on a front. This happens frequently enough that a supporting character being Too Good is one of DWJ’s few tells.2) It turns out that what you thought of as a positive character trait is actually their central flaw. For instance, if a character never causes trouble, ever, that doesn’t mean he’s good; it means he’s passive. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for a good man to do nothing - but then, isn’t that man not, in fact, good? Someone who’s loyal, who’s obedient - that has a lot of potential to be someone who does terrible things while “just following orders”.3) Their positive character growth is them developing dickishness, bastardness, and/or assholery. For instance, the character from 2 never caused trouble, and that was his big flaw - so, then, his development is to learn to cause trouble. It’s learning to yell and fight and stand up for himself and others. The obedient character needs to learn to disobey, because not all orders should be followed. And if someone tells you to do something you don’t want to, it’s entirely valid to say “no, fuck you.”Howl’s Moving Castle, the book, would never try to convince you to stop being concerned with your beauty. Howl continues to be vain as all hell to the end of the book, to the end of the sequel, to the end of the sequel’s sequel. He’s just as likely to throw a gooey tantrum about his hair at the end of the trilogy as at the start. The difference is now he has Sophie, who’ll bitch him out but good if he does, and now he’s become a little more aware of how what he does affects others, so (if you’re lucky) he may clean it up after a suitable period of moping.Because the key point there is not about something so small as beauty. Yes, HWC might coincidentally convey that beauty is a selfish pursuit - but it would never, ever tell you that because it is a selfish pursuit, it is wrong. Sophie’s main development over the book is learning to be selfish. Her central flaw at the beginning was always being selfless, always doing everything for others, always putting everyone else above herself, always letting others exploit her as they pleased. And the book chronicled her journey to learning that that’s not just bad for her, it’s bad for everyone around her too. But also that even if it was just bad for her… that’s enough.TL;DR: If any adaptation of a DWJ book has a message as straightforward and obvious as “war is bad, and beauty is a selfish pursuit,” no offense to Miyazaki, but that’s an adaptation that’s entirely missed the point. Character development and growth, for DWJ, isn’t about getting rid of your flaws. It’s about learning to manage them, about learning to use them as strengths, and about finding people who love you not in spite of them but because of them.This is the best philosophy on character development, because the reality of life and being a person is that PEOPLE DON’T CHANGE. It’s a great way to mix fantasy and the psychology of how human beings actually function. They develop coping mechanisms, they gain the ability to see themselves through new lenses and how their actions impact the world and people around them, and they can learn to lie and project an image of themselves to the world that doesn’t match with what’s inside them, but PEOPLE DO NOT FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE.Managing and redirecting your assholery without getting rid of it completely because that’s unrealistic and uninteresting. Beautifully put. -- source link