Benjamin Sullivan, the honorable and somewhat mysterious court magician was married last Saturday to Lettie Hatter, formerly of Market Chipping. The other court magician was also there, presumably as a guest of the matron of honor, Sophie Pendragon nee Hatter, the bride's sister. They seemed wrapped up in some sort of disagreement for most of the ceremony though.

Happy May Day aka Howl's Moving Castle Day my darlings!!!

I’m sad that DWJ never wrote a book with grown-up Morgan Hatter-Pendragon in it. Can you imagine what a holy fucking terror that kid must have grown up to be.

logged tf in

Sophie-core.

Rewatched the Howl's Moving Castle movie (fantastic animated movie, definitely inspired by more than an adaptation of the book) while doing something else and I was struck this time by the fact that the Prince (Turniphead the Scarecrow) says that he intends to go tell his king to call off the war, but THEN he intends on COMING BACK to Ingary to shoot his shot with Sophie again because (as he says to the flirtatious Witch of the Wastes) "hearts change".

And maybe he will come back to make Sophie an offer of marriage and then leave again when he's turned down, but I imagined for a moment that the Prince (who is possibly the movie's version of Prince Justin, so let's call him Justin) might just... move back into Howl's house without asking and stay there. There are several cases of precedent for this. Also, as Turniphead, he's shown several times helping Sophie with laundry, or playing with Markl, or helping the Witch of the Wastes move around, and Sophie deserves that kind of help around the house! Howl isn't going to reliably do chores.

And you know what? I think Howl would be into that shit. There's something very Wynne-Jonesian about it all still. It's tempting to write a post-canon fic about this situation from the movie with an extra dash of flavoring from the books. Like:

This is the infamous wizard Howl Pendragon/Jenkins, a vain draft-dodging flirt who likes to build moving castles to evade taxes too. The beautifully angry young woman with the silver hair over there is his wife, Sophie Hatter, who may or may not be an extremely powerful witch, but right now she's dusting and do not get in her way. This is Calcifer, the fire demon who used to have Howl's heart and is arguably his other life partner and also might be in love with Sophie, and this is arguably kind of actually his house. The old lady smoking a cigar over there is Howl's ex-girlfriend and former nemesis, the Witch of the Wastes, who now lives in their house. This is Markl, Howl's apprentice, kind of his kid, and there is no explanation of where he comes from or what happened to his parents. The dog used to be(?) the Royal Wizard's spy (Howl used to be her apprentice and potential successor) but now he also just lives here. And that's Prince Justin of Strangia, Sophie's house-boyfriend. Don't listen to the propaganda, he wasn't kidnapped by a heart-eating wizard; he used to be a cursed scarecrow and now he wants to be here to help Sophie do laundry. He's trying to homewreck and Howl thinks it's both funny and hot.

sophie is trying so desperately to view the moving castle and everything inside it as just a stop on her magical self-discovery journey. she tries to leave like four times because she thinks the narrative is ready for her to move on to a new adventure but she doesn't realize she's been rooted here. she thinks the fairy tale has to keep moving but what she doesn't realize is in real life there aren't perfect beat changes. sometimes you don't leave to represent a change in your perspective or goals. in real life you fall in love and get curious about new worlds and get attached to little brothers and fire demons. in real life you make a home.

it’s been long enough without me being here so a lot of u don’t know that I actually tattooed Christopher chant’s “chrestomanci” signature on my ribs (in DWJ’s handwriting) a couple of years ago because a decade or so before a friend said “but if u tattooed chrestomanci’s signature on u then you would always be protected since all of you is made of magic, Thais” when my life was really sad. So I keep forgetting this one but yeah I take Christopher with me wherever I go.

ofc she’s joking, she would hate humble Howl

idk why i’m obsessed with dressing howl in 70s style lol he just has that 70s popstar vibe

Howl’s Moving Castle is so good because Sophie being an old lady isn’t the problem!! She actually enjoys a lot of aspects about being older!!! It’s the fact that she never lived in the first place !!!!!!! Like aging isn’t scary or bad but it’s only worth it if you actually live your life!! I’m going crazy!!!!

lol and then he trips over a cat, falls down the stairs and breaks his neck again.

#christopher  you magnificent mother fucker

the witch of the waste would be into NFTs

#someone get this post to the howl's hype house author stat (@thekitchenphilosopheress) i hope the howl's hype house author knows that the psychological impact they had on all of us is immeasurable

I'm sorry I took so long. You've been waiting all this time 💫✨🌟

the witch of the waste would be into NFTs