#Sophie Jones

[pandora-da-kriket]

Sophie's stilled pissed off about missing season 4 so Em brought her a Big Mac.

[taylor-russell-fun]

Taylor Russell photographed by Sophie Jones at the 2024 Bafta Film Awards.

source: Sophie Jones (instagram)

[elvendoodles]

Honestly ask game Sophie I wanna see you destroy me with some gut wrenching angst about this kid

@valkylander asks:

Sophie Jones for the Headcanons Game?

Realistic: Sophie absolutely idolizes Emily. From her fashion to her hobbies, friends, and personality, Sophie wants to be as cool as her sister.

Funny: She regularly takes clothes Emily rarely wears and pretends to be her

Angst: The kid has trouble making outside-of-school friends. Her birthdays usually end up with no one she invited showing up.

Crack: Sophie develops and gains control of magic faster than Emily

[femftbllvr]

[valkylander]

I love so much stories of older siblings having to save their younger siblings from a magical kidnapping it's just. I'm too old to believe in magic and you're not but you're the one stolen and I'm the one who has to believe to get you back because our parents are too far gone, they'll never understand. You're my responsibility and I don't want you to be but when offered a choice to walk into the dark for you or to turn back I will always go on. I seem like such a grown-up powerful force to you but I'm just a kid myself. I'm scared and alone but somewhere out there you trust me to save you and I have to rise to that, I have no choice. I resent your existence. I love you. I will always come find you.

[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.

[nadiajustbe]

One of my favorite parts about the writing of Howl's Moving Castle is how easy it is to write off all the things from our world at first as him just being a weird wizard™ (also thanks to bestie @jutenium for spotting this I wouldn't put it like that without you!!/pos). Sure, Sophie uses weird descriptions, but readers have every reason to believe them because of the way Howl is presented as a character. When Sophie says he wrote with a quill that doesn't need an ink, you wouldn't think it was actually a ballpoint pen, you would think Howl had just enchanted his quill so that it wouldn't need ink! When she adds that she can't make out a single word, you think he has matchingly terrible handwriting, but in fact Sophie has simply never seen a pen writing. When she sees the mysterious labels on his books, you think he's keeping a lot of obscure magical literature, but it's really just an encyclopedia and a guide like "Top 10 Rugby Tips." When Sophie notices the bottles in Howl's bathtub, you think they're some kind of magical jars where he keeps girl's hearts, but I'm almost certain that they're just 'Dove' and 'Head and Shoulders' that he's enhanced with his spells and put silly labels on. When you read Calicifer singing a song in a language Sophie doesn't understand, you think it's some kind of ancient cipher or code, but it's actually just a rugby song in Welsh that Howl sings when he's drunk. And finally, when you see the terrifying black door, which is completely shrouded in darkness, you imagine a passage to an eerie, mythical place, similar to what Miyazaki showed us - but it's just fucking Wales.

[shebsart]

^redraw of a behind the scenes pic from a bout de souffle

This doesn't happen on page because it's a childrens book but I know in my heart it happened.

and probably some former english major student somewhere recalling howell jenkins, circa 1980:

[minimuii]

But what if … the movie adaption was more faithful to the book 🤔🤔?

[tctmp]

Drama

[svrt-degraded]

Cover for "Howl's Moving Castle" 🕸🕷💙💜✨ I'm in love with this book and it's characters, so I decided to draw my own version of cover art :)

[ace-artemis-fanartist]

The Hatter sisters from the book Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones.

[strangesmallbard]

And everything that that means. I know we can never have children. That is a great sadness. But everything else: to love and to cherish and to have and to hold, according to God's holy ordinance. GENTLEMAN JACK — 1x05: Let's Have Another Look at Your Past Perfect

[vseshlo]

[femftbllvr]

[shopwitchvamp]

"People need to read the book to see how dramatic book-Howl is!" True, but on top of that, even people who read the book need to read the sequels..