#and actually a few more things i redesigned the castle to better suit sirius’s backstory…

[suspendedinbush]

hiiihihihihi hiii youuuu simmy my beloved loml you i juuust watched howl's moving castle for the first time tday (ik appalling srry) but the entire tim i was thinkinng abt you my beloved and now i want to know abt yr r/s au <33 as much details as you dont mind saying pls <333 bc i was thinking like it would actually!! work sooo well for them ike r being not that conventionally attractive , and growing old w/a big nose while s still finds him just soooo pretty and also being dramatically vian himself AND swallowing! a STAR! and having a heavy heart that belongs to remus like itys sooooo it fits sooo well, but Also howl being a welshman is making me think it could work either way too! esp w/the turning into a crow thing paralleling werewolf tranforms and sirius instead being the son of a mother who would sell him out like sophie im!!!!!! i also know yr basing the au sorta on the book so im wondering which roles ud see fit instead! but aah im just my brain is so abuzz im so excited for whatever u plan to do however u plan to do it! this got wayy too long srry love u MWAH

LAYLA OMG!! firstly hi hi hi hello love <33 SECOND YOU WATCHED IT!!! ahhh having a little party in celebration also tell me everything what did you think??? (i'm running into your inbox right now just so you know!) and you thought of me…literally handing you my heart on a silver platter!! MWAH yours forever <333

also okay the au… (under the cut because minor spoilers and also this is so fucking long)

it definitely started as like taking direct inspiration from the book with a few nods to the movie (like the walking on air scene because obviously) but it’s evolved a lot in the past months mostly because i felt that my sophie-remus wasn’t remus enough and needed a more remus-like journey and destination in the story (not sure any of this will make sense with absolutely no context about what i’ve actually written), and then adapting the story to fit r/s more in tone (i.e the war, queerness, rejection from society etc) i got carried away and things have expanded a lot. i would still say a lot more book inspiration than movie, stuff like michael's character (rather than markl) and the minor details that the movie brushed over, like sophie’s sisters & fanny & the ben sullivan+prince justin story line, i’ve kept from the book but there are definitely some things that i knew i would change that directly contradict:

firstly and the MOST crucial detail for me, remus isn’t secretly pretty all along!! like this is the thesis of the entire au actually, it’s not an ugly duckling arc! he doesn’t break the curse to be young and beautiful again but with more self-confidence, he’s just not conventionally attractive full stop. he’s plain if not ‘ugly’ and in no way particularly impressive, he’s only 18 and hasn’t even allowed himself the space to start figuring shit out. sirius falls in love with him while he’s old with no knowledge of what remus really looks like because knowing that appearance just wasn’t even a factor in s desiring and falling for him revolutionises remus’s view of himself and his assumptions about who sirius is and also…

sirius as howl is not really that vain! this might be a spoiler, but i'd say one of the big theme’s in the au is that everyone is lying and no-one is who they appear to be and/or especially who they SAY they are and it’s remus’s assumption that sirius cares a lot about looks and would only fall in love with someone equally beautiful. howl’s vanity & concern for his looks makes sense for book howl and that story, but i wanted them to be more r/s than howl and sophie so in the au sirius’s flashy clothes and hours spent in the bathroom are more about self-expression, queerness and non-conformity, the contrast of remus struggling with otherness, not fitting in and his failed masculinity (poor baby is too sickly for the draft :/ ) and sirius being so extravagant, rocking the boat, rejecting expectations for his masculinity and flourishing—as in he literally builds a moving castle and lives on the fringes doing whatever he likes and running from/against authority (also should mention the working title for the au is 'Sirius Black’s Moving Castle for Misfits and Runaway Curse Victims').

in terms of roles i do feel like sirius is the natural howl but i did consider what r as howl would be like, i think there is something to work off with howl’s insecurity and one BIG trait being a slither-outer and a coward…very r if you ask me, but at the end of the day i don't think sirius as sophie works and remus-howl would change his character and role in the story by a lot to make it fit...

like howl’s personality by itself is sort of neither r nor s, there are similar and contradicting traits, the vanity and cowardice being the most un-sirius but (maybe a spoiler here) even in the book it’s up for interpretation how much these traits are really howl or instead a symptom of lacking a heart or even a deliberate front. so it was quite an easy adjustment in terms of sirius doing the same howl actions but with slightly different more sirius-like motivations, whereas for R as howl i don’t think you could get him to act the same way.

not sure that makes sense but i think the howl-sirius parallel works because his role in the story is much much more suited to S, like you could write an R-howl playing up the insecurity and the slither-outer trait but to me there isn’t really a story there, like where would it go…because howl is already very comfortable in his position outside polite society: he breaks convention ostentatiously, relishes in mainstream disapproval for standing out and enjoys and actively encourages his terrible reputation (for heart-eating, draft-dodging and other failings in his character). once you give reason for the apparent vanity and cowardice, howl as the prodigy who couldn’t care less about living up to expectations is perfect for sirius.

the thing about sophie's step-mother is that both dwj and miyazaki refuse to write antagonists without nuance, there isn't a clear villain like you WILL empathise with everybody—and with sophie’s step-mother especially, she’s worse in the book until she’s not! despite sophie being so lonely and unhappy at home, the story is about overcoming her own fatalistic worldview and internal feelings of worthlessness & inadequacy rather than an external battle. her family especially her sisters care a lot about her and do want the best for her even if it’s sometimes misguided but sophie has to learn to stand up for herself and stop putting everyone else first (hello martyr complex). AND there's a lot of repression (which goes to remus like water to a fish), even allowing herself to want things out of life, like it literally takes her being cursed to be an old woman and being so ashamed of her predicament and having no other choice for her to finally leave her suffocating home because she is so afraid of challenging the world head on (which is sort of antithetical to sirius).

so yeah then with sophie-sirius not working… like it’s possible to write her family and the hat shop to imitate the blacks but the problem for me is the characters themselves are basically opposites so you’d have to abandon one entirely and it would either be a completely different story to hmc or a completely different character to sirius… (also talking about the characters i mean book howl and sophie but i honestly can’t remember what’s different/missing in the movie??)

and really remus was ALWAYS the perfect sophie to me like in the wip he’s certain that in failing to be a strong, healthy, beautiful perfect specimen of a young man who can fight for the country, instead being sick, unattractive + the nebulous but undeniable fact of his queerness means there’s some innate monstrosity or wrongness about him, and being rejected by his peers has confirmed it, so he represses, withering away hiding in the dark and it’s a mixture of thinking ‘there is nothing better out there nor am i capable or deserving of any better, this is my lot in life and i’ll make do’ that keeps him there. UNTIL he’s forced to leave and comes across sirius who has made a life for himself on his own terms and on the outside seems to have everything: beauty, talent, confidence, freedom but is very flamboyantly throwing people’s admiration & acceptance (everything that remus covets) back in their faces.

in the story sophie is quite resentful of howl in a similar way remus is of sirius (here and in canon i think) and like sophie, he ‘knows’ that he’s a nobody with no future and just expects to fail. also the hat shop is much more remus’s natural environment, exhibit service worker R: ‘he was little more than a puppet in grey felt—marionette strings binding him tightly to the shop, a little flimsy and worn through in places from dancing around for customers all day long. A walking, talking, hat-fetching piece of furniture.’

sooo those are my thoughts on the casting obviously just my opinion and personal thoughts on r/s. oh and the turning into the crow thing and being corrupted by magic, it wasn’t in the book but i have incorporated it only with a different character…and someone turns into a dog also not sirius...other quick points about the wip: peter has a big part in this might be obvious who as but he’s so fun in this one, petunia is also a sympathetic character, Hope is long dead (as per), Lyall dies in the first few sentences and Andromeda has more lines than James i think. i didn’t use the whole multi-verse plot line from the book, we’re in an approximate uk somewhere between 1910s and 40s but it’s more a vibe than a time period because magic and wizards are well integrated with the culture, politics and technology etc, Market Chipping & The Waste are in the Scottish highlands (so Scottish Remus and Lily), Sirius is not from Wales unfortunately but someone does live there (also if ur interested in the book i would highly recommend listening to the audiobook to get the full of effect of Howl’s accent). and the star swallowing/giving away his heart!! it's a major plot point so i won’t say too much about that but THAT SCENE….the one with howl in the field with the shooting stars!! yeah i’m so so excited about it, it’s sooo fitting for what i have planned and only another reason why sirius just couldn’t NOT be howl!