#hmc is about SOPHIE not howl

[thebiffmethod]

i think i’ll never forgive tiktok for oversaturating the howls moving castle market with fans who only give a shit about the romantic undertones of the movie and literally nothin else

[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..

[nadiajustbe]

Underrated HMC moments I've never seen anyone talking about part 2

Howl choosing "H. Jenkins" for the shop's sign wich is the one and only moment in the series he actually uses his legal initials, as "H" can stand for "Howl" and "Howell" in the same time

Lettie being so angry about Prince Justin calling her "a sweet lady" that she said that she would prefer ever Howl over him. Wich is. Telling.

The King assuring that he never pushed Justin off and that everyone who knows them both wouldn't assume that.

Sophie being so RAGED with the whole weedkiller and daffodils situation she wasn't saying A SINGLE FULL WORD for about a page in the least. All of the sounds were like "argh!" and "Sophie gave the wordless glump of range"

The seven-league boots having the funniest description of use ever, as every time someone used it then the effects were simply narrated as "Zip!"

Howl raises the skull and quotes Hamlet directly to it, wich becomes a hundred times funnier when you remember that this Skull is canonically and ironically the only "person" in the room who can understand the reference.

Howl saying "Denmark" in the same sentence. And, again, they're in a fairly tale fantasy word. Sophie has absolutely no clue what to hell is Denmark. For Howl this is the basic knowledge of elementary school level.

Poor Percival being almost KILLED for transforming in the middle of a valley because people thought he's a WEREWOLF.

Poor Percival being STROKED with information of him being made of part of two other people right after experiencing heavy trauma, beheading, physical damages, not really well-planed adopting and moving a house.

Percival describing laying on the shelf and looking at the other parts of himself. What a lovely kids book.

Sophie accidentally making cayenne pepper magical. She would make a great seller-witch career because she doesn't need to know the spell in order to make. She takes random powder. She says it will do the duel fair. It makes the duel fare by making an opponent sneezing uncontrollable (wich is also just a way cayenne pepper affects people lmao)

Sophie's first thoughts after she heard that Howl is leaving the black door knob where it is being "Of course! There's miss. Angorian!'. Sophie, dear, he has a family out there.

Michael, apparently, hiding the money under the same brick Sophie will soon describe in CITA as "the brick where we're hiding money from Howl"

Miss Angorian and Howl acting like the spell in a modern Wales is the most normal thing ever. "That's a spell!!" "Oh yeah of course I suspected that"

“Didn’t know I used to fly up the wing for my university, did you, Mrs. Nose?” “If you were trying to fly, you must have forgotten how,” aka Sophie absolutely not understanding modern world sport terminology

Drunk Howell trying to get through the door MULTIPLE times, bumping on it before "discovering" the door

Calcifer "taking" that huge mention they lived (and almost never visited) in without buying it. It was literally said the owner is just Not Here.

Sophie loosing an acces to her own room. Wich must be really sad.

Witch of the Waste leaning on a swing when literally capturing Howl's family

Additionaly: Howl canonically NOT altering his clothes while rushing to save his family. He was running around in a long-sleeved medieval closes on a welsh playground

Sophie and miss Angorian having a whole fight over the guitar pulling it back and forward while it was making horrible sounds

Sophie literally pushing miss. Angorian off the house using the said guitar

Howl immediatly reacting when someone mentioned that the star Michael tried to catch looks sad.

Scarecrow literally running around with parts of Justin's body on its sticky shoulders for eighty percent of the book's finale

Howl saying he could be "the evil fairy at his own christening" which is probably a reference to the "Sleeping Beaty". Also. rises a question: did Howl HAD a christening. There's a huge chance he actually did.

Ben and Justin just. smiling at each other for enough amount of time for Sophie's narrative to say "If she had paid any attention she would see them". Am I interuppting something???

Lettie hating Howl's courting SO MUCH she asked Percival to bite him several times.

Additionally: Ben apologising to Howl for trying to bite him. That's also probably first time they're interacting

Howl ignoring all of it because sOPHIE HATTER

[shebsart]

howl's moving castle book but it gets faster every time sophie gets jealous over the black knob and the black suit

bonus brutal sophie:

oh my god and sophie doesn't even know she's affiliated with the Witch . miss angorian's just a random woman to her 😭

[wuffgang-ameowdeus-moozart]

Howl calling Sophie Welsh pet names and her never being sure if he is insulting her. Howl learning Shakespeare sonnets and Dickinson love poems by heart and trying to convince Sophie that he came up with those himself (she doesn't believe him). Sophie convincing Howl to teach her Welsh (and being completely unsurprised when Howl adds Welsh love poems to his repertoire). Just.....more Welsh Howl content please

[hycinthrt]

btw i was talking about howl’s moving castle to my best friend who loves the movie but hasnt read the book and i was telling her how in the book the black option in howl’s door doesn’t go to the war but to our world and she said “well it makes sense that to hayao miyazaki going to the real world from a magical one would mean going to a placed filled with war” and you know what you might have a point

[callonpeevesie]

Sophie is the diametric opposite of that one person who thought the Welsh flag was a pride flag. Inspired by this Tintin art

[pendragonbooks]

In which Sophie is horrified to discover she has been doing magic the whole time

[spoondrifts]

role reversal hmc au where sophie gets isekai'd into modern day wales after her sisters leave for their apprenticeships and she accidentally speaks a portal into existence with NO idea how she did it. after a lot of shenanigans she eventually lands a job at a local university library, where she realizes "hey, i'm actually more capable and respected in this world than my own, where the Laws of Nature mean i will never succeed. the rules are different here, why go back?" cue sophie actually thriving in wales to the point where she starts to be like "oh, so it wasn't me. it was the actual universe that didn't want me to succeed. good to know that i just need to stay here if i want to be valued and successful." (← lying to herself; self esteem lower than dirt)

and then one day she's shelving books when she overhears patented loserfailure grad students howell and ben arguing over magic at a table and interrupts them to be like "you guys are idiots. that's not how magic portals work." and neither of them have ever opened a portal before despite their theoretical prowess, so they're fascinated by her, because they can CLEARLY tell she's a witch by her story but she refuses to believe them, because obviously she was just the hapless victim of a random magical accident. so now ben and howl are trying to drill information out of her about how exactly she created a portal, while also cracking open the chest of deep-seated inadequacy issues inside her that stem from the whole magical world thing in the first place (that directly play into her inability to admit she might have magic after all). she flourished in wales without magic just fine, she doesn't need it and she doesn't have it!! shut up about the magic SHUT UP!!!

meanwhile howell is enchanted by this peculiar witch woman who accepts approximately none of his bullshit + ben is deeply impressed with her practical spirit and her obvious gifts, and sophie eventually grows to love them both—howell for his callous habits and cowardly personality and good heart underneath it all, ben for his dogged loyalty and biting wit and kind soul shining through.

and herself, too, learning the lesson she'd always needed to learn: that it was never about ingary, or wales, or anywhere else. it was always just about her, and what she's capable of when she's willing to trust herself enough to try.

the three of them build a door. ben enchants the doorbell with a beautiful song, strummed from his guitar; howell paints the dial with a colorful, slapdash scour of four equal quarters; for the first time in many months, sophie asks the door to take them home, and means it.

and it does.

[shih-coulda-had-it]

Counterpoint:

Old man Sorahiko is aged like fine wine

2. He's small and can fit into your arms easily which is cute

3. He's a disaster but he's a wonderful disaster. Grumpy, but attractive in all the right ways.

old couple defense

[allovesthings]

Movie Sophie: mild mannered young girl who lacks confidence.

Book Sophie: slightly unhinged, so nosy *Will throw weedkiller she made with magic at Howl's head because she is mad about her feelings towards him and will cut his suits into pieces*. Also lack confidence in a completely different way.

Movie!Sophie could not have handled Twinkle. (Also book!Sophie was not paid enough to handle Twinkle).

[tchaikovskym]

I think book Sophie's inner monologue regarding Howell could be summarized as "fuck, I love that guy."

And it's just yeah.

I mean, Sophie just learned how to enjoy freedom (from being old). To just be her weird self, doing whatever she pleases and not hiding a bit.

And in her freedom, she realizes she's in love. The freedom being free of all the emotional webs, the burden of thinking about your every step, your role in a society. Old age gave her that. And what she ends up doing anyway? Having feelings! The thing she wanted to escape from! But oh! She's not losing her freedom a one bit by being with him! She just has a guy to share her weird self with, who loves her back.

[nadiajustbe]

HMC fandom didn't make enough content with "all readheads are witches" stereotype, which obviously exists in our world and probably doesn't exist in Ingary because of how common the term "witch" is there (and also used for all females who practise wizardy/magic).

Imagine Mari once jokingly pointing at Sophie, asking "Are you a witch?" and poor woman is STRESSING for the rest of her day thinking that that random explosion of the oven might have been suspicious after all, before Howl explains that it's actually just a stereotype back from medieval times.

[sigewinne]

i know this is going to sound so silly but idc: i just finished reading howls moving castle and i cannot put into words how truly comforting both the book and movie are to me 🥹

[woliamakesamess]

howl and sophie :3

(DO NOT REPOST)

[fragglerockopinions]

Genuinely don't understand the changes that studio ghibli made to Howl's Moving Castle. American Howl? A plane war? A BIRD MONSTER?? MARKL????????? THEY RENAMED MICHAEL? TO MARKLE???????