#the hideous frankensteined hmc + fmab/se/etc au that I did not need to make

[ssruis]

I think a ruikasa/wxs howls moving castle au has potential but only if you like. Make a huge mess of the plot. Just really fuck it up. Replace the story/role of several characters with something completely different that you made up.

- Tsukasa gets cursed for kind of being an asshole (to a witch that came into the restaurant he runs w saki. As is his right as a service worker.) (he still does theatre in this au) w something that slowly turns his heart to stone and in a canon typical tsukasa way goes “I am going to solve this problem on my own through sheer stubbornness/determination”, leaves a note for saki like “brb nothings wrong don’t worry about it :)” and goes to hunt down the wizard’s weird fucking castle sighted roaming the nearby wilderness everyone is freaked out about

- emu replaces turnip head but she got turned into a talking bunny with very few of her memories because it’s cute and I refuse to make an au where she can’t talk for 99% of the story. Tsukasa frees her from a tangled up net and she follows him bc she can’t figure out how to break her own curse so she might as well follow this goofy guy and see if the wizard can help her too

- nene as calcifer & rui as howl, nene (a witch) was cursed to die 300 yrs ago after freezing while performing for a (more powerful and significantly more cruel) witch -> rui prevented her death by figuring out a way to give her his own life force/soul/heart/whatever at the cost of her existing as a soul without a body, she keeps him alive through giving him her magic. Hard to explain. Whatever. Fullmetal alchemist vibes? We’re going on a quest to get your body back nene. They’re both functionally immortal but if one dies so does the other. She exists as a flame that operates the castle (nenerobo reference…)

- rui has been attempting to hunt down a way to reverse the curse while also fucking with the government that began cracking down harshly on magic usage after the beloved princess went missing with the evidence pointing to a witch or wizard as the culprit. Idk. Potentially pulling in soul eater inspiration with a war against witches… as a treat… rui interfering on both sides of the fight

- mfw I just wanted to do silly shows with my silly robots and now I’ve been alive for 300 years making zero progress on breaking a curse but at least I can use magic now (rui) vs mfw I messed up one thing and now I don’t have a body and I’m forced to watch my friend run himself into the ground trying to fix what should never have been his problem (nene). Canon typical nene guilt complex/rui giving nene a way to get around her issue that doesn’t help her grow. You understand.

- the kidnapped princess is emu she just forgot

- tsukasa catches up to the castle and enters it (bitch you live like this dot png) and emu discovers nene and drags her into a conversation. They discuss the curses and nene’s basically like (internally) ykw we’ve made no progress on our own maybe if we look into the curses you guys are under we’ll figure out our own on the way. (Externally) maybe having an idiot around will give rui some ideas. In return you can clean this place.

- emunene will be in this au what do u take me for. Emu entertains nene and helps her grow more confident, nene helps emu sort through her memories and more negative emotions.

- the flying over the town scene does happen (rui saves tsukasa (before tsukasa gets cursed) from a bunch of weird creatures created by the witch who later curses him) so when rui gets home and walks into the convo btwn emu/nene/tsukasa it’s essentially

Tsukasa: YOU!???

Rui: hello nice to see you again :) now please leave

Nene: I already hired him as a house keeper

Rui: but we don’t need a house keeper?

Nene: rui those dishes have been in the sink for a month

- plot happens I’m not rewatching hmc to figure this out (lying. I’ll probably do it even if I don’t do anything with this au)

- the cure for the curse for all of them essentially requires personal growth which is why I think making miku a witch that cursed all of them to inspire this/put in motion the events that would lead to them meeting is a funny idea. Not one I’m going to go with but it’s funny.

- the effect of the curse on rui was like… draining him of his passion for shows/inventing and his emotions which tsukasa helps bring back, and rui makes tsukasa realize why he loves theatre so much

- maybe tsukasa actually gets cursed by being egotistical like I will outshine everyone I’m the greatest world future star lalala (is cursed because the witch finds his lack of humility deeply grating and/or is insulted by the implication that this random guy is superior to her) oh shit

- leaning towards the witch being meiko just for funsies although kaito is also not a bad choice.

- drawback of rui using magic as someone who is not meant to be using magic is that the more magic he uses the more he’s turned into a weird bird cat beast (& the transformation back becomes harder and harder)

- one issue I have with a 1:1 hmc au is that like… rui and howl only share surface level similarities. If I wanted howl level dramatics in my story tsukasa would have to be howl which would require significantly more fucking around with the plot because rui would NOT do what Sophie did. Howl can be tsukasa but rui cannot be Sophie. Do u understand. Emunene has potential but unfortunately ruikasa fits the howl/sophie dynamic best. You know? You know. Tsukasa would get cursed and go on a quest and be perfectly fine cleaning the house of a guy who leaves food stains on the counter & never cleans them up if it meant he could lift the curse. I think if rui “canonically hates cleaning” kamishiro had to clean an atrociously messy house (disregarding the fact that tsukasa would not live like that) he would die.

- but rui also would not turn into a pile of slime because his hair got fucked up. That’s a tsukasa thing. Gestures at the card story where tsukasa is Pissed rui fucked up his hair with an explosion. I’m sure somewhere in the au over the course of canon typical rui fucking w tsukasa with his experiments I’ll work in a joke about that.

- I think in general the issue with a 1:1 au is you have to erase too much of the characters you’re inserting into the world to make things happen which is boring. U gotta change stuff. Unfortunately this leads to taking inspiration from like 4 different sources to make things work which is a huge pain in the ass and requires actual planning to create a coherent plot

- together wxs can make this moving castle a moving home :) just kidding they can’t all live together. tsukasa has to go home to saki and emu has to let her family know she’s ok. Also the lifting of the curse gives nene her body and her magic back/gives rui his life force back so 1) they’re no longer immortal 2) rui can no longer use magic (he’s fine w this he basically just used it to make truly impossible mechanical feats happen which he can figure out how to do without magic) 3) this results in the castle falling apart

- rui just moves in with tsukasa and works as a mechanic and nene moves to a nice calm cabin that emu essentially lives in when she isn’t needed to do princess stuff. They probably form a theatre troupe that eventually picks up as well & nene and rui can collab on a new moving castle to travel around if they do desire.

- why is this so scattered you may be asking. It’s because I had given this like 2 hours of thought at 2am before typing this out the next evening and had several more ideas as I typed. Firm believer that good ideas only arrive when you are sleep deprived and have given very little thought to what you’re laying out.

- I want an au that is shorter than the other aus I have so if I elect to actually write something I’ll have an easier time -> oh this is kinda getting out of hand -> god fucking damnit I did it again. Truly incapable of not making an au that has like 30 different plot threads.