Howl's Moving Castle is an absolute VIBE of a book. The main plot is this girl gets turned into an old woman and proceeds to move into a wizard's house without asking permission first and torment everyone there by cleaning it up and being nosy and rude. The old woman part just makes her even more confident cause the wizard only "eats the heart" of young girls, so she just makes his life miserable with zero remorse and the wizard has no choice but to fall in love with her

*places an orange just outside a fairy ring to see what comes out* science is more of an art than a science

may his pussy haunt the narrative forever

historical accuracy in fics is so funny to me. googling if they had grapefruit spoons in 1845 but also letting two men get married. fuck homophobia, tell me about cutlery.

I feel like some people need to relearn Genre Expectations... "Man, this tragedy sucks!!! Why didn't they just do XYZ, then everything could have ended happily!!" well, then it wouldn't be a tragedy, would it. "Man, this lighthearted teen romcom is terrible, it's so sappy and unrealistic!!" Well, yeah. If it had been gritty and dark, it wouldn't have been a lighthearted romcom, would it. Is the writing actually bad or are you just trying to order a milkshake from a Home Depot

All my haters become craters when I hit them with the meteorite

I hate the “open floor plan” that everyone is obsessed with in houses now. I want nooks and crannies and bizarre floor plans. I don’t need to be able to see what someone is doing on the other side of the house. I want places to hide and lurk and dwell in the shadows. I am the beast who awaits in the labyrinth

I feel like a lot of people don’t quite get what a butler is. The role tends to get rounded off to ‘male servant’ pretty regularly in some media, whereas actually butlers are typically not just servants but chief servants. The butler was generally in charge of either all male servants or just all servants, period, in the household of an aristocrat or other very wealthy person. This meant that butlers have often been fairly powerful and influential people, and sometimes even had a manservant or two of their own.

(Also, fun fact: Mary Roberts Rinehart, the early 20th century mystery writer who is widely credited with popularizing the whole ‘the butler did it’ trope was nearly murdered by one of her own servants, a chef whom she had passed over for promotion to butler. He came at her with a pistol, but it jammed, allowing her chauffeur time to wrestle it away and restrain him.)

Shout out to Book!Howl. Truly a man of high culture.

Has a PhD but no job (relatable).

Dyes his hair blond.

Plays Welsh rugby.

Opened a portal to a magical world to escape the retribution of three angry men whose sister he'd jilted.

Cannot play the guitar but carries it everywhere.

Friend to all spiders (and their cobwebs).

Designs videogames on his magical AU life for his nephew.

Huge disappointment to his family.

Favorite drinking song is "Sosban Fach."

Real name is Howell Jenkins.

Look, book-Sophie's arc is dear and personal. Because she is an eldest sister, and so much of that is to her advantage in the story. She knows how to quell tantrums and knows how to run a shop and knows how to clean and make a home worth living in. The story would be infinitely sadder if Sophie was one of those "not like other girls" who couldn't cook or clean. Sophie knows that loneliness is the worst, leading her to talk to Calcifer enough that she knows how to break Howl's spell. Being bossy enough to get small children to stop fighting lets her deal with Howl and Calcifer's moods. Being unwilling to burden other people led her to talking to things, which is the essence of her magic! She acts like this because she's the oldest and knows how to take care of other people's hurts without them feeling like they have to take care of her. People can depend on her.

Sophie knows how to make a home from the start because she's the eldest and has been helping for ages. It's a great and wonderful thing that she knows all this!

What's terrible is when she think that it was all useless. She's cursed and her sisters are busy courting, her stepmom got married and sold the shop, no one in the town she grew up in recognizes her, the wizard she lives with can't stop whining about her cleaning to figure out she's bespelled and could really use some help, and she's right back at her father's shop a month after leaving.

But it wasn't useless! She and Howl just didn't have the communication skills to get her to know that. Her sisters are desperate with worry! They ask everyone, even Horrible Howl that eats young girl's hearts, for help in finding her! They have a reward posted for any information about her! Her step mother recognizes her almost on sight! Her sisters run to her the second they see her. They love her and their lives have been less without her. The skills she used to build up a home in the moving castle is one of the reasons Howl, Calcifer, and Michael love her and trust her with Howl's heart and Calcifer's life. Howl is actively returning the care she put into their home by consulting all his wizard friends about her curse to get to the bottom of it. (and is too busy to actually be courting anyone) Being nosy and bossy let Sophie see other worlds and get her the adventure she has never believed herself capable of.

That's what it actually means to be the eldest daughter.

Her manta "Of course I failed, I'm the eldest of three!" both pulls the reader to identify what is being constructed and deconstructed, the role of elder sisters and puts the reader in the odd position of thinking "what a self-aware fantasy character!" and "what a stupid thing to let stop you!"

One of Sophia's main internal struggles is about a fear of failure because the world tells her she's going to fail. Then she fails and immediately goes to the conclusion "the world was right, I am a failure for this arbitrary, uncontrollable trait."

Sophia escapes this mantra for the first time when she's old and is like "well, who cares what they have to say now. I'm old and earned the right to do as I please". The thoughts come back through, the way messages telling of hardship and failure always do, but she doesn't let it stop her anymore, not like it did the first months of the book. Why?

Because what being the eldest daughter actually means is cleaning up messes because no one else is going to clean yours and your siblings are too young to clean up theirs.

Sophie is pulled into plot points almost exclusively by the need to clean up her mess or help someone else. Gotta protect Lettie from Howl catching her heart and breaking it! Gotta help Michael with the spell! Gotta free Calcifer who can't break his own curse! Gotta help the poor dogman that hates Howl! Gotta help Miss Angorian, even though she's a beautiful lying manstealer! Gotta kick Howl out of his despressive spirals! Also gotta help Howl by blackening his name before the King (no one said helping couldn't be fun).

Ironically, the very trait the world told her would make her unsuccessful was crucial to her success. She's scared to fail like everyone has said she would, but she doesn't stop trying to help people anyway, in her eldest daughter way, and she succeeds in the end and rewrites fate. I love her.

honestly I feel for the movie version of howl so much. imagine you've presumably been dreaming of meeting this girl again with infinite longing for all of your adult life, looking for her everywhere, and when you finally do find her you manage to make it all of half a week of playing the dream prince before you revert to your real self and suffer a complete and humiliating breakdown in front of her, parading all your silliest neuroses before her age-cleared take-no-shit eyes. I would have to have two days of pathetic bed rest after that too. letting someone see the monster the horrors of wars have started to warp you into is nothing, it takes a real man to suffer the mortifying ordeal of being known in nothing but a towel and a layer of your drama queen goo and still look the woman of your dreams in the eye the next day, nevermind asking her to pretend to be your mother while you do so

Noone understood the female gaze more than Diana Wynne Jones writing Howls Moving Castle

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Howl choosing to go through a magical portal rather than having to navigate the hellscape that is the academic job market makes him the most relatable of all blorbos