#tossawary hmc

[tossawary]

Rewatched the Howl's Moving Castle movie (fantastic animated movie, definitely inspired by more than an adaptation of the book) while doing something else and I was struck this time by the fact that the Prince (Turniphead the Scarecrow) says that he intends to go tell his king to call off the war, but THEN he intends on COMING BACK to Ingary to shoot his shot with Sophie again because (as he says to the flirtatious Witch of the Wastes) "hearts change".

And maybe he will come back to make Sophie an offer of marriage and then leave again when he's turned down, but I imagined for a moment that the Prince (who is possibly the movie's version of Prince Justin, so let's call him Justin) might just... move back into Howl's house without asking and stay there. There are several cases of precedent for this. Also, as Turniphead, he's shown several times helping Sophie with laundry, or playing with Markl, or helping the Witch of the Wastes move around, and Sophie deserves that kind of help around the house! Howl isn't going to reliably do chores.

And you know what? I think Howl would be into that shit. There's something very Wynne-Jonesian about it all still. It's tempting to write a post-canon fic about this situation from the movie with an extra dash of flavoring from the books. Like:

This is the infamous wizard Howl Pendragon/Jenkins, a vain draft-dodging flirt who likes to build moving castles to evade taxes too. The beautifully angry young woman with the silver hair over there is his wife, Sophie Hatter, who may or may not be an extremely powerful witch, but right now she's dusting and do not get in her way. This is Calcifer, the fire demon who used to have Howl's heart and is arguably his other life partner and also might be in love with Sophie, and this is arguably kind of actually his house. The old lady smoking a cigar over there is Howl's ex-girlfriend and former nemesis, the Witch of the Wastes, who now lives in their house. This is Markl, Howl's apprentice, kind of his kid, and there is no explanation of where he comes from or what happened to his parents. The dog used to be(?) the Royal Wizard's spy (Howl used to be her apprentice and potential successor) but now he also just lives here. And that's Prince Justin of Strangia, Sophie's house-boyfriend. Don't listen to the propaganda, he wasn't kidnapped by a heart-eating wizard; he used to be a cursed scarecrow and now he wants to be here to help Sophie do laundry. He's trying to homewreck and Howl thinks it's both funny and hot.

#tossawary hmc #fic ideas #howl pendragon #sophie hatter #prince justin turniphead

[tossawary]

Thinking about the family arrangements of the "Howl's Moving Castle" film, specifically the question of where Markl (Howl's young apprentice) (pretty different from the Michael of the books) comes from... I do like the idea that Howl essentially took in an orphaned child whom he found on the street or something, because I like seeing adopted families. They're cool. It's cute.

Or maybe there was some complicated situation (curses, spells, adventures, oh my) with Markl's parents? Who can't care for him or can't be trusted to care for him, but they're still out there? If you want to get into the "messy bio family situation" side of adoption issues.

While thinking about this, my brain took a leap to the side and asked, "Even if I really don't like a 'Howl and Markl are biological family' angle on this, is there a way to pull that off?" In the books, Howl performs several extended courtships of beautiful women, so I suppose that you could just go with him having accidentally had a child with one of his exes or something. Easy enough. I still prefer the adoption of an orphan route.

And then I thought, "WAIT. If Howl has a reputation for seducing women, eating hearts, and then running off, then it would be really easy for some young girl with an unwanted pregnancy to CLAIM to her unhappy parents that the wandering Wizard Howl fathered her child." So then Howl could get saddled with a small child dumped on his doorstep and told to take responsibility as a father, even though he's never met this woman in his life!

And I thought that sounded like a really funny balance between the ambiguous situation of the movie and the style of humor of the books. That sounds like a Wynne-Jonesian situation to me! Sophie has to wrestle with her admiration that Howl selflessly took in this poor, unwanted child (Markl) and is raising him as best as he's able (for a given value of "best"), and also wrestle with her annoyance that Howl's reputation as a flirt is such a fucking mess that he has a "bastard" child who isn't even actually his bio kid.

Even funnier bonus interpretations / directions for this, in my opinion: (1) Howl is a trans man and is physically incapable of knocking anyone up without magic being involved. (Sophie and Howl have a kid in the books named Morgan.) The girl making the claim did not know this and Howl did not enlighten anyone.

(2) If it happened once (a girl successfully claiming that Howl is the father of her unwanted child despite never having met him), then it can happen again! Sophie knows Howl didn't cheat on her, but she's still not impressed by this mess. (Maybe this is where Morgan comes from in this AU.)

#tossawary hmc #howl pendragon #sophie hatter #markl michael #fic ideas

[tossawary]

Someone responded, "Howl would do chores for Sophie! He loves her so much!" to that Prince Turniphead house-boyfriend post about the "Howl's Moving Castle" movie where I said that Howl wouldn't reliably help around the house. And... no. No, I said RELIABLY, that's a really important word here, but also no.

Nothing about his home setup (the mess of the kitchen in the beginning, the RAINBOW BATHROOM, his cluttered bedroom) suggests that he's in the habit of picking up after himself. I don't think he's purposefully a slob, but I do think he's too distractible and thoughtless to do the required regular cleaning. I think he's a "I'll put this down here for now and deal with it later *proceeds to walk around this object every day for the next three years while doing more interesting / immediate things*" person at best. Being in love does not suddenly change all your habits as a person or your personal interests! I think Howl would definitely try (important word here) to do better for Sophie, but I think it would take a lot of work and he's kind of lazy about these things!

I do think he cooks. Movie Howl IS shown cooking with Calcifer and I think he and his fire demon could have fun with that task, very cute, and leave a mountain of dishes behind them in the process.

Also, (trying to limit referencing the books for those who haven't read them, but I can't resist here) Book Sophie is... kind of controlling and loves to complain? And can also do magic herself? When I said that Howl can't be trusted to RELIABLY do chores, it's partly because I don't think he'd be doing them to 1) Sophie's exacting standards and 2) in the EXACT way that Sophie wants it done. I think Sophie would in many cases decide that it's easier just to train Howl to better stay out of her way, honestly.

Especially because HOWL IS A WIZARD!!! You can't fucking trust those assholes with a simple chore! It doesn't occupy their brains enough and they're ALWAYS going to think, "I bet I could invent a spell to do this for me," and that's how you get floating dishes or animated broomsticks or a fucking water spirit in your house. It's the hubris! Can't smack it out of wizards with a stick!

Howl swallowed a star and made a deal with a fire demon! He built a giant walking castle that was holding together JUST using magic (it completely fell apart at the end of the movie) and wandered freely around the country! He was pretending to be two different people to run businesses and then abandoned the buildings when the government caught up to him! I'm pretty sure he used a magic spell to SQUAT in Sophie's family's former hat shop! He impersonated the king! He dodged the draft literally afterwards in an airship battle! He nearly irreversibly turned himself into a bird monster and fought bombing airships by HIMSELF - and there's no way that Sophie wasn't confusedly picking black feathers off the floor. He summoned the spirits of darkness and started turning into ooze because his hair dye came out the wrong color!

Howl would TRY for Sophie, I believe that. I just also think that he'd rather use magic to completely renovate the entire house than actually scrub floors. I think he would invent an incredibly ugly magical vacuum cleaner for her and Sophie would love it so much that she would choose to overlook the fact that it tries to eat the carpet and curtains and the dog sometimes. I think that if Book Sophie was told she could melt wizards with a bucket of soapy water with a little bit of lemon juice (like the Enchanted Forest Chronicles), she COULD DO IT by choosing to believe it, and Howl hides from her and that bucket because he loves her but she's TERRIFYING.

If Sophie's sister Lettie was visiting and Sophie was panicking because she hadn't had the time to dust on top of the guest room wardrobe... whatever the magical equivalent of shoving all of your stuff into a closet at the last minute to make the place LOOK clean is, THAT's how Howl would help.

#tossawary hmc #howl pendragon #sophie hatter #spoilers #fic ideas

[tossawary]

In the "Howl's Moving Castle" movie, I was always kind of taken aback by Madame Suliman's identical blond boy servants and how closely Howl resembles them. Strict uniforms are definitely a thing, that blond hair could be dyed or could just be wigs or it could all be an illusion to disguise what they really look like, and it would fit the extravagance that we see of the palace to have such an absurd dress code for apprentices / servants.

But yeah, my first thought was clones or magical creations of some kind.

If not for the scene showing Howl as a boy meeting Calcifer, and I think a mention of having a wizard uncle when he and Sophie visit the flower field... (And also if not for having actually read the book and knowing Howl's backstory in that universe, but if the book didn't exist and the secret backstory there wasn't so funny...) then I would wonder about Howl having actually been created by Madame Suliman in some fashion. I mean, you could still do Secret Magical Clone Backstory as an AU for the movie 'verse: Howl could totally be lying about having a wizard uncle and the dark hair in the flashback could be a childhood rebellion thing.

It adds a whole extra layer of "what the fuck, this was never going to work" to Sophie briefly pretending to be Howl's mother to get him out of having to fight in the war, which is funny to me. I always got the vibe that Madame Suliman knew the "Mrs. Pendragon" bit was 100% fake from the beginning. And I think it would be funny to have Sophie yell at Howl for making her a distraction.

Anyway, I feel like movie 'verse Sophie could immediately cure Howl's upset over not being blond anymore by asking him if he also used to have to dress up like those boys when he was Madame Suliman's apprentice, and if he'd been trying to look like that still. (It's possible that the blond servant outfit of Suliman's servants and Howl's early outfits were just both of them separately trying to keep up with the latest fashions. The uniform may have looked entirely different when Howl was an apprentice.) "Is that the look you were going for?" Sophie asks dubiously, and Howl spends at least the next three days having a fashion crisis.

#tossawary hmc #howl pendragon #sophie hatter #fic ideas #madame suliman

[tossawary]

Ha ha ha, the voice actor for Prince Justin in "Howl's Moving Castle" is Crispin Freeman, who was also Uchiha Itachi. I love looking at extremely different roles actors have had over the years; it's consistently amusing.

#tossawary hmc #tossawary naruto #prince justin turniphead #uchiha itachi