❤

Don't tell my parents I'm here. This blog is extremely unorginized, i reblog far too much and sometimes i post art. She/they. Hot jon truther. Formerly scubatubaboio. Icon by @mushymushhh !

[dancing-eel]

Just reread howls moving castle!! and i had to draw them

[dancing-eel]

More Howl and Sophie fanart !! :33

(With sketch under more)

[callonpeevesie]

there can be many variations of this meme but The Weedkiller is the most significant to me because it's such a peak sophie moment and movie fans have such a wildly different idea of sophie lmao

[entanglementbroke]

GUYS!!!! If there are any more Howl's Moving Castle book fans here (I don't know I'm still too much of a coward to check) I FOUND AN OLD FANSITE

https://sophie-lou.tripod.com/index.html

It's from the late 2000s and it's got lots of cool stuff on it for weirdos like me (and maybe you as well). Enjoy

[callonpeevesie]

it's that time of year again

[residentmiddlechild]

no offense to the Howl's Moving Castle movie (i love that movie) but I hate that bird man i hate it i hate it. some people think that bird man is hot. but i want to kill that bird man. That bird is disgusting and needs to die and I want to throw up when I look at bird Howl disgusting. there is nothing attractive about this bird man to me

[entanglementbroke]

MOST CRACKABLE HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE SIDE CHARACTERS

10) Prince Justin

9) The King of Ingary

8) The Count of Catterack

7) Fanny Hatter

6) Mrs Fairfax

5) Calcifer

4) Jane Farrier

3) Mrs Pentstemmon

2) The Witch of the Waste

1) Miss Angorian

[thenegoteator]

oh to be a fly on the wall during the Hatter sisters' first catch-up after the events of the novel

[twineathreadofstarlight]

amazing how sophie, throughout the entire book, always manages to focus carefully on exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time and completely ignore everything else

[dogsaveus]

It’s so fascinating how Howl’s transparency with Sophie evolves. Initially, he’s perfectly content letting her believe he’s "wicked." He doesn’t care about external perceptions because, at that point, Sophie is just a stranger. He leans into his flaws, his vanity, his reputation as a heartless philanderer, his nature as a "slitherer-outer." He doesn’t mind her seeing him as hysterical, childish, or impossible.

But as he starts to care for her, the dynamic shifts. It starts with teasing and "poking the bear" just to get a reaction. Then, as he grows more desperate to connect—and realizes he’s fundamentally incapable of a "normal" confession, he starts showing her his "vulnerability through flaws."

He stops displaying his cowardice and escapism to scare her away; instead, he offers them up almost like a plea. He’s showing her his worst self because he’s desperate for her to accept the real him. He isn’t truly a vain person at his core, so he can't just perform "goodness" and expect a reward. Instead, he throws tantrums and reveals his scars, wrapping them in jokes because he's terrified of rejection. The transition from indifference to teasing, to dependency, and finally to that raw confession is such a brilliant, messy character arc.

[dogsaveus]

I think Howl’s initial tendency to project his worst self—or his complete indifference to being misunderstood—is inextricably linked to his relationship with his sister. It’s not that Sophie was 'special' to him right from the start; it’s that Howl is accustomed to, and perhaps even finds a perverse sort of comfort in, being misunderstood.

He defaults to defying expectations—a deep-seated reflex that stems directly from his dynamic with his family, especially Megan. When you are conditioned to believe that people will inevitably be disappointed in you, you might as well lean into the disappointment before they can get close. It’s a form of passive rebellion, a self-protective mechanism where you amplify your own flaws just to keep control of the narrative.

Sophie has her own self-defense mechanisms, too. I’ve always said these characters are actually quite similar. She pours all her insecurity, anxiety, and fear into aggressive stress cleaning. She also clings to her prejudice against Howl, constantly reinforcing it because she desperately needs a stable anchor.

The context is: Sophie had fully internalized the "eldest child curse", resigning herself to her stepmother's "exploitation" while believing her sisters were doing the same. Discovering that her sisters had secretly swapped identities to seek their own fortunes was a massive cognitive shock. It shattered the reality she had accepted during months of isolation.

In the aftermath, she was desperate to grasp something real—something she discovered on her own, not something arranged for her. Unfortunately, she hadn’t shaken her habit of believing whatever people told her. So when she met Howl, a man who loves blackening his own name, she latched onto those rumors as her new "truth."

That’s why she clings to that prejudice even when it becomes unstable. Even when she starts to see he isn’t wicked, she refuses to let go. To do so would mean admitting she was wrong again, a blow her ego can't take.

And honestly, it’s not just about her insecurity or the fear that her feelings won’t be returned. What she truly finds unacceptable is the fact that she has fallen for the very person she judged so harshly. She doesn't want to admit that she loves him despite—or perhaps because of—seeing all his worst flaws up close. So, she clutches her "old woman" disguise like a shield, hiding behind the wrinkles so she never has to face the terrifying vulnerability of being young, wrong, and in love.

[petrichorblue94]

Ghibli fans who love HMC but have never read the book will never understand the thrill of reading about Sophie Hatter, the bossy dominating spitfire of a woman who would sooner chase Howl around with a broom than stare at him with sparkling eyes.

The surprise at seeing that there is a love interest in this coming of age (and also Coming Of Age) book and it’s Howl, Sophie’s sassy and lazy and neurotic Welsh flatmate from another universe, who is a slither-outer of a first degree, who codes video games for his nephew in his spare time and is, like, really into rugby. And his greatest fear is his sister Megan, a suburban housewife, judging him for his life choices and his obscure college degree.

And also they’ll never know that Howl gets to repeat his “I look like I don’t care and I’m running away from responsibility but I’m secretly solving a whole conspiracy so that Sophie won’t have to worry” TWO more times.

That when a djinn chases them cause he really fancies their castle, Howl turns a pregnant Sophie into a cat so the djinn won’t notice her, and Morgan gets to be a kitten before he gets to be a baby and he’s very annoyed when he gets turned back into a baby cause he’s a lot less independent. That throughout the whole second book Sophie is cursed not to notice Howl even though he’s right there with her throughout her adventure the entire time.

That Howl just can’t bear to be away from Sophie as she solves a mystery in the third book, so he just pretends that he’s a helpless dad who simply doesn’t know to stop their toddler from crying (despite having a lot of experience with his nephews) so the two of them just follow Sophie to a whole other country. Which really annoys Sophie cause she was hoping to solve the mystery on her own but she doesn’t complain too much because she loves her two boys a lot.

[ballpointbird]

Made a Howl’s Moving Castle Diorama with peeps recently! I printed out and pasted on some book pages and concept art for the background.

[contemplativepervert]

Been reading howls moving castle lately and i do love how idgaf maxxing sophie is about. Everything. Learns her sisters swapped places bc one wanted to learn magic while the other wanted a family😐👍 gets turned into an old lady by the wicked witch of the waste😐👍 meets a fire demon and makes a contract w him before taking a nap on a cozy chair😐👍 learns shes a witch ans has been speaking magic into every hat she ever made😐👍 like i strive to give that little of a fuck. Which is contrasted to howl going on a neurotic spiral every two pages

[certifieddragonenjoyer]

Asra's a better person then I am because if I spent years working to resurrect my longtime friend I was in love with more then life itself, spent three more years trying to fix them after the necromancy fucked up their mind, and then left for like a few weeks and came home to find they've started fucking specifically my ex who I used as a rebound after they died I think I'd actually level the city

[rpgchoices]

Remembering The Arcana

I suddenly remembered how much I enjoyed The Arcana (that phone app), so I reinstalled it and found out it was sold to another company.

It is so disappointing. I remember it was created by a small company called Nix Hydra. They also have/had an itch io account, and they started a very successful kickstarter campaign to create a visual novel dating sim videogame.

(link)

The game was successfully funded, and some of the rewards for the pledges were:

An artbook

A PC VERSION OF THE ACTUAL GAME

For a while the company was ignoring the pledgers regarding the artbook:

They later replied that they were working on sending the artbook, so I think that was finally shipped but not everyone seemingly received it.

And of course, the pc version...

The pledgers got a discount code for certain routes only.

The game was supposed to be a steam/gog/pc game, a full on visual novel. But unfortunately greed won:

You can see here a bit more about how much more they ended up earning with predatory mobile app practices.

Basically, they knew they had a hit, and locked all the romance content behind pay for play. When you play the game on mobile (mind you: this is a romance game, a dating sim), you will be able to play a non romance scene for free, and a romance scene only by using a coins/keys that you can win (with high difficulty) or purchase with real money.

Nix Hydra was mainly owned by:

Nikolai Ladizinsky, Dana Rune... the rest of the employees at Nix Hydra seem pretty hard to find.

It looks like a lot of people (EDIT: three of the people) went to work at Red Spring Studio just to open a new kickstarter for a new videogame.

The kickstarter is from 2023, with an "estimated delivery" set to 2023 (EDIT: apparently the release date for the game is 2025, but none of the backers saw chapter 1 till now... 2026...). The owner and workers at the company all use first names (EDIT: shortened names/names that are hard to search, but this is not important because I missed that the people who worked for mix hydra had written in the bio, so it's only three people, none of them used to be in decisional roles for nix hydra if I understand correctly) so it is hard to know who they are, but they do credit "The Arcana" among their successes, in their website.

Funnily enough one of the rewards is an artbook and the comments are...uhm... very familiar.

Luckily, this time there is a steam entry for the game but the game is still "to be announced" three years later, which is not promising. And after three years what is currently available is still Chapter 1, which can only be played on Patreon. Updates of the game are also locked behind paywall (for patreon and backers).

EDIT: The Co-director of the game is also from Nix Hydra but not The Arcana. They are the first person listed in credits and worked for the Nix Hydra mobile game Last Legacy. Two of the writers also worked for Nix Hydra (Last Legacy and The Arcana).

And what happened to The Arcana, in the meantime?

In 2022, as soon as it stopped making money (I suppose) it was sold to some predatory mobile app called Dorian, which follows the same rules of having a dating sim/romance story where the romance scenes can only be unlocked through payment of difficult to earn coins. Dorian allows fans to create their games, using AI art etc.

So yeah, pretty sad story and a very disappointing ending. Especially because The Arcana had a solid plot and quite interesting diverging romance interests. It could have gone down as one of the most popular dating sim (with queer romance) of the past years, and instead it will probably one day disappear into a blip as soon as this mess of a company called Dorian sink into the sea.

[nadiasfanpage]