somehow, i have been allowed to become a legal adult and so iām being forced to adult. doing taxes or something
(what do you even put in a pinned post iām just winging this.)
anyway in between adulting i uhhhh. write. sometimes. occasionally. for various fandoms but hsr & genshin are my favorite
these are on tumblr because they arenāt long enough (imo) to post anywhere else, but iām. a little sad if they never get to see the light of day because motivation died and they never end up being long enough
the first few (many) snippets will vary in quality. and consistency. but theyāre all very dear to my heart even if theyāre not perfectly coherent.
eventually maybe if i feel like it iāll make a master list. mostly for me because the amount of snippets i canāt remember where i put them but want to continue.
i hope that any one of my silly little stories brings a smile to some of your faces :)
lohen & furina friendship? (theyāre my FAVS at the moment) hear me out. this is gonna be really really unrefined bc i just want to put it out there. maybe iāll write it one dayā¦.. (i say as i edit this multiple times and add more to it)
lohen and death have a complicated sort of relationship. i think.
in some way. receiving pain is proof heās alive, and giving it out to others is control. control that he didnāt have as a child because he was expected to follow in his parents footsteps to become a bowmaker, and was then further taken from him by dottore.
(like. he was always vaguely feral. in his story quest [mild spoilers for that!] when you go into theodoreās memory of being brought to eroch's lab, thereās a thing he sees. or rather, that he hears.
Respectful Voice: Sir, the new subjects are here.
Complaining Voice: This brat's real vicious. Took a lot of work to quiet him down.
and this could be a throwaway line. but this was a kid that wanted to be taught how to use the bow. his character story calls him untamed even at like. 10 years old. he's just Like That. it's definitely him being described. also it's his story quest, so even if it's theodore's memory he's in there somewhere.
becoming an adventurer was control. becoming a knight was control. poisoning other knights (not lethally) is a way of him making sure they can be more interesting. less likely to die to poison, a calm, quiet, death. itās care, in a way (but he DEFINITELY enjoys seeing the knights be afraid and squirm LOL)
i think, personally, lohen is a very heavy advocator for being interesting, over being the strongest fighter in the world he can test himself against. being strong =/= being someone heād hang around for more than just sparring.
i think if dementia is a thing in teyvat, thatās his greatest most terrible fear for both himself and people he cares about. losing memories, losing strength. ādonāt get old on meā (stay with him. no matter how sadistic or unconventional he is, stay with him.)
and yāknow what? because of this i think if lohen knew about Furinaās gambit, her act that fooled the heavens, i think heād like to have her as a friend, and i think theyād actually be good for each other.
but even if he didnāt, i think furina would fit that definition of āinterestingā for lohen. not in a romantic way (though that would be a fun dynamic to explore lmfao), but i think they genuinely would be good friends and. bring out the best in each other is Not the phrase iām looking for but close enough i guess.
ācause even though furina spent almost all of her time acting as focalors, she was a star. she acted in other things throughout those 500 years. furina actually probably has some weird misc knowledge if shes ever acted in a murder mystery play before, which. considering fontaineās whole justice & court & entertainment entanglements, seems pretty likely.
sure, most of it is heavily unrealistic, but. lohen is the type of Guy to actually find a way to pull them off. bother and get albedoās perspective and create some wild poison that would be used in a locked-room mystery.
(the fifth company knights shiver in fear. oh god their vice captain has gotten even MORE terrifying)
anyway. how they would meet is very very self indulgent and a lot of background i use to justify it. uhhhh.
so with furina's whole gambit, it was a lot. it was such a demanding role, with no breaks (eyes on her, always.) furina just wouldn't know who she is. and sure, i have Things to say about her story quest and how we make her act even though she didn't really want to, and she still does love acting in the end, the way they went about getting her to that point was :/
anyway that's all to say furina had a lot of control over herself, but not her situation. not the people around her. she's been stuck in fontaine for 500 years, worrying and trying her best to avert the prophecy in her own way, considering im 80% sure focalors did Not tell her any of the details except for that she had to pretend to be the goddess and the trials had something to do with it all.
something something (neuvillette and furina talk. itās a lot of awkward silences, all the things they never said and all the things furina desperately hid and omitted or outright lied to him about, but they donāt leave in the middle. they sit and talk the way they never really did in the past 500 years- one because he didnt understand humanity, and the other because what could she say? and neuvillette insists on funding her a trip through the nations. he might not like the archons, but their nations are made up of humans, whom he is fond of. so. she should visit. travel. see more of the world that she never could when doing what focalors asked of her.)
and maybe neuvillette also wants furina to get away from fontaine for a bit. because. shes no longer cursed with immortality. the goddess who cursed her so is gone, and so she will finally get to live (and die) as a human being should, doesnāt have to act and pretend and hide the sound of her sobs in the fountain late at night
but neuvillette is a dragon, and furina is not an immortal, and may the archons be damned if she, a constant in his life for 500 years dies even a year too soon from some zealot, someone ignorant in her role and efforts or someone obsessed with her returning to the limelight (if i canāt have her no one can)
because because neuvillette has judged a Lot of cases. a LOT of them. and though he spared fontaine, he WAS witness to a lot of the strange and terrible and violent crimes they could commit
iām sure some were committed against idols, and actors, and furina was spared those [her reaction to arlecchino's attack] because she was beloved Archon, how could they dare to do that against their Archon? also probably serious bodyguards but reverence definitely played a part. so when she's freed of that role, it's a bit of a gray area.
she has her vision, but she just eats mac n cheese. shes free and doesnāt know what to do with her freedom and she deserves to try thing. be her own person. learn how to do thing with her own hands because she can now. she doesnāt have to be regal.
and i'm saying she starts in mondstadt. maybe furina asks traveler, maybe it's just because mondstadt is the nation of freedom.
and lohen is in no way the first friend she makes in mondstadt (maybe barbara, similar yet different struggles with idol-hood). it's the nation of freedom, furina's learning how to be free, meeting and getting to know a bard that knows WAY TOO MUCH, learning how to glide, being welcomed for no other reason than she came to visit. not because shes Furina de Fontaine.
and i could go on and on but uh. this is probably a good place to stop myself djfhdsjfhkadfhsk
Howell is absolutely fascinated by magic. Itās everything his sister tried to keep him away from, it makes something in his head perk up like nothing in school had, not even rugby. Itās rare and special and everything he just wouldn't get from a normal college education. If he could have written a thesis on magic, he would've.
brain is not braining but just know howl went on multiple paragraphs long rant about how cool magic is
i think. itll be fun to play with and also howl is still the one that makes the deal with calcifer in this specific snipper
āā¦a few moments before they wither and die.ā <- on stars/fire demons. so iām headcannon-ing that fallen stars / demons donāt have names. they have no need for them in the sky and they die far too soon to think of one themselves
basically iām saying, in the canon!movie/books, calcifer names himself some unknown time before the story, probably with some input from howl, but more like āoh this name means thisā and only after a few months to years
in swapped!au, even if howl still is the one with calcifer, sophie is the one who names him.
He doesnāt voice it, but Sophie is an older sister. She is well aware when her younger siblings want something, and while Howlās Fire Demon isnāt Martha or Lettie, he is exceedingly young. Powerful, she wonāt denyā with practice and time, Howl and him would almost certainly become more powerful than her, speaking nonsense into life.
Words are important in magic, and what are names but unique words associated with nothing but another person? Their soul and identity? Itās why Sophie refuses to give up her name, and why the Witch of the Waste is both powerful and weak for her title and her hidden-lost birth name. Sophie is very well aware that the Fire Demon wants a name of his own, and is even more certain that Howl, amazed with magic and everything one could do with it, if they had a bit of creativity, would not think to name the star he had followed and caught, for years.
ack words are hard i hope i conveyed that right.
and i tried writing more for this but. calcifer is a Made Up Name from what i could research and base words have to do with like. calcifing. so finding a way for sophie to come up with calcifer that makes sense is :/
The Witch of the Waste isā¦ā¦.. jealous, for lack of a better word. She's been a witch for longer, arguably is the stronger one in comparison to Sophie Hatter, girl-who-hadn't-wanted-to-be-magic, and yet she's the one that the townsfolk and people travel far and wide to see. (It doesn't matter that The Witch of the Waste doesn't even take requests, most of the time. They should still go to her.)
And then that boy scorned her, pretty as he was, he had no right to do that to her, and then Sophie Hatter dared to cross her by taking him in.
i think it'll be fun to have similar yet different reasonings for the witch of the waste disliking/hating sophie.
in the movie, i think the witch was bitter and jealous of sophie, young and definitely pretty. i donāt know if howl actually had any relationship with her, but being not chosen/staying with her, being spoken of in fear, has got to take its toll.
and any kindness that sophie might offer her is seen as pity and unwanted
Sophie Hatter was the eldest daughter of three, and everyone knows that the firstborn daughter is guaranteed to fail in the endeavors she sets out to do.
To her family and the town she grew up inās great shock, she became a renowned good witchā giving protection trinkets to those who needed them most, cursing bad luck onto those who hurt others. They praised her for breaking the curse of being the first to set out and the first to fall, but if anyone had asked Sophie, she did fail, because she never tried to become a witch at allā being a craftswoman and hat maker was just so very difficult, and, well, spells were easier. But donāt get it twistedā Sophie is still going to do it!
(Howell Jenkins is 18 years old, and has no plans on going to college. His sister has a perfectly normal, regular life, and is stern that Howell should follow it, too, and it grates. Wasted talent, wasted physique, heās wasting his life away.
But Howell follows a star, in the process crossing fields of flowers, climbing a mountain, even, and finds himself in the company of a woman who is utterly convinced she is as normal as his sister, when she is magical and has everything Howl (itās a much cooler name, isnāt it?) has wanted.)
hi if some of this below doesn't make sense i'm doing minimal editing of things i've sent my friends.
also inspired by this art ages ago (its so pretty.)
by role swap, i don't mean that sophie is now personality-wise, like howl. or that howl in any way has the sense of responsibility sophie has. i think that would be an interesting idea to explore what action in their pasts could make them turn out that way, but i mean mostly in that sophie is a witch first, found out she was a witch first, and is older than howl.
canonically (in both i think) also their age gap is weird but i'm. mildly uncomfortable but also okay with electing to ignore it because uhhh sophie WAS an Old Lady even if she was young mentally but sheās more mature and howlās heart is young and. it just wasn't a plot point in either about age power dynamics and imbalances. it was for a nice number for a curse so it could be mystical and be in days and it wouldn't be as interesting if sophie was a 25 year old woman who felt old and was turned into an old lady and also having two (reasonably) younger siblings who want things for their lives that their mom is planning out for them.
but in swapped!au. um. a 27 year old sophie would NOT fall in love with an 18 year old howell. no way. so ages will have to be closer. in a sophie is younger way (not 18 but. 21 max)
howlās still this heart stealing, heart throb, smooth mother fucker of a guy, and he dyes his hair, but itās not through magic (initially). and sophieās this āterribleā witch who actually fussed over her younger sisters and still values manual work even when she uses magic
the juxtaposition of howlās mess of a castle when sophie gets there, and sophieās spotless ācastleā when howl gets there after accidentally-on-purpose pissing off the witch of the waste (instead of sophiejust. being in the crossfire).
idk if sheās have cacifer. because on one hand, i love their dynamic and itās a great indicator of āoh he has her/his heart, and he listens to sophie/howl, their heart already belongs to one anotherā
but also like. au!howl totally would still eat a fallen star fire demon for no reason other than for shits and giggles and omg magic that's so much more interesting than life in wales.
but also quiet au!califer (if he is sophie's fire demon) moments with howl, being more honest because thatās who heās spent his time with in this auā sophie, a straightforward young woman who if people interpret her words wrong that's not her fault. emotional, sure, but with magic at her fingertips she is careful with how she phrases things.
and idk idk if this would be book!swap or movie!swap becAUSE I HAVE DIFFERENT IDEAS FOR BOTH? or maybe a mix?? ugh. different plots because movie!howl was a coward who ran away from his problems (madam suliman) and sophie, as a witch, just. wouldnāt be.
also i only read the first howl's moving castle book. i have to read the other two :(
if i HAVE to separate them:
movie!verse
like movie wise howl. wouldnāt have magic other than what sophie gifts him through trinkets? and this would include a whole arc on how āyouāre literally perfectly fine without it. special in your own wayā [this would also be a sophie has califer au]
i think this would be a "wales doesn't exist" au becauseā wait actually that could work but also the fact that howl's castle in the movies has a door that sophie's not allowed into. i think it's funny if that's how howl gets to ingary. the door sophie made on accident (oh, won't you lead me to somewhere ordinary?) when she was young and then she doesn't really visit because there's no reason to but one day her sister(s) visit and turn the door there and howl comes through.
i. really. really liked the āfated / chosen loversā thing the movie had going on. BECAUSE. LIKE.
āfind me in the future!ā and howl, at the beginning, goes, āi was looking everywhere for youā
and. SOMEONE ON YOUTUBE NOTICED. BUT HOWLāS RING. THE RING THAT GLOWS WHEN ITS GUIDING YOU TO SOMEWHERE/SOMEONE YOU WANT TO GO. WAS GLOWING. WHEN HE FOUND SOPHIE.
so maybe it's a childhood childish promise when sophie went through to wales as a young girl and befriended Megan, howl's sister
āoh shit idk how the prince justin plotline would be resolved. bc sophie would Not feel grateful enough to kiss that guyā¦? and howl. isnāt the type i dont think. and the whole true love thing. hmm. well. maybe sophie can speak the cure into reality? i'll think about that more. later.
book!verse
or the gentle mentoring of sophie with this little arrogant pretty boy whoās making Terrible Life Choices and pissing off witches and/or eating fire demons and giving them his heart because it's clear and obvious that he has magic (unlike sophie's Speak into Life magic)
and fanny hatter doesn't have to worry as much, because wow does sophie make money by speaking magic words being being generally kind and respectable for it. and so maybe the sisters get a bit more freedom and don't have to pull the switcharoo. and lettie gets directly introduced to mrs. fairfax, because sophie's magic is unique to her and very instictual.
and howl is freedom, in a way, because he's choosing this life and sophie cannot always try to be normal. she's changed and touched many many lives, and she hasn't ever truly wished/spoke that she wanted her magic gone.
and maybe because howl is younger, he isn't as. embarassed? or hides away his welsh heritage as much (at least from the three sisters who saw him come out of the door)
i think there would be more sympathy for the witch of the waste in the dialogue and their thoughts, at least from sophie's side, but also of how sympathy and knowing how she became who she is isn't an excuse, and sophie would do anything for the people she loves. the safety of the general public, sure, but that's because she has to live in this world and so does her family.
hm. the ms. angorian plotline. would probably be different because sophie wouldn't flirt with her. maybe a. something of a threat to her sisters? i don't know what form the fire demon would take but. something both more dangerous and unassuming because my view of sophie (in this au) doesn't really have bad habits that affect anyone but herself
anyway these don't have. concrete "which au is this" but.
