in case anyone is looking through the notes trying to find the original artist it’s will mcphail !! feel free to check out his site but also here are some other things he made too !!
OOOHHH CLICK ON THAT LINK THIS GUY IS FUCKING GREAT
that Diana Wynne Jones interview where she’s like “I don’t understand why so many girls are into Howl, it must be because they want the challenge of fixing him” is so optimistic, like DWJ’s out here hoping I at least want to make him a more functional person as if “rogue academic turned melodramatic fashion disaster whose social skills Do Not live up to his own hype” is not a perfectly valid thing to be attracted to
@corvidscorpse said: People who aren’t morosexual just don’t understand those of us who WANT a complete dumbass
DWJ, a reasonable woman: behold this undesirable man. look at him, he dresses weird and he keeps emotional support spiders and doesn’t even question people moving into his house without asking and he has to reverse psychology himself into doing anything he’s actually supposed to do.
every morosexual in a 100 mile radius: oh fuck yeah babey
god this isn’t even touching on the fact that Howl is??? apparently??? an ordinary-ass Welshman who was studying spells (????) at the doctoral level and then (somehow???) found a doorway into Actual Magic and promptly moved there to set up shop as a wizard with like five different names and two outfits but still goes home sometimes because he loves his niece and likes to hang out with the rugby lads (still working on processing Howl being a jock but?? okay), because PRESUMABLY all of this is supposed to further illustrate that Howl is an absolutely ridiculous sort of person but all I see is a man who made the exact decision I would make in a millisecond if given the opportunity
Howl Jenkins is what happens when the overpowered ‘thrust into a fantasy world’ man… is not the main character.
Howl Jenkins is what happens when an a normal man gets thrust into a fantasy setting and is mostly excited to dick around and learn some magic to turn his hair different colors, only to realize to his dismay that being a powerful wizard means that people are going to ask you to actually do shit for them
Howl’s real name is just Howell which is one of the most generic welsh names ever and is like a guy named Steve going to a fantasy land and naming himself Stev.
Howl is supposed to be totally ridiculous yes but also supposed to abruptly in the middle of the story turn out to be Extremely Relatable.
We
turn the black knob to the Mysterious Destination and afterward Sophie
is more confused than ever (though not by much because she isn’t
interested enough) but the audience has abruptly had ‘incomprehensible fantasy chaos wizard’ transmogrified before our eyes
into an easygoing perpetual grad student with no job prospects whom
nobody takes seriously, except he has a secret magic life, which is in
fact only slightly less stupid and even more off the rails than the normal one.
poetry.
Just want to add: being invested in rugby does not make a Welshman a jock. It just makes him Welsh
