after the raven has had its say

rewatched howl the other day

Howl’s immediate response to getting his heart back was less poetic in the book.

#no but like #you don’t understand how important and meaningful sophie’s arc in this movie is #she starts out hating herself because she believes herself to be ugly and dumb#then she’s turned into an old hag and promptly loses most of her insecurities because she no longer has to care about being beautiful #then we find out the curse weakens whenever she is being strong and it shows her real self underneath #which means the curse is mostly self-inflicted and not done by the witch of the waste #sophie curses herself because it is easier for her #but because she starts to see that she is important to people and others love her #she grows out of it and finally is able to stand up for others #and break her own curse #and get some fucking shit done #sophie is my hero and my gpoy always

In the book, Sophie possess a certain kind of magical power - she makes things real by saying them. She can lay spells just by saying them. When she made hats, and she told a hat that it would make a rich young man fall in love with it, a rich young man fell in love with the woman who bought it. When she told a hat it would make some woman look beautiful, everyone knew the mayor’s wife looked positively radiant in it. It’s what drew the Witch to her hat shop in the first place.  When she cursed out a bucket of plant food, it turned to potent weed killer. When she told herself she might as well be an old woman, when she told herself she was doomed to fail, when she told herself she was plain and boring and no one would ever notice her, no one did.

When Howl tried to break the spell on Sophie, and he tried many times, he always failed. Not because his magic was less powerful than the Witch’s, but because it was less powerful than Sophie’s.