❤

(With sketch under more)

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.