#twotw

How much of the artilleryman's underground society enthusiasm came from a likely head injury do you think?

Okay, so a year before the story starts, the Witch of the Waste kidnaps Wizard Suliman and makes a jigsaw of him. But everyone thinks he's dead:

Even Mrs Penstemmon seems to think so, and she's a very smart woman:

But Howl knows better:

So how does Howl know that Wizard Suliman isn't dead? Well, it could be that he dated her a few months after she'd kidnapped him:

(which by the way is absolutely insane. Why would he do that.)

But I'm pretty sure she didn't tell him anything about Wizard Suliman, because he seems not to know about the whole situation with the scarecrow and the dog and everything she did to him. But he bought the skull and the guitar together, and what he does know, is that the skull is Welsh:

Because he bought it with the guitar, which is clearly from modern day Wales. TWOTW sold them both at the same time, because they're both Wizard Suliman's. And- here's the kicker- this is his reaction to the skull chattering at him:

He's startled, but not shocked the way you'd expect someone to be when an inanimate object moves. He doesn't further question it. I imagine the skull has done that before. And why does it do that? Well. According to my theory, because some part of Wizard Suliman, who is alive, lives in it. And THAT is how Howl knows he's alive, and why he keeps the skull around.

Take this with a grain of salt because it could also chatter because Sophie talked life into it. But it does chatter when it gets close to the other parts of Wizard Suliman in the scarecrow, which would be strange if its animacy was independent of its identity as a part of the living Wizard Suliman.

Tl;Dr: The reason Howl suspects Wizard Suliman to be alive is because he deduced that the skull he bought was Wizard Suliman's, and that it was alive.

PEOPLE STARTED CHEERING, COME ON THUNDERCHILDDD

the weight of the world is a story about two childhood friends who realize that the world they know is actually much larger than they thought. it's also about magic, trauma, and second chances.

the weight of the world is also an homage to tumblr rp, and is thus written in a very similar way! based on an rp blog i ran from 2014 to 2015, each character is represented by a series of icons that vary in art style, with a heavy focus on dialogue throughout each chapter!

all in all, twotw is a labor of love that's been in the works for a decade, and i'm very happy to finally show it to people!