Aaaah! Aaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG I am too excited for life!

The newest Hitherby canon entry's title is a reference to one of my favorite legends EVER in the history of the UNIVERSE!

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!

New Hitherby canon is too much the best thing ever that it is kind of scary.

Wait

Dude, what?

Relatedly, Hitherby needs a better Melanie tag. Although I do find the phrase, "Cunning Melanie, beloved of the gods," extremely memorable.

Depressing _Hexwood_ Thought of the Day!

Mordion is the same age that I am now.

I mean, okay, sure, I'm not particularly old, but, damn. That is a terribly long time to be Mordion :(.

Wonderful Aspects of PSME Volumes 5 and 6

-Rin's "I am evil" expressions
-Rin's "I am perfectly innocent" expressions
-Rin's "Ooops, what did I just say?" expression
-Rin's "Gyokuran, you are an idiot" or "I have no idea what you are talking about" or "This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life" or possibly "Man, you have a lot left to learn" expression
-Rin's "Despite the fact that I have not yet achieved double digits, I am amazingly patronizing" expressions
-Rin's "I am actually the single most patronizing person in the history of the universe" expression
-Gyuokuran and Shion have an argument even though Shion is not actually there! I will always love that.

Only One Coin

The Neverending Story was my favorite movie as a kid, and I still quite enjoy both the movie and the book version. That having been said, it occurred to me while watching the movie today that the relationship between creativity and the void presented by the film is one that I'm not entirely comfortable with. Trying to think of an alternative model, I realized that, perhaps unsurprisingly, I find it best expressed in Fire and Hemlock:

"Two sides to Nowhere, Polly thought. One really was a dead end. The other was the void that lay before you when you were making up something new out of ideas no one else had quite had before."

Guess Who THIS Post Is about!

Isabel Archer: "A swift carriage, of a dark night, rattling with four horses over roads that one can't see - that's my idea of happiness."

---The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

Rereading The Portrait of a Lady does make me feel very anxious that I will somehow inexplicably wind up marrying Gilbert Osmond.

I mean, metaphorically. You know.

_What Maisie Knew_

In his Preface, Henry James himself picks out two scenes in What Maisie Knew as demonstrating particular excellence. One of these is the scene where the Captain, Maisie's mother's lover, says the first nice words Maisie has ever heard about her mother in her entire life, moving her to tears. The other is the scene where Maisie's father urges his daughter to let him take her to America, all the while making it quite clear to her nonverbally that he desperately wants her to refuse. Perhaps because these are the scenes James himself picks out, perhaps because they really are quite excellent, I did in fact remember both these scenes.

But I did not remember the scene in which the following happens:

ELDERLY WIDOW: Your father is a manwhore. And that's his best quality.
. . .
[later]
. . .
ELDERLY WIDOW: Your beloved stepmother is also a whore.
SMALL GIRL [Maisie's age at this point is slightly unclear, but I would guess she's twelve or thirteen): Well, but aren't you a whore too?

I so much <3 Henry James!