I'll check out your friend's book, Scrappy!

I'm towards the end of reading Prisoner of Azkhaban to my son. Snape really is a monster in this book.

I'm about halfway through, and yeah, he's really, really awful. I mean, he's just been generally terrible so far, and for no discernible reason.

One thing that's fun is that I've forgotten what actually happened the day Sirius supposedly killed thirteen people and laughed about it. I remember a little, but not the whole story, so I look forward to finding out again! Also looking forward to the Scabbers reveal, which is one of my favorite plot twists of all time.

Also looking forward to the Scabbers reveal, which is one of my favorite plot twists of all time.

Yeah, once you get that, you like Crookshanks a lot better...

I kind of wish there was a scene where Crookshanks didn't go after some other rat, to indicate that he was specifically going after Scabbers for a reason.

Man, that's weird. I was just reading Mark Reads for The Golden Compass and somebody mentioned "HSQ" in the comments and I realized that might be my greatest contribution to the culture.

But then it's a little weirder because I tracked it back through TV Tropes where it alludes to it probably originating here and then it has a page about Gus. Just saying that he was the originator of TV Tropes and that he had his roots here at b.org. Which is accurate but weird.

That is weird.

I mean, I think language is fascinating and I love that you originated something here and that it propagated through the general (for very specific iterations of the term general) population. But I also think it's weird every time Gus comes up, which is more than I thought it would at this point.

That's the thing, why would TV Tropes call their founder "Gus"?

It's a little extra weird for me because the TV tropes concept came out of a conversation I had with him. Not that my notion of an Encyclopedia of Lost Pop Cultural Tropes is the same thing but that TV Tropes started out of that conversation.

Also, I want credit for coining "asspull" in the OED, okay?

Because he was. All the Fast Eddie crap came after the fact, and only to superficially placate us. Gus was the person who had an account here and the person who founded TV Tropes out of the conversation here and the person who did interviews with the press years later calling himself Eddie. The fact that that person couldn't keep his story straight after his fake death is the source of all and any confusion.

Ooh.

Still unhappy about that whole thing, aren't I?

Still unhappy about that whole thing, aren't I?

It's funny to me how little it bothers me. In fact, this morning I was thinking about how Gus's persona changed over time. How it was a lot more carefully constructed in the beginning and then became less sophisticated/warm/charming and more didactic/cocksure/know-it-all towards the end. As if he lost the energy to maintain that facade.

I do feel a wee bit of a sting at the betrayal of trust, but his story was always so unlikely that I wasn't entirely surprised that it popped like a soap bubble.

And I like the TV Tropes website which has become a singular dissection of narrative strategems.

I don't know if you can claim credit for asspull, Hec.