Letters Column for June

Posted on July 1, 2004 by Jenna

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Thank you for your kind words,
Janus
edomaur
Charles
Egarwaen
shellefly
Rana
Tom
incandescens
space_parasite
Archangel Beth
BSD
Solarbird
Sparrowhawk
S
Rene
cary
Tim Gray
Nerje
mirv120
Shamaneyes
Tuxedo Slack


you may be the North Star in the new era of RPGs.
— Janus

I will assemble with the East, South, and West Stars to form UltraStar!


Somehow, a ninja in a waiting room, seated on a chair, perhaps flipping through a magazine, seems perfectly appropriate to my sense of what ninja’s do.

My only question is what magazine he might’ve been flipping through. Not People, surely. Probably not Time. Hhm…
— Jason

Cosmo. If you’re not fashionable, you’re nobody.


you know, there really isn’t any evidence that [Cain]’s dead. it’s not written, and for anyone else, it is written when they die. and nobody is allowed to kill him.
So how can he be in hell?

— Tamir

Administrative error.


Okay, this is freaky. I was just thinking last night that it was about time for another Ink story.

I really like the Ink stories, though I’m still trying to figure out what that first comment, about her delusions, meant.
— Egarwaen

Among other things, Ink’s convinced that she was going to Hell anyway. :)


How very odd.
I have had this relationship, mostly metaphorically except for the name and the hair, his hair.

His hair is exactly as you described it.
— Shellefly

A strand of which blew away, to fly in the wind for years, finally landing on my keyboard.


But… [The vampire who protested that he couldn’t kill his children] did kill his own children, earlier.
— Egarwaen

Technically, it was a matter of judicious versus wholesale slaughter. That explanation bores me, though, so instead I note that vampires are very bad at consistency. They can’t adhere to basic boolean logic—that’s why they don’t reflect in mirrors!


I have to know: is “dhampyr” really the Indian word for dandelion?
— Sparrowhawk

Nope! But I looked insufferably smug when you posted, so it’s okay.


Clearly, he should put on a condom before he bites her neck.

Er.
— Archangel Beth

A lesson more vampires should learn!

Unfortunately, Catholic missionaries in Vampireland are trying to discourage birth control by telling vampires—essentially, falsely—that wearing condoms on their teeth actually encourages plaque and gingivitis. Then they hold up their crosses to make the vampires draw back, hissing. It seems like good clean fun, but is it really what the people of Vampireland need?


Is this monster the one that Martin killed? Because the barbie did say that he preferred to spend time with his spider.
— IDENTITY UNKNOWN!

Nope! But the connection you have drawn is accurate.


So, what exactly do they put IN the water up there in Seattle?
— Egarwaen

It’s tainted by Jovian gravitational pull. Seriously! You can check the math. It’s a matter of public record.


Mystical insemination coilgun?!? What have you been ingesting out there?
— S

The conception of Christ is a sacred mystery, and I don’t believe that there was any kind of coilgun involved. When Saul proposed that an aspect of God might possess one, he was not in fact speaking to the actual circumstances of Christ’s birth but rather speculating generally on the kinds of mecha technology necessary to create a virgin birth and, through it, the salvation of humankind. In this respect, his flaw was not so much speculating about coilguns as failing to consider the need for some kind of Z-ray capable of transforming flesh and blood into the host. Without both of these things, I suspect that you’d need to look outside of mecha-based salvation entirely and into more abstruse and theologically theoretical approaches. See also “Neon Aquinas Evangelion,” wherein Thomas Aquinas explores these issues and certain others from the perspective of a troubled Medieval adolescent.


So, this is the first part, and “The Unsubstantiated Assertations Fairy” is the second. You posted them in reverse order this time.
— Sparrowhawk

Yes.

These two raise a couple of questions. First of all, you describe the Monster of 1968, which makes me realize that today’s Monster has never been described. Except, of course, for his shiny tie. Why is that?
— Sparrowhawk

Because he’s the monster. :)

That said, there’ll probably be a description eventually. It’s just not as important as for most characters.

Second, who is Priyanka?
— Sparrowhawk

:)


This makes me feel sad. I don’t really know why, either.
— Shamaneyes

I get that all the time from hitherbies. A feeling of incomprehensible loss — that is, you can’t understand what’s been lost, but you know it must have been something important, or the place where it ought to be wouldn’t hurt so much.
— Tuxedo Slack

Perhaps you’ll figure it out somewhere in the story. :)


Have I mentioned that I love you? Because I love you.
— Rene

:)

**

Eric’s comment has brought up something interesting, however. Angels fill emptiness with hope, and demons fill emptiness with acceptance.
— Sparrowhawk

Technically, the closest we have to a formal definition is “demons teach you to accept whatever is necessary to bear.”

The angels are easy enough to understand, but I can’t wrap my head around the concept of the demons in the hitherby universe. I suppose that the problem I have is seeing acceptance as a bad thing. True, Thysiazo’s brand of acceptance is the “lay down and die” type, but that’s only one kind of acceptance. Acceptance can mean abandoning an unrealistic solution for a more practical one. It is a central tenet of Buddhism that one must accept the world for what it is before one can achieve enlightenment. It seems to me that demons are acceptance because angels are hope, but I don’t see acceptance and hope as being opposites.
— Sparrowhawk

It’s okay. I don’t think they’re opposites either. :)

None of the gods in Hitherby exist without a valid cause. The label “demon” does not refer to intrinsic evil. It’s mostly an indication that they’re very much the yin side of the cosmos.


Wait, what?
— Eric

Consider it a brief and hopefully amusing Dadaist interlude, with an expectation that it’ll make perfect sense within about three months. :)


That’s it for now! Thanks for reading, thanks for commenting—even if you didn’t get thanked for a compliment or picked for a specific response—and see you again this coming month!

Rebecca