There is no sinner like a young saint

But her anger never makes her irrational or HySTeRiCaL as so many might say. She's angry with her parents but still loves them and shows her love, she's angry at the people in town for trying to get out of paying their debts but never unfair to them in what she asks. Even though she doesn't care about them because they all treat her family and her people like shit she accepts what little they can give her and doesn't force anyone to starve themselves to repay her debt.

And she's so angry at the Staryk king for very good reason but even so, she never extends her anger at the other Staryk; she loves Flek and Tsop and Shofer, she loves Rebekah and when her anger at the Staryk king hurts the entire Staryk realm she goes and tries to make it right.

She's angry and she's proud and it's oh so easy to believe that even the Staryk king would fall for her.

I'm fascinated by the like, circular logic of magic and power in Spinning Silver. It's like, you say you can do something, then you prove it, so you have it, so you have MORE of it. It's like, power via proof but the proof isn't necessarily LITERAL, just accurate.

"A power claimed and challenged and thrice carried out is true; the proving makes it so."

He would only shrug and look at me expectantly again, waiting for high magic: magic that came only when you made some larger version of yourself with words and promises, and then stepped inside and somehow grew to fill it.

And a bonus:

But I had not known that I was strong enough to do any of those things until they were over and I had done them. I had to do the work first, not knowing.

I'm pretty sure circular logic is the right phrase but I'm not sure I can explain it coherently?

It's like. You couldn't do something but you said you could so you were challenged to do so then you pulled it off so now you can do it. So you can do it because you proved it which means you always will be able to do it regardless of how you actually achieved it.

Miryem boasted she could change silver to gold and instead of swapping the pieces she exchanged them, traded silver for gold in equal parts, and now she can change silver to gold with a touch. She pulled off the storeroom challenge and it became something she could do easily, because she pulled it off even if on a technicality, so now she can change a ton of silver at once.

It's like. You have the power you claim to have once you've proved you have it. The proving is both evidence and ability.

mostly because that means when he shows up in river city and hears that Marian the Librarian seduced a secure and permanent position out of the elderly town miser, he would think: ah, another creature like me.

(not that “sadder and wiser girl” isn’t a phenomenal song on its own, but it takes on a different tenor if it’s game recognizing game rather than HH just refusing to go after nice, church-going girls.)

plus, leaning into that characterization would mean that marian is sadder and wiser, did in fact befriend (or seduce) specifically to have access to books and then later, to keep accessing them; she’s a con man too, just on a lesser scale due to lack of opportunity.

[Harold Hill gazes meaningfully at Marian, then looks back to Winthrop]