Yeah, sewing a pillow in home ec was co-ed, and sewing def comes in handy all the time IRL ... but if the movie had been about your <i>brother</i> sewing to save the day, that would have been impressively progressive, less so when it's about a princess-who-doesn't-want-to-be-a-princess discovering that the womanly…

Well, I didn't actually think Brave was that big of a step forward - Merida just swapped one stereotype for the other, never wore anything but a dress, AND HAD TO SEW TO SAVE THE DAY.

Same here.

$2,000 is half my entire wedding budget ...

Well, as long as we're talking about proposals ...

I just assumed the misinterpretation of signs and/or the manipulation of fanatics were among the many themes on GoT. She might not be an intentionally bad witch, just misled by her god or missing her god's point.

The Geisha and the Philosopher's Stone

I think you're thinking of "Geisha: A Life" by Mineko Iwasaki, but I also recommend "Geisha" and "Kimono" by Liza Dalby (which are entirely non-fiction and seriously enlightening). I love "Memoirs" as fiction, but I kind of hate Arthur Golden the more I learn about him.

"Well, not animals, really, so much as the scuttling disease portmanteaus we affectionately call 'rats ...'"