Mark Reads ‘The Truth’: Part 16

In the sixteenth part of The Truth, THIS IS ALL HAPPENING TOO FAST. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read Discworld. 

WHAT THE FUCK, THIS ESCALATED, I WAS NOT READY.

Angua

You know, she and Carrot made a good point: Vimes can’t risk charging William with anything for what he did because it might expose Angua’s identity. Part of me thinks that William knows this, too, and what he did was actually much more of a calculated act than I realized. Regardless, he’s now got the Watch off his back… well, I suspect the twist at the end of this will complicate matters.

Trixiebell

I REALLY HOPE THERE IS FANART OF THIS. This whole charade is 100% absurd at this point, but I love one ironic element of it: William is devoted to exposing the truth, of representing the world in an honest way. He sees himself as part of a crusade now, even if it’s a lonely one at times. Yet he is constantly deceived by Gaspode, and the “truth” of Deep Bone is always just a few feet from William.

Look, I was very curious how this was going to unfold, and I’m happy to say that I wasn’t disappointed at all. Trixiebell was a great disguise for Gaspode, but the actual translation of that interview was a delight, too. That’s a great achievement because it’s not as if Wuffles reveals anything we didn’t know. Instead, Pratchett uses it to move William closer to the truth of what happened in the Oblong Office. He now knows that there were three strangers in that room, and that one of them looked (but smelled/tasted) different than Wuffles’s “God,” or Vetinari.

I don’t know how William is going to publish this, though. Will he take a page from The Inquirer (heh) and just straight-up say that he interviewed Wuffles??? If the public can believe half-truths and mistruths and lies, what if William tells an absurd truth?

Mr. Slant

It’s always a bit shocking when Pratchett ditches humor because even the majority of the action sequences or violent scenes are still funny. Yet I did not find one second of the confrontation scene with Mr. Slant to be funny AT ALL. Tulip and Pin are agents of cruelty who are used to hurting others to get exactly what they want. They injure Mr. Slant’s clerk’s hand, then they threaten to murder Mr. Slant over a flawed payout for services rendered.

Of course, there’s another angle to all of this: Otto did something to Mr. Pin when he flashed him with that dark light, and I still haven’t quite figured it all out. I think there was a clue here, though:

He was also worried about the way Mr. Pin had acted with the –ing lawyer. It wasn’t like him to point a weapon at someone and then not use it. The New Firm didn’t go round threatening people. They were the threat. All that –ing stuff about “letting you live for today” … that was amateur stuff.

“I said, are we heading–?”

“What do you think happens to people when they die, Tulip?”

Couple this with Mr. Pin’s intense reaction to the potato bit (I AM AT A LOSS, WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS BOOK), and I wonder if Mr. Pin is being taunted by guilt. He mentions hearing people behind him, seeing faces in the shadows, and he’s preoccupied with the afterlife and sparing others. Why the change? Why suddenly care whether or not you kill someone? The only theory I have thus far is that the people Mr. Pin has killed (or has ordered killed by Mr. Tulip) are tormenting him. How that’s possible is lost on me, but IT’S SOMETHING, OKAY?

The deWorde Residence

I had forgotten that William had said that Sacharissa could borrow one of his mother’s dresses, and y’all. Y’ALL, I WAS NOT READY FOR ANY OF THIS. First of all: why is the deWorde home so dusty? Why does it seem like no one has lived there in ages??? That doesn’t make sense, though I admit that perhaps I just forgot some pivotal detail. Just… what the hell??? What does that mean???

This scene, however, provides absolute confirmation that Lorde deWorde is one of the people (if not the main person) behind the plot to turn Ankh-Morpork into… what? A pure version of itself? Even that doesn’t denote what kind of purity that he wants. As long as it benefits himself and those like him, deWorde is willing to do anything to keep Ankh-Morpork from ever changing, and that includes CHAINING UP CHARLIE TO THE FLOOR IN THE CELLAR. It was just seconds after realizing who was being held there that I remembered that Mr. Tulip and Mr. Pin were heading there to kill Charlie. SO YEAH, I WASN’T READY. The whole thing was tense and scary, and I kept worry that Tulip was going to snap and just kill everyone. Why not? He’s been itching to, and his frustration with Mr. Pin’s bizarre behavior was pushing him towards it anyway.

Look, I don’t know what Pin and Tulip are going to do with Rocky and Sacharissa, and my worry is that they’re both so desperate to leave Ankh-Morpork that they may do something hasty and horrible in order to escape.

HELP.

http://youtu.be/dVrGzRctAt0?a

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