In the sixth part of\u00c2\u00a0Feet of Clay<\/i>, things are starting to make a little more sense. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Discworld<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Angua and Cheery<\/b><\/p>\n
I WAS SO EXCITED AND SO THRILLED AND THEN IN AN INSTANT, I TURN INTO A BALL OF ANXIETY ABOUT THESE TWO. I am hoping, then, that this will prove to be a valuable teaching moment. Pratchett is not inventing this dynamic at all, for the record. See, I went into this section\u00c2\u00a0loving<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0Angua and Cheery as partners. The whole sequence with Igneous does wonders to show us how good of an investigator Angua is, which means that Cheery has the best possible mentor as a new member of the Watch. We learn about pottery clay, how common it is, and how coincidental it is that a few months prior to this, a half ton of Igneous\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clay was stolen. IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S A HUGE CLUE, Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ALL! Though, it makes me ask another question: why steal something that is so readily available???<\/p>\n
Anyway, I was ready. I WAS READY FOR OUTCAST BONDING SO MUCH, Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ALL. The Biers is seriously one of the coolest things in all of Ankh-Morpork, and I desperately hope that this book (and future\u00c2\u00a0Discworld\u00c2\u00a0<\/i>novels!) deal with the differently alive in the city. I LOVE THAT THEY HAVE A BAR JUST FOR THEMSELVES SO THEY CAN\u00c2\u00a0BE<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0THEMSELVES WITHOUT HAVING TO WORRY ABOUT ASSIMILATION. The real-world parallels are undeniable, and given recent events in the U.S., it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to see this as a fantasy-world equivalent of a gay bar. (Still no actual gay characters, though. SIGH.) Seriously!<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153People who have to spend most of their time being very careful, not frightening people,\u00c2\u00a0fitting in<\/i>. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how it works here. Fit in, get a job, don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t worry people, and you probably won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t find a crowd outside with pitchforks and flaming torches. But sometimes it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s good to go where everybody knows your shape.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I RELATE TO THIS DEEPLY AND COMPLETELY. On some level, you would expect that Cheery would understand this, too! I suspect that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the reason Angua brought here there. As a dwarf who doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fit in with her community, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a very basic similarity between her experience and what the differently alive go through. However, let this be a fantastic example of how different marginalizations aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the same, nor do they offer identical understandings of the world. Despite that Angua explains VERY WELL what the purpose of Biers is, Cheery still says this:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Er\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 any werewolves here?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153One or two,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Angua.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00c2\u00a0hate<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0werewolves.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n For the remainder of this section, Cheery believes she has a sympathetic ear in Angua, unaware that SHE IS TALKING TO A WEREWOLF THE ENTIRE TIME. Of course, this is a metaphor for actual marginalization, and as is often the case, it kind of falls apart once you start analyzing it. In this case, Cheery\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s prejudice against werewolves comes from her family\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s history with them:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153He sounded like he came from Uberwald, like us. There was a baron who lived near us and he\u00c2\u00a0hated<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0people to leave.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The whole family were werewolves. One of them ate my second cousin.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n WELL, SHIT. So, losing a family member to something that routinely eats\/kills people is not the same as being marginalized or oppressed. The context is different. Yet this specific phenomenon \u00e2\u20ac\u201c of saying bigoted things to someone who belongs to a specific group because you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re part of it \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is painfully real. Every so often, someone thinks I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m straight, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s usually so they can make disparaging comments about gay or queer folks, as if I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to stand in solidarity with their terrible opinions. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s awful! And let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s make this more complicated: Angua and Cheery work together. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a whole lot harder for Angua to call out Cheery for her comments because she has to work alongside her. Navigating that\u00c2\u00a0alone<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0is a nightmare, you know?<\/p>\n Vimes and Golems<\/b><\/p>\n Hey, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got another clue! The piece of paper rolled up and stuck into Tubelcek\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s has been translated!<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153These are some of the rules that their god allegedly gave to the first people after he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d baked them out of clay, sir. Rules like \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThou shalt labor fruitfully all the days of your life,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 sir, and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThou shalt not kill,\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 and \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcThou shalt be humble.\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 That sort of thing.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Initially, that was completely confusing to me. It seemed so nonsensical! I figured that maybe it was brought up to poke fun at Corporal Visit\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s incessant need to bombard Vimes with religious pamphlets. You know, the joke is that even murderers are taunting Vimes with religion. Yet when Angua and Cheery seek out Dorfl, A GOLEM WHO WORKS IN A SLAUGHTERHOUSE, this moment is put in a different context. First of all, there\u00c2\u00a0are<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0golems about Ankh-Morpork. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not popular, but Angua knew enough about them to suspect that a golem was behind the murders of Tubelcek and Hopkinson.<\/p>\n But the reveal that words give golems power through text written and placed\u00c2\u00a0inside<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0their head meant that this is most likely what the rolled up paper was. What if it was a list of commands for a golem? Granted, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand why the words were given to Tubelcek. Wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t they only work on golems? I DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T GET IT. What was the golem lying about??? Was Dorfl involved in the meeting of golems at the start of the book? I FEEL LIKE I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M VERY CLOSE TO FIGURING THIS OUT. Just once, I want to get it before it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s spelled out to me.<\/p>\n Diane Duane is still offering a massive discount on the first 9 books in the\u00c2\u00a0Young Wizards<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0series just to this community, so please take advantage of this deal while you still can:<\/b><\/p>\n http:\/\/bit.ly\/markreadsYW<\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jf3zBT9biuw<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – I am now on Patreon<\/a>! There are various levels of support, from $1 up to whatever you want! You’ll get to read a private blog, extra reviews, and other such rewards.<\/b> In the sixth part of\u00c2\u00a0Feet of Clay, things are starting to make a little more sense. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Discworld.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[517,463,248],"class_list":["post-3871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-feet-of-clay","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3871\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n– I\u00c2\u00a0will be at numerous conventions in 2016! Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a>
\n– My Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0My next Double Features for Mark Watches have been announced here.<\/a>
\n<\/b>-\u00c2\u00a0Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0I’ve got a community page up that I’m running. Guaranteed shenanigans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"