In the eleventh part of\u00c2\u00a0Hogfather<\/i>, Susan tracks down a clue, and Death tries to figure out what the spirit of Hogswatch is. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Discworld<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For extensive talk of poverty<\/b><\/p>\n
OH, I HAVE THINGS TO SAY, and I love when\u00c2\u00a0Discworld<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0gets me like this.<\/p>\n
Susan<\/b><\/p>\n
Susan\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s little detective story is a lot of fun, especially since it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s taking us to so many cool places, some which we haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen before. The YMBA is neat, and it made me want to know so much more about Banjo Lilywhite. How long had he been living there? Was he teaching himself to read? What about his friends and family? Where were they? I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT HIM.<\/p>\n
I was also real excited about the time spent in Death\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s library, especially since we got to see inside of someone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s book. In this case, Susan uses the library to track down where Violet might be. She gets an answer, but Pratchett doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t reveal it to the audience; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still a mystery for us. But we did get confirmation that Teatime\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s henchmen kidnapped her after collecting one of Banjo\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s teeth. Actually\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no real confirmation that she\u00c2\u00a0did<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0get one of his teeth. What if it was a trap? It has to be, given his age. (That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not a big surprise, obviously; Susan had suspected that in the last section since she recognized that Banjo was out of place on her list.) So, they kidnap her, bring her to a tower located\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 somewhere? The details here confused me, because how can there be goldfish\u00c2\u00a0on top<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0of the water? Why do the colors seem so vibrant? How can there be no sky on the horizon?<\/p>\n
Susan knows where she is, but I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. ARGH.<\/p>\n
Death and the Meaning of Hogswatch<\/b><\/p>\n
If I think back hard enough, I can remember only a couple Christmas mornings that were good once I moved to California back in 1992. They were those first two holiday seasons, and they were picturesque. We had a giant tree that was impossibly wide at the bottom. My mother always went all-out to decorate it, and she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d let us put tinsel on it that would sparkle against the lights that were programmed to twinkle on and off all night. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d already known that Santa wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t real; I had caught my parents putting presents out when I was six because they were arguing while doing it. Yet I was the kind of kid who couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sleep the night before a big, exciting trip. The anxiety was always overwhelming, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d ultimately be up until exhaustion pulled me to sleep.<\/p>\n
I remember that first year in California and how I rushed out into the living room once I heard my mom making coffee. There were so many presents that they spilled out on the carpet, right up to the couch and the coffee table that sat in front of it. It took us hours to open them all, and I made a little pile next to me on the floor of everything I got from my parents, from other relatives, and from my parents\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 work friends.<\/p>\n
And then, it was gone. There\u00c2\u00a0is<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0a reason to criticize the materialism that surrounds Christmas. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve not found much wrong with the idea of getting people gifts to show you care, but when the money dried up in our household, when my mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s behavior drove away most of our relatives away and they were banned from giving us gifts, when I looked upon Christmas with dread and terror, I came to understand it differently. There were many years \u00e2\u20ac\u201c practically all of them \u00e2\u20ac\u201c where the collection under the tree was sparse. Most years, my sister got more presents than my brother and I combined, in part because she was younger and in part because she was the favorite child.<\/p>\n
But there was one thing I dreaded more than anything: returning to school in January after the winter break. Everyone would be wearing their new clothes or playing with their new gadgets or reading the liner notes to the CDs and cassettes that they got. Kids and teenagers are often capable of wielding the cruelest of insults and hatred, especially since they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re learning what is and isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t acceptable to say. So everyone noticed that my jeans were too small and too tight, and everyone noticed my shirts had holes in them. I developed a bitter hatred of the holiday, one that I still struggle with. I know this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the first time I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve written about Christmas, but Albert\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s words got me thinking about what this holiday means to other people. Part of me felt that Pratchett\u00c2\u00a0was<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0poking fun at the materialism surrounding the holiday, but there was also a stark realism to Albert\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own cynicism.<\/p>\n
So I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think this was just a chance to show us that Death doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite understand humanity. It was a moment to show us that humanity sometimes doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make a whole lot of sense. We value things that are meaningless and cruel, and occasionally, we develop entire belief systems in order to accommodate the pain we went through because of them. Albert certainly has; he grew up poor and now supports the very system that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll guarantee that others turn out just like him.<\/p>\n
IT IS\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 UNFAIR.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life, master.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
BUT I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M NOT.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I mean, this is how it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s supposed to go, master,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Albert.<\/p>\n
NO. YOU MEAN THIS IS HOW IT GOES.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a damning statement, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also the truth.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=HKjE06NZFzA<\/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>
\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":"In the eleventh part of\u00c2\u00a0Hogfather, Susan tracks down a clue, and Death tries to figure out what the spirit of Hogswatch is. 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":[519,463,248],"class_list":["post-3939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-hogfather","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3939","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=3939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}