In the thirteenth part of The Truth<\/i>, William is confronted. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld<\/i>. <\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For discussion of cissexism, specifically transmisogyny.<\/b><\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been having a number of conversations lately \u00e2\u20ac\u201c both because of these reviews and life events \u00e2\u20ac\u201c about the frustration that surrounds constructed narratives. The scene at the beginning of this section of The Truth<\/i> is such a powerful example of that frustration. The people who read The Inquirer <\/i>not only believe what they are told, but they begin to construct this whole worldview that prevents them from ever questioning the thing they were told in the first place.<\/p>\n
The example given here revolves around a fire that The Times<\/i> reported on. It was obvious that Mr. Hardy had accidentally lit himself on fire, yet The Inquirer <\/i>made it out to be a Mystery Fire, one that got people convinced that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been lied to. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a manipulative way of making people feel special, like they were smart enough to realize that they were being lied to. (The irony being, of course, that this all started off with a lie anyway.) So when William tries to report on a fire the next day, this happens:<\/p>\n
On making gentle inquiries of a family watching disconsolately as the smoke from the fire was turned to steam, William ascertained that the blaze had been mysteriously caused by mysterious spontaneous combustion in an overflowing mysterious chip pan full of boiling fat.<\/p>\n
Now, they could have lied in order to protect themselves from embarrassment over causing their own fire. Even then, why choose the spontaneous combustion angle? Either they exploited it to make themselves part of this narrative, or they began to believe it to make themselves part of this narrative. Nothing is challenged, nothing is questioned, and the world is pushed just a little bit further into the reality described by The Inquirer<\/i>. So how do you combat that? How do you convince people that what they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve told themselves is wrong? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a frustrating position to be in, and even William lacks a real solution.<\/p>\n
On top of that, William\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got to deal with the undeniable reality of Ankh-Morpork logic. Sometimes it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s funny, but it can also be deeply troubling, like when half the city brings in any ol\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 animal they can find in order to claim the reward for finding Vetinari\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dog. (BLESS THE PEOPLE WHO BROUGHT IN THE WRONG SPECIES, especially the person with the parrot.) So you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got a populace who is prone to their own special logic and<\/i> believing the nonsense that the Inquirer <\/i>peddles. <\/i><\/p>\n
As if that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not enough, Pin and Tulip show up to attempt to find the Patrician\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dog. I had hoped that their awful disguises wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t devolve into jokes about men in dresses, but yet again, Pratchett had<\/i> to say something. This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even the first time he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s made the joke about the size of someone\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hands in this context! So you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even claim he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s being original about the transmisogyny. That aside (and seriously, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s real hard to put that aside), I did enjoy this section for Otto\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s role in everything. His new method of reviving himself was brilliant, but I also love that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s taking a bigger part in the paper. He is the main reason that Pin and Tulip abandoned the shack, too, since he was able to distract them using his dark light flash. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a hint of another conflict here, since the dwarfs are pissed<\/i> that Otto continues to experiment with dark light, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m unsure where this might be leading to. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m paying attention, though! This dark light stuff wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be mentioned as much as it has if it weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t important, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all.<\/p>\n
AND NOW I NEED THE NEXT SECTION BECAUSE I WANT TO KNOW WHAT VIMES\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S ANSWER IS TO WILLIAM\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S QUESTION.<\/p>\n
http:\/\/youtu.be\/NioZzZSV31U?a<\/p>\n
Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n
– Please visit my new site for all announcements<\/a>. If you’d rather not have to rely on checking a website regularly, sign up for my newsletter instead<\/a>! This will cover all news for Mark Reads, Mark Watches, and my fiction releases. <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the thirteenth part of The Truth, William is confronted. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld. <\/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":[463,248,529],"class_list":["post-4230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-truth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4230","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=4230"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4230\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}