{"id":4293,"date":"2017-08-23T05:00:15","date_gmt":"2017-08-23T12:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4293"},"modified":"2017-08-20T16:55:50","modified_gmt":"2017-08-20T23:55:50","slug":"mark-reads-thief-of-time-part-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2017\/08\/mark-reads-thief-of-time-part-16\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘Thief of Time’: Part 16"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the sixteenth part of Thief of Time<\/i>, I know y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all have been waiting for this for a while now. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld<\/i>.<\/p>\n

We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got two huge things to discuss, friends. Buckle in!<\/p>\n

The Truth<\/b><\/p>\n

I got into an argument with a man at Readercon last month regarding spoilers.<\/p>\n

Now, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure there was a component here that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s far more uncomfortable than the face of it. An older white man was extremely rude and condescending to me about my own website<\/i>, and he tried his damnedest to prove to me that I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know how spoilers work, nor do I know why they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily matter. His need to be right \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and for me to learn something through<\/i> him \u00e2\u20ac\u201c was more important than anything else. This is not the first time that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve experienced this kind of nonsense at a convention. Truthfully, I brace myself for white dudes all the time<\/i>. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like they have to be the arbiters of all information all the time! Why! Who asked you! These aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t questions!!! Stop doing this!<\/p>\n

But I digress, since that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not really the point I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m trying to get to. See, I was in a mixed group of friends, a few acquaintances, and a couple strangers who I had just met minutes earlier. A close friend of mine mentioned how excited they were for me to watch Person of Interest<\/i>, as they thought it was an underrated show. The stranger at the heart of this story had good intentions at the start, as he excitedly chimed in to say that he was glad someone else was going to get into POI<\/i> as well. He thought it was largely ignored when it shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be.<\/p>\n

And then it started. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153See, here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what you need to know about Person of Interest\u00e2\u20ac\u201c<\/i>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153 he began.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, before I could do anything other than raise my hands in a dismissal, practically everyone in the group interrupted him and told him not to spoil me. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure that if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been around this community for a while, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen this exact exchange unfold in real time.<\/p>\n

Him: No, no, this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a spoiler\u00e2\u20ac\u201c<\/p>\n

Friend: No, Mark can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be spoiled for anything. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like his whole thing<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Him: I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a spoiler, I just want him to know something going into it.<\/p>\n

Another Friend: I really don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think you get it. Mark\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s whole reviewing style is to be completely ignorant going into things.<\/p>\n

Him: But I just need him to know that\u00e2\u20ac\u201c<\/p>\n

A Third Friend: Please stop.<\/p>\n

Him: But if he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know\u00e2\u20ac\u201c<\/p>\n

Me: DUDE, PLEASE STOP IT. WE SAID STOP.<\/p>\n

I get that what I do is a little weird and strict. I REALLY DO. And I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t begrudge anyone for not knowing just how intense my personal spoiler policy is! I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been spoiled by folks entirely by accident, and I promise I hold no grudges or ill feelings for that. But once this guy was told to stop and he kept going, I stopped feeling any sort of sympathy for him. Why couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t I experience this show on my own terms? Why was it so important that I know something about it, and why did it have<\/i> to come from him?<\/p>\n

I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seen it because one of you called it out and I had it deleted, but there was a guy on my YouTube channel who was apparently furious<\/i> that I got the big twist of Thief of Time<\/i> wrong. Now that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve gotten to it, I was told what it was they were saying. Apparently, my experience with this book was \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ruined\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see the full extent of what Pratchett was doing. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s probably true, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true for most<\/i> people while they consume most<\/i> media. The initial experience that we have with a text \u00e2\u20ac\u201c in whatever format \u00e2\u20ac\u201c involves a complex set of biases, interpretations, perceptions, and readings, and it is my absolute favorite thing in the world. I stumbled into this whole unspoiled reading\/watching thing mostly by accident, but one of the reasons I kept going with it is because, frankly, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so fucking fun<\/i>. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fun to not know what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m doing, and for the most part, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m surrounded by people who get that. Who understand that half the fun is the (very public) struggle I have to put the pieces together, to anticipate tropes, and then, in rare moments like this, to realize that I have been utterly tricked by a work of fiction.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m trying to make some grandiose statement about the inherent superior value of unspoiled readings. I get why other people love spoilers, and I get why some people like to have the full context of a work before they experience it themselves. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, I \u00e2\u20ac\u0153watched\u00e2\u20ac\u009d every episode of Glee<\/i> beyond \u00e2\u20ac\u0153American Cheesus\u00e2\u20ac\u009d ENTIRELY THROUGH RECAPS ON TUMBLR. I have not seen a single second of any episode past that awful episode, aside from a scene where Merecedes drags Kurt to hell. (It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s very entertaining.) I am not unspoiled in my life. I only read recaps of season five of Game of Thrones<\/i> until that last episode because I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t subject myself to The Thing. So there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no Objective Value in any one type of consumption here.<\/p>\n

But there is one for me and this project. I want to be foolish. I want to misinterpret things. And I want to learn at my own pace because I want to inherently support that we are going to get things wrong. I got this book wrong \u00e2\u20ac\u201c HORRIBLY SO, IN PRACTICALLY EVERY WAY \u00e2\u20ac\u201c and I would not want to have done this differently. I literally guessed correctly and then convinced myself that I was wrong<\/i>, IN PUBLIC, for all of you. And to me, that makes the experience of reading Thief of Time<\/i> so much more entertaining. It means I was immersed in Pratchett\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s world enough that I bought the lie that he sold me. It means that the writing and storytelling was good enough that this twist was truly a Twist for me, and I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand wanting to take that away from me.<\/p>\n

So thank you. I am so incredibly happy to be Completely Fucking Wrong.<\/p>\n

Twins<\/b><\/p>\n

Please have an extra laugh at me for not realizing Jeremy and Lobsang were \u00e2\u20ac\u0153twins\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (not technically, but you know what I mean) DESPITE THAT I AM A TWIN MYSELF. How??? HOW DID I MISS THAT THIS WAS EVEN A POSSIBILITY? It is not just painfully obvious in hindsight; I feel like this book outright told me and I ignored it.<\/p>\n

Anyway, I wanted to talk about COOL TWIN SHIT because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so fascinating to me, and I figure people love hearing this kind of shit. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been immensely close with my twin my whole life, even when we lived on opposite coasts. Most of the really eerie\/awesome stuff we did, though, happened before we were ten or so. We flat-out invented an entire language as toddlers that we used to communicate with one another. My mom said we would babble on for hours<\/i> with each other, and it was clear that we were saying something that each of us could understand. I WISH I REMEMBERED THIS, BUT I DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T. Apparently, I was a child genius?<\/p>\n

We also had a number of unexplainable and weird coincidences growing up that all centered around our connection with one another. In elementary school, we had the bizarre ability to know if the other one of us got hurt. I SWEAR TO YOU. And this still manifests from time to time! I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get a burst of anxiety or pain out of nowhere, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll text my brother to find out he stubbed a toe or something bad happened to him. Anyway, in third grade, one time my brother fell while playing football and skinned his knee. All the way across the playground, I was playing handball when I tripped due to a searing pain in the exact same knee that my brother hurt. I THEN SKINNED THAT KNEE, TOO.<\/p>\n

Oh, y’all should see us play games together. We actually got forbidden from being on the same team for things like Taboo because we were frighteningly good at being able to communicate a word or idea in a matter of seconds. We often had intensely similar dreams growing up! And they’d be on the same night, too. One of the only ways in which we break the pattern is that I’m gay and he’s straight, but other than that, we always have been similar.<\/p>\n

I’ve wondered what that was due to. Maybe because we shared a womb together, there’s chemical or biological shit going on that explains some of hear things. Maybe it’s part socialization or part environmental. We shared a room for many years, and for a large part of our childhood and teen years, we were pretty inseparable. That could explain the closeness… to an extent. Yet despite my curiosity, which has always been my default state anyway, I don’t think I need an explanation. It’s just part of who I am, you know? I can’t imagine NOT having a twin, and I certainly wouldn’t trade it for the world.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/yjglaDtXXNU<\/p>\n

Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n

-\u00c2\u00a0Please 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.\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"