In the first half of the seventh chapter of The Wee Free Men<\/i>, Tiffany makes a bargain. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For discussion of death and grief<\/b>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Well, this was unexpectedly heavy.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This passing of the torch fits within a more archetypical narrative in fantasy, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m certain many of us have seen a version of it before. While the context is truly different, I was reminded of the opening episode of Deep Space Nine<\/i>, in which Sisko is given a role that resembles what Tiffany is gifted in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153First Sight and Second Thoughts.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s long been an outsider anyway<\/i>, and the Feegles definitely were not the first people to make her feel that way. If anything, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d argue that the Kelda doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/i> want to inspire isolation in Tiffany.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Yet it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to see how this further separates her, even though she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s now an integral part of Feegle society. WHICH WAS FURTHER EXPLAINED, BY THE WAY. Now I get why there are so few women; Pratchett\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s analogy is akin to honeybees<\/i>. In this culture, women can leave a clan to seek out a kelda in another<\/i> clan, and they can bring other men (usually relatives) with them. And because a kelda cannot pass on the mantle to another woman related to them, that means the only woman around is\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 Tiffany. Who is not<\/i> a pictsie, and which Fion is quick to point out as soon as possible. So what is she supposed to do? How can she be expected to manage an entire battalion of Feegles when she just discovered they existed a few days prior?<\/p>\n Pratchett doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t necessarily answer this question yet, as we only barely get to see Tiffany as the kelda before the artificial split I was given in this chapter. Instead, Pratchett focuses on both urgency and empathy. He drapes a frantic energy over the changing of the ruler by highlighting how much this reminds Tiffany of the death of Granny Aching. And oh lord, I was NOT READY FOR ANY OF THIS. Tiffany might not want to play this part, but as the kelda passes away, the gravity of it all weighs heavy on her mind. She LITERALLY watches this woman die, watches her daughter immediately grieve her, watches as the other Feegles contend with the odd, uncomfortable reality that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve all been dealt. I could tell that the Aching name at least held some meaning to the pictsies, but is that enough<\/i>? Even Rob Anybody, who is largely supportive of Tiffany, seemed a bit on edge about the whole thing. (That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s less confirmed in the text and more of a feeling I got, though. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M TOTALLY GUESSING HERE.)<\/p>\n Yet it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the Feegles\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 mourning that triggers a memory in Tiffany of when she was the one to discover that her Granny had died. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve spoken about grief at length for years through Mark Reads, and it still fascinates me just how differently<\/i> it manifests for other people. And that includes the Feegles, who mourn in a way that seems strange to Tiffany. The biggest takeaway for me from her flashback was the notion of silence<\/i>, how Granny\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s death revealed a different kind of it. Even if Granny Aching never spoke much to her granddaughter about anything other than sheep, her absence birthed a worse<\/i> kind of silence. And that intrigues me because of this line:<\/p>\n The old Feegle smiled briefly. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But for now, each Feegle remembers her in silence.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem<\/i> like a coincidence, you know? Silence plays an important part in both of their mourning, though that silence has a vastly different meaning. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what the Feegle do to honor their mother (I STILL CAN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T GET OVER THIS DETAIL), but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what haunts<\/i> Tiffany. She wants nothing more than to be able to talk to her, especially<\/i> at this very moment. Instead, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own her own. Even with the toad, even as the kelda of the Nac Mac Feegle, Tiffany Aching is alone. That being said, this book is so rewarding because<\/i> we get to see this character react to a world that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s falling apart around her. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s remarkably adept at it, though, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not just<\/i> because she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s got that Aching line running through her. Sure, it probably plays some part, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m certain that because Tiffany has had such an interesting and challenging life at her age, she is more skilled at adapting than most people.<\/p>\n And this is one big adaptation, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it?<\/p>\n https:\/\/youtu.be\/B3sF86ndRzs<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now available for pre-order!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the first half of the seventh chapter of The Wee Free Men, Tiffany makes a bargain. 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":[463,248,543],"class_list":["post-4525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-wee-free-men"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4525","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=4525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}