{"id":4852,"date":"2019-01-04T05:00:25","date_gmt":"2019-01-04T13:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4852"},"modified":"2018-12-30T18:39:04","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T02:39:04","slug":"mark-reads-wintersmith-chapter-2-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2019\/01\/mark-reads-wintersmith-chapter-2-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;Wintersmith&#8217;: Chapter 2, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the first half of the second chapter of <i>Wintersmith<\/i>, Tiffany visits a familiar face, and the reader meets Miss Treason. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>Discworld<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Oh no. Even knowing where this might end up\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe future <i>is<\/i> wobbly, after all\u00e2\u20ac\u201dI still don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m prepared for this. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, MISS TREASON IS A TRIP. But before I get to her and the design for her character, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first talk about Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany, who, after the events of <i>A Hat Full of Sky<\/i>, have built a relationship that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so fascinating to me. We don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t often get to see friendship of this sort between Granny and&#8230; well, literally anyone else. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s some similarity to her longtime friendship with Nanny Ogg here, in the sense that Nanny knew how to push Granny\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s buttons when she wanted to. Tiffany tests these boundaries, too, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because of the unique sense of respect she earned from Granny during the last book.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Still, that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s earned the right to skip over everything or to suddenly experience being a witch without all the difficult parts. To her credit, Granny Weatherwax makes this visit deeply, deeply uncomfortable and awkward because&#8230; well, because she can! Why wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t she be like this? So, the conversation is jarring, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s full of small talk, and then Tiffany just digs in <i>just<\/i> a little bit my mentioning Mrs. Earwig. Pratchett does a great job of providing exposition for these little moments, in case someone hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t read the past two Tiffany Aching books. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re reminded of Mrs. Earwig\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s style, how she prefers to have her name pronounced, the whole hiver business is referred to later, and we even find out there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still a bit of Professor Bustle inside of Tiffany because of the hiver. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m also gonna guess that Granny\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s heat transfer trick that we see here is meant as the eventual explanation for how Tiffany will be able to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153become\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the fire to melt the Wintersmith\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s snow. She finally figured out how to get her mind \u00e2\u20ac\u0153right.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I&#8230; think??? That feels like an intentional thing!<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>BUT LET\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S ALSO TALK ABOUT THE KITTEN. Oh god, is Granny going to name it? I have a feeling she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll claim it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a name at all because she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t \u00e2\u20ac\u0153care\u00e2\u20ac\u009d about the kitten, but then privately, she will TOTALLY have a name for it. Oh gods, I love this trope, where a character is EMOTIONLESS and HARD AS HELL and WILL NOT BE AFFECTED BY THE SAME THINGS OTHER HUMANS ARE. But then <i>cute animal<\/i>, and with time, they will soon FIGHT A WAR for said cute animal.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s totally what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happening, right? Right???<\/p>\n<p>So, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s move on to Miss Treason! I feel like we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve gotten to know so many witches through the Tiffany Aching books, in part because she has to spend a great deal of time with them. As is custom, Tiffany stays with a witch, like she did with Miss Level in <i>A Hat Full of Sky<\/i>, so that she can learn from an expert in witchcraft. And I feel comfortable saying that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never met anyone like Miss Eumenides Treason. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re even warned that this is the case by the book:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>All witches were a bit odd. Tiffany had got used to odd, so that odd seemed quite normal&#8230; But when it came to odd, Miss Treason didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just take the cake, but a packet of biscuits too, with sprinkles on the top, and also a candle.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It was this that we are introduced to Miss Treason, an older witch who is blind, deaf, and uses Borrowing in order to see and hear the world around her. Which really isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the oddness itself, or at least that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the sense I got from the text. No, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s her many other behaviors and habits that are bizarre even for a series like this. But can we just talk about this fucking imagery???<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Somebody in one of the local villages had made the old woman a perch that fitted across her shoulders, one bird on either side, and with her long white hair the effect was very, well, witchy, although a bit messy down the back of her cloak by the end of the day.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Then there was her clock. It was heavy and made of rusty iron by someone who was more blacksmith than watchmaker, which was why it went <b><i>clonk-clank<\/i><\/b> instead of <i>tick-tock<\/i>. She wore it on her belt and could tell the time by feeling the stubby little hands.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>WHERE IS THE OFFICIAL ART FOR THIS. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen time and time again throughout the <i>Discworld<\/i> books how the image a person gives off can easily give them a certain power. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the pointy hat motif. Having one identifies a witch to other people. So what does <i>this<\/i> communicate to the outside world? Well, as we learn later, the people of the surrounding villages and town view Miss Treason as someone who can help solve their problems. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the whole \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Justice is Blind\u00e2\u20ac\u009d saying made literal. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m interested in people\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s take on this, though I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m aware how little information I have on Miss Treason right now. Right now, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a sense that Miss Treason is one to be feared, though having tons of cobwebs in your home but no spiders is not exactly helping things??? (WHAT IS THAT.) She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s definitely strange, but I also want to be aware of the way she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s treated in the narrative, given that she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of a handful of canonically disabled main characters we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve gotten before. So, just something I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to be thinking about.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>And what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s this dance that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so important to Miss Treason? Ugh, I know so little at this point!<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/xDyxQwbEIDY<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markoshiro.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/19\/the-anger-is-a-gift-paperback-edition-is-out-may-7-2019\">The paperback edition of my debut, ANGER IS A GIFT, is now up for pre-order!<\/a> It comes out on May 7, 2019.\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the first half of the second chapter of Wintersmith, Tiffany visits a familiar face, and the reader meets Miss Treason. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld.\u00c2\u00a0<\/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":[463,248,556],"class_list":["post-4852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-wintersmith"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4852","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=4852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4852\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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