{"id":4855,"date":"2019-01-09T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-01-09T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4855"},"modified":"2019-01-06T09:16:10","modified_gmt":"2019-01-06T17:16:10","slug":"mark-reads-wintersmith-chapter-3-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2019\/01\/mark-reads-wintersmith-chapter-3-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;Wintersmith&#8217;: Chapter 3, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the first half of the third chapter of <i>Wintersmith<\/i>, Tiffany learns of the ramifications of her actions. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch <i>Discworld<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>While I feel something complicated about how Miss Treason has dealt with this, I do want to say that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad that this is already a story about messing up. Because oh lord, Tiffany has made A Mistake. And look, I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t claim to understand just how big of a mistake this is, and I say this knowing that Pratchett already gave us a possible future, in which the Wintersmith has been spurned (I think?) and brought a massive winter down on the Chalk that is killing lambs and threatening lives. So, yes, this is bad, but this chapter only gives us a glimpse of just how bad this is. Much of what I understand here is given from context clues, the biggest one being Miss Treason\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s disappointment and anger. Seriously, how cutting was this bit?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Miss Treason hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t shouted, hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even raised her voice. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d just sighed and said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153foolish child,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d which was a whole lot worse, mostly because that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just what Tiffany knew she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>YEAH THIS IS A TERRIBLE FEELING. And Pratchett manages to capture that sense of shame, embarrassment, and rage when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve messed up for the first time in your life. <i>Really<\/i> messed up, that is. This is not a small goof or a little accident. And I understand why Tiffany has the reaction she does too, why she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so certain that she needs to say that she didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t <i>mean<\/i> to join the dance. I still feel very weird about Miss Treason knowing this was a big deal, but barely telling Tiffany anything about it! I suppose in the world of the witches, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s culturally accepted here that Tiffany should have just listened to what Miss Treason said and not disobeyed her. At the same time, I got the sense from the text that Miss Treason believed that someone <i>literally<\/i> a hundred years younger than her knew everything about how the world worked. This part in particular upset me:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153That doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make sense! The Morris dance is to welcome the coming of the summer, yes, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00e2\u20ac\u201d\u00e2\u20ac\u0153<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Are you an infant?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Miss Treason. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The year is round! The wheel of the world must spin! That is why up here they dance the Dark Morris, to balance it. They welcome the winter because of the new summer deep inside it!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I am not nearly 13-years-old, and I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand this. This is not obvious at <i>all<\/i>. How was Tiffany supposed to know this? You didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t inform her of ANY detail aside from telling her not to talk or move. I know that does not negate what she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s done or exonerate her. She <i>does<\/i> have to take responsibility for herself and what she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s done, regardless of her intentions. And <i>none<\/i> of this excuses her for going outside and ACTUALLY CALLING THE WINTERSMITH UPON HER. But what of that magical, psychic pull that the dance had on Tiffany? How does a person as unknowing and young as Tiffany counter something like that, particularly without any warning or information or knowledge whatsoever? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not like Miss Treason <i>told<\/i> her that the empty space might call to her, you know?<\/p>\n<p>Still, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fine line between youthful rebellion and youthful ignorance, and this problem straddles that. Miss Treason behaves as if Tiffany knows the ways of the world; Tiffany behaves as if she <i>does<\/i> know the ways of the world but doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know them in actuality. And so we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got this mess of shame and anger, and lord, this book is so uncomfortable so <i>soon<\/i>. Miss Treason does not seem like the kind of teacher who will ease students into lessons; she prefers the lash of a sharp tongue and the burning shame of experience. Which is generally an effective teacher; I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think Tiffany is going to make very many mistakes like this again. (At least I hope not.) And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true that sometimes, it takes shame and embarrassment for a lesson to stick. Seriously, sometimes we have to learn the hard way not to do certain things, and perhaps that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the lesson that Miss Treason wants to impart on Tiffany: she was told things for a reason, so she should have listened to her. Well, that and DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T GO MESSING IN THINGS YOU DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T UNDERSTAND. But even then, Pratchett writes Tiffany with an anger of her own: at Miss Treason for treating her like a child or an infant. At the situation for being so absurd. At <i>herself<\/i> for messing up so badly and so quickly. Well, and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s some anger at the Feegles, who admit to reading Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s diary <i>and<\/i> her letters to Roland.<\/p>\n<p>So what this amounts to is that Tiffany is in a real shitty place, so to speak. She wants to be seen as older, more mature, more experienced. And in many ways, she <i>is<\/i>! Look what she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dealt with over the course of this series. How many other twelve-year-old girls have had to do the same? But that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s automatically all-knowing, that she gets to seem as free-from-accountability as Miss Treason is. (Who, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m guessing, is not all that free from the concept anyway. Tiffany just <i>perceives<\/i> that she is.) Growing up is monstrously difficult, and it means that sometimes, you have to charge headfirst into bad decisions, and Tiffany? Oh, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s doing this spectacularly.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/S3fFjGY-FIE<\/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 third chapter of Wintersmith, Tiffany learns of the ramifications of her actions. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to watch 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-4855","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\/4855","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=4855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4855\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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