{"id":5001,"date":"2019-07-17T05:00:41","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T12:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=5001"},"modified":"2019-07-18T11:00:01","modified_gmt":"2019-07-18T18:00:01","slug":"mark-reads-unseen-academicals-part-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2019\/07\/mark-reads-unseen-academicals-part-17\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;Unseen Academicals&#8217;: Part 17"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the seventeenth part of <i>Unseen Academicals<\/i>, Vetinari gets drunk off beer, and Glenda gets drunk off righteousness. 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>Well, all of this was unexpected.<\/p>\n<p>Given what happens in the majority of this split\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat Vetinari is coping with being ridiculously drunk from the banquet\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat means I must re-think the opening scene here. Because when Swithin arrives to clap Vetinari on the back, Vetinari\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s immediate and lightning-fast reaction happens WHILE HE IS DRUNK. He still stops Swithin! And still has a very reasonable reaction to something that is HORRIFYING to everyone else! He talks to Swithin firmly, yes, but look at the way he delicately nudges the man in the direction of the new rules of the football. Well, it probably will seem delicate to Swithin, who will be suitably horrified in the morning when he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sobered up and realizes what he did. But Vetinari uses information to his advantage, which he does here to show that he \u00e2\u20ac\u0153cares\u00e2\u20ac\u009d about Swithin and is deeply interested in the sport. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a part of me that wonders if Vetinari <i>is<\/i> amused or entertained by football, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s combining that with his impressive knowledge of every part of his city.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Anyway, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s jump from that point, because there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a fantastic context that arises in this split to address this head on. I love that Pratchett made this about cultural theft, or at least addressed the concept from the point of view of Glenda. Part of the allure of <i>Unseen Academicals<\/i> for me is the exploration of class in the university and the fact that we get to see a side of the city and characters who aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t usually associated with the wizards. (Well, only in passing, I suppose.) As I said in the previous review, Glenda is someone who has to see multiple strata of this class structure on a day-to-day basis. She knows what the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153nobs\u00e2\u20ac\u009d like, how they behave, what they believe, and ultimately, how they can harm others. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in this that her anger is rooted: nobs have taken a sport of the under class and made it theirs. She is quick to point out the hypocrisy, too:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It was something that people themselves had put together and rickety and stupid though it was, it was theirs. And now the nobs were again picking up something that wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t theirs and saying how wonderful it was.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s appropriation, plain and simple. And many of us have seen this happen, over and over again, throughout our lives! I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll give a great example: having thick eyebrows was often viewed as something hideous and ugly and unwanted for many years, and I was ruthlessly bullied for it. These days? Suddenly, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in! And rich people and nobs and even SOME OF THE PEOPLE WHO BULLIED ME now think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cool! I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m positive each of us could talk about five things off the top of our heads that went through this same cycle. Coconut water is another example. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what we drank after cross country and track drinks because it was cheap as fuck at the Asian markets, and it had so much potassium in it, so it was helpful for hydration. And now look at that industry!<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>So I completely understood Glenda\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s anger. I just\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 holy shit, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, she actually bribed her way into the Palace, and she confronted Vetinari, and because this is Glenda we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking about, she said WHATEVER THE FUCK SHE WANTED TO SAY to the man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s face. Granted, she is <i>aware<\/i> that maybe she shouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just say whatever is on her mind, but like she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s done throughout this book, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like her brain just can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stop the words from leaving her mouth. But those words are important! Her confrontation with Vetinari is necessary because she believes that the captains were wronged, that Vetinari is participating in the theft of this sport.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Vetinari\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s explanation does seem to placate her somewhat, and I thought his point about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153changing the playground\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was clever and fair. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not banning the sport, and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not claiming it as his own; rather, by introducing some sense of order to it, football might not be so deadly and painful. All right, still painful, probably, but you know what I mean. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a violent situation right now, and this will allow the game to have some structure. Is it enough? I guess we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll see. And I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that Glenda is perfectly satisfied by this all, either. I assume she wants to see the outcome of this organization. But I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also easy to explain why her righteousness fades away by the end of this conversation: Vetinari was not what she expected. He so easily is able to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153read\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the inside of her mind, to anticipate what she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to say, and to see her as a whole person. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an unnerving thing, too, and we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve watched Vetinari do this over and over again. (Particularly to Vimes and Moist.) He knows everything because it is in his best interest as the Patrician to know everything about his city. Yes, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the personal connection that Vetinari has to Glenda\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s grandmother, but I bet he would have been able to get most of that information by other means.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>So, my question is: What is Glenda going to do <i>next<\/i>?<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=U-N57JAO7To<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markoshiro.com\/blog\/2019\/5\/7\/the-anger-is-a-gift-trade-paperback-is-out-today\">The paperback edition of my debut, ANGER IS A GIFT, is now OUT!<\/a>\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 seventeenth part of Unseen Academicals, Vetinari gets drunk off beer, and Glenda gets drunk off righteousness. 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":[463,248,561],"class_list":["post-5001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-unseen-academicals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5001","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=5001"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5001\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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