{"id":5055,"date":"2019-10-07T05:00:08","date_gmt":"2019-10-07T12:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=5055"},"modified":"2019-10-07T13:08:43","modified_gmt":"2019-10-07T20:08:43","slug":"mark-reads-snuff-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2019\/10\/mark-reads-snuff-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;Snuff&#8217;: Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the second part of <i>Snuff<\/i>, Vimes makes the journey to Sybil\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s childhood home. 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, this is already so much fun. As I remarked on video, this whole split felt so exciting to me because of how it provided a glimpse into Sybil Ramkin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s past. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know a whole lot of her upbringing from past books, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m hoping there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more of what we get here in the rest of the book. Sybil has long been a fascinating character because she comes from wealth and privilege, and yet she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t look or behave like virtually any of the other privileged characters we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve met along the way. Indeed, she often appears to deliberately do this, to be kind and gracious and charitable to the world around her. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also that air of unimportance to her, in the sense that when she first started seeing Vimes, it was virtually unimportant to her that she had money. This was not what she thought of as the best of who she is!<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>So it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s intriguing to me to see Sybil in this specific setting, since it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a first in the entire series. The Hall isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t just her childhood home, though that emotional importance is <i>everywhere<\/i> in this split. We can see how wealth and privilege touched Sybil\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s life and how she chose to deal with it vastly differently than her predecessors. Of course, this is all filtered through Sam Vimes, who has zero interest in or time for ANY of these shenanigans, but goes along with this because he loves Sybil. He gives it all a good try! And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s through this that the first instance of privilege rears its head: Sybil\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s family used to tip the staff with <i>LITERAL BURNING HOT COINS<\/i>. And why? Just for their enjoyment. That is it! They did it because it was funny, and hidden beneath that is such an insidious and gross outlook on the staff on the part of the Ramkins. They knew this money was life-changing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dor at least significant\u00e2\u20ac\u201dto the staff. So why not dangle a carrot before them? Why not turn money\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsomething the Ramkins had so much of\u00e2\u20ac\u201dinto a game for those who have comparatively little?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>And yet, I deeply understood this exchange:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153My father put a stop to it. My mother complained. So did the gatekeepers.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I should think so!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153No, Sam, they complained when the custom was stopped.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s demeaning!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Sybil sighed. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Yes, I know, Sam, but it was also free money, you see.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>As Sybil further explained this to Vimes, I appreciated that Sybil was willing to empathize with the gatekeepers, to see their side of this. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s aware of the value of a penny, but in an entirely different context: she doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see the recipient of it as <i>less<\/i> than her. Her relatives? They all absolutely believed that anyone not in their social class was <i>beneath<\/i> them. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m wondering, then, what all of y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all thought about Mr. Coffin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reaction to Vimes was about. My gut reaction was that Mr. Coffin was frightened of what Vimes was going to do to him. But he was also breaking tradition, wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t he? We see this later when Vimes shakes the hand of the gardener first and how quickly he earns the ire of others because he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do what he was <i>supposed<\/i> to do. However, I am curious. Did Mr. Coffin shrink away from Vimes because he thought he was going to hurt him? Was that an instinctual reaction because he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been harmed in the past when someone gout out of their carriage?<\/p>\n<p>I realize that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s conjecture, since Sybil doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say anything about Mr. Coffin otherwise, and I do believe that most of the staff is reacting in horror to Vimes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s inability to just do what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s supposed to do. But I did not expect anything less of Vimes. This isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t his world! He doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s expected of him in this position. He had the polar opposite upbringing when compared to his wife. (There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that great line about how he spent his childhood just hoping to <i>survive<\/i>.) So I totally get why he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d greet the first and most familiar-ish person to him. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just being polite! There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no protocol hardwired into his brain, so from Vimes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s point of view, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been no faux pas committed. Awkward, maybe, but he probably expects to be that.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>So Vimes does his best, and I do think he recovers a bit after insulting the butlers. Like by speaking \u00e2\u20ac\u0153candidly\u00e2\u20ac\u009d about Silver from the smoking room! But this home is full of so many rules\u00e2\u20ac\u201done of which Willikins brings up near the end of the split\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because the place is situated so high up the social ladder. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s respectability politics mixed in with some ridiculous social standards, and honestly? If half the book was just Vimes trying to figure out what all this stuff is, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d be pleased. And given the opening stuff about goblins, I feel like this setting\u00e2\u20ac\u201din a place drowning in privilege\u00e2\u20ac\u201dis intentional. Pratchett <i>wants<\/i> us to be thinking of social and financial hierarchies, of what behaviors are acceptable where and when and by <i>whom<\/i>, and it makes me wonder what Vimes is going to discover in The Hall.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/N6tAftk52VM<\/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 second part of Snuff, Vimes makes the journey to Sybil\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s childhood home. 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":[463,563,248],"class_list":["post-5055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-snuff","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5055","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=5055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5055\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. The path to wp-cache-phase1.php in wp-content/advanced-cache.php must be fixed! -->