{"id":5061,"date":"2019-10-14T05:00:04","date_gmt":"2019-10-14T12:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=5061"},"modified":"2019-10-13T10:46:12","modified_gmt":"2019-10-13T17:46:12","slug":"mark-reads-snuff-part-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2019\/10\/mark-reads-snuff-part-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;Snuff&#8217;: Part 5"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the fifth part of <i>Snuff<\/i>, Vimes meets the locals. 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>Hey, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, WHAT IS THIS BOOK ACTUALLY ABOUT??? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know??? Who does know??? All of you??? Because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not me! I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a problem with that, of course, and this is so fun to read already. But I thought maybe we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d have more of an inkling of the greater plot by now. <i>Is<\/i> it about goblins? Something else?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m guessing that these new characters and the society around The Hall is going to be integral to later developments in <i>Snuff<\/i>. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t <i>have<\/i> to be, though, as I am enjoying the chance to see more of this whole life that Sybil has largely abandoned or ignored. These are the people of this part of the Disc, and their lives\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhatever side of the class divide they are on\u00e2\u20ac\u201dare so deeply different to Vimes. Which is the point! This split opens with him getting metaphorically \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lost,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because all the markers he recognizes from Ankh-Morpork aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t here, at least not in the same way:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But here <i>everything<\/i> was watching him. Things darted away behind a hedge, flew up in a panic or just rustled suspiciously in the undergrowth. He was the stranger, the interloper, not wanted here.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And so, for this split, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the space that Vimes occupies. He is deeply aware that he can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fit in here; he can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even be who he normally is because he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on holiday. Of course, that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean he avoids trying. The bulk of the time, he still thinks like a copper and analyzes everyone in the Goblin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Head as a copper. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how he processes the world, how he categorizes people and behaviors and words, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fascinating to see it spelled out so clearly here. As Pratchett writes:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>And then the men lurched in, and Vimes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mind clocked them for ready reference.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s exactly what the text does after this, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what happened prior, too. Again, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all quite hilarious to me because I screamed so much on video about how Vimes should just RELAX. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on holiday! Stop working! Except guess who is guilty of the same thing? Guess who JUST went on a trip that was at least half vacation AND STILL WORKED? So there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a part of me that, while I am not a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153copper\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and cannot imagine myself ever being like that, understands this compulsion of Vimes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s. And to his credit, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s able to read the room expertly, enough so that he can at least briefly win over Jiminy, the publican, and the three Toms who were all outside the pub. He even discovers that Jiminy most likely <i>was<\/i> a cop at some point, too. My mind is thinking ahead, though; what if there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a <i>reason<\/i> for all of this? I think Pratchett is setting something up here. Like I said at the start, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually know what this book is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153about,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d so to speak, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m curious. Is Vimes going to use his way of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153reference\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to his advantage when something inevitably goes down here? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think Vimes is thinking that way; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just second nature to him.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>And then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Jethro. He <i>has<\/i> to be meaningful to something later on, but even if he isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t, there is still a great reason for him to be here: someone catalogued Vimes by his appearance and title. And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s interesting to me to see him on the receiving end of this! To someone who has no understanding or knowledge of Vimes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s past, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clearly an outsider. (Again, something the text has made super clear prior to this.) He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also from The Hall, Jethro makes a reasonable assumption that Vimes is not just posh, but that, like many posh people have done, he has come to the pub to be <i>very<\/i> visibly posh. Which we know isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t true! Vimes is about as far from a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153posh\u00e2\u20ac\u009d person who thinks he is better than the working class as possible.<\/p>\n<p>And yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 he <i>is<\/i> a Duke. He married into wealth, even if it was not a sliver of a motivation or explanation for his love for Sybil. So here we have a character who, outside of Ankh-Morpork, is only read by superficial means, even if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s understandable <i>why<\/i> he is read that way. Vimes has a challenge ahead of him, especially as he is forced into other spaces while on this holiday. What is he going to be like to the other upper class families he is inevitably going to meet? I expect a dramatic reaction to him, like the one he got from Jethro, but from the other end of the spectrum. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m also curious to see if he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll <i>try<\/i> to fit in. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how I read the whole crockett thing! Well, lemme first just say how hilarious it was to read that long section where Vimes \u00e2\u20ac\u0153died\u00e2\u20ac\u009d while that man explained the sport. BRILLIANCE. But the reason I bring up this notion of fitting in is that I noticed that Vimes made an effort to at least watch it and then later be able to regurgitate details to Sybil. In the midst of this, he has a very surprising \u00e2\u20ac\u0153reunion\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of sorts with Lord Rust, and <i>that<\/i> is what made me think about the context of Vimes amongst the super wealthy.<\/p>\n<p>See, Lord Rust <i>also<\/i> judges Vimes superficially, but for entirely different reasons. He <i>knows<\/i> who Vimes is, and I got this sense that he was trying to bring him down a peg or two. Right? As if he was reminding Vimes that <i>Sybil<\/i> was the reason he was in this part of the world, that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not <i>really<\/i> part of this place. It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t phase Vimes, of course, but how long will it be until the other aristocratic folks realize that Vimes isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t one of them?<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/P6NUY3XOKmU<\/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 fifth part of Snuff, Vimes meets the locals. 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-5061","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\/5061","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=5061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5061\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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