In the tenth part of Raising Steam<\/i>, Moist goes into overdrive to account for the many problems the railway faces. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For discussion of terrorism, xenophobia.<\/b><\/p>\n
When Moist is in his element, he is really<\/i> in his element.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I now understand why Pratchett includes to metaphor of the sizzle in this split. Moist operates best within chaotic conditions, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen over the course of his books. The more impossible the situation, the more his mind is able to discover serpentine paths through the muck and mud. Indeed, his brain works best this way, and what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s more chaotic than two children nearly being run over by the Iron Girder? Again, Moist saw a problem\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthose two kids with their ears to the tracks\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand devised a solution, one that Adora Belle rightly designates as such:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t resist it, could you? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s like a drug. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not happy unless someone is trying to kill you, or you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in the center of some other kind of drama, out of which, of course, the famous Moist von Lipwig will jump to safety at the very last moment. Is it a disease? Some kind of syndrome?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also a very succinct way of summarizing Moist as a character, no? But I think it speaks to the innate goodness of Moist, even if he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also thinking of the financial concerns that the death of those children would have caused. He still saved them at great expense to himself. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also a nice cherry on top that he did so while being ridiculously dramatic. So it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hard to deny that Moist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s creativity and ingenuity works best in these situations when Pratchett follows this up with that scene where William de Worde interviews Moist. We get to see Moist in his prime: He is presented with a problem, and he not only addresses it immediately, he has to one-up himself, too.<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m absolutely certain that one day the train will save many, many lives. In fact, I guarantee it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n When I first read this, I assumed it was merely some very<\/i> direct foreshadowing. I believed that Moist would fulfill this promise. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s done so with other promises in Going Postal <\/i>and Making Money<\/i>. But this has an entirely different meaning for me after reading both the scene with Harry King and with Ardent. Like Moist, I was shocked by Harry\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s emotional response to what Moist did. Honestly, I expected rage and callousness. Instead, Harry recognizes the risk to human life that the train poses, and he then agrees to pursue safety measures for the whole<\/i> line. Moist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s promise has a different ring to it, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? How can he satisfy the demands of the railway while also devising methods to keep everyone safe? Many of those ideas presented here are brilliant, and once again, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all evidence that Moist is fucking brilliant<\/i> under pressure. At the same time, Harry King is given a bit more depth as a character, and I love a narrative that manages to advance the plot AND character development. I admit that I have a soft spot for the archetype of hard-as-hell characters being shown to actually have deep emotional wells. I AM TRASH FOR THIS, I WILL BE UPFRONT ABOUT THIS.<\/p>\n But what about the damn grags? As I said on video, I appreciated that Pratchett called Ardent\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actions out for what they are: manipulation. He knows exactly what he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s doing here. And I bet each of us could point out examples of this sort of fear-mongering from politicians in our own countries. How often have we seen people appeal to the lowest-common denominator? To invoke xenophobia, as Ardent does with the goblins? To twist reality in order to create a narrative that paints a group as victims when they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re often the perpetrators? I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m reminded of the white nationalist terrorists that have been active in recent years here in the US and how many of them believe that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re being actively persecuted, which they use as justification of their violence. Seriously, one of the dwarfs even points out that the reason why dwarfs aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t used on the railway is specifically BECAUSE the grags are burning down the clacks towers. Unfortunately, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not enough to stop this disastrous line of thinking, and before long, Ardent has creepily convinced the gathered dwarfs that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for them to make a real<\/i> statement: They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re going to sabotage the railway, and it will most likely involve the loss of life, too.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Moist\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s promise has a different ring to it, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it?<\/p>\n Now, I could be wrong about this, and I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t Google this because of my longstanding policy of not doing so out of fear of spoiling myself. But the whole concept of le patrimony<\/i> in Quirm is actually based on a real policy in France, right? I remember something similar to it all the way back when I took AP European history back in high school. (I HAVE RETAINED SOME EDUCATION FROM HIGH SCHOOL, OKAY.) But I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t speak to this with any authority; it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just something I wanted to bring up because I know Pratchett frequently borrows from actual history when constructing his books. Regardless! I still found this fascinating, and I was very appreciative of getting to delve into Quirmian culture, especially since we haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t spent all that much time in it. (At least not in a while!) It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s also engaging because initially, Moist doesn’t<\/i> thrive in the situation. The complication of le patrimony<\/i> means that Moist is dealing with more people over smaller parcels of land, some that would have been entirely devoted to the railway if Moist got his way. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the aristocrat problem from Sto Lat, but a million times more complicated.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The solution that he comes up with at the last minute, after a discussion with the Marquis des Aix en Pain, though, is ABSURDLY chaotic. So it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no surprise that both Moist and Harry King are excited about the prospect of visiting the badlands and ridding it of bandits. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually know what this entails, by the way. Fighting? Scare tactics? Negotiation? What are they actually going to do once they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re in<\/i> the badlands??? Ask the bandits nicely to go somewhere else? I HAVE NO IDEA, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m excited to find out.<\/p>\n https:\/\/youtu.be\/smFGuaRn-FI<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – You can now pre-order my second YA novel, Each of Us a Desert<\/i>, which will be released on September 15, 2020 from Tor Teen!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong> In the tenth part of Raising Steam, Moist goes into overdrive to account for the many problems the railway faces. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld.<\/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":[463,565,248],"class_list":["post-5145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-raising-steam","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145","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=5145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5145\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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