{"id":4538,"date":"2018-05-04T05:00:46","date_gmt":"2018-05-04T12:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4538"},"modified":"2018-04-29T16:27:52","modified_gmt":"2018-04-29T23:27:52","slug":"mark-reads-the-wee-free-men-chapter-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2018\/05\/mark-reads-the-wee-free-men-chapter-10\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;The Wee Free Men&#8217;: Chapter 10"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the tenth chapter of <i>The Wee Free Men<\/i>, I 100% did not need to see an illustration of that nightmare, and yet HERE WE ARE. 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>It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just now hitting me how much of the Queen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s realm relies on contrasts. As I started writing this review, I was prepared to wax poetically about summer and how much I love the heat (a love that has only been strengthened by this unending, godawful winter here in New York), only to realize\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fucking <i>winter<\/i> in this book. THIS IS ALL HAPPENING IN THE WINTER. This heat is a <i>trick<\/i>. I mean, yes, EVERYTHING in this world is a trick, but I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m fascinated by the idea of foils, of opposites. Pratchett highlights those disparities, and Stephen Player dropkicks me into the stratosphere, which\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get to that.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>So let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talk about that contrast. Tiffany is pushed through another dream portal, and this time, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in a world where it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hot and searing, where the Queen has twisted an image found in an old book that Tiffany once had, <i>Faerie Tales<\/i>. (And I love that Roland later reveals that this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t from Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s head, but rather something that <i>other<\/i> people had dreamed of. I love the notion of shared dream topics!) Everything is wrong, and I was fine just letting my imagination run wild, but this chapter in particular is WAY TOO FULL OF STEPHEN PLAYER\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S NIGHTMARISH ILLUSTRATIONS! I almost wish he was <i>bad<\/i> at his craft because then these drawings wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t burrow inside my brain and HAUNT ME FOREVER. Like\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 holy shit, everything is just so <i>wrong<\/i> in the illustration of this <i>Faerie Tales<\/i> image??? But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s truly what makes this edition so amazing. Pratchett toys with that idea of wrongness\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsomething being just a few degrees \u00e2\u20ac\u0153off\u00e2\u20ac\u009d from reality\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand then Player gives us a visual representation of that horror.<\/p>\n<p>Thus, we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got this sense that Tiffany is truly an outsider, but she is in a <i>world<\/i> of outsiders. No one fits in here, and they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re never supposed to. How many of these creatures or beings\u00e2\u20ac\u201dat least those that aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t dream manifestations\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwere stolen from other worlds? Were kidnapped? Got lost along the way and never found their way home? How do they find ways to survive?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I am <i>horrified<\/i> by the answer to that question, and leave it to Pratchett to find quiet ways to DEEPLY UNSETTLE ME. Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s conversation with Roland about the Queen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s world was a brilliant means of providing us with necessary exposition, but it also contains perhaps one of the most disturbing things in the whole book:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153[Sneebs\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s] been here for <i>years<\/i>. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how I knew about the time being wrong. Sneebs got back to his own world once, and it was all different. He was so miserable, he found another doorway and came straight back.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This comes in the midst of Roland telling the story of how he got trapped in this world. And while I got the sense that Roland <i>did<\/i> want to return, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still this unspoken fear of his that <i>too<\/i> much time has passed, and he won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fit in. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that same theme again: who belongs? Who is <i>allowed<\/i> to belong? Tiffany struggled with this very notion long before she even knew who the Queen was! So there are ripples of that same conflict that manifest differently based on the situation. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s how Sneebs exists: he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s somewhere who would rather <i>not<\/i> belong in a strange world than be in one where he <i>used <\/i>to belong.<\/p>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M FUCKED UP BY THIS.<\/p>\n<p>And then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the Queen, who finally makes her dreaded appearance in the book, and HOLY SHIT, TIFFANY IS SO AMAZING HERE. She <i>had<\/i> to experience EVERYTHING she went through before she faced her, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m LOSING IT. She came <i>prepared<\/i>, and even though the Queen is terrifying and still in control, I am in <i>awe<\/i> of how Tiffany is able to make an impression on the Queen, to show her that she is not who the Queen thinks she is. Of everything she does, though, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the way Tiffany cuts through the mask and the fa\u00c3\u00a7ade that impressed me the most. The Queen is <i>obsessed<\/i> with appearances, and you can see it in the way she speaks of Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s brother. She cares more about how words <i>sound<\/i> than what they mean. For example: she nitpicks Tiffany and tries to say that no one \u00e2\u20ac\u0153owns\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Wentworth, when it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s obvious that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not what Tiffany meant. Then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Such rudeness, and you hardly know me,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Which is such a devious little play at respectability and control. She tries to make it reasonable to be spoken to with care and politeness, despite that she KIDNAPPED A LITERAL CHILD. Free advice for all of you: NEVER TRUST PEOPLE WHO DO YOU WRONG, WHO COMMIT ACTS OF VIOLENCE AND HATRED, AND THEN DEMAND THAT YOU BE RESPECTFUL ABOUT IT. They just want to control the situation <i>they<\/i> caused, and they certainly have no actual interest in the concept of respect. The Queen is obsessed with suffering and cruelty, and so I certainly do not feel at all bothered that Tiffany insulted her. Good. For. Her. Beat the Queen at her own game by reminding her that the world she has assembled isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t real. Her appearance isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t real. And in the end, her <i>control<\/i> over everything won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be real, either.<\/p>\n<p>THIS SHOWDOWN IS GONNA BE GREAT, Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ALL.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/3QXGetDi4V0<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong>My YA contemporary debut, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markoshiro.com\/blog\/2017\/9\/22\/i-am-proud-to-announce-my-ya-contemporary-debut-anger-is-a-gift\">ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now available for pre-order!\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 tenth chapter of The Wee Free Men, I 100% did not need to see an illustration of that nightmare, and yet HERE WE ARE. 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":[463,248,543],"class_list":["post-4538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-wee-free-men"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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