Name! Also Discworld.
Hello! I have a new name, after all of my hand-wringing, and I managed to force myself to click the button that would disassociate this name from the kenovay name, so any links that people had will be broken now. Which was hard to do, actually, because I hate it when other people do that, but kind of necessary to avoid little old Scottish people who probably knew my grandfather running me to ground.
The name is the first word of the first recorded piece of syntactical Welsh prose, which is not actually a Welsh word, in a cruel twist of irony. Said Welsh prose is now in my info, if you want to look at it: I kind of wanted to leave it as my only bio, just this weird little thing about Tudfwlch son of Llywd, but I thought that might be a little offputting, if mildly amusing. Also, irritatingly, according the internet while I was looking for a decent translation, the transcription of the first word seems to be generally agreed to be 'surrexit', not 'surexit'. However, I got it from the Celtic Philology texts compilation that we worked off a couple of years ago, which were compiled by the single most fearsome intellect I have ever run across, so I think there's probably some validity to the 'surexit' transcription. Oooor Dr [Terrifying Celticist] made a typo, but I don't think such things happen to people who have genuinely and by more than one person been described as gimlet-eyed. (Quotation from my department's student newsletter: 'Every time I go into a classroom, my greatest fear is that Dr [Terrifying Celticist] will be in there.')
I finished the new Discworld book! I am absolutely terrible at identifying spoilery things, because I personally love and actively seek out spoilers, even for things I never intend to read or watch, so rather than try to judge what might or might not be considered a spoiler, I'll just cut the whole lot:
- If I never read another 'husbands are so downtrodden, the secret to a happy marriage is the ability to say 'yes dear' HAHAHA' joke again, it will be too soon. What, PTerry, what?
- Vimes, for most of the book, is not quite the man I know and love. He's a bit too fond of monologuing, the kind of monologues which work much better as narrative. Additionally, in this book he's just a bit much. Like, he's a hero wherever he goes! People say adoring things to him! Part of the essence of Vimes has always been to me that he is honestly just a man, a man who does extraordinary things because he can't quite stop the ball rolling when it starts, but nothing special in himself, which makes his amazingness even more special. Am I talking any kind of sense? He's not like Carrot, he's not a hero, he just gets on with things and does the job according to his lights, and his lights are fucking fantastic lights, but they're also a bit flawed and cracked sometimes. Whereas in this book he was edging closer than I like towards being an extra-special person, a person shining with the inner fire of Justice, a person just a little bit above us all.
+ I take back the comparison to Unseen Academicals, which I really enjoyed but thought was weakly plotted. This, on the other hand, although not mind-twistingly intricate, was very strongly plotted, and the last third or so was absolutely gripping.
+ When Vimes did shine through as Vimes, he was just as capable of bringing me close to tears as usual. Guys, I don't think I will ever, ever get tired of seeing Vimes make people's lives better just by being decent - not shining with inner goodness or guided by divine light, frequently cranky and bitchy, but just... a good guy. I will be incredibly cheesy right now, but it reminds me of how amazing it is possible to be to each other, and how as full as the world is with awfulness, it is also full of such incredible people. (Which is partly why I disliked the moments when the narrative seemed to give in to Vimes' hype, because it's so incredibly important to me that anyone could do what he does, that ordinary people do extraordinary things. I have far too many feelings about the City Watch books, way more than is healthy.)
+ The whole plot was also precisely what I love about the Watch books, basically seeing the world taking one tiny step closer to niceness, driven largely by Vimes' aforementioned decency. And I know it's a deeply problematic narrative, in a world where the non-human races stand in for real life minorities, to tell the story of 'hey so almost single-handedly this human guy has improved the lot of the goblin race OH MY GOD ISN'T HE AMAZING?' but oh God I'm in love with it anyway. Even though I wish we'd gotten a deeper look at the goblins, and I wanted to know more about the ones that were taken off to Howondaland and whether any of the ones that were alive when Wee Mad Arthur found them made it home, and would basically have liked the story to have spent a bit more time with them and been a bit less (only a bit less) about Sam Vimes, I still had many, many moments of heart-clutching. (Although I would love the story of how Stinky gets the goblins home, because Stinky is also a Big Damn Hero and it would be fascinating to read.)
+ Angua's thought about how everyone becomes human and the melting pot only melts in one direction was excellent and sharp and biting and I wish it had been more than a throwaway moment, because yes, and it would have been an excellent counterpoint to the bulk of the story, which was mostly uncritically about how the goblins needed to be saved and educated.
+ Hey, so, this might not be all that noticeable to people, but Sybil and Vimes get a sex life! They haven't really had that before. I mean, obviously Young Sam exists, they have, but scrupulously and entirely off-screen, whereas in this book I counted one reference to bath sex, one reference to a passionate hello kiss involving 'suction', and one reference to Vimes making dirty suggestions in Sybil's ear. It was all much further than PTerry goes normally, and was delightful.
+/- I'm not sure how I feel about the handling of the class stuff. This is a book which spends a lot of the first third or so meandering about class and... I don't know. I appreciate the points that it's always more ambiguous than it seems, but at the same time... I don't know. I couldn't quite grasp the thrust of it - maybe there was no thrust, just meandering - but I do know that the spinning housemaids seemed to be a pretty clear example of something where Sybil or Vimes could have just told the housekeeper that they should stop doing that. I also didn't like Sybil's 'but they are demeaned' bit - I get her point about the relative value of the housemaids versus Vimes, and that value is not worth, but I don't think that saying that they are demeaned is a decent excuse, and saying that her grandmother was being cruel to be kind in instructing that any housemaid not spinning to face the wall when a gentleman went past would be fired is a bit... patronising. I don't know.
Also posted on Dreamwidth at http://surexit.dreamwidth.org/16604.html with
comments. Comment wherever you like.
The name is the first word of the first recorded piece of syntactical Welsh prose, which is not actually a Welsh word, in a cruel twist of irony. Said Welsh prose is now in my info, if you want to look at it: I kind of wanted to leave it as my only bio, just this weird little thing about Tudfwlch son of Llywd, but I thought that might be a little offputting, if mildly amusing. Also, irritatingly, according the internet while I was looking for a decent translation, the transcription of the first word seems to be generally agreed to be 'surrexit', not 'surexit'. However, I got it from the Celtic Philology texts compilation that we worked off a couple of years ago, which were compiled by the single most fearsome intellect I have ever run across, so I think there's probably some validity to the 'surexit' transcription. Oooor Dr [Terrifying Celticist] made a typo, but I don't think such things happen to people who have genuinely and by more than one person been described as gimlet-eyed. (Quotation from my department's student newsletter: 'Every time I go into a classroom, my greatest fear is that Dr [Terrifying Celticist] will be in there.')
I finished the new Discworld book! I am absolutely terrible at identifying spoilery things, because I personally love and actively seek out spoilers, even for things I never intend to read or watch, so rather than try to judge what might or might not be considered a spoiler, I'll just cut the whole lot:
- If I never read another 'husbands are so downtrodden, the secret to a happy marriage is the ability to say 'yes dear' HAHAHA' joke again, it will be too soon. What, PTerry, what?
- Vimes, for most of the book, is not quite the man I know and love. He's a bit too fond of monologuing, the kind of monologues which work much better as narrative. Additionally, in this book he's just a bit much. Like, he's a hero wherever he goes! People say adoring things to him! Part of the essence of Vimes has always been to me that he is honestly just a man, a man who does extraordinary things because he can't quite stop the ball rolling when it starts, but nothing special in himself, which makes his amazingness even more special. Am I talking any kind of sense? He's not like Carrot, he's not a hero, he just gets on with things and does the job according to his lights, and his lights are fucking fantastic lights, but they're also a bit flawed and cracked sometimes. Whereas in this book he was edging closer than I like towards being an extra-special person, a person shining with the inner fire of Justice, a person just a little bit above us all.
+ I take back the comparison to Unseen Academicals, which I really enjoyed but thought was weakly plotted. This, on the other hand, although not mind-twistingly intricate, was very strongly plotted, and the last third or so was absolutely gripping.
+ When Vimes did shine through as Vimes, he was just as capable of bringing me close to tears as usual. Guys, I don't think I will ever, ever get tired of seeing Vimes make people's lives better just by being decent - not shining with inner goodness or guided by divine light, frequently cranky and bitchy, but just... a good guy. I will be incredibly cheesy right now, but it reminds me of how amazing it is possible to be to each other, and how as full as the world is with awfulness, it is also full of such incredible people. (Which is partly why I disliked the moments when the narrative seemed to give in to Vimes' hype, because it's so incredibly important to me that anyone could do what he does, that ordinary people do extraordinary things. I have far too many feelings about the City Watch books, way more than is healthy.)
+ The whole plot was also precisely what I love about the Watch books, basically seeing the world taking one tiny step closer to niceness, driven largely by Vimes' aforementioned decency. And I know it's a deeply problematic narrative, in a world where the non-human races stand in for real life minorities, to tell the story of 'hey so almost single-handedly this human guy has improved the lot of the goblin race OH MY GOD ISN'T HE AMAZING?' but oh God I'm in love with it anyway. Even though I wish we'd gotten a deeper look at the goblins, and I wanted to know more about the ones that were taken off to Howondaland and whether any of the ones that were alive when Wee Mad Arthur found them made it home, and would basically have liked the story to have spent a bit more time with them and been a bit less (only a bit less) about Sam Vimes, I still had many, many moments of heart-clutching. (Although I would love the story of how Stinky gets the goblins home, because Stinky is also a Big Damn Hero and it would be fascinating to read.)
+ Angua's thought about how everyone becomes human and the melting pot only melts in one direction was excellent and sharp and biting and I wish it had been more than a throwaway moment, because yes, and it would have been an excellent counterpoint to the bulk of the story, which was mostly uncritically about how the goblins needed to be saved and educated.
+ Hey, so, this might not be all that noticeable to people, but Sybil and Vimes get a sex life! They haven't really had that before. I mean, obviously Young Sam exists, they have, but scrupulously and entirely off-screen, whereas in this book I counted one reference to bath sex, one reference to a passionate hello kiss involving 'suction', and one reference to Vimes making dirty suggestions in Sybil's ear. It was all much further than PTerry goes normally, and was delightful.
+/- I'm not sure how I feel about the handling of the class stuff. This is a book which spends a lot of the first third or so meandering about class and... I don't know. I appreciate the points that it's always more ambiguous than it seems, but at the same time... I don't know. I couldn't quite grasp the thrust of it - maybe there was no thrust, just meandering - but I do know that the spinning housemaids seemed to be a pretty clear example of something where Sybil or Vimes could have just told the housekeeper that they should stop doing that. I also didn't like Sybil's 'but they are demeaned' bit - I get her point about the relative value of the housemaids versus Vimes, and that value is not worth, but I don't think that saying that they are demeaned is a decent excuse, and saying that her grandmother was being cruel to be kind in instructing that any housemaid not spinning to face the wall when a gentleman went past would be fired is a bit... patronising. I don't know.
Also posted on Dreamwidth at http://surexit.dreamwidth.org/16604.html with
comments. Comment wherever you like.