thinking about the sequence of scenes in sourcery that are cut together like:
- rincewind and conina’s “I take after my father” talk, in which conina vents about how she (given her inherent skillset), isn’t seen as someone who could be a hairdresser, to which rincewind specifically responds that he gets how it is, he wanted to be a wizard,
- coin turns the walls of the UU great hall to glass. as the light filters in, all the rich gilded tapestries and ornate wizard robes are revealed to be tattered and old and fading,
- conina cuts rincewind’s hair for him. rincewind likes the way the cut looks on himself. (AND off the top of my head, this scene is the origin of rincewind declaring that the fact that he’s a wizard is the only thing he’s sure of),
- carding twirls about in new super fancy shiny robes, talking about how well they suit him. spelter hand stitches a decoy of the archchancellor’s hat. carding asks why? spelter says he wasn’t able to magic a copy up, but look how good this one is! see how much these common ankhstones look just like octarines! and we get some limits on what magic can do. on the way that it cannot make spelter look younger, cannot change spelter into something he is not.
about the way that the first thing coin reveals about wizard society is how it is mostly artifice. about how the first thing the wizards do with unlimited access to magic is to double right down on that artifice. about how when i flailed these thoughts at @potatoobsessed999, she immediately hit me back with the observation that rincewind, frequently described as wearing robes that are old and tattered, just. isn’t performing Being A Wizard in the way he’s expected to. coin reveals everything in the university for what it is, and all of it is tattered. rincewind isn’t less than any of it, he’s just… not performing.
and thinking about the gesture of conina cutting rincewind’s hair. about the two of them both being people who aren’t looked at and seen for who they know they are. about conina getting to do the craft she sees herself in, and in turn caring for rincewind’s physical appearance, a thing that is important to wizards but that rincewind himself doesn’t really keep up with. and, perhaps it’s worth noting that she doesn’t mess with his hat or his robes - just his hair. none of the things that have been textually associated with wizards and their idea of how a wizard should look and what a wizard should be, but something that’s been associated with what conina wants to be. someone who can relate to rincewind in this particular way taking an action that coaxes rincewind’s image of himself out, rather than forcing rincewind into the mold he has no interest in performing as.
and then for all of THAT to be chased immediately with that conversation between spelter and carding??????
very very normal about everything going on with appearance and identity and performance here.
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