@thestarsarelaughing first of all thank you i KNEW you would get me.
second of all!! i’m thinking about rincewind’s complaints about magic!!! the reasons why he says it doesn’t make sense, calls the system stupid - it reads to me like every time he complains about the way magic is done or taught, it’s because rincewind has this sort of instinctual awareness that discworld magic is a SOFT magic system, and so of course the way the other wizards treat it like a hard magic system makes no sense to him!!!
look at my linguistics nerd look at him of course it makes more sense to him as a soft system the irony of it all is that a soft system is what he’s wired for. screams.
and the thing is, according to the text, rincewind is RIGHT. even carding calls the wizard levels fake!! they’re just a rationing system!! the problem with the whole system as is is the way it’s treated as this concrete thing, when really it isn’t.
and like. soft systems can be SO useful. language is a soft system and it is incredibly useful!! but. i don’t know. something about the difference between utilizing a medium for what it is, versus insisting that something is an infallible, irreproachable structure when really it isn’t.
and like,,,,,,, okay not to bring MORE characters into this (gee, rincewind, how come pratchett lets you have so many narrative foils/parallels?), but THAT’S the trymon v. rincewind fight!! like when it comes down to it, none of the wizards actually care what trymon is doing with the power he has, just that he has it, and therefore it’s just,,, an unimpeachable fact of their structure that trymon is in charge now and they’d better congratulate him. trymon who can’t cast the octavo, actually, not without turning himself into a portal for the dungeon dimensions. where like. rincewind doesn’t have an interest in all that. rincewind and rincewind alone isn’t going to congratulate trymon. and rincewind alone is capable of actually casting the octavo, properly, for real, and yes because at the end of the day i’m a tolkien nerd and therefore everything is about the linguistics, it’s worth looking at their respective relationships with linguistics as a soft system with regards with to their relationship to both magical and structural power. trymon, the representation of societal power, doesn’t value the soft system as a soft system. rincewind, his foil, the one outside of society, does, and doing so is one of his greatest strengths. and rincewind doesn’t succeed alone either, and i think that’s worth noting also, because like. using linguistics to represent that relationship to power - it’s a very interpersonal thing. something about the inherent lack of value for personhood that is inherent to success within the framework of gathering societal power. (the fact that rincewind does succeed because that IS an intrinsic value of his. that this is the thing that runs counter to being valued in wizard society.)
the lack of value for anything that can be produced by people anymore seen in the sourcery takeover.
the thing that’s been made load-bearing is a thing that a sufficiently powerful person believes in, and it’s being relied on over people.
i have lost the plot, but i am chewing on this.