something about rincewind panicking on the back of a dragon (something made entirely of magic. something that fundamentally isn’t really there.), suspended thousands of feet in the air.
IT WON'T WORK, laughed a voice like the dull toning of a funeral bell, YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN THEM.
something about spelter panicking on the top of coin’s tower (something made entirely of magic. something that fundamentally isn’t really there.), suspended thousands of feet in the air.
The thought shocked him. He was a wizard, and he was worrying about magic.
something about how the events of everything that has happened between the light fantastic and sourcery has happened because of the things that are fundamentally wrong with wizard society. and about the way that this is communicated through how they think of magic, the way it is a thing they use, and the way that even as far back as the color of magic, we see how rincewind is just,,, fundamentally the opposite of all of this. the ways he doesn’t perform wizard society. the ways he’s set up to be its textual contrast. how he fundamentally doesn’t think of magic in the same way - and @thestarsarelaughing has put this more eloquently than i ever could, but the way that rincewind has a mistrust of it that lends itself to a respect that other wizards don’t have?
thinks about spelter sounding almost like rincewind. while breaking from the view of magic that has allowed coin’s takeover in the first place. suspended on something made entirely of magic, something that isn’t really there, thousands and thousands of feet in the air.
A wizard was all I wanted to be.
@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.
