#the wintersmith
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The Winter is Coming ❄ Hence why I'll re-read The Wintersmith 😊
#am reading#books#the winter is coming#the wintersmith#terry pratchett#discworld#Tiffany Aching#Tonička Bolavá#zeměplocha#zimoděj
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"She actually tried to dance with the Wintersmith," Miss Treason repeated. "I told her not to."
"Ach, people're are always tellin' us not tae do things," said Rob Anybody. "That's how we ken what's the most interestin' things tae do!"
Miss Treason stared at him with the eyes of one mouse, two ravens, several moths, and an earwig.
"Indeed," she said, and sighed. "Yes. The trouble with being this old, you know, is that being young is so far away from me now that it seems sometimes that it happened to someone else. A long life is not what it's cracked up to be, that is a fact."
Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith
#miss treason#rob anybody#tiffany aching#the wintersmith#wintersmith#discworld#terry pratchett#growing up#witches#nac mac feegle#borrowing#maturity#wisdom#age#retrospect#interesting#rules#forbidden#told her not to#a long life
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Cold winter: The Wintersmith
THE WINTERSMITH
Category: Fantasy literature / Pratchett’s Discworld
There is a folk dance in England and Wales called “The Morris dance”. A very popular entertainment in rural areas and villages, usually performed during spring or summer festivals, it is a centuries-old tradition dating back to Henry VIII, Edward VI and Shakespeare, and yet still practiced today. There are many different groups and associations perpetuating this tradition that got with times its own terminology, its own subgenres and a variety of different choreographies. The dancers gather to move according to the sound of a fiddle or a pipe and tabor (more recently, instruments such as melodeon and accordion are allowed), holding sticks, swords and handkerchiefs they must move and clap according to the rhythm of the music, and dressed all in white (or sometimes with other bright colors such as green and blue) with bells-covered clothes.
In Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, the Morris dance is also a rural tradition beloved by the folks of mountains, hills and villages – always celebrated in spring. But there is another dance… A secret dance nobody talks about. A dance performed in autumn, deep into the shadows of the woods. A Morris dance where the dancers are dressed in black and where the bells make no sound. It is the Black Morris, and the same way the “white” Morris welcomes in spring summer returned, the Black Morris celebrates in autumn the coming of winter. The white Morris is merry, festive and joyful ; the black Morris is quiet, austere, and yet just as beautiful and powerful as its spring counterpart. But much more dangerous, as a young girl learned one day…
Tiffany Aching is a young witch in training, and one day her mentor, a much, MUCH older witch (more than a hundred years old) introduces her to the dark and silent Morris dance of autumn. But not understanding fully the implications of the ritual, charmed by the grace and intensity of the dance, and seeing that there is an empty spot left in the middle of the dance, she throws herself into it, dancing with the silent and black-clad Morris men… And gains an unwitting love.
For you see, there is always in the Discworld’s Morris dance an empty spot left in the middle of the dancing crowd. For it is a place left so that two beings can dance… two immortal, natural, powerful beings, the dual anthropomorphic personification of the seasons known as the Summer Lady and the Wintersmith. In the springtime Morris the Summer Lady comes to dance with the old, aging, dying Wintersmith, while in the Dark Morris the Wintersmith comes to dance with the fading Summer Lady. And as Tiffany Aching jumped into the dance, without knowing it she usurped the Summer Lady’s place in the dance, and danced with the Wintersmith… for disastrous consequences.
The Wintersmith had never danced with anyone else than the Summer Lady before… It was the first time he saw another female being place itself as his equal, dance with him to welcome his return… and he immediately fell in love. Or at least THOUGHT he fell in love – for the Wintersmith, despite all the almanacs depicting him as an old ice-covered man, is not comparable to a human being, he is barely a personification. He is winter itself, he is the gales and the blizzards and the avalanches and the frosts, and lacks much of the “anthropomorphic” part in “anthropomorphic personification”. And so he lacks human emotions… but he felt something he could only interpret as love.
The result is disastrous... Imagine mixing the awkward first love of a teenage boy who never saw a girl before, with the disastrous consequences of winter itself deciding to live with you forever and never leave. Tiffany herself realizes with horror what she did, when the snowflakes are all suddenly shaped like her face, and when gigantic iceberg-sculptures of her start floating on the sea, and when she discovers that by taking the Summer Lady's place in the dance, she actually usurped her very role and existence, preventing her from waking up of her winter sleep... The Wintersmith's love for her might very well plunge the world into an endless ice age.
But even more worrying is that the Wintersmith, to try to be able to “love” Tiffany better, starts searching for a way to become HUMAN. It wanders throughout the world, searching for the key to the mystery – how can a sentient season become a human being. And, possessing a snowman built by children (which in the Discworld are either an unconscious form of worship of the winter spirits such as the Wintersmith, or a primitive leftover of the time of the Ice Giants – but more about that later), it asks them how to become a man… And the children tell him a little poem everybody knows, a nursery rhyme all kids know about, and that goes as such…
“Iron enough to make a nail / Lime enough to paint a wall / Water enough to drown a dog / Sulphur enough to stop the fleas / Potash enough to wash a shirt / Gold enough to buy a bean / Silver enough to coat a pin / Lead enough to ballast a bird / Phosphor enough to light the town / Poison enough to kill a cow”.
Trusting these words with the naivety of a semi-occult semi-natural embodiment of ice and snow, the Wintersmith starts collecting those various ingredients (with due tests to make sure they fit the recipe), in order to build himself a human body… But despite all of his efforts, being just natural elements and a sentient weather, the Wintersmith cannot understand the last three lines of the rhyme, that yet are the most important of them all… “Strength enough to build a home / Time enough to hold a child / Love enough to break a heart”.
- - - - - -
While the Morris dance is not an invention of Terry Pratchett, as I pointed out before, his Dark Morris is indeed a pure invention… And yet, said invention became so popular and well-known that the Morris clubs and Morris associations actually decided to invent a real-life Dark Morris in honor of Pratchett’s invention. And thus, life imitates art…
“The Wintersmith” is the third book of the “Tiffany Aching” series, a series of young adult fantasy novels centered around the titular Tiffany, a witch-in-training who has to faces the various supernatural (or too-natural) dangers offered by the work of a witch in the Discworld. Note that while the Tiffany Aching books started as their own individual series, a spin-off of Pratchett’s main fantasy series for adults, the Discworld books, with time it became more and more part of the Discworld series to the point it is now the last of the cycles forming the vast work that is the Discworld books.
Interestingly, the Wintersmith is not actually the only spirit of the winter weather to have appeared… For you see, in earlier books of the Discworld series, Jack Frost himself appeared. He appeared briefly in “Reaper Man” (about the Grim Reaper deciding to quit his job) and in “Hogfather” (about someone’s attempt at murdering the Discworld’s equivalent of Santa Claus, and Death being forced to replace him), as the spirit responsible for drawings the “frost ferns” on the windows… At least until the events of “Hogfather”, where he was encouraged to explore his creativity and start drawing things other than ferns on windows. Like paisley.
And just as interestingly, the topic of why people build snowmen was explored much, much earlier in the Discworld series… in the very first books. While in the Wintersmith book, the snowmen are tied to the existence of the Wintersmith (who uses them as rustic bodies he briefly possesses), in the early Discworld stories we learn that their existence might be because humanity’s unconscious spirit remembers the Ice Giants… The eternal enemies of the Discworld’s gods, that the latter banished forever due a petty neighborhood feud of music being played too loud at night and a borrowed lawnmower never returned; and whose return will herald the Apocralypse (Discworld’s apocryphal apocalypse). And when we see them return, bringing with them an eternal ice-age certain to kill all living life on the Discworld, riding giant glaciers as if they were horses, the narration points out that they have obviously, something in common with the snowmen children build around the world every winter… if said snowmen were giant-sized and slightly more humanoid, made entirely of ice, much uglier, and much more vicious looking.
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the tiffany quote where she's like "these are real fucking PEOPLE you are condescending to"
#hold on ill grab it. its tiffany night i cant stop thinking about her#hmmm it was in#wintersmith#i think?#discworld
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Villain Song Showdown Preliminary Round #25
Top two will make it into the bracket
Barbie only has one more spot though.
Songs below the cut
After All - Villain: Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent
youtube
Friends in Low Places - Villain: Cesare
youtube
Ignorance is Bliss - Villain: Bowser
youtube
Easy to Breathe - Villain: The grandpa
youtube
Crown of Ice - Villain: Wintersmith
youtube
Wintersmith - Villain: Wintersmith
youtube
The Rat Song - Villain: The rats
youtube
Wonderful Me - Villain: Lydia
youtube
How Can I Refuse? Reprise - Villain: Preminger
youtube
Slick - Villain: Matthew Patel
youtube
#villain song showdown#preliminary round#ever after#ever after the musical#bigtop burger#wintersmith#steeleye span#nintendo#white knuckle scorin#barbie#barbie as the island princess#barbie and the diamond castle#barbie as the princess and the pauper#scott pilgrim vs the world#tournament poll#Youtube
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Granny Weatherwax wasn’t popular with anyone much – except when they needed her. When Death was standing by the cradle or the axe slipped in the woods and blood was soaking into the moss, you sent someone hurrying to the cold, gnarly little cottage in the clearing. When all hope was gone, you called for Granny Weatherwax, because she was the best.
-- Terry Pratchett - Wintersmith
#Terry Pratchett#discworld quotes#GNU Terry Pratchett#quotes#Wintersmith#Granny Weatherwax#Esmerelda Weatherwax
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Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett
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an aardman tiffany aching film series would fix me
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"Blessings be upon this house," said Granny, but in a voice that suggested that if blessings needed to be taken away, she could do that, too.
Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett
#gnu terry pratchett#tiffany aching#wintersmith#granny weatherwax#old toph has Granny Weatherwax vibes
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Stay Awake || Ed & Stede by Wintersmith.
#ofmd#blackbonnet#gentlebeard#ed x stede#stede bonnet#ed teach#edward teach#sansael talks#my videos#Wintersmith.
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That was the thing about witches. They were, according to Granny Weatherwax, "people what looks up." She didn't explain. She seldom explained. She didn't mean people who looked at the sky; everyone did that. She probably meant that they looked up above the everyday chores and wondered, "What's all this about? How does it work? What should I do? What am I for?" And possibly even: "Is there anything worn under the kilt?"
Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith
#granny weatherwax#esme weatherwax#tiffany aching#wintersmith#discworld#terry pratchett#witches#people#kilts#psychology#perspective#reflection#introspection#philosophy#explanations#people what looks up#the thing about witches
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"It was a witch. You could not mistake it. She -- it -- was probably a she, but some things are so horrible that worrying about how to address a letter to them is silly --"
gender goals👏
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Now, Tiffany, that's how you make a FIREBALL. Can you make a fireball, Tiffany, can you?
I wonder how they got along after Wintersmith...
#discworld#discworld fanart#gnu terry pratchett#tiffany aching#annagramma hawkin#Perhaps they will grow into a power duo in the future?#like Nanny and Granny?#Or more like two Grannies?#They don't have to get along from the very beginning...#OH HOW I HATED ANNAGRAMMA WHEN I FIRST MET HER#she is now Tolerable#post-wintersmith
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Just going to dump my notes file of favorite quotes from The Fifth Elephant and Wintersmith here, it's an odd pairing but what the heck.
"Sometimes," Vetinari said, testily, "it really does seem to me that the culture of cynicism in the Watch is... is..."
"Insufficient?" said Vimes.
-- Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant
He enjoyed moments like these, the little bowl of time when the crime lay before him and he believed that the world was capable of being solved.
-- Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant
"I hate when you get too many clues, it makes it so damn hard to solve anything."
-- Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant
"Dere's guys in der road," said the troll. "Dey got halibuts."
Vimes looked out of the windows. There were half a dozen guards, and they did indeed have halberds.
-- Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant
"Yes," mumbled Vimes, experiencing vertigo and seasickness in one tight green package.
-- Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant
It wasn't just that his brain was writing checks that his body couldn't cash. It had gone beyond that. Now his feet were borrowing money that his legs hadn't got, and his back muscles were looking for loose change under the sofa cushions.
-- Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant
"Where should I fire it, Mister Vimes?"
"Good grief, not in here! This is an enclosed building!"
"Only up until I pull dis trigger, sir."
-- Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant
Vimes sat and stared. His head felt like some vast sea that had just been parted by a prophet. Where there should have been activity, there was just bare sand and the occasional floundering fish.
-- Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant
"This I choose to do. If there is a price, this I choose to pay. If it is my death, then I choose to die. Where this takes me, there I choose to go. I choose. This I choose to do."
-- Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith
(Tiffany Aching is thirteen years old here)
You had to deal every day with people who were foolish and lazy and untruthful and downright unpleasant, and you could certainly end up thinking that the world would be considerably improved if you gave them a slap. But you didn't because, as Miss Tick had once explained: a) it would make the world a better place for only a very short time; b) it would then make the world a slightly worse place; and c) you're not supposed to be as stupid as they are.
-- Terry Pratchett, Wintersmith
I mean the range from comic quips to unusual yet perfect metaphors to breathtaking insights is just. How.
#terry pratchett#terry pratchett gnu#discworld#sam vimes#havelock vetinari#detritus#tiffany aching#the fifth elephant#wintersmith
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youtube
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addendum to my ongoing "Reigen is a Discworld witch" agenda: Mogami is very specifically a Discworld witch who went bad
#listening to the Wintersmith album again and remembering how much the idea of 'going to the dark' in Discworld#is about loneliness#about trying to better the world and feeling like you're getting nothing back from it until that feeling eats you#about shutting yourself off from other people until all you have are the nasty little whispers in the back of your own head#it's a very specific kind of tragedy#anyway. niche post but i'm right#the turtle moves#mob talk
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