My roommate asked me to do a guest spot in his #DnD campaign as a Nac Mac Feegle, from the #TerryPratchett book the Wee Free Men, so I reread the book for the first time since middle school. Not sure if anyone else has read it and remembers it, but the main character is a very ordinary girl, aside from the fact she thinks more than she feels, she asks exacting questions when other folks just want the vagueries.
"Yes! I’m me! I am careful and logical and I look up things I don’t understand! When I hear people use the wrong words, I get edgy! I am good with cheese. I read books fast! I think! And I always have a piece of string! That’s the kind of person I am!"
And when she does feel... she feels everything. The climax of the book had her tapping into a level of sensory awareness that she realized she would need to block out to maintain going about her life.
She was oft accused of being selfish, and her taking on the mantle of her duty was her recognizing that yes, she was selfish. Everything in her world was hers, and when something is yours you have an obligation to it:
“Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine! I have a duty!”
Tiffany Aching is frequently described as a hero written for ordinary girls, by which they mean the ones who will never be drop-dead gorgeous and/or astrophysicists, the girls who will need to get through life with common sense and resourcefulness... But the only folks I've known in my day-to-day with that level of Hag to them have never been ordinary, or at least we are the ones painted by the world as "divergent." And of course, as much as all the talk around the book describes Tiffany as a "normal girl," in universe, she isn't. All of these things set her apart. She's a witch. And while things do go all right for Tiffany, others accused of witchiness in this world find themselves ostracized, and shunned, and left to die in the elements.
Pratchett thinks he wrote a hero for normal girls, but I think he missed the mark by fair bit, and it's not a bad thing. I think he wrote a hero for the kind of kid I was.
#discworld #TiffanyAching #BookReview #TheWeeFreeMen #Witch
Sean Eric Fagan
Roland Maurice
Kara Goldfinch
Poor 'Possum
CB Uí Foghlú
Muss es sein?