On Rincewind

Rincewind, we are -told, is a wizard. On the Disc, wizarding is a profession; Pratchett based -them on the English academic system, with colleges and bursars and tenure. A -wizard is a man of some academic distinction, or a student of such a man; -career wizards are uniformly well-fed, of sound body (if not necessarily of -sound mind) reasonably dressed, opinionated, crankish, and - importantly - -capable of magic.

Rincewind is a wizard: he is not well fed, having spent his life being thrust -from one adventure to the next; his body is more attuned for running away -from things than it is for meandering the halls or sitting by a fire; his -opinions largely revolve around “is this new thing going to eat me,” rather -than more abstract matters; importantly, he is completely incapable of magic, -in spite of years of study.

Rincewind is a wizard, and the interesting thing about that is that the -reader is expected (and I certainly did) take both his and the narrator's -insistence on it at face value. Why shouldn't we?

I had a conversation with @aeletich a while -back, while she was teaching herself to program. I don't recall exactly what -prompted it, but at one point I told her to stop worrying about all the -better programmers out there: from everyone else's point of view, she was -already a wizard. There might be better wizards, and worse wizards, but she'd -already passed any sort of bright line delimiting “not a programmer” from -“programmer.”

I think self-identification is important, and overlooked.

- - - -

- - -comments powered by Disqus -

- - - - - -