History Literature / Wintersmith

* PaintingTheFrostOnWindows: The titular {Wintersmith and his counterpart the Summer Lady, who bring and end the seasons. Spring and Fall aren't mentioned. It seems that they're the highest form of this in Discworld as JackFrost has shown up before painting the forst on windows, guess they're the boss.

* PutThemAllOutOfMyMisery: [[spoiler:the Wintersmith thinks it, at this point her, can win Tiffany's heart by saving people from their constant fear of death... forever.]]

* ReturningTheWeddingRing: [[spoiler:After Tiffany defeats the Wintersmith, he leaves behind the iron nail he'd collected to be human, she has it fashioned into a ring. When the Morris dancers drop by for the year, she gives the ring back to a man with the Wintersmith's eyes as a way to say that it would never work out since she's a human and the Wintersmith is basically a force of nature.]]

* SelfMadeMyth: Tiffany discovers that her mentor for this book, Miss Treason relies heavily on cultivating an air of witchy mystique in order to impress those in her steading. This includes buying props like fake skulls and a cobweb-making machine from a novelty company, or making up stories about herself, stories like that she keeps a demon in her basement or that her crude iron pocket watch is a clockwork replacement heart. She's disappointed to hear some of the older stories are dying out, like the bit about her cutting people's bellies open with her thumbnail on Hogswatchnight if they've been bad.
* TheSimpleLifeIsSimple: DiscussedTrope when Tiffany gets given a romance novel, and thus bad, by the Nac Mac Feegle and completely misses the point of the story, mostly concerned with how the portrayal of farm life is all wrong.
* SingleSeasonCountry: Explored with the sections of the disc hubwards and rim wards. [[spoiler: The Wintersmith goes flying over a landscape of snow-covered trees in a blizzard, singing in Russian about the glories of snow in one of them.]] The book also shows this trope is but the start of a slippery slop into a WorldOfSilence.

** Tiffany contemplates the awful reality of a very high (ice) statue of herself, created in tribute to her. She notes, with resignation, the head and shoulders are already dripping with the tribute of bird-poo. Later, [[Radio/TheHitchHikersGuideToTheGalaxy1978 wearing a dressing-gown, she goes in search of a cup of tea]]
* {{Snowlem}}: The Wintersmith's attempts to create a man ends up with this. He has the various elements (Iron enough to make a nail, etc.), but they are stuck together haphazardly into a mostly-snow body; he keeps trying to make the body work better as the story goes on, even managing a basic digestive system, but still isn't exactly sure how its supposed to work.

* StealthInsult: Petulia remarks that when Annagramma calls her "the pig witch" there's too much "pig" and not enough "witch".

* TheTalk : Delivered by [[DirtyOldWoman Nanny Ogg]]. Sort of. Tiffany keeps on expecting it, and eventually bluntly tells Nanny Ogg that having grown up on a farm with a bunch of older sisters she knows about sex already. It turns out Nanny Ogg knows that, and gives her a talk on relationships instead.

* ThinksLikeARomanceNovel: Subverted, a Nac Mac Feegle provided romance novel, in part for the purposes of education to help Tiffany with the Wintersmith... and she thinks all the characters should just be more sensible.

** Annagramma gets one too, [[spoiler: her use of wizard magic comes into play when she directly fireballs the Wintersmith, and she manages to get Tiffany evacuated despite her being in complete shock.]]

* WhatKindOfLamePowerIsHeartAnyway:

* WickedWitch: Miss Treason, Tiffany's new mentor, cultivates this image more than most. When asked why, Treason revels that if given a good look she'll be revealed as just a blind, deaf, and extremely old woman.

* XanatosGambit: Granny Weatherwax pulls one when [[spoiler: Miss Treason dies]] and there's an opening for her cottage. She backs Tiffany for the cottage and turns it into a choice between Tiffany or Annagramma. If Tiffany gets the position, she'll do a good job and showcase to all the witches how well Granny's methods work. If Annagramma gets the position, she'll fail and make Tiffany help her, showing the other witches that Annagramma's methods don't work and how well Granny's methods work by helping her back on her feet. Tiffany sees through the first half of Granny's plan, so she organizes a campaign to assist Annagramma, so that she at least doesn't fail. Then at the end Tiffany realizes the full plan; [[spoiler:get Annagramma the cottage, because the responsibility will do her good, let the trainee witches assist Annagramma, because she could do with humility and sense, and then let it be known that Annagramma's teacher, Miss Earwig, is no good, Granny's the best, and Annagramma's on her way to being a competent witch]]. The only one who suffers anything is Miss Earwig, everybody else gains.

** To explain, he brought a normal sword on his [[spoiler:katabasis to retrieve the Summer Lady]] only he threw it away for being too heavy. But since imagined things in the Underworld can become real he calls up his idea of a sword from all his practising, creating the platonic ideal of a sword.

* AgonyBeam: PlayedWith Granny Weatherwax shows that very skilled witches like her can take the pain of an ailing patient out of their body and transfer it to somewhere else. She warns Tiffany that it can kill the user if they aren't careful.

* AnIcePerson: What with being the arch spirit of winter and all, The Wintersmith showcases all kinds of ice and related seasonal magic. Were takings person-shaped icebergs and worse.
* AnimateInanimateObject: Horace the cheese. See he's a wheel of Lancre Blue, which is noted below in ContinuityNod to be abnormally lively for cheese when made ''normally''. Since Tiffany Aching, who is ''very'' good with cheese, made Horace, he apparently achieved sapience and started hanging out with the Nac Mac Feegle, who are also small, blue, and belligerent.

* AntiIntellectualism: Apparently somewhat of a driving force behind [[BurnTheWitch hostility to witches]]; after all, "witch" basically means "someone who knows more than you". This process feeds on itself -- the stupider a region's inhabitants get, the more suspicious they are of witches (and intelligence in general), so they keep on driving them out and decreasing the average local intellect. The inhabitants of Dogbend are now so stupid that, in Miss Tick's opinion, they'll soon be throwing rocks at pigs for being too smart, but this also makes them incredibly easy to fool -- she's planted a book called ''Magavenatio Obtusis''[[labelnote:*]] er... ''Witch-hunting for Dumb People''[[/labelnote]] in the town, and they follow its instructions to the letter, meaning that whenever she's caught they give her a hot meal and a comfortable room for the night, stuff two sixpences in her boots and then dump her in the river with easily-untied ropes round her arms and legs.

* TheBackwardsR: When the story, and the titular character touches on a place where [[MotherRussiaMakesYouStrong bitter cold is seen as normal]] and murderously violent blizzards are commonplace. When the elemental spirit goes riding through the snowstorm, one a horse that is essentially an extension of itself, and singing in the region's native tongue, which is rendered in the text as Russian Cyrillic.
* BadassBookworm: Tiffany and Roland, which really helps them here with understanding them and navigating the underworld.

* BalanceBetweenGoodAndEvil: Between the seasons, mainly Summer and Winter. See just like England in our world, there are [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_dance morris dancer]]s who perform their ritualistic dance in spring with bells and colourful costumes to welcome in the summer. However, in order to balance this, there are also ''Dark'' morris dancers who use silent bells and black costumes, dancing in the autumn to welcome in the winter. Then Tiffany disrupts the dance and disturbs the equilibrium.

* BlindSeer: Miss Treason, she gets around this be "borrowing" the eyes of mice and ravens.

* BriarPatching: Showcases a particularly elaborate version where travelling witch Miss Tick has written a ''book'' (''[[FauxToGuide Witchhunting for Dumb People]]'') for would-be witch-hunters, explaining that [[BurnTheWitch burning a witch]] just makes her angry, and the best plan is to rob her of her powers by giving her soup ([[DoesNotLikeSpam not tomato, as that would make her ''more'' powerful]]), then providing pillows and blankets to trick her into going to sleep, and later waking her quietly with a cup of tea and a chocolate biscuit (a ginger biscuit may also work, plain would be a very bad idea), tying her hands with a bosun's knot and throwing her in the river. The knot is easily undone, and Miss Tick was a swimming champion at school and keeps in form.

* CallingTheOldWomanOut: After leading a private campaign of defiance against his usurping, embezzling aunts for most of the book, Roland [[spoiler: finally stops even pretending to be polite when they threaten to involve his sick father]]. Countering that ''he'' will tell his father about the missing silver candlesticks and monies that have gone missing from the strong boxes.

* CheerfulFuneral: As is common with a Discworld magic-user, [[spoiler:Miss Treason]] calls in all her colleagues and gets a lot of food for everyone and there's a lot conviviality, also politicking which many witches find amusing.

* ClingyMacGuffin: Tiffany's silver horse necklace, she lost it in the morris dance only for the inchoate Wintersmith to return it to her. Granny later has her get rid of it near later start to keep the Wintersmith from finding her, and near the end of the book finds it in the guts of a pike caught by her little brother. Later still, Granny Weatherwax makes some remarks hinting she anticipated something like this might happen, even asking what kind of fish Tiffany found the necklace in.

* CoolOldLady: Nanny Ogg, as always. Here it shows her from tiffany's point of view. The tyrannical matriarch of a large family who's also TheSocialExpert that has been able to put up and keep up with Granny Weatherwax for ''decades''.

* CuteKitten: You (yes, that's her name), softens Granny Weatherwax. Slightly. Deny it though she may. Nanny Ogg's angelically challenged tomcat Greebo [[BlatantLies (he's a big softy, really)]], on the other hand, found an encounter with her [[BewareTheNiceOnes somewhat disquieting, to say the least.]]

** Seems like Rincwind's theory of a limited number of real people being transposed across the Discworld (pondered in Literature/TheLastContinent) might even applies to deities.

* FlyingBroomstick: Tiffany Aching starts riding a broomstick in this book, it has two smaller brooms attached to the back to keep her stable. These get removed as she gets more comfortable.

* GodCouple: PlayedWith; the Wintersmith and the Summer Lady have been in a dance for eternity never quite meeting but going on none the less. When the Wintersmith [[spoiler:mistakes tiffany]] for the Summer Lady he acts like an obsessed stalker, when the Summer Lady chimes in she comes across as more possessive then actually in love.

* IceMagicIsWater: {{Averted}}, while incredibly flexible with the use of Ice the Wintersmith is ''Never'' shown manipulating liquid water.
* IcePalace: Once the title character has become capable of understanding why it would, it creates an ice palace for it (well "him") and the Summer Lady to live in.

* InvisibleToAdults: By the rules of Discworld, only children could hear the Wintersmith questions since adults "knew" that invisible creatures don't talk from out of thin air, or in this case through snowmen. The only other humans who could are [[RobeAndWizardHat the ones with pointy hats]], who have trained themselves to "see what's really there".
* ItWasAGift: The silver necklace that Roland gave Tiffany again features significantly in the plots though now as a ClingyMacGuffin.

** [[spoiler:Later at the Wintersmith's IcePalace Tiffany checks the fig leaves on all the classical statuary are firmly fixed in place, in a spirit of inquiry]].

* LivingLegend: Miss Treason is in line for this, albeit for a small section of the country, a few people. She even quizzes Tiffany on a few of the stories and is 'delighted'' when it turns out Tiffany heard one she didn't make.

* ManInAKilt: The Nac Mac Feegle, are about six inches high, but have enough muscle to lift oxen by the feet, they shouldn't even look human let alone have attractive legs, at least the artwork here reflects this. Roland finally asks the perennial question if anything is worn underneath...

* MonsterShapedMountain: Girl-shaped icebergs, rather. [[spoiler:The Wintersmith thought Tiffany would like them and didn't consider the danger to shipping which horrifies Tiffany.]]

* MoodWhiplash: Lighthearted example, Tiffany Aching talks to the Wintersmith, personification of winter (obviously), the guy behind snowflakes, hurricanes, avalanches and the like, while Annagramma Hawkin snores in the background.

* MundaneMadeAwesome: Rob Anybody spelling "marmalade". Not very well, but Granny Weatherwax admits it was "a heroic effort" especially given the feegle is both semi-literate and Sesquipedalophobic enough that even '''short''' words give him trouble.

* MyNaymeIs: We finally learn that Roland's last name "Chumsfanleigh". A footnote tells us that it's "Pronounced Chuffley" and that "it wasn't his fault".
* NeverMessWithGranny: As always; Granny Weatherwax, here we see [[spoiler:her intersect with the Wintersmith and cause '''him''' to discorporate.]] Another one shows up too Miss Treason. Granny is [[InsistentTerminology Mistress Weatherwax]] to other people and witches who have not earned the right to call her Granny yet. Miss Treason refers to her as "the girl Weatherwax". Possibly because she's 113 years old and is herself a respected witch.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: [[spoiler: Tiffany is repeatedly reminded that this entire trouble was caused her feet wanting to dance and not thinking first.]]

** Tiffany contemplates the awful reality of a very high (ice) statue of herself, created in tribute to her. She notes, with resignation, the head and shoulders are already dripping with the tribute of bird-poo. Later, [[Radio/TheHitchHikersGuideToTheGalaxy wearing a dressing-gown, she goes in search of a cup of tea]]