In the eleventh part of\u00c2\u00a0Carpe Jugulum<\/i>, Reverend Oats has a crisis, while the witches stage an attempt at a coup. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Discworld<\/i>.<\/p>\n
You know, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve wondered what would have happened to me if I had been raised in a more forgiving household. If I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been encouraged to ask questions. If I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d sought out different people or a different church when I felt lost and alone. How would my path have turned out differently? By the time I converted to Catholicism, I had grown up being lied to. Any time something in the Bible confused me, I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t given an explanation; I was told to shut up and accept it. If I found a contradiction in something I was told, I was shamed for it. I was\u00c2\u00a0mean<\/i>. Or, even better, I lacked faith. If I had faith, why would I question what I was told?<\/p>\n
Thus, my education at Our Lady of Perpetual Help was doomed right from the start. I\u00c2\u00a0thirsted<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0for knowledge, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not what those classes were for. The closest word I can come up with to describe those days is \u00e2\u20ac\u0153indoctrination.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I was being taught how to be a Catholic, not how to believe in God. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t realize it at the time, but the\u00c2\u00a0latter<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0was what I was craving. So as my teachers \u00e2\u20ac\u201c two nice older women who volunteered to teach all of the adult converts and one nun who was one of the cruelest people I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever met \u00e2\u20ac\u201c \u00c2\u00a0guided us through the tenets of belief and many of the social practices of being a Catholic, I asked a lot of questions. I believed that I was now in the space where I could finally do that!<\/p>\n
Except I wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t. You ever have a teacher who is there for a one-sided purpose? They have no interest in engaging with anyone in the class, and instead, the speak, you accept, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s it. While the volunteer teachers were a little more sympathetic, the nun who worked with them was\u00c2\u00a0brutal<\/i>. She frequently told me to look up things on my own time or to talk with her after class. When I asked to meet with her? She said she had no time for people who doubted the word of God. When I struggled with things like original sin or Jesus\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sacrifice, I was told to shelve my concerns or I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never become a Catholic before I died.<\/p>\n
I wanted knowledge, and I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get it. Even worse, this all reminded me of the sort of environment I grew up in. None of those women knew that, of course, and I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t blame them for that. But as I read through Oats\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s theological struggle, I recognized myself in much of his anxiety. I wanted to believe and belong, but I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t make sense of that belief. In that sense, I was of two minds, too: one was what I desired, one was who I actually was. I wanted so badly to talk with God, but I lived under \u00e2\u20ac\u0153thick, uncommunicative clouds.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I drifted away from that, but the scene that opened this part took me right back there, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s kind of amazing how a book can do that.<\/p>\n
Anyway, now that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve gotten all serious on you, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talk about the Count. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that a\u00c2\u00a0Discworld<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0book has ever felt so\u00c2\u00a0dire<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0to me, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m exhilarated by the choices Pratchett has made here. First, the Count\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s encounter with the mob surprised me. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expect the threats because\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 well, I just assumed he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d control them all. He did it to a ballroom full of people in the palace; what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a little mob to him? Of course, there\u00c2\u00a0is<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0some control happening here to pacify these people, but just in case anyone gets any ideas at a later date, he reminds them all of the mercenaries he hired to protect him. This\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 honestly, I CAN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T IGNORE THE BIZARRE RELEVANCY OF THIS TO OUR MODERN TIMES. The Count took over this government and then hired people to violently intimidate anyone who protested it. OKAY.\u00c2\u00a0OKAY<\/i>.<\/p>\n
But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the Count\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s treatment of the witches that upset me the most. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not used to outright displays of power in these books because Pratchett doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t write straightforward fantasy. There aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t these huge battles where magic is thrown from one side to the other. Yet the Count\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s treatment of the witches is just so\u00c2\u00a0visceral<\/i>. He uses the weather to lift them in the air; he teases them over how powerless they are to stop him; he flings Reverend Oats across the room and knocks him out; and he does all of this with a muted sense of\u00c2\u00a0glee<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0in his actions. He enjoys this! He loves knowing that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s won and rubbing it in their faces.<\/p>\n
That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s even more the case with Granny Weatherwax, who arrives to launch her assault on the Count and FAILS. SHE FAILS SO SPECTACULARLY. And my mind couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even comprehend how that was possible. This is\u00c2\u00a0Granny!<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0She doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lose! She doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come in half-cocked! Now, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s entirely possible that this is part of some greater plan. Perhaps she\u00c2\u00a0meant<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0to appear weak to the Count so she could distract him. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good plan, right?<\/p>\n
Except the Count seemed to predict every thing Granny tried to do. Borrowing. Using other minds to hide herself. Even a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153shot across the bows\u00e2\u20ac\u009d! None of them work, and I gotta hand it to Pratchett: Granny had succeeded so frequently in the past that once she lost a\u00c2\u00a0lot<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0in these scenes, I became distressed. THIS WASN\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T HOW IT WAS SUPPOSED TO WORK. She can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do\u00c2\u00a0anything<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0like she normally can here, and thus, this whole sequence feels like a tipping point. Pratchett\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s books usually don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a dire point-of-no-return in them, but this one\u00c2\u00a0does<\/i>, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s SO SCARY.<\/p>\n
To make matters worse, Nanny and Magrat are stuck inside the palace, and Nanny isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t nearly drunk enough to resist every mental trick from the vampyres. Agnes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s screaming trick only sort of works, and Vlad\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 asks her on a date? Your timing is kind of terrible, dude. Anyway, the scene passed by in a blur; I honestly couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d been reading for twenty minutes straight because it was so thrilling and well-written! At the very least, Agnes and Oats were still together, and between the two of them, they were the strongest resistance force to the Magpyrs. So that was good, right?\u00c2\u00a0Right<\/i>?<\/p>\n Agnes hurried to the bottom of the steps, with the priest squelching along beside her.<\/p>\n There was already a wide and muddy puddle at this end of the courtyard. Granny Weatherwax lay in it, her dress torn, her hair uncoiling from its rock-hard bun.<\/p>\n There was blood on her neck.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n See, the Count had threatened to turn Granny into a vampire during this confrontation, but I na\u00c3\u00afvely assumed that this moment would be delayed so that Granny would have a chance to avoid it. This moment, however, shows that Pratchett is not fucking around. HOW THE FUCK IS HE GOING TO WRITE HIMSELF OUT OF THIS? They drank her blood and\u00c2\u00a0threw her into the street. IS THERE A CURE?\u00c2\u00a0<\/i>I mean\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 look, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if they actually turned her, but this implies they did, right?<\/p>\n What the fuck is this book, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=9JwSHb5P4G8<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – I am now on Patreon<\/a>! There are various levels of support, from $1 up to whatever you want! You’ll get to read a private blog, extra reviews, and other such rewards. I POST A LOT OF CUTE PHOTOS, OKAY. Think of it like a private Tumblr blog that only SPECIAL PEOPLE get to read.<\/b> In the eleventh part of\u00c2\u00a0Carpe Jugulum, Reverend Oats has a crisis, while the witches stage an attempt at a coup. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Discworld.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[526,463,248],"class_list":["post-4116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-carpe-jugulum","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n– I have updated my list of conventions and events for the remainder of the year and much of next year.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a>
\n– My Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0My next Double Features for Mark Watches have been announced here.<\/a>
\n<\/b>-\u00c2\u00a0Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0I’ve got a community page up that I’m running. Guaranteed shenanigans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"