In the eighth chapter of The Wee Free Men<\/i>, Tiffany faces the first nightmare in the Queen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Land. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld<\/i>.<\/p>\n
You wanna know how I knew this was gonna be an endless nightmare? Because this is my current<\/i> nightmare scenario:<\/p>\n The cold was like little needles all over her skin.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n YEAH, I NEED PERPETUAL SUNSHINE AT THIS POINT, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M FINE, NO MORE WINTER, WE\u00e2\u20ac\u2122RE GOOD OVER HERE. Y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have to wear thick coats over seven hundred layers anymore. Do you know how happy I am? That seasonal affective disorder hit me REAL hard, and this sunshine is like the most thorough soul bath I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever taken. IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S TRUE, I AM BARELY EXAGGERATING.<\/p>\n Okay, my ridiculousness aside: I can only imagine at this point just how much more fucked up this is going to get. See, I was fine with the onslaught of grimhounds that came upon the group at the start of this chapter. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d seen them before; we knew they could be defeated. Part of the way fear works for me is in the unknown. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s when I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know<\/i> if a creature or a nightmare has a weakness that it affects me more. Plus, the Nac Mac Feegle were prepared! Specifically, William was ready, and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The King Under Water\u00e2\u20ac\u009d was a perfect and eerie deterrent for these hounds. We were fine! All was fine! That whole effect like a video game rendering its background as you move closer to it was… well, it was disconcerting, but it was fine! I could deal with that!\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The air was cold and dead, like the air in old cellars.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve lived my whole life in states where cellars aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t a thing, so I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have any real experience or understanding of this phenomenon, so I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m still okay.<\/p>\n The light grew dimmer as they reached the forest. In between the trees it became blue and eerie.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Oh… okay. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s weird. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t particularly like that.<\/p>\n No birds, she thought.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yeah, sure, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s… not good. Creepier than the other details.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Time passes slower the deeper you go intae this place,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Rob Anybody quickly. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Years pass like days. The Quin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get tired o\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 the wee lad after a coupla months, mebbe. A coupla months here<\/i>, ye ken, where the time is slow an\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 heavy. But when he comes back into the mortal world, you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be an old lady, or mebbe you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be deid.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n See, I was ready for this<\/i> because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m somewhat knowledgeable about fairy worlds and their messed up worlds. This is pretty standard for fey dimensions, you know? So they definitely<\/i> need to get out as quickly as possibly, lest too much time pass in Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s normal world. Right?<\/p>\n She stopped and scraped some snow away from the base of a tree, and just for a moment there was nothing but grayness where it had been.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Oh, no, this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fine at all<\/i>, and I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like it and then WHAT THE FUCK WHY DID SHE SUDDENLY WAKE UP? Oh, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, that was it, the transitional point in which Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fears became so strong that the Queen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s world fully<\/i> took over. Of everything that happens here, I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the quiet domesticity of it all that just fucked me right the fuck up. Normalcy is twisted for Tiffany, just a little bit from what she knows. Her bedroom is the same, her mother was at the sink and washing dishes, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s her home, so everything is fine, right? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not weird that her mother isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t talking, right?<\/p>\n Oh gods, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all.<\/p>\n The walls were shifting. The floor moved. And now the thing turning around at the sink was not even human but just… stuff, no more human than a gingerbread man, gray as old dough, changing shape as it lumbered toward Tiffany.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n HI EVERYONE, I HATE THIS, AND IT WOULD HAVE BEEN AWFUL ON ITS OWN, BUT IT WAS ALSO ONE OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE EDITION I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M READING FROM AND: HARD FUCKING PASS<\/b>. What the fuck!!! No!!! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s mouth! Those eyes! I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122M A GOOD PERSON, DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T DO THIS TO ME.<\/p>\n Dromes, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. Dromes! I haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ever heard of them before, so I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if this is a Pratchett invention or some sort of rare fairy creature. Either way: I still hate them. And this is just the start<\/i>, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? What other nightmares of Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s might the Queen throw her way? What about Feegle<\/i> nightmares? Do they even have them???\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But this whole thought process is overwhelming to the point that Tiffany has to acknowledge that she is going to truly face some awful shit. Not just that, but she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s going to have to do things that seemed unfathomable to her in order to defeat the Queen and get her brother back. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in the midst of this that she remembers Granny Aching teaching a peddler a violent lesson in how to treat his donkey. There was no traditional magic there, either, just a direct demonstration of how pain doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/i> work as a good motivational technique. Tiffany realizes:<\/p>\n Is this what being a witch is? It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t what I expected! When do the good bits happen?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This book is all about Tiffany learning the truth of the world, and sometimes, the truth hurts. ALSO: SOMETIMES, TINY GLOWING CREATURES BITE YOU AND THREATEN YOU WITH POETRY??? I DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T EVEN KNOW.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n https:\/\/youtu.be\/hXdjO4PmCyk<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now available for pre-order!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the eighth chapter of The Wee Free Men, Tiffany faces the first nightmare in the Queen\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Land. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld.<\/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":[463,248,543],"class_list":["post-4534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett","tag-the-wee-free-men"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4534","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=4534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}