{"id":5028,"date":"2019-08-30T05:00:39","date_gmt":"2019-08-30T12:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=5028"},"modified":"2019-08-25T21:42:15","modified_gmt":"2019-08-26T04:42:15","slug":"mark-reads-i-shall-wear-midnight-chapter-7-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2019\/08\/mark-reads-i-shall-wear-midnight-chapter-7-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;I Shall Wear Midnight&#8217;: Chapter 7, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the second half of the seventh chapter of <i>I Shall Wear Midnight<\/i>, the Cunning Man strikes again. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>Discworld<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Well, shit.<\/p>\n<p>That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a reaction to a lot of what happens in the second half of this chapter. I thought maybe Mrs. Proust would know what the Cunning Man was, but she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s technically <i>less<\/i> experienced with it than Tiffany, who had that run-in with him on the way to Ankh-Morpork. But this chapter gave me a new piece of the puzzle! Well, it also gave me understanding of the scene with Mr. Carpetlayer: The Cunning Man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s hatred can <i>spread<\/i> to other people. We saw that just before Tiffany was arrested, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s here again between Tiffany and Mrs. Proust:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t you aha me,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d snapped Tiffany. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153At least I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t go around making witches look <i>ridiculous<\/i>!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>Mrs. Proust slapped her. It was like being hit with a rubber pencil. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a rude slip of a girl, you young hussy. And I go around keeping witches <i>safe<\/i>.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In both of what they say, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an element of their own truth. I do think Tiffany feels like Mrs. Proust has helped feed into negative images of witches, even if at the same time she understands <i>why<\/i>. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s literally seen it in action in past books! And Mrs. Proust\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reaction is based largely on her experience. She helps witches perform a role that keeps people properly afraid of them. Look what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happening in the city and the surrounding areas! People suspected of being witches are being murdered!<\/p>\n<p>And yet, both characters also realize <i>real<\/i> quick that this is abnormal for them, that they were each pushed to the point of hatred in a matter of seconds. And not just general hatred: hatred of <i>witches<\/i>. They were both so eager to blame the witch! AND THEY ARE BOTH WITCHES. So I love that this turns into a form of solidarity: Tiffany and Mrs. Proust realize they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re being set against one another, and they try to stay as aware of possible of this as they discuss another uncomfortable reality:<\/p>\n<p>It is very, very likely that Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dance with the Wintersmith awoke something truly evil.<\/p>\n<p>That was mentioned earlier in <i>I Shall Wear Midnight<\/i>, and now it feels obvious that what Tiffany awoke is the Cunning Man. And what a terrifying metaphor <i>and<\/i> literal reality. The Cunning Man\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwhoever this being is\u00e2\u20ac\u201dis both a being a hatred and able to feed into existing paranoias and fears. As Mrs. Proust notes here, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a cycle over the years. People just start hating witches for a while, and often, the victims aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t witches at all. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think it was mostly poor old women,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mrs. Proust explains in the text. And the paranoia feeds, gets worse, and many more people become collateral damage in the nightmare. Why? Because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so easy to designate a person as the <i>other<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>In a city like Ankh-Morpork, one that has had so many brushes with the Other, The Cunning Man really has found a box of dry tinder. So, I thought maybe that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the advice that Mrs. Proust was giving Tiffanhy? She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s lived here! She has arguably seen everything from dragons to moving pictures to trolls to vampires to werewolves to&#8230; well, you get what I mean. Ankh-Morpork has had so many growing pains, and it has survived them.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Instead, she says this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153There is a lady who I am sure would be very keen to talk to you. She lives in the city, but you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll never find her no matter how hard you try. She will find you, though, in the blink of a second, and my advice is that when she does, you listen to everything she might tell you.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I like that my immediate reaction to this was also Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, because all I wanted to know was how she could find her. WHICH MRS. PROUST LITERALLY ADDRESSES. So, who the hell is this she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talking about? How could this mysterious woman help??? Oh, this is so exciting; I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wait to find out who this is!<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s move on to Wee Mad Arthur, because&#8230; holy shit. I was reminded of both Captain Carrot and Mr. Nutt in how Pratchett chose to write this character. As far as I understand it, Wee Mad Arthur is actually an orphaned Feegle who was taken in and raised by gnomes, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not until he meets the Feegles that he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s confronted with a very new understanding of himself. But there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no long mystery like we got with Mr. Nutt, but he also doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a history of being aware of his \u00e2\u20ac\u0153real\u00e2\u20ac\u009d species, either. So, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in this happy middle ground between these two characterizations. Also, I was just so damn entertained by Wee Mad Arthur trying to figure out what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actually <i>good<\/i> about the Feegles. It gave us the gift of a fried stoat taste explosion! Also, I loved this bit:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Ye think so? You wee scunners punched an entire pub to death.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I mean&#8230; he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not wrong? That is quite literally what they did. But I wanted to point it out for a less humorous reason. Right after this, Mrs. Proust and Tiffany have a very complicated, uncomfortable conversation about life in the city versus life in the country. I saw this as a parallel to the conversation that Wee Mad Arthur had with the other Feegles. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s people comparing their lives, their experiences, their outlook on the world. And for what it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth, I appreciated that Mrs. Proust, using the example of the men in the D wing, tried to insist that country life wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t as harsh as it was in Ankh-Morpork. And what does Tiffany bring up in response?<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Petty.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153My father always says that things will look better in the morning.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<p>There was a pause. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Upon reflection,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Mrs. Proust said, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I think your father will turn out to be wrong.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Great. So this book is gonna get even <i>darker<\/i>, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it?<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/mSSNGydrGYs<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markoshiro.com\/blog\/2019\/5\/7\/the-anger-is-a-gift-trade-paperback-is-out-today\">The paperback edition of my debut, ANGER IS A GIFT, is now OUT!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the second half of the seventh chapter of I Shall Wear Midnight, the Cunning Man strikes again. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld.\u00c2\u00a0<\/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":[562,463,248],"class_list":["post-5028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-i-shall-wear-midnight","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5028","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=5028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5028\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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