In the third part of the ninth chapter of I Shall Wear Midnight<\/i>, Tiffany has a disturbing interactions with two different people in the castle. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For talk of abuse, bullying, and grief.<\/b><\/p>\n
THIS BOOK IS SO INTENSE.<\/p>\n
The Duchess<\/b><\/p>\n
Even though this quote is in the section talking about the cook, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to bring it up here. Throughout this book, one of the main things that Tiffany struggles with is whether or not these people are behaving as they do because of the Cunning Man or because they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just actual awful people. Before the Cunning Man arrived, we had Mr. Petty, and now, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the Duchess. I feel safe in saying that the Cunning Man might<\/i> utilize the Duchess, but she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s miserable and terrible through and through. She does not need the Cunning Man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s help at all<\/i>. I sensed she was bad news before, but what we witness in the final third of this chapter? Oh, absolutely NOT. She is an abusive nightmare, one who openly fosters a culture of misery, fear, and pain, and she knows it! It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the whole point of the arrangement! We need look no further than that ridiculous poem she makes Letitia recite, wherein workers and staff are analogous to NETTLES. Nettles!!! And the whole deal that is that, apparently, if you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re nice<\/i> to nettles, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll sting you and then stage a rebellion.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worth noting that Tiffany pretty much immediately counters this, since she thinks about how much kindness the old Baron exuded, and there were no rebellions, no stinging, nothing of the sort! But the Duchess has never been challenged; she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s never had to believe anything but her system of violence. And why would she? When you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re at the top, when you carry around that stick<\/i>, when you are so used to doling out abuse and getting exactly what you want, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no need to examine what you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re putting out in the world.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It takes Tiffany dropping one HELL of a comeback on the Duchess for her to realize exactly what kind of a person the Duchess is, and I love this description so, so much:<\/p>\n The Duchess beat them all: She was a bully, the kind of bully who forces her victim into retaliation, which therefore becomes the justification for further and nastier bullying, with collateral damage to any innocent bystanders who would be invited by the bully to put the blame for their discomfiture onto the victim.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n HOLY SHIT. IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S SO ACCURATE??? And this is also a scathing and much-needed rejection of that refrain I grew up hearing in regards to bullying: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter who started it.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d YES. YES IT FUCKING DOES, especially when you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re dealing with someone like the Duchess! But that nuance gets lost, and people like the Duchess know that, and they use it to their advantage.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Fuck her. I know that there is probably going to be some sort of price Tiffany will have to pay, but I got a thrill out of her standing up to the Duchess.<\/p>\n Preston<\/b><\/p>\n HI, WHERE DID YOU COME FROM? Because I got perhaps even more<\/i> of a thrill watching this character use his cleverness to perpetually frustrate the Duchess. HAPPY ASS CORP ASS. Look, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a stretch to suggest that Preston and Tiffany are remarkably shippable, right? At the very least, she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s intrigued by his cleverness and sense of humor, and it was a huge surprise! I honestly didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d see Preston again; my assumption was that he was just an extremely minor character. NOPE. HE\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S AMAZING. Funny and nice and seems to genuinely enjoy Tiffany\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s presence? And he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s obsessed with words! HE KNOWS TIFFANY\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S FAVORITE WORD. I ship it, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t care.<\/p>\n The Cook<\/b><\/p>\n I have to reference this again, since it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so relevant to what Mrs. Coble shouts at Tiffany:<\/p>\n But all that foul stuff? Where had that come from? Was it something she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d always wanted to say, or had he<\/i> put it into her mouth?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n In this specific case? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually know. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never met Mrs. Coble before (to my knowledge), and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no real context or history given to us in the book itself. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s believable, of course, that Mrs. Coble is like many people in this part of the Disc who are highly suspicious of witches and witchcraft. So maybe this was<\/i> always there. Tiffany does<\/i> have a moment where she tries to remember what Mrs. Coble has been like to her before, how grief may have affected her and her reliance on alcohol, and I appreciate that. One thing that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been interesting about this Cunning Man experience is that Tiffany has had to force<\/i> herself to be more empathetic, to attempt understanding, even in situations where it would be understandable if she did not do so.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Still: FUCKED UP.<\/p>\n https:\/\/youtu.be\/qg-eSS0QLs8<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – The paperback edition of my debut, ANGER IS A GIFT, is now OUT!<\/a>\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 third part of the ninth chapter of I Shall Wear Midnight, Tiffany has a disturbing interactions with two different people in the castle. 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":[562,463,248],"class_list":["post-5033","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\/5033","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=5033"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5033\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5033"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5033"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5033"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}