{"id":5070,"date":"2019-10-28T05:00:26","date_gmt":"2019-10-28T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=5070"},"modified":"2019-10-28T07:00:29","modified_gmt":"2019-10-28T14:00:29","slug":"mark-reads-snuff-part-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2019\/10\/mark-reads-snuff-part-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;Snuff&#8217;: Part 11"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the eleventh part of <i>Snuff<\/i>, Cheery makes a discovery, and Vimes has an important meeting with the goblins. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>Snuff<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><b>Trigger Warning: For discussion of the death of a child.<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>The Unggue Pot<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Okay, I love that all the bits previously in this book about Unggue and the importance of bodily secretions to the goblins have now come back around, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to try to unpack what this bizarre reveal actually means. I initially thought that the unggue pot was a bribe from Mr. Gumption. Sergeant Colon had noticed that something was off about the tobacco production at Gumption\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s factory, and maybe this was how Gumption hoped to keep Colon quiet. This pot was rare and weird and probably worth a lot of money! And wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that why Cheery made that big monologue and pointed out how Colon had taught her so much about being moral and ethical and fair as a copper? Except&#8230; holy shit, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, this part:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153You picked up a little trinket, sergeant, and now it really is yours, more yours than I think you can possibly imagine. I wish I could tell you more, but I only know what the average dwarf knows about goblins; and I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know much about this type of unggue pot but I think, given the floral decoration and its small size, that it is the one they call the <i>soul of tears<\/i>, sergeant, and I think you have made your life suddenly <i>very<\/i> interesting because\u00e2\u20ac\u201d&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Which leads to:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m very sorry to hear that, sergeant, but you see, in that pot is the living soul of a goblin child and it belongs to you. Congratulations!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If unggue pots are for bodily secretions, then&#8230; what the hell? Is it just the tears? Or does a soul leaving a body count as a secretion? Which would imply that the child <i>died<\/i>? Why was a soul (A LIVING ONE!!!) put in one of these pots, and why was it <i>then<\/i> put into a cigar? So, I figured that Gumption\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s behavior had something to do with the goblins. My guess is that he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know that the unggue pot was in the cigar; I think a goblin is sending a message, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s directly related to what Vimes is investigating. But what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the message? Makepeace mentioned something regarding children being separated from their mothers, so that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s totally what this is, right?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>HI, THIS IS GETTING INCREASINGLY MORE FUCKED UP.<\/p>\n<p><b>The Goblins\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Plea<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Well, the goblins have now officially enlisted Vimes to help them, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s clear that this one body is just the tip of the iceberg. I think Vimes is spot-on here: someone did not want Vimes to meet with Jethro, and the easiest thing to do was to frame Vimes for Jethro\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s murder by killing a goblin and hoping no one would figure out that it was goblin blood on Hangman\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Hill, not human blood. But this death reveals exactly what the people of this place consider the goblins to be: disposable. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s another detail that is nagging at me: why was Vimes able to tell the sex of the goblin from the <i>belly<\/i>? Could Vimes tell that she was pregnant? Look, I wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even think that if we hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t had all these clues that child goblins are being separated from their parents.<\/p>\n<p>Even if that isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the case and this is just a bad guess on my part, it doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t lessen the tragedy of this murder. As Sound of the Rain puts it:<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153She was thrown into our cave last night, Mr. Po-leess-maan. She had gone out to check the rabbit snares. Thrown down like old bones, Mr. Po-leess-maan, like old bones. No blood in her. Like old bones.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Again: disposable. A means to an end, nothing more. But the text deliberately reminds us through Vimes and Sound of the Rain that this goblin was a person with a life that was extinguished early. She was Sound of the Rain\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s second wife. And she did not matter at all to the people who killed her. Understandably, then, the goblins both want to trust Vimes to help them, but they also don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t trust him all the way. Vimes even realizes that the other goblins tried to hide as he arrived! And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a fair reaction, given how humans have treated them in the past. But look how important it is to Sound of the Rain that Vimes asks what the name is of the goblin who was killed. <i>Humans never do that<\/i>. They operate under the assumption that goblins DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T have names, which further stigmatizes them and makes it easier for them to be perceived as vermin or failed humans. This is also not the only epiphany that Vimes has about the goblins, either. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a gut-wrenching moment not long after this where Vimes wonders why Sound of the Rain was able to talk about his dead wife without being intensely emotional about it. Initially, I thought that maybe goblins just weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that emotional? But then we got this line:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>How can you get like that? How can life so beat you down?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And now I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m thinking that Vimes just got a deeper glimpse of how oppressed the goblins are. What if this whole nightmare they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re a part of, that I assume the aristocrats are a part of, is so heinous and hellish that they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve just become <i>used<\/i> to their loved ones being murdered? What if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that they aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t emotional, but they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned how to grieve over and over again because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so common?<\/p>\n<p>Christ, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s DARK. As Vimes puts it, they were \u00e2\u20ac\u0153going through the motions now,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d because what else was there to do? Well, <i>this<\/i>. Stinky did something to change this reality, and he sought out Vimes and brought him to the cave as a means to fight whatever is happening. On top of that all is the existence of the Summoning Dark, a being of pure vengeance, and what more apt situation is there for a revenge demon than <i>this<\/i>?<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>I am a little frightened to discover just how deep this nightmare is.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=GXQOc55Qu5I<\/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 eleventh part of Snuff, Cheery makes a discovery, and Vimes has an important meeting with the goblins. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Snuff.\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":[463,563,248],"class_list":["post-5070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-snuff","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5070","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=5070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5070\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. 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