there’s really no point at which I’m not thinking about the moment in Terry Pratchett’s Lords and Ladies when it’s like,
The Queen’s gaze was infinite; pure how dare you even address me. It stripped away every layer of Magrat, every self-conscious quirk and earnest exhortation about granola, and exposed the bare core of Magrat Garlick.
Magrat smiled like a feral weasel and punched her in the face.
I think you’ve combined two brilliant Magrat moments. From Lords and Ladies;
The Queen attacked again, exploding into her uncertainty like a nova. She was nothing. She was insignificant. She was so worthless and unimportant that even something completely worthless and exhaustively unimportant would consider her beneath contempt. In laying hands upon the Queen she truly deserved an eternity of pain. She had no control over her body. She did not deserve any. She did not deserve a thing.
The disdain sleeted over her, tearing the planetary body of Magrat Garlick to pieces. She’d never be any good. She’d never be beautiful or intelligent, or strong. She’d never be anything at all. Self-confidence? Confidence in what? The eyes of the Queen were all she could see. All she wanted to do was lose herself in them, and the ablation of Magrat Garlick roared on, tearing at the strata of her soul… exposing the core.
She bunched up her fist and hit the Queen between the eyes.
And from Witches Abroad
The snake sister opened its mouth.
Then Magrat looked up and, almost dreamily, punched it so hard that it was carried several feet along the passage.
It wasn’t a blow that featured in any Way or Path. No one ever drew this one as a diagram or practiced it in front of a mirror with a bandage tied around their head. It was straight out of the lexicon of inherited, terrified survival reflexes.
“Use the wand!” shouted Nanny, darting forward. “Don’t ninj at them! Use the wand! That’s what it’s for!”
The other snake instinctively turned to follow the movement, which is why instinct is not always the keynote to survival, because Magrat clubbed it on the back of the head. With the wand.
It sagged, losing shape as it fell.
The trouble with witches is that they’ll never run away from things they really hate.
And the trouble with small furry animals in a corner is that, just occasionally, one of them’s a mongoose.
Don’t fuck with Magrat. Granny might be the personification of “good is not nice”, but Magrat is proof that being nice and kind is no barrier to shooting an elf in the eye with a crossbow when necessary.
you are RIGHT, thank you!
some people not familiar with discworld novels may assume Magrat is some toned girl capable of doing heavy farm labor or a veteran of bar brawls this is wrong
Magrat is the one on the left, generally described as a wet hen in wait of the mythical ‘good hair day’. her witchcraft typically consists of aromatic candles, finding vegan alternatives for potion ingredients, ornate occult jewelry she gets by mail order, and flower crowns as opposed to the witchcraft methods of nanny Ogg (being absolutely sure of herself and improvising/bullshitting) or granny Weatherwax(glaring at people or psychology focused to a laser beam) thus the context of her punching the queen of the fey as her inner core of being was being assaulted is her background as a very meek girl unsure of herself
One of my favourite points they raise about Magrat is that, in her own way, she’s a genuine expert, just not in the way of traditional hedge-witching, and it’s partly down to the sort of witch whose cottage she had trained in, and inherited.
Magrat’s cottage traditionally housed thoughtful witches who noticed things and wrote things down. Which herbs were better than others for headaches, fragments of old stories, odds and ends like that.
It was a cottage of questioning witches, research witches. Eye of what newt? What species of ravined salt-sea shark? It’s all very well a potion calling for Love-in-idleness, but which of the thirty-seven common plants called by that name in various parts of the continent was actually meant?
The reason that Granny Weatherwax was a better witch than Magrat was that she knew that in witchcraft it didn’t matter a damn which one it was, or even if it was a piece of grass.
The reason that Magrat was a better doctor than Granny was that she thought it did.
