Challenge 66

[amazon_syren]

Fandom: Discworld (MR)
Pairing: Polly/Mal
Challenge: 66 -- Taste
Word Count: 100
Rating: PG (for violence)
Notes: This is a follow-up to some (much, much longer) fic that I wrote about Polly and Mal in Ankh Morpork.
(For the back-story, go to: Against the Trumpets and click on "fanfiction". See Amazon_Syren's fics: "Only an Arrangement" and "

Comments

[ilthit]

Well she ought to be comforted by the fact that not only did she not hurt Mal physically, she couldn't; not without Mal's consent. Hitting is physical domination, and that's something she's simply not capable of when it comes to Mal. Besides which, she kinda deserved it.

But yeah. Not exactly something that should enter into a relationship.

[amazon_syren]

See, therein lies the trick of it.
Mal didn't deserve to be hit.
She *did* deserve Polly's anger and hurt the expression thereof.

But hitting someone to show that you're angry -- whether hitting them has much, if any, physical effect (affect?) or not -- doesn't actually explain *why* you're angry or what they did to make you angry. It just says "If you piss me off , I'll hurt you". Which adds to the problems, rather than fixing them.

Polly should know better than that.

[ilthit]

You can't expect her to be superhuman. She can barely expect her to. Is it any worse than if she'd called her names? That's hurting someone because you're angry and that is, at least in my experience, the way all family fights go. You can't fight at all if you're not allowed to hurt someone, and if you never fight you never deal with issues. I wouldn't make that much out of a slap... well, it was a strike, but we know it didn't hurt Mal, and couldn't have, and Polly knew that as well. I read that as a wordless expression of "I'm angry with you". The equivalent of a weak slap, in other words, and I wouldn't make a big deal about it if my lover slapped me. It'd be a much bigger thing if she showed me that my opinions, wishes and feelings don't matter to her. That's actually what broke up me and Mirkka for the second and final time.

[amazon_syren]

See, I'm not sure that was what Polly was thinking.

She might have been thinking "Mal needs to hurt for this".
She was definitely thinking "How could she do this to me?"

I don't think she was... calculating the degree of force needed to 'slap' a vampire.
If she was calculating anything at all, it was "punching her in the face with the back of my fist will express my degree of hurt and anger more accurately than slapping her with the palm of my hand will. Whether she takes it like a slap, or ends up sprawled against a wall, is not an issue here. The issue is how upset she's made me."
(Note: Not 'how upset I am')

I think I'll start taking notes. :-) You and Latin Doll, in particular, are wonderfully helpful when it comes to getting different perspectives on this stuff. :-)
Thank you! :-)