#Death (Discworld)

[oftenoffler]

NO NO NO NO NOT MY PATIENT NOT MY PATIENT

[thestuffedalligator]

The wizards said the orangutan would be able to lead them back to the dungeon in a couple days.

What a sentence, Chilchuck thought. It seemed to him that he’d been saying a lot of things with full sincerity that weeks ago would’ve been total gibbering nonsense.

The others had wandered off into the city like tourists. Laios was spending the day in some kind of pet shelter for dragons. Senshi had mentioned bringing Izutsumi to check out the local dwarven cooking. Rats were apparently involved, to his total lack of surprise.

He had decided to hole up in the nearest bar that would accept a fistful of foreign coins. He was at the stage of buzz that felt as though someone was wrapping a woollen blanket around his head, and it was loosening his tongue.

“And he’s a good kid,” he was saying. “He’s a good kid, he’s even a good fighter, but he’s got all the social skills of a dead donkey. This is a guy who hears that he has to eat part of his sister, and the first thing he says is-”

THE EGG IS PLACED ON TOP OF THE BACON?

He paused mid-ramble and blinked stickily at the stranger seated next to him. “Sorry?”

WHAT STRUCTURAL SUPPORT DOES THE BACON OFFER THE EGG?

He blinked again. “It’s for,” he tried. “You know. So you can eat the egg and bacon at the same time.”

INSTEAD OF CONSUMING THE ELEMENTS OF THE BREAKFAST SEPARATELY.

“Right.”

BUT IN THIS EXERCISE, YOU WISH TO REMOVE THE EGG FROM THE BACON.

“Right — right! The idea is if we take away the half of Falin that’s a dragon, we can resurrect the human half of her.”

THUS UNFRYING THE EGG.

He screwed an eye shut and tried to make out the face of the stranger through the three images swirling in the hot, lightheaded haze. It looked like a very skinny face.

“I’m starting to lose the food metaphor,” he mumbled. “My point is, the further we go to fix this problem, the worse it gets. And it’s not that i have a problem with resurrection — have you ever been resurrected?”

NO, BUT I HAVE BEEN WITNESS TO PART OF IT.

“Some people are weird about it. Senshi’s weird about it too, but he’s the one who suggested it. Anyways, it’s not that I have a problem with resurrection, I just don’t like the idea of eating an old coworker.”

Another sentence that would have been nonsense barely a week ago. He tried to shrug and missed. “I guess they say, ‘Eat to live, don’t live to eat.’”

A STRANGE THING TO SAY. A PARADOX OF SOME KIND, I’M SURE.

He was beginning to feel a slight headache. “No, it means, like — treat food as a fuel, a necessity, don’t get fussy about the experience of eating it.”

THEY ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE. The stranger plucked a paper umbrella out of their drink. They twirled it thoughtfully between very skinny fingers. I WOULD RECOMMEND A CURRY, they said. I’VE ALWAYS BEEN FOND OF A CURRY.

[inquissien]

The first batch of requests by @drunkenfangschrecke, @summoningraziel and @jellymish-art.

Thanks for the suggestions!

[falloutnewnobody]

i want to take death discworld for a walk on the beach and give him a kiss on the forehead and share soup and bread with him is that too much to ask?

[furiouskettle]

Near Rincewind Experience

[chaunguyenj]

I’m not very good at following lists, and I got stressful recently so I want to draw something nice first, something happy. Death and kittens from Discworld, for example.

[cantheykillmacbeth]

Can Death (from Discworld) kill Macbeth?

Yes, Death from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series could kill Macbeth!

In regards to the Gender Clause, it gets a bit complicated, as Death seems to generally be alright with masculine terms and he/him pronouns, though Death's gender identity is wildly different across different translations. This is mainly due to the fact that these languages will have inherit genders tied to different concepts, and in many of these, death is often referred to with feminine pronouns, and so there's a bit of confusion there. (Apparently, the Czech translation deals with this by making his name a non-existent masculine equivalent to their feminine word for death.) For now, we'll be leaving Death off of the Gender Clause, but that is not to say that there's no ground for discussion on that front, of course.

As for the Unconventional Birth Clause and Birth Parent Clause, Discworld's Death is very much a primordial entity- perhaps more accurately, a primordial concept- and thus was never exactly born, and certainly not of a woman. The character of Death has always been and always will be, similar to the concept of death itself. So, Death applies for both UBC and BPC!

As for whether or not Death counts as a Unique Exception, I'm leaning a bit more strongly towards no. There is a case to be made, of course, that Macbeth dying in any way would be Death killing him, but in the Discworld books, Death as a character seems to be very heavily discouraged from meddling in mortal affairs and killing anyone directly. Instead, he acts more as someone who comes to take you away after you have already died. Now, Discworld's Death does seem to be a transdimensional entity, and this whole thing of being "discouraged from directly meddling in mortal affairs" may very well be a rule he must only abide by within Discworld, and he would be free to kill as he pleased in a different universe (say, one with Macbeth in it). But either way, we've already confirmed Death's ability to kill Macbeth through UBC and BPC, and considering that, these explanations feel like a bit too much of a stretch for me, so I won't be categorizing Death as a Unique Exception.

Thank you for your submission! (And big thanks to my mom for helping me out with this one!)

[asparklethatisblue]

Death and cats. There's always time to stop and pet the cats

For the Discworld Readalong, month 1 and Mort. I want to try and paint something for each book

[zagreuses-art]

Discworld meshi pt.2 (part 1 here) (ID's in Alt)

Sybil and Laios, getting along like a dragon barn on fire, convinced Senshi to try and get Vimes how to eat vegetables, he has his work cut out for him.

Meanwhile you cannot convince me Death would not absolutely love hanging out with Izutsumi. Much to the distress of Death Of Rats.

[monsterloverxxx]

Hear me out...

Death from The Color of Magic 🥵🥵

He can take my soul any time he wants 👻

[oftenoffler]

The child stared distantly at the landscape for a while and then said, “I’ve got new socks.”

YES?

“You can look, if you like.” A grubby foot was extended for inspection.

WELL, WELL. FANCY THAT. NEW SOCKS.

“My mum knitted them out of sheep.”

MY WORD.

- Reaper Man, Sir Terry Pratchett

[thestuffedalligator]

My mom has been listening to Hogfather for the first time, and she brought up an interesting idea that I kind of already knew about the book but didn’t really think about until now.

Hogfather is about Death experiencing the feeling of being wanted.

All the Death books are about Death feeling an emotion so hard that he bends reality. Mort is about Death feeling ennui, Soul Music is about Death feeling depressed, Reaper Man is about Death feeling. Either death anxiety or love, I’ll accept either answer.

And I never really thought about it until now, but this book is Death really experiencing his first taste of being wanted. He explicitly says that THEY DON'T NORMALLY LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING ME… EXCEPT IN SPECIAL AND RATHER UNFORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES.

He likes it. He loves it. He wants to live in this space so much. In an earlier Discworld book, this would be the point where reality shatters as he dives head first into the emotion and feels it as hard as he can.

But by this point in the series, he knows he can’t.

[inquissien]

(don't fear) the reaper

[foundfamilyhq]

[scarecloud69]

had an epiphany

(you can make your own! I posted some .pngs of the charaters on my art blog @scareclouddraws!)

(left to right, top to bottom)

Moist von Lipwig

Mustrum Ridcully

Havelock Vetinari

Ponder Stibbons

Carrot Ironfoundersson

Rincewind

Samuel Vimes

Death

[monstermonsterman]

just finished Reaper Man and idk what i'm meant to do now that i've read the best book of my life except cry