#Equal Rites by Terry Pratchett

[wherekizzialives]

November Reads

Seven books finished this month, again including the next book from my chronological order Discworld series re-read. If I had to recommend only one of the seven it would – hands down – be Nicola Chester’s On Gallows Down, which made me laugh and cry and left me uplifted and feeling that it is possible for each of us to make a difference in this world, even now.   Reiterating (as always) that…

[longearedhare]

It has been said before but it bears repeating: if you are struggling to divest yourself of the Harry Potter franchise, may I suggest getting into Discworld, not as a replacement but as an UPGRADE? Perks of Discworld include, but are not limited to:

-41 books (no, you don’t have to read them in any given order, most work as standalone although there are some that are arguably part of a series)

-specifically British charm

-magic (including different systems of magic and not just one poorly explained type)

-funny af

-author isn’t a transphobic POS

-golems (including an arguably transgender golem named Gladys)

-EXTREMELY expansive world building that takes place over a long time, covering different populations, the Industrial Revolution, magical AND non-magical groups, and even a whole section of “science” books which discuss the physics, biology, and so on

-well-written female characters

-nuanced moral messages

-death is a cat person

[stupidphototricks]

I'm so far behind on posts I still want to write about The Truth and Small Gods, but I just started Equal Rites, one of my first favorites although it's been a long time since I last read it, and I just want to take a minute to respect one of the all-time great fantasy/humor book openings. You just can't read this and not want to keep going.

This is a story about magic and where it goes and perhaps more importantly where it comes from and why, although it doesn't pretend to answer all or any of these questions. It may, however, help to explain why Gandalf never got married and why Merlin was a man. Because this is also a story about sex, although probably not in the athletic, tumbling, count-the-legs-and-divide-by-two sense unless the characters get totally beyond the author's control. They might. However, it is primarily a story about a world. Here it comes now. Watch closely, the special effects are quite expensive.

-- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

[pratchettquotes]

There was a village tucked in a narrow valley between steep woods. It wasn't a large village, and wouldn't have shown up on a map of the mountains. It barely showed up on a map of the village.

It was, in fact, one of those places that exist merely so that people can have come from them. The universe is littered with them: hidden villages, windswept little towns under wide skies, isolated cabins on chilly mountains, whose only mark on history is to be the incredibly ordinary place where something extraordinary started to happen. Often there is no more than a little plaque to reveal that, against all gynecological probability, someone very famous was born halfway up a wall.

Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

[aeshnacyanea2000]

If you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don’t apply to you.

-- Terry Pratchett - Equal Rites

[rogue-rook]

I have SOME THOUGHTS about equal rites ushering in early era discworld by giving us eskarina, a girl who becomes a wizard with granny weatherwax's help, and now shepherd's crown is ushering out late era discworld by giving us geoffrey swivel, a boy who wants to become a witch with tiffany aching's help, neatly closing the narrative loop

[lunocura]

It was a horrible feeling to find things in your head and not know how they fitted.

-Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites.

[original-post-locator]

From Pratchett’s 1987 Discworld book Equal Rites, and his 1990 book Good Omens. Just a little detail I noticed:

The mispelling “diuerse” instead of “diverse”. In the context of a witch writing something in Ye Olden Spelling.

Side note; what else was made in 1987?

Rick Astley’s hit song Never Gonna Give You Up.

[bakedbakermom]

why is the librarian my absolute favorite

(also he can be bribed with bananas)

[crimzonstudioz]

Fun fact my first discworld book was equal rites, and I loved it so much I drew esk

Would love to redraw her but I need to also reread equal rites 😆

[emys-123]

[pourablecat]

Eskarina! She ends up looking a bit like Granny, due to convergent evolution.

Esk: You've missed my BA graduation, my wedding, my MA graduation, my baby shower, my husband's funeral, my PHD graduation, not to mention every single one of my son's football matches. I am disowning you as my mother figure.

Granny, who was in a 15-year time skip: Your what?

[sirterrypratchett]

"This is a book about magic and where it goes and perhaps more importantly where it comes from and why, although it doesn't pretend to answer all or any of these questions." & "Perhaps more importantly, the ants used all the sugar lumps they could steal to build a small sugar pyramid in one of the hollow walls, in which, with great ceremony, they entombed the mummified body of a dead queen. On the wall of one tiny hidden chamber they inscribed, in insect heiroglyphs, the true secret of longevity. They got it absolutely right and it would probably have important implications for the universe if it hadn't, next time the university flooded, been completely washed away."

Equal Rites, Terry Pratchett

Opening and final lines.

[stupidphototricks]

Have some Granny Weatherwax wit and wisdom and Bad Ass-ery. It's amazing how fully-formed her character was right from (practically) the very beginning of Discworld, in Equal Rites.

"If you can't learn to ride an elephant, you can at least learn to ride a horse." "What's an elephant?" "A kind of badger," said Granny. She hadn't maintained forest-credibility for forty years by ever admitting ignorance. -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

"That's one form of magic, of course." "What, just knowing things?" "Knowing things that other people don't know," said Granny. -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

"You're a bit young for this," she said, "but as you grow older you'll find most people don't set foot outside their own heads much. You too," she added gnomically. -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

"That's the biggest part of doct'rin, really. Most people'll get over most things if they put their minds to it, you just have to give them an interest." -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

She had got "diuerse" out of the Almanack, which she read every night. It was always predicting "diuerse plagues" and "diuerse ill-fortune." Granny wasn't entirely sure what it meant, but it was a damn good word all the same. -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

But Granny had spent a lifetime bending recalcitrant creatures to her bidding and, while Esk was a surprisingly strong opponent, it was obvious that she would give in before the end of the paragraph. -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

Granny, meanwhile, was two streets away. She was also, by the standards of normal people, lost. She would not see it like that. She knew where she was, it was just that everywhere else didn't. -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

"Yes," lied Granny, whose grasp of geography was slightly worse than her knowledge of subatomic physics. -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

"No, I could tell he was telling the truth. You know, Granny, you can tell how--" "Foolish child. All you could tell was that he thought he was telling the truth. The world isn't always as people see it." -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

"Um, women aren't allowed in," said Esk. Granny stopped in the doorway. Her shoulders rose. She turned around very slowly. "What did you say?" she said. "Did these old ears deceive me, and don't say they did because they didn't." "Sorry," said Esk. "Force of habit." "I can see you've been getting ideas below your station," said Granny coldly. -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

Granny smiled grimly. It was the sort of smile that wolves ran away from. -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

"Anyway, you walk wrong for rain." "I beg your pardon?" "You go all hunched up, you fight it, that's not the way. You should--well, move between the drops." And, indeed, Granny seemed to be merely damp. -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

Granny adjusted her hat and straighted up purposefully. "Right," she said. Cutangle swayed. The tone of voice cut through him like a diamond saw. He could dimly remember being scolded by his mother when he was small; well, this was that voice, only refined and concentrated and edged with little bits of carborundum, a tone of command that would have a corpse standing to attention and could probably have marched it halfway across its cemetery before it remembered it was dead. -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

"Yes, but is it safe?" Granny gave him a withering look. "Do you mean in the absolute sense?" she asked. "Or, say, compared with staying behind on a melting ice floe?" -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

"Right," she said, in a tone of voice that suggested the whole universe had just better watch out. -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

"I know. The building told me." "Yes, I was meaning to ask about that," said Cutangle, "because you see it's never said anything to me and I've lived here for years." "Have you ever listened to it?" "Not exactly listened, no," Cutangle conceded. "Not as such." -- Terry Pratchett, Equal Rites

[lebagelboy]

Ok, hear me out: Eskarina Smith (discworld) as an intersex allegory

[deathdecayglitter]

I love Eskarina Smith I adore her forever and also Marchesa my beloved