#Glenda Sugarbean

[dimity-lawn]

There was a polite cough. She recognized it as belonging to Nutt, who had the politest cough there could possibly be. “Yes, Mister Nutt?” “Mister Trev has sent me with this letter for Miss Juliet, Miss Glenda,” said Nutt, who had apparently been waiting by the steps. He held it out as if it were some double-edged sword. — Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

[pratchettquotes]

Glenda herself was reading one of her cheap novels wrapped in a page of the Times. She read the way a cat eats: furtively, daring anyone to notice.

Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

[flouryhedgehog]

Vetinari's confidence that Glenda would never try to poison him is so funny.

He's like. Listen. She could want me dead, I don't know, I'm not judging. But she would never disrespect food like that.

[evilcatv]

yeah dunno if he's straight or gay or ace but he sure is old

[cosmicrhetoric]

unseen academicals was my first practical introduction to crab theory/crab mentality ("if i can't have it neither can you") and it makes me so fucking crazy so crazy it's SO crazy to realize that you're the person who is limiting and hurting someone you truly love because you want to keep them safe and your status quo is the only safety you know. the fact that the book relates that back to model minority theory is also crazy. the other fact that the tip glenda uses to bake pickled onions into pies while keeping them fresh and crunchy actually works is also also crazy

[aeshnacyanea2000]

They were male. Glenda knew this simply because any female of any sapient species knows the look of a man who has nothing very much to do in an environment that, for this time, is clearly occupied by and totally under the control of females.

-- Terry Pratchett - Unseen Academicals

[baxtervalentine]

the underestimated workers of unseen university

[jehanthepoet]

Lady Margolotta: I've given Nutt worth

Glenda: you've fucked up a perfectly good orc is what you've done. Look at him, he's got anxiety

[deezmrnutt]

Mr. Nutt Mic Drop Moments, Part Two: and who would you send to civilize the humans?

and a bonus Mic Drop from right before: "is if they who should be sorry?"

I love how politely Mr. Nutt points out the hypocrisy.

Are the humans, who are just as violent and dangerous as orcs (who were created from humans) truly more civilized than orcs are?

Who decides which cultures are considered civilized, and which are not?

[mywingsareonwheels]

The witches who don't know they're witches in Pratchett's Discworld and the Morseverse's Oxford

There may come a day when I will get over the glorious, very blatant, and wonderfully resonant influences of Terry Pratchett's writing (and especially the Discworld) on Russell Lewis's writing of Endeavour.

It is not this day.

(Spoilers for s9 of Endeavour; much milder spoiler for the first episode of Inspector Morse; mild-ish character spoilers for Witches Abroad, The Wee Free Men, the Watch books (but especially Thud), and Unseen Academicals.)

We know three things:-

every place on the Discworld, by and large, has its witch. Someone who takes responsibility for it, whose answer to the question "who is going to do something about X problem" is pretty much always "me", who tells the place what it is. Who is usually ferociously down to earth. Some places have more than one witch, though this can cause clashes.

not every witch knows that they are a witch (cf Granny Aching).

while custom and practice dictates that only women are witches, it's not at all a hard-and-fast rule.

And a fourth:-

I saw this explained far better in a post about Good Omens actually, but the risk with witches is that they go off the rails. This can look like desperately trying to control others (especially doing the thinking for others, which Pratchett always (rightly) regards as horrifying), and in extreme cases changing reality to suit that control. It can look like cruelty. It can look like violence. Above all, it's loss of self-control. And in all cases, it's called cackling. We see it most of all with Lilith Weatherwax; we see that Granny Weatherwax is terrified of it happening to her.

I'm anything but the first person to note that Sam Vimes is, unbeknown to himself or probably anyone else in-universe, the witch of Ankh-Morpork. He absolutely is. I'd also add that Glenda Sugarbean, similarly unbeknown to herself, is the witch both of Unseen University (which Vimes generally leaves well alone; and sure, UU has wizards everywhere, but it needs a witch), and of her particular street in Dolly Sisters.

If it weren't for her character development in Unseen Academicals I think Glenda could very well have ended up cackling in middle age or when older. She becomes awesome and has some excellent qualities from the beginning, but her tendency to take over what other people are doing rather than let them grow and learn and be themselves is troubling in itself and sometimes comes very close to doing the thinking for others. And she resents others' dependence on her while also actively fostering it which... yeah. In no reality does that lead to anywhere good. I love Glenda, but *ouch*. All power to her for getting herself away from that trajectory. By the end of the book she's a far more balanced witch and cackling is clearly not in her future. :-)

And Vimes, oh goodness. His monitoring of his own character and actions is clearly paralleled with that of Granny Weatherwax: both of them have to work not to keep darkness out, but to keep it in. His own internal Guarding Dark is what keeps him from becoming both a cackling witch and the kind of copper he desperately wants to avoid being (and honestly, in his case the two would be pretty much the same).

Now, as we know, a) Russell Lewis is a massive Pratchett fan, b) Vimes turns up as a mentioned cameo in Endeavour, as Fred Thursday's sergeant and mentor (both in policing, and in fighting against the other police in the Battle of Cable Street/generally being an antifascist) back in the 1930s and probably as the person Sam Thursday was named after. And I don't think it's any kind of stretch to see Fred as the witch firstly of Mile End, and then of Oxford when he's forced to leave. He talks about first his part of "the Smoke" and then Oxford much as Vimes talks about Ankh-Morpork or Tiffany talks about the Chalk.

He's a very frustrated witch, constantly having to grapple with corruption in the city, in the force, and even in himself, but always, always "there's a city to look to". There's something deeply mythic about Fred in the early seasons of Endeavour. He makes mistakes even back then, but my Gods does he care, and my Gods does he take responsibility. I honestly think that over the entire series, and certainly prior to his unravelling in s9, the only thing he does for purely selfish motives is buy those canaries. Ah, my heart.

He protects, he works his arse off. He loves Oxford, deeply and passionately. Protection is the beginning and the end of his work.

But he's very traumatised and not always very self-aware, and he always has that tendency to try to control the narrative. Morse is fine. His marriage is fine. The money is fine. Sam is fine. He is fine. He won't confide in Morse, lest he upset Morse; he won't confide in Win, ditto; he won't pressure Morse to confide in him, ditto. And he can be violent, sometimes understandably, sometimes much less so.

Instead of having an internal Guarding Dark, Thursday a) represses so he can leave everything at the hatstand, and then b) takes on Morse as an external Guarding Dark (with just a little touch of both Carrot and Angua), to help him stay in line - and then pushes back against it. And just with all of the intense expectations Morse places on Thursday, it's both heartbreakingly understandable, and really not fair at all.

Ultimately Morse can't keep Thursday's darkness in, and Thursday can't keep standing upright on that dizzying pedestal. Because of course they can't; no one could. And the trauma conga line that is series 9 for Thursday I think has him damn close to cackling, if not right over the edge, making some disastrously bad mistakes. He nearly loses Sam, and in saving him he loses Oxford, loses Joan, loses Morse.

Whatever Thursday still thought was possible at the beginning of That Conversation in the pub (moving his responsibility from Oxford to Carshall? really, Fred? after Raymond Kennitt, would that really work?!), he's had a massive change of heart and mind by the time he and Morse finally shake hands and part, and in that change I see his redemption.

Here are the last things he does for Morse:-

refuses an offered lift all the way to Carshall so that Morse can get to his rehearsal okay (underlining his repeated support of Morse as someone who needs music to keep him going; that one thing the darkness can't take from him)

validates Morse's strengths and his belief in him, and in a teasing compliment to himself, makes him just-about laugh

hands over his own service revolver, forgoing his own duty and responsibility as potentially violent protector (and also giving himself the opportunity to learn to be someone who doesn't need that role anymore, and omg this is giving me Granny-giving-Tiffany-her-hat vibes and all...)

calls Morse for the last time by his given first name (and nods in sad acceptance when corrected)

And in all that, I see him passing Oxford on to Morse, as a last act of love and respect (even if one that he's desperately aware is hardly the easiest of gifts to bear).

Morse is the witch of Oxford now. And look at him in the first episode of Inspector Morse! He's a mess in some ways, good grief is he. But he's far more centered and at ease, and he's also not only developed further that deep and abiding sense of responsibility (which, let's face it, the poor man wasn't lacking in before), and a certain trickster nature that honestly reminds me as much of a far (far, far...) less filthy-minded Nanny Ogg than of Sam Vimes. ;-) He's rather a good witch for Oxford. And so it goes on. <3

[me3dia]

"Can't do that, sir. You've got to support your team, sir." "But you just said they weren't doing well." "That's when you support your team, sir. Otherwise you're a numper." "A numper being . . . ?" said Ridcully. "He's someone who's all cheering when things are going well, and then runs off to another team when there's a losing streak. They always shouts the loudest." "So you support the same team all your life?" "Well, if you move away it's okay to change. No one will mind much unless you go to a real enemy." She looked at their puzzled expressions, sighed and went on: "Like Naphill United and the Whoppers, or Dolly Sisters and Dimwell Old Pals, or the Pigsty Hill Pork Packers and the Cockbill Boars. You know?"

— Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

If that last example of team rivalries isn't an allusion to the Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears, I'll eat my pointy hat.

[dimity-lawn]

He [Ridcully] smiled at her expression. 'What is your job, young lady? Because you are wasted in it.' It was probably meant as a compliment, but Glenda, her head so bewilderingly full of the Archchancellor's words that they were trickling out of her ears, heard herself say, 'I'm certainly not wasted, sir! You've never eaten better pies than mine! I run the Night Kitchen!' The metaphysics of real politics were not a subject of interest to most of those present, but they knew where they were with pies. She was the centre of attention already, but now it blazed with interest. 'You do?' said the Chair of Indefinite Studies. 'We thought it was the pretty girl.' 'Really?' said Glenda brightly. 'Well, I run it.' 'So who does that wonderful pie you send up here sometimes, with the cheese pastry and the hot pickle layer?' 'The Ploughman's Pie? Me, sir. My own recipe.' 'Really? How do you manage to get the pickled onions to stay so hard and crispy in the baking? It's just amazing!' 'My own recipe, sir,' said Glenda firmly. 'It wouldn't be mine if I told anyone else.' 'Well said,' said Ridcully gleefully. 'You can't go around asking craftsmen the secrets of their trade, old chap. It's a thing you just don't do. Now, I am concluding this meeting, although what it has in fact concluded I shall decide later.' —Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

[pratchettquotes]

Some scenes are only ever a memory rather than an experience, because they happen too fast for immediate comprehension, and Glenda watched the subsequent events on the internal screen of horrified recollection.

Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

[mendedrum]

Glenda Sugarbean would really have liked The Cook of Castamar

[firstofficerrose]

Glenda and Nutt the Orc are genuinely adorable. I hope they're very happy together, they certain deserve to be, for being brave enough to talk to Lady Margolatta like that.

[istra-ish-sucha-geek]

The level of need i have for more Glenda and more Mr Nutt is immeasurable.

glenda sugarbean top ten characters of all time. not even vimes managed to yell at lord vetinari AND lady margolotta in the same week....she found out the weird little guy in the basement was battling stereotypes about his race and also a lot of deeply set insecurities about what even makes him a person and was like bet i know you're not gonna hurt anyone but if anyone is mean to you ill literally kill them