#discworld mud

[is-this-a-sideblog]

Didn't had much time to progress yesterday so I'm still in pumpkin town. I've also never played a text game so I've been testing what can and can't be done. Very fun so far.

[robinisademon]

so uh... what was this game about again...?

[toasterpoker]

I started playing the Discworld MUD again. Here are the skill increases for today.

http://discworld.atuin.net

[glockmonkey]

sybil being upset when vimes Likes His Job with the watch but then being surprised when he’s boring and sad without it. my sister in christ you married the weird watchman

[leggybein-sfw]

> search

> search

> search

A cockroach scuttles out of a gutter.

[dzcool3]

His purse is home to only moths!

[chameleonsallinvermillion]

I always forget just how good The Truth is until I reread it. Not just the central mystery but the themes of it! The way it marks such a sharp change from the old Ankh-Morpork to the new one we'd see in the later books, far more than any of the Watch books ever do.

And William! A character of all time. This awkward little man who believes passionately in truth because "don't tell lies" was quite literally beaten into him as a child, who then tells a lie to protect the one who did the beating. This man with very few social skills who earns the loyalty of his coworkers with his sheer passion. William who was raised to be a bigot and is fighting those instincts every step of the way.

When the dark light reveals the spectre of his father looming over his shoulder all the time! When his father threatens to kill him and he is relieved! When Otto compares William's internal struggle to overcome the lessons he was taught as a child, the racist, classist, cruel beliefs of his family, with his own struggle to not drink blood.

I adore this man. I adore how electrified he is when he's trying to solve a conspiracy, how brave, how dedicated - and it never shows up again. In all other books, from the perspective of other characters, he's a stuffy straitlaced stick-in-the-mud. Nobody else ever sees what his coworkers see of him, what his father finally sees of him.

William De Worde is important to me because the only other person who ever truly Gets It, the only character in the whole of Discworld canon who seems to understand him, is Otto. Sacharissa does a little but it's Otto who really knows him. Otto fighting not to be a bloodsucking monster, with the help of cocoa and a singsong, and William fighting not to be a metaphorical bloodsucking monster, with the help of his colleagues and their faith in him.

[felagund-fiollaigean]

there's something so unsettling about seeing fanart of discworld characters who look thin and conventionally beautiful. my beloved what have they done to you. where are your imperfections and pimples and jowls and wrinkles. where is your lazy eye and your belly and the mud on your shoes.

[is-this-a-sideblog]

I'm starting the Discworld MUD partly out of curiosity and partly as an assignment for class. I'll keep you updated how it goes I guess.

[robinisademon]

just some scenes i imagine antomeow is up to as a mentor

[fictional-gods-tournament]

Prelims

Fandom: Discworld

Characters' info under the cut

Bilious, the Oh God of Hangovers (wiki)

Domain: Hangovers

Propaganda:

has a grudge against the god of wine, Bibulous, because whenever Bibulous drinks, Bilious is the one who experiences the hangover

Azrael (wiki)

Domain: The Death of The Universe

The Auditors of Reality (wiki)

Domain: Order and physical qualities of reality

Propaganda:

Sticks in the mud

Offler the Crocodile God (wiki)

Domain: Crocodiles

The Lady (wiki)

Domain: Luck

Propaganda:

do not draw her attention or call upon her name for she will abandon her most ardent worshippers

Anoia (wiki)

Domain: things that get stuck in drawers

Popaganda:

"I pray to her when I get my hand stuck in my dresser drawer" -my former roommate

Death of Rats (wiki)

Domain: guides recently deceased rats to the afterlife

God of Evoloution (wiki)

Domain: Evolution

Propaganda:

he loves bugs :)

Nuggan (wiki)

Domains: official god of the state of Borogravia, also in charge of paperclips and unnecessary paperwork

Propaganda:

anything you don't like can be called "an abomination unto Nuggan"

The Great God Om

No particular domain.

Propaganda:

Satirical take on the Christian God. How many gods do YOU know who got turned into a tortoise because their followers stopped believing in them, and then had to learn from their mistakes so they could get powerful again?

[nevertheless-moving]

been catching snatches of your stormlight posting. never enough to actually understand anything. should i read it

I really liked it! However it was on my reading list for many years before I finally was in the right headspace to dive in. It's a lot.

The Stormlight Archive consists of four fairly long high fantasy novels and two tie in novellas. It takes place on an alternate fantasy world called Roshar, which is part of a larger fantasy universe called the Cosmere. If you like high fantasy epics, or if you're interested in giving them a shot, then yes, definitely try out the Cosmere!

High fantasy, as I define it — sorry if you know this already anon also sorry if my definition differs from other's reading this — is...bigger than life. High fantasy is two main things. First, the setting— magic creatures and fantastical architecture and folks with super cool magic powers. Second, High Fantasy is the way people behave, which verges into Mythology and Fairy Tale. I'll explain.

Don't get me wrong, when well written, and Cosmere is very well written, the people still feel real. I mean the glowing guys wearing vaguely renaissance faire clothing who are fighting the giant rock monsters still have complex relationships with their fathers. But it's also an idealization — people saying the right words at the right time, people being their noblest version of themselves. Read and/or Watch the Lord of The Rings and take notes on Aragorn's speech at the Black Gate. It's the fantasy of people at their best, noble in all the ways we want the word to mean.

Low fantasy, by contrast, is a bit more grounded, both in the setting and the people. The places in low fantasy look more like your day to day on earth — dive bars with bouncers and crude jokes on bathroom doors. The dive bar bouncer in low fantasy is just a massive rock troll and the graffiti has penises of many different fantasy races. The people are a bit more like some guy you know. It can still be a good some guy you know. Just if they have to fight a nightmare monster they're probably ugly crying and maybe peeing themselves a little. People can still be good and bad, they just maybe have a bit less polish.

There's obviously lots of grey area — Game of Thrones has a lot of high fantasy setting elements, being a vaugely mideval europe pastiche with dragons, but the way it focuses on brothels and people trudging through mud is a bit more low, the reality of a world without indoor plumbing, as opposed to the dream of a world without cellphones. It has epic speeches and larger than life figures, but they get bogged down by stuff like taxes and dehydration, which high fantasy doesn't generally linger on. I'd argue some of the worst behavior fits right in with high fantasy — the red wedding is just a much graphic version than we're used to of the ol' scheming advisor trope, but still fits into the archetypes. Anyway.

Discworld by Terry Pratchett is an excellent low fantasy series, and if you're looking for a fantasy book recommendation and haven't read/watched/ didn't really enjoy lord of the rings, or if you did and want to read my favorite series, then read these 100%. If you've read them already — nice.

(I think having some more familiar touchstones makes fantasy novels more enjoyable for folks who aren't into their recreational reading being Very Unlike real life . Discworld is incredibly funny, while also being full of heart. The turns of phrase are adult without being crazy dense. I'm not a personally big grimdark person; I prefer my stories with a core belief that people who are good deep down, which is at the heart of Pratchett's writing. I laughed, I cried. I recommend Guards, Guards as a first book but you can start lots of places.)

To get back a little closer to your initial question — I started reading the Cosmere with Mistborn, which consists of three novels, a several hundred year time gap, and then four more, slightly shorter but still pretty long novels. It takes place on a completely different world from Stormlight. The planets are only tentatively connected, but there the very solid promise that they will interact a lot more soon.

By soon I mean in the next decade as far as book publishing goes, because the author, Brandon Sanderson, is a madman. And by madman I mean he fucking writes like a machine. I checked his website and he posts things like "23% percent through my next book." "45% through" "82% through" who writes like that??? He's also a massive prude, which is hilarious. I love him in a non parasocial way. He's got the next 20 years of book releases mapped out. Whom the fuck??

Anyway if you like high fantasy epics, or want to try one, then yes, definitely try out the Cosmere! It's funny, I've always had a hard time listening to audiobooks, but either things clicked in my head or the narrators, Michael Kremer and Kate Reading, are just that good.

I...actually liked Mistborn more than Stormlight. The first Stormlight book I found a little hard to get through at the start, because the main characters seriously go through it, but I had trust in the author at that point and things DID get better. Mistborn hooked me start to finish and every plot twist felt perfectly executed in a way that Stormlight didn't completely nail for me. I mean, Stormlight Archive is still a great series, with compelling characters and well structured romances and interesting world building and super, super rad fight scenes.

I'm posting obsessively about Stormlight partially because I'm scrambling for more cosmere content (I didn't actually expect to reach the end) and partially because there are things in the books that weren't 100% satisfying, and those spaces are where fandom lives. Again, it's still really, really good. Just long, and sometimes fairly heavy in how much the main characters struggle with mental illness while fighting crab monsters.

In the stormlight archive, your personal fight with depression and PTSD and drug addiction is actually inextricably linked to your super rad glowing magic power fight with rock monsters and crab people. The crab people who also have a lot of trauma and mental illness.

Honestly, I'm not sure how Sanderson is going to resolve that.

But fuck it, TLDR, Stormlight is good but long, and the next book is supposed to resolve a bunch of stuff and it comes out this December, and the way he wrapped up things in his other books was really satisfying! So this is a pretty good time to get into the series!

[wizardbracket]

The Final Four

The Matches:

The German Mud Wizard vs. Ged of Earthsea

Merlin vs. Ms. Frizzle

The Final Four:

The German Mud Wizard: Initially submitted only 2 times, the German mud wizard/monk has become a surprise favorite to win the competition, defeating Critical Role's German dirt wizard Caleb Widogast by over 1,000 votes.

Ged: The only POC to make it to the final eight*, Ged has shown himself to be a strong competitor, with a consistent fanbase of voters whose enthusiastic support and propaganda have allowed him to topple Gandalf the Grey.

Merlin: Although there were 7 Merlins entered into the competition, Sword in the Stone Merlin is the last one standing. With his quirky outfits and modern humor, he defeated fan-favorites Big Hat Logan and M.Rasmodius, as well as the literary behemoth that is the Discworld fandom.

Ms. Frizzle: Although some voters initially argued that she should be in a witch bracket instead, Ms. Frizzle has proved herself a wizard with her academia-based magic, flashy outfits, and pursuit of knowledge, and remains the last woman in the competition*.

*Caveat: The German mud wizard's gender and race are unknown

Updated brackets below the break:

[irrigos]

okay, I finished reading Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett, and i have some opinions on it, and about Clay Men in Fallen London. Shocker, I know. Irrigos? Having opinions? I'm only 80% opinions by volume!

This is really long and rambling, and I WOULD apologize for that, but, idk man you chose to read it.

anyway, I'm gonna preface this by saying that I am not Jewish. I've been pretty forthcoming about that on here, I think, given that every post I make somehow becomes about how I was raised Catholic.

so... the Clay Men are golems, yeah? I don't think I really need to argue that that's so, and even if I did, I'm not really sure how I would (or, rather, I don't know how someone would disagree, beyond "but they're not CALLED golems")

I've always thought the Clay Men were such an odd addition to Fallen London, because like... why are there golems here? In folklore, the golem was made to protect the Jewish people (in the most famous story, the golem was made by Rabbi Loew in 16th century Prague to protect the Jewish ghetto from pogroms and blood libel) but like... there's no imperiled Jewish community in Fallen London. I mean, I don't think there's been any mention of any Jewish community whatsoever. So why are there golems? What purpose do they serve?

I know in canon, they were created by the King with a Hundred Hearts. But I'm not really sure... why. The lore wiki says that the Clay Men come into existence when the King dreams (but also, the article on Clay Men on that wiki doesn't cite any sources, and has a big banner saying it doesn't meet their citation requirements and might contain theories and headcanons. So I can't verify where in the game it says that). I know the King's backstory and all, and I know why he's a city, but I just don't really see why that resulted in the creation of a race of golems. Not really sure how his divorce was aided by the presence of an entire race of swole mud dudes, but... well what do I know

Anyway, the reason that I read Feet of Clay is because it's all about golems, and also... it's kind of the only answer I can think of for why there are golems in this game? I mean, golems aren't really a staple of the Victorian era, like Jack the Ripper or Sherlock Holmes, and they're not a staple of the cosmic horror genre (that the game at least makes a lot of gestures towards), like squid people or uncaring cosmic entities. And it doesn't seem like any of the FL founders were Jewish, or had any particular attachment to the golem as a folkloric character, so like... why? This is just a theory, and I might be totally off-base, but the best reason I can think of is that the Discworld books are incredibly famous and iconic and (especially in the UK) ubiquitous, and... they have golems, I guess? I don't know, I'm grasping at straws here because I have NOTHING. I understand all the talking animals and the fish people and sentient cities from space, but the golems? The golems confound me.

Especially after reading Feet of Clay, I just wish Fallen London would actually DO something with the Clay Men. There's been a few stories focused on Clay Men, but... well I've made no secrets about the fact that they've been the ones I enjoyed least. I think The Clay Man's Arm is gross, I think Factory of Favours is boring, I think the Comtessa storyline is... idk uncomfortably racially coded? ("Rich young white woman is kidnapped and killed by someone that is less than human but still undeniably A Man who claims to be in love with her" is uh. literally a plot point in Birth of a Nation? That really famous 1915 movie about how awesome the KKK are?)

The golems in Discworld are such a rich thematic vein-- they function as allegory for Jews, for oppressed workers, for automation, for the power of words in general. What is the narrative purpose of the Clay Men? What do they add by being in the story? What would be different if any given Clay Man that shows up in a story was replaced by a human? In Feet of Clay, you couldn't replace the golems with humans, because the story would cease to function. If you replaced the Clay Men in the Comtessa story line or in Factory of Favours with a human, or a Rubbery, or literally any other being that exists in the Neath, what would really be different, narratively and thematically? In my opinion, not a whole hell of a lot! So why are they here???

Anyway, I'm hoping that Mask of the Rose has more meat on this particular narrative bone. I know FBG has mentioned several times how much research they're putting into representing Jewish characters in MotR, and I know there's going to be a Clay Man lodging in Horatia's, too, and if David and Rachel don't have something to say about the fact that golems are real, I'm gonna riot.

Also, I couldn't think of a good way to work it into this post, but I really like this Jacob Geller video about the golem.

Thank u for reading all this mess. If you have any thoughts about Clay Men and what they mean, uh... well, let me know, because I'm stumped.

TL;DR:

[ofpineapplesanddawns]

Ooh, ooh, what about Crawly (at any point really, but probably earlier on i would guess) and Aziraphale meeting Death of Snakes? (Holds scythe wrapped in tail tip)

🐍☠️

Let's go with Crawly between Eden and the Ark (cause I refuse to believe that they didn't see each other again for a thousand years).

Warning: mentioned animal death (it's not seen, but we do see the Bone Snake)

On with the fic!

--

"Seems that the humans are doing just fine on their own here." Aziraphale spoke as he and Crawly walked through the streets of a newly established town.

It was small, most of the 'buildings' were temporary structures, though some of the humans were hard at work making mud brick homes. Aziraphale always enjoyed watching the humans as they went about the world around them. After all, this planet was meant to be explored!

"Of course they are!" Crawly scoffed, drinking from a clay mug that he was carrying around with him. Aziraphale had his own, gifts from a family that they had helped. Well, Crawly didn't help with fixing up a tent like the angel did, nah, he was busy entertaining the children and keeping them out of the way.

Still, it was nice to be paid in good, homemade beer, even if your deed wasn't as evil as you probably should have made it. Crawly said that he was doing something evil, but didn't exactly explain what it was at all, Aziraphale thought he was just trying to hide the fact that he liked to entertain humans.

"Angel, look out!" Aziraphale snapped out of his thoughts, being yanked out of the way of a fast moving cart, pulled by two oxen. He had nearly been ran over! Oh, what a terrible way to be dicorporated!

"Oh," he turned to the demon at his side, "thank y-!" A finger was pressed to his lips and Crawly hissed.

"Shhh! Not so loud, do you want the whole bloody village to hear!?"

"Well, that was..." Aziraphale cleared his throat. "Anyway, shall we continue?"

He turned to look at Crawly, but the demon was completely focused on something on the ground. Sadly, it appeared that a snake had not gotten out of the way in time. "Oh, the poor dear."

"Probably didn't even notice, too many people about, makes feelin' vibrations rather..." Crawly started but trailed off as the two of them noticed something that none of the humans saw.

A snake, made completely out of bones, slithered towards the fallen one. It wore a strip of black around itself, a makeshift hood covering over a portion of its face. Clenched in its bony tail tip was a miniature scythe.

Crawly seemed to be on high alert next to Aziraphale, blindly grabbing for the angel's hand. Aziraphale allowed for him to take it, feeling a rather tight, painful grip.

The bony snake made a small hissing sound before shifting the scythe around and they watched as the fallen snake seemed to shift, until a more faint version of it followed after the now-departing bone snake.

It turned back to look at them. GOOD AFTERNOON, GENTLEMEN. It said in a way that it echoed in their own skulls.

"A-afternoon to you as well." Aziraphale greeted, very aware that this was one of Death's friends.

Crawly was completely silent as they watched the two snakes leave this mortal plane. Aziraphale let out a breath he hadn't noticed he was holding onto. "Well, that... is often why I try to voice animal sacrifices and the like, always so uncomfortable when Death and his little counterparts show up, you know? Crawly?"

He looked at Crawly, who was quite pale and trembling.

Ah. Yes. Might be rather unsettling to come across the death snake, it seems. "Right, let's go find a tent that is making some wine, I think we need something stronger than beer." The angel stated, still holding Crawly's hand as he guided him away.

--

The only reason I know there is a death for different animals is because I just recently watched The Amazing Maurice and it seems exactly like something I'd come across in Terry Pratchett's work. (Mind you, I've only read Good Omens and have read a bit of the first book for Discworld, so... yeah. Still, a Bone Snake seems like a possibility and someone Crowley greatly fears).

(Also, I greatly enjoyed The Amazing Maurice and had no idea that the guy who plays Ligur was in it. That was cool to find out!)

[discworldbooksbracket]



I am sincerely sorry that was meant with meant with an air of humour. Not seriousness.

I really did not mean to insult you at all, I meant it in a joking way andvery much missed the mark.

(If an excuse could be given, I had about 2 hours of sleep stretched across 3 days, and that was written at the tail end)

I really am sorry, and re-reading what I wrote with less sleep deprived eyes I can honestly say I am emberassed as well.

No worries, we all flub.

I did have "least favorite character" and "least favorite book" on my list of potential future polls, but one reason I ultimately decided I probably won't do that is because I know that, no matter how hard I stress "less favorite, not worst", it will turn into a worst bracket, and that will turn into a huge garbage fire.

I support being a hater, and I like chaos. But ultimately I want these polls to be a celebration of Discworld; as much as I would also like to open up the floor to depedestalize Discworld and Pratchett in general, I don't think a worst or even less favorite bracket is the way to do it. I think that invites people to get nasty, and there's a difference between "I like this less" and "I think this fell short" and "I think this betrays biases", and "This Is Bad And Here's Why".

I would like to, at some point, do polls that do open up the floor to those conversations, but I think that 1, those will have to be done after I have a better community established over here, and 2, they will have to be built extremely carefully. I have already once been in a situation where "was anyone else bothered by this thing in this Discworld book or was it just me?" went from being a discussion of "yeah, they're not perfect, and sometimes they could even be hurtful" or "as long as we're dragging him through the mud--" and I would like to avoid that in future.

Flaws and all, Discworld are some of my favorite books, and a big influence on the way I think about stories. I want to have fun with them with other people who love them, not nail our 95 theses to the Patrician's door.

tl;dr, a worst bracket or even less favorite bracket makes it really easy for people to get their back up and hurt everyone's feelings, and that's not fun for me to host on a blog that seeks to celebrate Discworld with other people who love it.