#discworld spoilers

[telekinetic-hedgehog]

[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

[twofoursixohjuan]

best thing about Maladict is that gender is completely and absolutely optional.

cis-female Maladict? excellent!

cis-male Maladict? no problem!

nonbinary Maladict? marvellous!

genderqueer Maladict? wonderful!

trans girl Maladict? spicy!

trans boy Maladict? easy-peasy!

genderfluid Maladict? love it!

you can interpret the text to support any gender you like for Mal and that's just fun

[robotbirdhead]

I’ve gotta talk about Soul Music (the Discworld book) for a sec. I saw this post a few weeks ago that inspired me to reread it and I just finished and I can’t get over A) how much stuff happens in this book, damn and 2) how much it being a book about grief just went over my head last time. Like somehow Susan’s whole storyline flew right by me idk.

Anyway the way that the narrative denies that Susan is feeling anything about her parents death over and over and over again while simultaneously doing everything in its power to show us, totally unrelatedly, that she is obsessed with the idea of saving good people from dying young rules. And the climax of that, when she saves The Band from falling off the cliff, like really hit me this time. Sometimes the universe needs changing.

[valdin-s]

Fifth Elephant (heavy spoilers)

9th book i read

whoooo okay

this book is easily my favorite of all the discworld books ive read so far almost everything about it is just simply chef's kiss

so i loved loved loved! pretty much everything with Uberwald, just seeing a setting that is different from Ankh-Morpork is great for one (love that place but all the past City Watch books have been heavily based in it so a slight change of pace was a breath of fresh air) the political intrigue with everything there was a blast to read and each of the characters were simply divine (Angua's father now holds a special place in my heart for example)

Vime's personal arc with discovering how to navigate his new role as Duke was fantastic and im excited to see how it goes next especially with a child on the way. i also loved seeing Sybil playing a bit of a more active role in the story as well, esp. with her not doing much in past books

all of the fun exploration with gender with the dwarfs was also superb and i wasn't really expecting it to have as much focus and dialogue as it did considering it was written in 1999

another thing this book did for me is solidify my extreme dislike of Fred Colon. like i disliked him in previous books (mainly Jingo) but this one just made me all the more mad at him. his type of casual bigotry towards people that aren't like him is one that i experience too much in my day to day life for me to enjoy him as a character. i can see him potentially getting some sort of redemption but if he doesn't i wont be too broken up

overall;

9.8/10

[patheticmenscuffle]

Listen. LISTEN. Rincewind is such a pathetic man (affectionate) y'all don't even Know

He's a Wizard that can't do magic. His is "the magical equivalent of the number zero". He sewed "Wizzard" into his hat. Man is a polyglot and is super good at picking up languages but can't spell wizard. He spends most of his time running away from people who want to kill him.

Rincewind constantly, and I mean CONSTANTLY, falls into Situations that he wants no part of and then has to fix anyway.

He's just supposed to help guide a tourist around the city bc said tourist doesn't speak the local language, and only Rincewind can speak one he understands (and the ruler of the city doesn't particularly want to go to war with the kingdom the tourist is from if he dies)? Oops, whole city's on fire goTTA GO- (And that's literally just the beginning of the book it gets worse, he ends up getting chased by an eldritch lovecraftian creature at one point in that same book). Man has been kidnapped, imprisoned, and threatened with death/execution so many times.

Either the narrator or Death (I've forgotten which) calls him the opposite to the 'hero with a thousand faces', something to the tune of 'the hero with a thousand retreating backs', and 'the eternal coward'. He got stuck in the Dungeon Dimensions & then was summoned out of them by a 13-year-old 'demonologist' and then had to grant said kid's wishes bc since he was summoned he has to obey demon rules. He got stuck in a massive desert & survived by eating grubs or beetles and falling into watering holes, the frequency of which was only thanks to a magic-adjacent creature that wanted him to do a quest for it and thus needed to be sure he stayed alive.

All this man wants for a good portion of the time you see him is a good meal (preferably potatoes) and to sleep in a bed instead of a prison cell or the dirt somewhere.

Vote Rincewind.

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Oh goodness Rincewind propaganda!! Fun to see! :D Both me and mod Dragon were very taken by the fact that he spelled his name wrong on his hat.

-Mod Knight

[centwithlove]

@transboybreakdowns @cipher-of-the-round-table

happy glorious 25th of may

[marsreds]

terry pratchett, small gods

[glockmonkey]

CARROT’S AUTISTIC SWAG WINS AGAIN!!!!!!!

[marciaillust]

the post office is open for business!!

[benevolenterrancy]

(Unseen Academicals, Terry Pratchett) I think Shang Qinghua and Ponder Stibbons should have tea and compare notes about somehow accumulating so much behind-the-scenes power by doing menial jobs no one else wants that they could basically run the show if they wanted...

meanwhile we have Shen "meh good enough" Qingqiu

[valdin-s]

Soul Music (heavy spoilers)

(8th book i read)

i found this book very interesting

so i already knew that Susan existed because of just general baseline knowledge i had of the discworld and the books therein, but i didn't expect her character to be what it is (at least in this book)

again i was disappointed at the surprising (although not as much anymore) lack of Death in the book. he was just having an existential (or nonexistential?) crisis and wasn't really there for most of the book but all of his scenes were amazing, esp the ones at the end where he became rad as fuckk

another thing with this book was the argument i felt being made on how interestingly Susan reacted to dying, she thought she could solve it all (which i found pretty accurate for a 16 year old ngl) by just not letting people die

this coupled with Death's attitude of noninterference and him seemingly unable to accept the concept of letting someone survive made for a very fun dichotomy between the two opposing viewpoints in the few scenes where they interacted and they ending was a interesting surprise with Death, if not changing his outlook, at the very least becoming more lenient and, dare i say... Human (gasp!)

for the stuff with the Band With Rocks In i don't really have all that much to say, it was a fun thing that was happening but i wasn't super invested, again there was just more time spent on it than i thought there needed really (even if it is kinda the main plot)

the first part was great, the middle was kinda slow, but the last like 40 odd pages were the bomb dot com

overall;

8.7/10

(next book: The Fifth Elephant)

[avelera]

Pratchett's Vimes has set my definitive standard for what an actual, true Good Cop looks like and how they would stand in opposition to militaries, how police are supposed to be civilians who keep the peace, not soldiers who defeat an enemy

And omg, while I was watching Arcane Season 2 with Cait's whole thing, especially that scene with Ambessa at the end of 2.3 I turned to my partner and said, "If he saw this, Vimes would go spare."

[dungeondykes]

night watch keeps throwing absolutely mean right hooks then kicking me while i’m down like. we’ve got this intensely topical political drama unfolding in the foreground, one where the guy in charge is hiring his buddies into office and the poor are getting poorer while their friends are arrested and killed in the streets, and they’re all so desperate they’d gladly put the lesser of two evils into office, not knowing what that future holds. and while vimes knows the outcome /we/ don’t, we just know it’s in history books and it absolutely ends with the death of john keel. beyond that there’s all the time shit with lu-tze and closed loops and historical imperative and then vimes finally getting his wish of going back to simpler times but simpler does not mean easier, don’t you remember how horrible it all was? have you become so used to comfort that you forgot what it was like in the gutter? and now vimes is running around in a divergent timeline he created (again 🙄) because he’s incapable of staying in his lane. all this is happening and then terry’s like. hey so i know you were wondering what vetinari was up to 30 years ago. i’ve also canonized him as a dog person

[willwoodwithadditionalgrapejuice]

woah discworld? woah minecraft malevolent!? shocked face

[goalieflashflight]

This paragraph killed me, and this is full of spoilers. I could write tomes of literature about this paragraph. This is from 'Monstrous Regiment' by Sir Terry Pratchett. Polly is a soldier pretending to be a man. Their god declares things sinful as abominations. The abominations were reasonable, then tolerable, and then wholly insane and even life-threatening. The country's citizens do what they can and guiltily ignore what they can't. Polly's mother was highly religious and found solace in their fading god.

Polly's brother is only described as having learning difficulties, but his hyperfixation is birds. He can name them, recognize their sounds, and mimic them. If he is not told what to do, he will stand outside and observe for hours. Polly, who was responsible for Paul, saved and worked to buy a paint set for him. Paul excitedly paints a bird that could fly off the page. Polly's mother is enraged by this, as painting living things is an abomination, and throws the paint and picture into the fire. Even though almost every room has a drawn picture of the Duchess, whom everyone prays to to talk to their god!

Her mother burned the picture. Her mother who Polly speaks about in only certain terms follows like a ghost in the story. She is another deity that has let Polly down. Something else she can't believe in.

I AM FERAL!

She lost everything she ever believed in that moment. Her mother, her country's god and the Duchess.

We all have that moment in childhood where we realize our parents aren't perfect, they aren't invincable. Polly's mom first did this by burning the picture then sealed it when she got sick and died. Which parelles how the country's god has died and all that is left is echoes. Echoes like that we see of Polly's relationship with her mother. Like how the Duches echoes the voice of another character when possessing her.

This story oh god this story. I will end it here, but there is still so much to say.