#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

[marciaillust]

the post office is open for business!!

[glockmonkey]

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

[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

[strummerjoe]

Okay okay, listen, Night Watch is an absolute masterpiece of storytelling. It’s done so well I want to scream. Not only do we, the readers, know that the revolution will end in tears, the protagonist of the story knows it too! Vimes goes into this with the exact same expectations as the reader of here we go, we know we’re in a tragedy, we’re know we’re doomed by the narrative. AND YET, AND YET as the story goes on, you start to hope that maybe, just maybe, something will be different this time.  Even Vimes starts to entertain the idea, but every time this happens, you get reminded (by the History Monks) that No. This is only going to go one way. This. is. a. Tragedy.  BUT STILL. These are good people and look, some things have gone better this time, maybe it’s enough? Vimes always wins in the end, doesn’t he? And so you HOPE and by hoping, you wilfully forget what you’ve been told again and again, that this is a tragedy.  AND THEN THEY GET SO CLOSE. SO FREAKING CLOSE that when it all goes wrong you feel surprised, even though you were told from the very beginning how it was going to go. It’s insane. It’s Terry Pratchett at his finest. Its’s a goddammed masterpiece.

[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)

[willwoodwithadditionalgrapejuice]

woah discworld? woah minecraft malevolent!? shocked face

[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."

[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.

[stupidphototricks]

Dwarf tradition, in The Truth. Long quote but there is so much to unpack here.

"A dwarf needs gold to get married." "What… like a dowry? But I thought dwarfs didn't differentiate between--" "No, no, the two dwarfs getting married each buy the other dwarf off their parents." "Buy?" said William. "How can you buy people?" "See? Cultural misunderstanding once again, lad. It costs a lot of money to raise a young dwarf to marriageable age. Food, clothes, chain mail… it all adds up over the years. It needs repaying. After all, the other dwarf is getting a valuable commodity. And it has to be paid for in gold. That's traditional. Or gems. They're fine, too. You must've heard our saying 'worth his weight in gold'? Of course, if a dwarf's been working for his parents, that gets taken into account on the other side of the ledger. Why, a dwarf who's left off marrying till late in life is probably owed quite a tidy sum in wages—You're still looking at me in that funny way…" "It's just that we don't do it like that…" mumbled William. Goodmountain gave him a sharp look. "Don't you, now?" he said. "Really? What do you use instead, then?" "Er… gratitude, I suppose," said William. He wanted this conversation to stop, right now. It was heading out over thin ice. "And how's that calculated?" "Well… it isn't, as such…" "Doesn't that cause problems?" "Sometimes." "Ah. Well, we know about gratitude, too. But our way means the couple start their new lives in a state of… g'daraka… er, free, unencumbered, new dwarfs. Then their parents might well give them a huge wedding present, much bigger than the dowry. But it is between dwarf and dwarf, out of love and respect, not between debtor and creditor… though I have to say these human words are not really the best was of describing it. It works for us. It has worked for a thousand years." "I suppose to a human it sounds a bit… chilly," said William. Goodmountain gave him another studied look. "You mean by comparison to the warm and wonderful ways humans conduct their affairs?" he said. "You don't have to answer that one. Anyway, me and Boddony want to open up a mine together, and we're expensive dwarfs. We know how to work lead, so we thought a year or two of this would see us right." "You're getting married?" "We want to," said Goodmountain. "Oh… well, congratulations," said William. He knew enough not to comment on the fact that both dwarfs looked like small barbarian warriors with long beards. All traditional dwarfs looked like that.* *Most dwarfs were still referred to as "he" as well, even when they were getting married. It was generally assumed that somewhere under all that chain mail one of them was female and that both of them knew which one this was. But the whole subject of sex was one that traditionally minded dwarfs did not discuss, perhaps out of modesty, possibly because it didn't interest them very much, and certainly because they took the view that what two dwarfs decided to do together was entirely their own business. — Terry Pratchett, The Truth

I super love the footnote, of course, but unexpectedly now I kind of want this version of a dowry to be a thing. I mean, the dowries of the bad old days where the man basically bought the woman from her parents, that's not okay. But this.

I'm a parent, and in no way do I feel like my kid owes me for their upbringing, education, or even (I'm anticipating) a few years of post-college living at home. Not at all. I can't imagine not taking care of them or attaching any strings to that care.

But that's not what this is. Really, ideally, it's a way for parents and children to give each other the gift of the child's independence, their autonomy, their adulthood. To officially and tangibly say that their relationship from this point on is no longer parent/child, but something more on an equal level.

For that matter, I imagine the child is free not to have a relationship with their parents any more at all, if they want. No obligation, no guilt. If parents want to be in their kids' lives when they're adults, they'll need to make sure their kids actually like them as people.

Well. I know that our world of humans doesn't work like this. Even if we put a monetary value on what we owed our parents and paid it, we'd still feel obligated to them, at least a little. Even if our kids paid us back, we'd still feel like we had the right to control them, at least a little.

But man. That g'daraka thing sounds wonderful.