#he starts wearing his hair different bc the bangs were just getting in the way+less care needed in the new manner

[dinoserious]

sending ori to hisui. for funsies

[genius-billionare-playboy]

Avengers Headcannons

-main 6-

no warnings

set between civil war and infinity war

Tony Stark

-his sunglasses barely protect his eyes. in fact, has trouble seeing out of the different colored sunglasses he wears, but it makes him feel cool, so he wears them. end of story.

-owns countless different suits and ties, just for all of them to look exactly the same. he's in denial about it.

-a guy who probably prefers records and CD over platforms like spotify, when he feels like listening to music.

-has (and still does) own nerdy science shirts like peter, but only wears them on his floor.

-he uses so much hair gel/hair spray to keep his hair looking neat, despite hating the feeling of it. appearance always comes first, according to him.

-has several times stolen steve's suit to "improve it," when he was actually just trying it on and posing in the mirror. (not a ship!)

-he LOVES watching gilmore girls and dance moms. its a guilty pleasure that only pepper needs to know about.

-gives people nicknames because he cannot care less about someones name, or he just really likes them. no in between.

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Steve Rogers

-has those cute fluffy socks with dogs on them, but no one ever sees them with his costume on.

-uses all of tony's hair products, (usually asks), and tries different methods to make his hair stay in place.

-during civil war, he truly knew that giving in to the government would be the best, but was afraid he would be taken control of.

-has bleached his hair many times as a teenager, and does not regret it at all.

-shops at the most random stores. this man probably has clothes gap, even though he can afford anything he wants.

-younger, he could not cook to save his life. with the help of nat, wanda and vision, he cooks femominally and is the unofficial baker in the avengers tower.

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Thor Odison

-for a while, he had no clue as to why others couldn't pick up mjolnir. he truly thought that they were worthy.

-enjoys trying new drinks (alcoholic or not) and foods whenever he can.

-has electrocuted himself several times while trying to unplug something.

-ironically, he spends the least time on his hair, and it looks the best.

-once called clint mjolnir on accident, and now does it on purpose just to annoy him.

-has horrible taste in clothes, but always pulls off a look bc well... its thor.

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Clint Barton

-has no idea what he's doing in his life anymore, but its whatever. he finds a way.

-has terrible memory. not because of age, just in general.

-even before losing his hearing fully, he always had poor hearing. at some point natasha started throwing little things like pens at him to get his attention.

-has on several occasions forgotten which arrows do what, but it usually works out in his favor.

-cherishes his bows more than himself. arrows? don't matter. he'll just go buy some more. bows, however? will throw himself to protect them without hesitating.

-uses kate's skincare thinking she doesn't realize (she totally knows and is over the moon about it)

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Natasha Romanoff

-loves trying new haircuts on a daily basis.

-had a phase in high school where she had bangs and dyed her hair crazy colors. is still recovering from it.

-at first, she was almost annoyed finding out she was the only female on the avengers. now, she couldn't care less.

-her and wanda go on shopping sprees at least once a month. its mandatory.

-finds little pleasure in sitting and watching tv, but enjoys it when its with people she likes.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bruce Banner

-unironically, his favorite color is green.

-loves wearing button-down shirts, but hates wearing suits. thinks that they are uncomfortable and too classy.

-afraid that he will hurt someone he loves as the hulk.

-his favorite weather is snow, but he dislikes rain.

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that's all for now!

my apologies since they kind of basic and there's not much for a few characters.

as this is my first post, any and all suggestions are sincerely appreciated. please feel free to ask for any hcs or send a fic prompts, I try my best to be frequently active.

have a great day!

[sadlynotthevoid]

Now, where was I?

Anyways, PriPara fusion AU where og!Cale got his priticket (you know, the card thingy they use to enter to and change in PriPara) when he was 13-ish years old and a self-isolated pre-teen with too much free time and too much thoughts.

So, he went to the nearest PriPara sucursal because 'why not? It's better than staying alone with his thoughts' and, after an explanation from an employer (I love the meganee's, but I think it's funnier if it's meganii because young og!Cale would totally get a puppy crush on him), he went with the Mireille way— that is, his PriPara appareance is different enough that no one would relate it to him at simple glance.

(I forgot I was writting this post yesterday, whoops—)

A change of hair (I was thinking on a bright violet for his hair, fits his elegance) and eyes colour (I say golden-ish or light blue bc I like how it looks with violet hair). Make it a bit longer but tied up high in a classy but semi-messy style (a high pony tail with bangs, a few little braids from the side to the back, a bun with a fancy hairpin, etc).

PriPara usual kind of idol clothes (og!Cale would love them for how extra shiny and fancy they're, but he finitively wouldn't wear them for the daily life. I mean, have you seen them?) that are too colorful and happy-looking for "Lout Cale" or from a different style than he tends to wear. Well, in a modern AU he would wear modern rich guy clothes. So, he probably could get away with wearing fantasy-ish fancy clothes.

And maybe a hat or a mask (a good-looking one, like a Venetian mask, not whatever ugly plain thing WS has).

For the next two years, this works well. His daily life might be exhausting on the good days and like drowning at the worst, but in PriPara is not the same. There, if he wants, he can laugh, sing and dance at any moment and no one will be hurt for it. Is the only place were he can loose and enjoy to the bottom of his heart.

So he practices, eats sweets, composes music when he feels inspired and even tries designing his own suits once or twice. He performs when his happiness is overwhelming and he performs when his sadness menaces with driving his soul away. He sings once and over again and feels himself reviving more and more.

Besides, there are so much idols at PriPara. No one is going to look twice at a guy with a mask and think 'ah, that's that lout guy!' There's no need to stress about keeping his indentity a secret.

That doesn't mean he's going to go around tempting his luck.

He could be himself here, but only as long as he can keep it a secret. Which means, keep distance. Not getting to close with people he already knows as Cale, not talking about his outside life and not letting others look at him face to face for too long, specially if they could recognize him.

Of course, none of his precaution measures had taken Kim Rok Soo into account.

Hey, how was he supposed to know that his classmate was going to start working here? He didn't even know that they accepted non-Mega-looking workers.

He guessed it right away.

Other things in this AU:

-For a while, Cale keeps giving Rok Soo money, thinking he's buying his silence. Actually, PriPara workers are completely forbidden from revealing their clients' information, so he couldn't tell anyone even if he wanted. It was in his contract. But Rok Soo was not going to tell him that.

-Cale's PriPara bag is so full of cords and other tickets that he was worried he would need a second bag (can you even buy an extra one?). Meganee then told him that PriPara bags were practically infinite and impossible to fill.

-Rok Soo started working there because he needed the money because he's in his money-less orphan era. He quits after Cale makes Deruth and Violan adopt him.

-Cale doesn't know it, but he's quite well know. Like, in an early Sophie Hojo level. He has a fan club and all. Is not that he hasn't seen some of them around, he just thinks that's normal.

-Short after Rok Soo finds out, he runs into Rosalyn in PriPara (he's 100% sure it's Rok Soo's doing. He's right). They end up teaming up an exchanging TomoTickets, which were both first times for him.

-He's sure she found out something. She did. Rosalyn is not going to tell anyone about him tho.

-Rather than idoling, Rosalyn is more interested in investigating whatever the fuck that PriPara technology-magic is.

-Choi Jung Soo is a Cale fan since his early days. He doesn't know he is Cale though. They're also classmates, which means Cale often has to hear him rambling about his idol-self and pretend it has nothing to do with him.

-Choi Jung Soo can't sing at all, he sounds terrible. After knowing that Choi Han can't act for his life, Cale is convinced that being bad at non-martial arts is a Choi family treat.

-Newbie idol Soo Hyuk. He just got his ticket a week before Rok Soo got his job.

-I forgot to say it, but Rok Soo's job at PriPara begins when they're fifteen.

-Freedo is their highschool headmaster because I think that's fun.

-Cale eventually ditches the secret identity thing.

-Cale Barrow, AKA the inferior Cale, goes around trying to steal PriPara's technology-magic thing because he thinks he could use it for his Evil Purposes. He never succeeds. Instead, he keeps fighting and losing to a group of teens and their parental figures.

-Eric, Amiru and Gilbert cheering Cale after they find out. Lily and Bassen join them after the reveal.

That's pretty much it, I think.

Og!Cale-centric modern AU, except it's a PuriPara fusion.

I will elaborate when my eyes open once again. Righg now can't

[fangurk]

She’s Always There (Paul Lahote x Reader)

Key:

Y/n: Your Name

Y/l/n: Your Last Name

Y/n/n: Your Nickname

Y/e/c: Your Eye Color

Y/h/c: Your Hair Color

Prompt Given To Me By @ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhghhhh.tumblr.com: hey!! so the reason I'm messaging is because I wanted to request something but can't fit it all into an ask lmao. anyways could i please request a Paul Lahote x reader where the reader has been super close to the whole pack for years and has been Paul's imprint but doesn't know it (bc Sam thought it would be best to keep u away from it all) and they decide to finally tell you about being shapeshifters and being Paul's imprint and you're so mad about them not telling u earlier and there's a huge argument and they and Paul tries to calm you down but you say stuff like 'leave me alone' and things like that and it sounds like you're rejecting him/the bond in ur angry breakdown. anyways Paul is heartbroken and can't get out of bed or eat or anything so the guys finally convince you to come back bc they and Paul need you and it's just the reader cuddling with him and getting him out of bed to take a shower and eat and he realizes that you're not going anywhere and it's just like healing the imprint bond? sorry for this WALL of text, I've just had this idea stuck in my head for a while lol. if you don't want to do it, that's completely fine!! thank you for your time ♡

ok so my guy,, bc this fic has been stuck in my head for a bit, some scenes have developed? so idk i hope this isn't too much, but if u do write it, would u be willing to add like some angst to it, obvi, and maybe a scene/part lol where when the reader tries to get him to shower (bc the misinterpreted rejection made him like super depressed and he just felt low about himself) he won't shower, because he doesn't want to come out and the reader is gone. so either they shower together (not smutty just angst&fluff) or she sits like in the bathroom while he showers LOL. and when he feels a bit better, they go down to eat and he's touching some part of her at all times. if this is too much to like,, include then that's a-okay. i just need to get this OUT of my MIND ugh lmao!/!

Reader Gender: Female

Summary: The Reader has been friends with most of the pack members for her whole life. Which is why, after months of silence and strange changes, she was willing to let them back into her life— until she finds out she’s been told lies that leave her in danger, of course. After a big freak out and two weeks of avoiding them, the boys come begging for her help; it turns out that Paul has some wolf-y claim on her, and whatever she said to him has left him worse for wear...

Warnings: Mentions of Depression, Nudity, Angst, and Cursing.

A/n: this is literally like a whole novel I’m so sorry I got carried away. this is kinda based on a lot of fics I read where the imprint has the potential to really hurt people and I named Paul’s dad.

Word Count: 2.9k+

“The legends are real!?”

Y/n Y/l/n hasn’t ever been so disturbed in her entire life.

After weeks of radio silence, Sam Uley’s little ‘gang’, mostly consisting of people she’d known since childhood, had slowly trickled back into her life. What started as a grocery run with Paul or a movie with Jared had turned into big bonfire parties including Jacob Black and his gaggle.

But that was months ago. Months. And now, as she sits by a fire, surrounded on either side by them, they decide to tell her their little secret?

“Y/n.” Sam says as she abruptly stands, eyes stern and hand raised placatingly.

His actions only served to upset her more and her skin bristles with irritation. Sam was acting as if she, a human surrounded by shape shifters, was the unstable one. As if she could do any damage to things built to kill vampires.

“Don’t you dare, Sam.” She clenches her fists, glaring right back at him. “It’s been months- months- and you’re telling me now?”

“It’s not exactly an easy thing to bring up.” He reasons, voice a little less demanding. “We all wanted to be sure that you were ready to know.”

“Ready?!” Y/n laughs mirthlessly, y/e/c eyes wide with disbelief, “When was I supposed to be ready Sam? W-when one of you gored me? When a cold one ripped me apart?”

Her hands shake as she puts them on her forehead, blinking back tears. Growing up all she’d ever heard were stories of humans getting dragged into fights between wolf and vampire, and she couldn’t bring herself to look Emily in the eye because it was suddenly apparent that wolves alone could hurt people too.

It was so bad, whatever happened to Emily, that they said a bear mauled her— Y/n didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“It’s not like that, Y/n/n.” Embry chimes in, reaching out to grab his friend's arm.

She yanks her body out of the way and gathers her belongings quickly.

“What is it like then, Call?” She holds her bag to her heaving chest, “because it seems to me that you all have the ability to turn into giant, slobbery freaks that are built for killing vampires and, after completely dropping me for weeks, you decided to keep it secret from me for months. Did it even occur to you that I would’ve been better off knowing right off the bat?!”

No one says anything. Eight shifters and two of their girlfriends sit there, just staring at her like she was speaking a different language.

“You know,” Y/n has to clear her throat to steady her wavering voice, “had you guys really been souped-up on drugs like everyone says, maybe I could’ve handled the lying. But my life was clearly potentially in danger, and you let me hang around without saying anything. I- God I don’t want to see you people right now.”

She leaves with that, stepping over logs and storming back down the beach with determination. Faintly over the roar of her heartbeat, she can hear someone scrambling to stand behind her.

“Wait!— shit, sorry-” Paul grunts, jogging to catch up with her- “Y/n-“

With an unusual gentleness, his warm hand wrapped around her forearm. For a moment, deep in the back of her mind, a foreign feeling tells her to stop, to listen; but that small voice is quickly smothered by the rational part of her brain, and she wrenches her arm from his grip.

“Don’t touch me!” She snaps, lowering her voice, “Leave me alone- I need to be alone.”

Paul stands there, dumbstruck, an unreadable look in his eyes as she walks away. And he’d continue to stand there, looking like a kicked puppy long after her retreating form became a blur amongst the darkness of the beach.

“Paul?” Sam is hesitant, hand hovering over the younger boy’s shoulder a minute before he touches him, “You okay?”

Shrugging his leader’s arm off his shoulder, Paul sighs. “No...I...I’m just gonna head home.”

Instead of going in the directions of the cars, the wolf stalks off toward the woods; Emily stands from her seat, wrapping her sweater more around herself as she watches Paul leave. Concern is written all over her features.

“He’ll be fine, Em,” He pulls her in for a hug, “it’ll all work out eventually.”

ஓ๑♡๑ஓ

Y/n does a good job of avoiding them for a while.

She turns her phone off a few days in and avoids going to First Beach, even when Washington gets a rare, warm summer feel. Books that have sat long forgotten on her shelves get read and TV shows she’s always meant to catch up on get watched; it’s boring and she runs out of options, at one point thinking of dying her hair y/f/c just to spice things up, but it allows her to think. (Or at least it allows this strange little voice in the back of her head to tell her that she needs to go back to them.)

The next time she sees any of the boys is exactly two weeks after the bonfire incident.

She’s curled up on her couch, picking at some of the Clearwaters’ fish fry and barely watching an episode of ANTM, when a fist comes banging down on her door. Turning off the TV, she tiptoes to the window, peeking under the curtain as carefully as she can.

As she expected, Jared Cameron and Embry Call are on her porch, the former standing in front of her door with his hip cocked, the other rooting around in her mother’s plants for something. Cringing, she hopes if she’s quiet enough that they’ll just go away.

Her front door opens within minutes, however, and she realizes her hoping is fruitless.

Should’ve known you can’t hide from wolves, she can’t help but think bitterly.

“Y/n?” Jared calls out through the house, “we know you’re here.”

“Yeah, and you guys should probably move your spare key,” Embry tacks on, flicking the light switch to the living room up, “I've known you forever and it’s still in the same place.”

From her spot by the window, the y/h/c haired girl glares at the two boys, arms crossed over her chest. Embry gives her a lopsided grin and holds the key out to her, his bud plopping down on the couch and pulling her abandoned plate into his lap.

Y/n extends a hand to take the key.

“Has it really been in the same place?” She sounds a little more defeated than she’d like.

“Yeah, it’s always been in your mother’s cornflower pot.”

“That’s...kinda sad.” She wrinkles her nose, pocketing the key with the intention to hide it better later, “but uh, I’ve been ignoring you for two weeks for a reason. Peacefully breaking into my house kinda furthers my need for space.”

Embry scratches the back of his neck.

“Well,” He says, “we need you to come back, man. Paul won’t talk to anyone- Sam doesn’t know if he’s eating, and he won’t even get out of bed for patrol! He needs his imprint-”

“His what?” She cocks her head to the side and Jared snorts from the couch.

“She left before we got there, nimrod,” Jared mocks through a mouthful of food, “she doesn’t know what an imprint is.”

He lets out an indignant “Hey!” as Y/n walks by, snatching her plate back from him on her way to the kitchen. Embry chases after her, a grumpy Jared jumping up from the couch to follow.

“You’re his imprint— you’re basically his soulmate!”

“Really?” She says warily, sealing the fish and putting it back in the fridge.

Both boys nod clumsily.

“You remember a few weeks ago when you saw each other for the first time again and he kinda just stood there like an idiot while you talked?”

“Yeah? Oh!-” She brings her hands up to her mouth, brows furrowed as she recalls.

It was exactly Jared had said. She and Paul had seen one another for the first time in a long time and the minute her y/e/c eyes looked into his, it was like he’d been struck dumb.

Embry gives her an encouraging look, “An imprint is...It's not like love at first sight, really. It's more like… gravity moves… suddenly. It's not the earth holding you here anymore, she does… You become whatever she needs you to be, whether that's a protector, or a lover, or a friend. When you snapped at him last week he thought you were rejecting him….”

A part of her thought about how absurd it was that he knew that whole speech. But the bigger part of her came to a realization that made her stomach churn.

“So he's all depressed… because… of me?” She whispers, leaning back on the counter.

Embry, always a rather sympathetic person, opens his mouth to comfort her, but Jared cuts him off.

“Basically. So are you going to come with us so we can help Paul or are you going to continue being petty?”

In any other circumstance, Y/n probably would’ve thrown something at her for calling her petty. She felt she was completely justified in her actions. A part of her wonders if she can really believe them— they’d spent months lying to her after all. But a larger part thinks about Paul, curled up in his bed, slowly desecrating because he thinks she rejected him.

If it were really all some ploy to get her to listen to them, then she’d at least be the person who chose the well-being of her friend over a petty disagreement.

“I’m coming.” She affirms, pushing herself off the counter, and letting the boys lead her to the car.

ஓ๑♡๑ஓ

Jared and Embry drop her off in front of the Lahote household. They tell her something but she can’t really hear them over her heartbeat, she doesn’t even know they’re gone until it’s too late to turn back.

Getting into the house wasn’t the hard part. Paul’s father, Cyrus, had been leaving as she arrived, and, after he watched her stare at the house with a fearful expression for a few minutes, he happily let her in. The hard part was willing her legs to take her up the stairs to Paul’s room, and then it was opening his bedroom door.

Y/n has known Paul since they were eight, but she was afraid of him until they were eleven. He wasn’t mean, per se, but his anger made him do mean things; she wasn’t entirely happy with puberty and it’s monthly gifts, but whatever it did to make her suddenly un-afraid of him she was grateful for. But now, standing in front of his bedroom door, she had a nagging fear that Paul would revert to that eight year old boy who threw lunch boxes and twisted arms behind backs until people cried.

The door creaks slightly as she struggles to push it open.

His room is almost completely dark except for the light coming from the hallway behind her. Trash and dirty clothes have formed a compact layer on his bedroom floor, foot sized holes leading up to the twin sized bed in the corner. On the bed, amongst the blankets she’s sure he doesn’t need, is Paul— or at least, a Paul sized lump.

As gross as it is, she’s kind of relieved he’s been eating.

“Paul?” She whispers tentatively, stepping toward the bed.

The lump flinches and turns toward her.

“Y/n?”

If the room and the description of his state weren’t heartbreaking enough, his voice definitely was. Hollow, rough, and small, everything it never was, everything Paul wasn’t.

“Is that you?”

“Yeah...it’s me..”

She carefully steps over to the bed, and Paul slowly sits up, pushing his blankets to the side. There’s a beat of silence as she stands between his legs, his reluctant hands coming to rest on her waist after a minute. Y/n let’s him have another to gather his thoughts.

“You really came…” Tears well up in his eyes and loops his arms around her back.

She runs a hand through his hair. “I did, and I’m so sorry, if I had known—”

Paul nuzzles her stomach, “S’fine, you didn’t know, and you’re here now.”

There’s a sort of cute, euphoria lacing his voice and he’s visibly much more relaxed.

“Just don’t ever say that again…”

“I won’t, I promise.”

She’s surprised when he manhandles her into his lap, but she doesn’t really mind. He’s warm and strangely familiar and something about it just— clicks.

“When was the last time you spent, I dunno, a minute or two out of your room?” Y/n asks softly, y/e/c eyes glancing about the room.

The shifter’s only response is a shrug, too busy nosing around her neck with vigor. When he finds a certain spot, it makes her squeak, and this seems to excite him like a puppy finding out its favorite toy makes noise.

“You need to bathe, eat something substantial,” She intertwines their fingers, “and the...pack...they’re really worried about you— are you even listening to me?”

He looks up at her then and flashes her a sheepish smile, answering her question. Pursing her lips, she pulls his arms from around her.

“C’mon, Paul.” She stands up and takes his hand. “We’re gonna get you cleaned up.”

She moves toward the door, urging him forward, only to be jerked to a stop as he stays put. He looks a little distressed when she turns back to him, brows furrowed, almost like he’s in pain.

“Paul?”

He grunts, jaw clenched as the cogs turn in his head. Y/n cocks her head and reaches out for his other hand. It felt like some sort of supernatural intuition, one she’ll blame on the imprint and ask Emily about later.

“Paul, hon, why won’t you come shower?”

“I’m afraid you'll leave,” He says bashfully, “it’s stupid, I know, but part of me is afraid you’ll leave while I’m in the shower.”

Y/n couldn’t help but feel a little heartbroken at his confession. Paul was part wolf, and part of being part wolf was imprinting— she almost wishes she’d have stayed long enough to listen, or been able to focus as the boys debriefed her on the ride over because only being able to speculate how much she’d actually hurt him was eating her alive. He wouldn’t even shower, something he desperately needed to do, because of what she’d said.

Taking a deep breath, she barely registers the words she’s about to say.

“I’ll wait with you, I’ll sit on the toilet, you’ll see me there.”

And true to her word, Y/n does sit on the toilet while Paul showers, reading the information on soap bottles to distract herself from the fact that he was there next to her, very naked. Occasionally he asks her what she’s doing, and she reads the ingredients out loud to the best of her ability, and he laughs a little— she tries to hide her smile, but she was too happy he was laughing.

She closes her eyes when he gets out, letting him dry himself off and pull on some clean shorts. He throws the wet towel at her when he’s done, eliciting a “Hey!” that makes him laugh again.

Now that he’s clean, the two of them descend into his quiet house. Y/n navigates the kitchen, her wolf attached to her hip and being less than helpful, and makes them both something to eat— he doesn’t do much more than stand behind her, wrapped around her, making her life more difficult.

“I’m so happy you came back.” He says, watching her work.

“I was always going to.” Y/n responds, her voice sure and steady.

They talk as they eat, sitting across from one another at the too big table in the Lahote household. Talk about how this was going to work, admitting feelings that always lingered, and everything in between; she hooks her leg around his, watching him scarf down his meal with a wrinkled nose and fondness glittering in her y/e/c eyes.

He’s...gross...but he’s hers, she’s kind of stuck with him.

A date is planned. An actual date.

Paul promises to take her to the local diner (and to wear a shirt, for once.)

“I’ve been saving up for something like this.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, and you can get that dessert you like.”

Y/n laughs softly, but heat spreads up her neck and settles in her ears and cheeks. It’d been a long time since that had been her favorite food, but it was the thought that counted...

When Cyrus Lahote returns from work later that night his son and the Y/l/n girl are awkwardly situated on his couch— him on his back, snoring, her lying on top of him, face tucked into his neck, also fast asleep. The older man turns off the TV and tosses a blanket over the pair, ascending up the stairs with a smile on his face.

Y/n Y/l/n was trustworthy. She’s always there when Paul is in a rut too big for him to handle...

[sailorhyunjinz]

can i request a bf!skz reaction to you cutting ur bangs yourself but falling terribly and end up crying bc u think ure ugly??🥺 i love ur blog btw!!💓

OH GOD I SHOULDNT LAUGH SHOULD I?? something gives me the feeling that you have been in this situation WHICH SAME and that why you dont cut your own bangs,,, learned that from my mistakes AHSAH BUT HEY IT TURNED OUT OK, IT GROWS SO NO WORRIES!

ALSO AH thank you!! thank you for sending in this idea that almost killed my stomach HAHSAHS <33

LEEEE go HEADCANON

also can i just say that i was crying with laughter when writing this because i just kept on imagining bad hairstyles HASHSAS my stomach hurts

(also; if you guys are wondering why im tagging “stray kids smut” even though this isnt smut, it’s because like 99% of my blog is nsfw and so i dont want to present my blog to people that are uncomfortable with that)

Warning; skz x gn!reader; fluff? oh mentions of scissors! maybe crying??

Bangchan

Find it funny at first but NAH HE HUGGING THE SHIT OUT OF YOU IF YOU’RE CRYING

says like overly comforting things HASHHS

“you did great,,, it’s not even that bad? You just need to like,, comb it!”

“combing it doesnt put hair back channie!~” you say, sighing and rubbing your head on his chest

“why didn’t you ask me?”

you look up at him with teary eyes, starting to laugh

“y-you? i think you would make it worse!”

he chuckles “no! next time i’ll do it and you’ll have to pay for dinner if it turns out better than this,,, whatever it is”

you roll your eyes “Fine! Deal! now let me cut your hair”

his eyes widen as he starts running away from you, you running after him

Minho

a momentary laugh before he gets all fussy about it

“thats why you should go to a hairstylist”

“let’s shave it off, you’ve already started”

NOO BUT IF YOU START CRYING HE WOULD FEEL REALLY SORRY FOR BEING A BIT MEAN

he’s not the most,,, comforting person BUT HE’D TRY BECAUSE HE LOVES YOU VERY MUCH

“hair grows,,, it will grow back before you know it”

“b-but i look ugly?” you say, almost crying and laughing at the same time

“tsk,, nothing is ugly on you”

Changbin

“Are you ok?!”

bruh he’s panicked when he sees you crying, covering your face in shame

“what’s wrong?! wh-OH”

he’d try to make some sort of trend out of it LMAO

“But it looks cool? dye it pink or something” 

“changbin are you making fun of me?” 

he’d hug you and hold his laughter for dear life

“it looks cool, i promise”

you know how he’s very conscious on what he wears? yeah,,, 

“WAIT YOU KNOW WHAT Y/N! pair it with some like,,, cool dangly earrings, wait i have this pair that would look great-”

why is he so cute like stop (please dont)

Hyunjin

sorry to put it like this but HYENA LAUGH 

like where’s the lie??

“WE SHOULD MATCH? GET THE SCISSORS!!”

he’d pull up different characters/people/animals

“WAIT WAIT LOOK! thats you” he snickers, flinching when you raise your arm, wanting to hit him playfully

“show me one more animal and you’ll wake up bald tomorrow”

he shivers, dramatically panicking

“I won’t, miss lemur”

“HYUNJIN GET OVER HERE IM GONNA TEAR THAT STUPID BLONDE HAIR TO SHREDS”

Jisung

you know what he finds funnier than your hair?

the fact that you’re crying over it

HE’S NOT A DICK he just,,, can’t hold his laughter,,,

“no no no y/n!! don’t cry, it’s not that bad!”

he hugs you, patting your back

he would remember the hairstyle and like present it in a meeting the boys have for like comebacks HSAHSHASH IM CRYING

“i mean why not y/n?! let’s all have bangs that are 1 cm on our foreheads”

Felix

*surprised pikachu face*

“what did you do?!?”

I SWEAR he would cry with you because he feels bad for you having to walk around with that hair

he’d try to like,,, comb it or style it in a way that makes it less noticable

does it more because he wants to play with your hair 

“ok,,, we are putting these damn hairstyling scissors away,,,in the basement”

he’d volunteer to cut your hair next time,,, so it looks better LMAO 

OR ACTUALLY GO TO THE HAIRSTYLIST WITH YOU

Seungmin 

another mf that would laugh his ass off

IF YOU’RE NOT CRYING he would take pictures and laugh even more

ONCE AGAIN; HE’S NOT A DICK just,,, having fun LMAO

“what beanie do you want? i got a blue one and a black one here-”

“minnie,,,, it’s summer?”

“do you really want to walk around,,, like that?” 

WHY AM I MAKING HIM SO MEAN?! HE’S NOT MEAN 

just doing to try to make you feel better

“what were you even trying to do?” he asks later in the day

you show him a refrence picture and he starts rolling on the ground from laughter

“this is legendary” he says, almost crying

Jeongin

you know that clip where hyunjin eats a baby shark lollipop AND JEONGINS FACE IS LEGIT LIKE *o* (i legit cry everytime he’s fucking adorable)

YEAH THAT LIKE AGSHASHAS JUST SILENCE AND THAT EXPRESSION

at a loss for words 

“does it look cute?” you say, testing his honesty

he gulps before answering, staring at the abomination thats your hair

“not too bad” says, pressing his lips together to muffle a smile

“YAH YOU’RE SUCH A LIAR!” 

his gaze is drifting all over the place as he nervously looks around

“hey! it’s on you and therefore it’s cute”

[starsmuserainbow]

Here’s the second round of ‘Star picks potential RL-FCs for her muses’.

In short: I have picked (and got suggested some) a few possible faces that I might pick as (real life-) Faceclaims for my muses. Not that I intend to use them much or at all, but I thought it’d be nice to at least for once try and see which faces I would be picking if I were interested in doing so. I have removed some of the faces that I previously picked from the list, because I grew more liking of others or don’t like them anymore, or also simply because I tried to limit myself to a maximum of 5 options per muse.

I would appreciate hearing other’s thoughts on the matter, though if you don’t want to, that’s okay too of course. Like, please, if you do look at it, tell me what you think!

Once more - this post is long, and has a batch of images.

I’m not gonna name the faces I picked, because I don’t need it to show up in any search and I also don’t see a need for it. If you want to say something to a specific one, you can always go by the order that they’re appearing in this post or, like, describe something of the pose or the picture or whatever. (Example of the first option here, like, ‘I like Starfire #1′ or the likes.)

These edits are not done that well, some at parts a little better or worse than others. I just did them because I was hoping to be able to decide better when the colors actually fit. After each pic, I will list some of my thoughts, probably some pros and cons of the face, that I see, too.

Okay, with that said, on we go!

————————————————————————–-

Starting, of course, again with

Starfire!

#1

(The edit on the right of this picture is not mine, I found it through a search and thought I could save myself the editing work)

I included her the last time already, in ‘Blackfire and Starfire’, but I don’t plan on doing that category again, so she’s here this time. And probably will be listed on Blackfire’s options too.

I’m not sure if I really wanna do the positive and negative thing again that I did last time, but, I guess I’ll try to do it. Is a good way to say something about each.

+ eyes nicely big-enough + expressive face + the hair is long enough to work

- She is, or was, a pretty common pick for stuff in general I think? - I don’t think I found a specific appearance of hers that could work well for my purposes

#2

Also taken from last time, and mostly included again because I had at least one voice saying they liked her for Star. I’m still not quite sure how I feel about her, but, yeah.

+ princess-y attire + good hair-length

- I think where these pics are from is an older thing so the quality probably is bad - I don’t really know if I like her smile all that much if I’m honest

#3

+ hair has a decent length + I can see the face working

- The appearance that I found as most interesting/fitting for if I ever do want to take icons, was I think a horror-ish movie of sorts? Which I don’t really wanna watch much, so idk how using her would go for me

#4

+ from the pics I saw, I feel like she’s nicely strongly expressive, like I could use for Star + I do like her face/looks

- She’s like, a really really often used face for characters I think? At least I’m pretty sure I came across her as possible choice for a bunch of muses before - I know her from at least one thing already and it might be difficult to connect her to being Star?

And with that, we’re done with Starfire!

————————————————————————–-

Obviously, next:

Blackfire!

#1

You might recognize her, both from above on Star’s #1, and from the previous post of this. I still consider her a potential fit for them both though, so of course I included her again.

+ eyes nicely big-enough + expressive face + the hair is long enough to work + the pic I did here for Blackfire totally - yes, simply because of it being done in/surroundedby nature - reminds me of the Poison Ivy I once did stuff with both on Starfire and Blackfire, I miss those interactions (or the mun/muse) a lot and just absolutely love that the pic feels like a little like a hinted remembrance for those

- She is, or was, a pretty common pick for stuff in general I think? - I don’t think I found a specific appearance of hers that could work well for my purposes

#2

+ I can see her face working for Blackfire + that pic on the right exudes exactly her smugness + ridiculous point, but if I do take her and ever feel the need/urge to actually do iconing of the FCs, and I pick someone specific from Moonshot’s options, I could get both done from the same show I think

- another time from a rather common thing I think? Which, shouldn’t really be a criteria, but I’m always thinking that people might simply not be able to connect her to something else then

#3

Again taking her from the previous post of doing it, because I had recieved one opinion on her being a good choice.

+ Face and eyes work, at least in these two pics + Clothes work for Blackfire + Her hair is more ‘sleek’ than some of the others in the pics I found, meaning not as many sticking-out hairs to recolor

- In some pics of her I could absolutely not see Blackfire, so I guess it depends a lot on the pose or expression which might mean she’s not that good a fit after all - Comes from a rather well-known thing so even if I myself don’t connect her to it, many others might and I know that when I feel like that I can’t enjoy the FC as much

#4

+ I like her face, I think it fits well + In at least some of her appearances/pics, she has bangs like here, which I kinda in general tend to prefer over all hair done back + her clothes work good for Blackfire

- Again, not all of her pics when searching for them look fitting for Blackfire. But I’m not sure if that’s something I should even list as point, since it seems to be default state. - I think she too is from a rather known thing

#5

+ in the right pics, I feel like her face works really well for Blackfire + I think she’s not from that known medias

- in most of her things, I think she’s having hair about as long as in these pics here, which is kinda too short for a proper Blackfire look - she looks kinda... a bit very thin to me? Idk, I can’t explain what I mean by that

#6

Since I did only 4 on Star, I feel like I’m ‘allowed’ to do one more here. More or less just to actually have my edits shown at least once though, I think I feel the above 5 more than this one. Still, though, here’s number 6.

I don’t really have any + or - here, I mostly just kept her in because I wanted to not just waste the edits I did. I kinda sorta already sorted her out for myself.

That makes it all of Blackfire’s options.

————————————————————————–-

You might be able to guess - next up:

Wildfire!

I don’t really have much new here, but I did sort out a few. I’m not all too fond of the younger-looking ones, so I mostly kept them out of this, outside of one who had gotten a ‘vote’ from the last post.

#1

The only new one of his options right away.

+ I kinda really like the face for Wildfire + one of his appearances has a kind of ‘evil’ look/attire so if I would ever need an evil!look for him I could totally take from there + the hair was surprisingly nice to recolor into Wildfire’s red

- I’d have to work on removing the freckles throughout most of his face, because while I have before considered to have Wildfire with some, I don’t actually think he has such anymore - A rather known face I think thanks to a few recent-ish movies - I’ve heard a voice before saying he’s problematic? Idk why, and I think I don’t really care since all I do is ‘steal’ the face for my own use, but yeah

#2

Like the other option for him still coming below, he’s taken from the last thing.

+ hair is okay-ish + medieval-ish attire probably could work well for mimicking Wildfire’s usual clothing

- He’s only in an episode or so playing this role, I think the role has like 3 different actors or so over the time whenever he appears as young - This is one of like two or so pics in total I found of his appearing and idk, on both he doesn’t quite feel right, a little too ‘stiff’ or ‘serious’ idk (though I guess Wildfire is that too at times, idk it’s just hard to explain)

#3

This had before been his #5, but since I only have 3 options here this time, he’s now #3 instead I guess.

+ face is ‘long-ish’, which I kinda feel helps + I like his face better than #1

- the first pic looks like he’s a good fit, but on the one on the right it doesn’t quite feel that much like a fit - I’m not sure if he’s from too known stuff as well

Okay, Wildfire done!

————————————————————————–-

Now we’re having someone who I had absolutely zero idea for last time, and I didn’t even expect to ever have potential faces. But thanks to wonderful suggestions, I do now! So here comes

Galfore!

#1

+ good-enough hair+beard + a warrior-esque role at least once + I think he looks at least kinda like that without being in-role too, which would mean more possibilities for editing/iconing/whatever

- I could say that his hair is good but not long enough or some other details of Galfore’s look like the braids and such, but honestly, this is probably as close as I can get with actual people so yeah - From a popular series that I never watched, and didn’t exactly plan to ever do, if I do pick him though and want to make icons or something, I might have to

#2

+ hair+beard working pretty well, again + warrior-like role too + I think the hair here is a little longer than with #1, so maybe a little better a fit?

- idk how big his appearance was, gotta re-check the movie for that

#3

+ I could use the eyepatch as excuse of not having to edit Galfore’s scar and broken eye, though I’d have to mirror the pics first since it’s the wrong eye here + hair+beard work well again + A viking, so definitely filling the slot of warrior too

- In most of his appearance, he’s wearing the helmet that you can see on the right? I actually haven’t yet checked if the actor had other roles with similar attire/hair/etc - I don’t really think Galfore would be wearing an eyepatch?

#4

(Only one edit here bc I grew tired of editing)

+ his face kinda works I think?

- he barely has any appearances anywhere I think

That’s Galfore done, too.

————————————————————————–-

So we continue onwards, though for the next two there haven’t really been any changes. Still, though, in order to maybe get some opinions for them too, they’re included, so next up:

Starlight!

#1

Okay, uh, let’s be honest, I don’t really consider anyone else anymore. I have gotten one pretty excited feedback from the last time, and, I just think her face works really well for Starlight.

+ I like her face + I’m pretty sure she wears some really nice colorful things throughout the show, and even changes style eventually which means a nice variation

- From a well-known thing - I think by now she is a singer of sorts so maybe too many can’t quite connect her to something else

#2

This is the only other one I’d really consider for her, mostly as a form of older looks. And when I say older, here, I mean like somewhere in her 20s or late teen or so.

(Also I just need to say that this is probably the best likeness to how I actually imagine Starlight’s hair that I managed to create)

+ hair was nice to recolor + I like her face

- (feeling) too old for how Starlight is at the moment - I think she too comes from a well-known thing

And with that, Starlight’s already done, too.

————————————————————————–-

On to the last but not least,

Moonshot!

#1

Those are all taken from last time, so my pro and con also gets copied from there, as I did with the other repated ones above already too.

+ ‘square-y’ face in the way I feel I’d need it + ‘small’ eyes, as in narrowed a bit

- the hair isn’t quite perfect since Moonshot has a bit longer of a hair and more… more messy - I don’t like his face in some of the pics a picture-search gives me

#2

+ face and eyes again fit to what I’d be looking for + a good amount of the pics of a picture-search actually are ones I can see working

- I think he’s from something well-known again - and again the hair with the same reasoning as above, but tbh I don’t think I even can find anyone completely fitting anyway

#3

+ face works I think + many pics of the result are ones I can see work

- comes from a rather popular thing as far as I can tell - in some angles, or maybe simply at another time of the actor’s life idk, the face doesn’t look that fitting anymore

————————————————————————–-

Aaaaand... finish!

I kinda doubt anyone actually looks as far as here, though if you do, thank you!

I’d really appreciate hearing opinions, if you can see any of them work or not and maybe why. You could even name me other options if you want to, too, though I don’t think I’m gonna make another post of FC-options since I’m kinda fed up with doing the work and not being able to decide.

Of course I do have my own favourites, slightly, but I’d really like to hear feedback! Like, you could even tell me for those of my muses you don’t know, just look at my pics of them on my pages or something, if you really want to give me feedback! Thank you a lot in advance if you do!

[pyotatochip]

just like dancing | hyunjin x reader

what’s up losers. this one goes out to @starhhj​ thanks for always hurting me so good <3

just like dancing | hwang hyunjin x gender neutral reader wordcount: 4k inspired by: sidekick by walk the moon summary: meeting up with a photographer for a day of modelling turns into making a maybe forever friend.

ur a model

well. aspiring model.

ur instagram is a buncha pictures that u make ur friends take of you whenever y'all hang out

u have booked a couple photoshoots and submitted them to magazines

u even got published a couple times!!!!

not in anything big, just photography journals and portraiture mags

BUT IT'S SOMETHING!!!!

photoshoots are hella expensive tho fuckin. rip ur wallet

so u join a facebook group, which is something u never thought u would do

the idea was that aspiring photographers and aspiring models would meet up, get experience, and maybe make professional relationships

you? young and cute

all these photographers? 36 yr old dudes

they always invite you to their studios in their houses

to do artsy half nude shoots

so u were pretty unwilling to meet up with most of them

(understandable)

but then this one schmuck posts in the group, just when u so happen to be looking for weekend plans

“looking for a model this saturday, autumn themed shoot at han river. the leaves are really pretty right now, i wanna catch them before too many fall”

han river was a pretty public place, so u DEFINITELY felt safer

and like, ur school is pretty close to there, so ur familiar with the area

u comment “i'm free all day, give me a time and i'll meet you there”

after it posted, you clicked on his profile and

fuck

he was not 36

and he was CUTE

u freaked the fuck out

this kid looked like he was ur age. and he was hot.

should u delete the comment?

why would u do that?

bc ur nervous?

why are u nervous?

bc the photographer is a hottie?

is that really a good excuse?

before u could debate with urself much longer, ur comment received a like and u got a private message

hyunjin: hi! u look great! meet at the main gates of yeouido park at 9am?

“u look great!”

“U LOOK GREAT!”

(jooe sunbaenim is quaking)

screech

you: so early! okay! what kinda look are u going for?

hyunjin: haha i wanna get that fall morning light!!! i’d like it to be pretty autumnal. warm colors, maybe a sweater/scarf/jacket combo? if u have something like that. minimal makeup & hair, if you're into that stuff. hopefully that's all okay (^ム^)

you: sounds good! see you saturday!

you spend the next few days at school literally just thinking about how ur meeting up with a cutie on saturday

u rlly dont know what to do with urself

i show ur friend a pic of him and she's like “HOOYKY FUXKJGN GODJ”

which was basically your initial reaction too

but then shes like “he looks familiar??? is he a model too???”

u have literally no idea but it's completely possible

like, it's a waste to have that face exclusively behind the camera

and suddenly the two of u are like. obsessively going through his instagram bc WHAT THE FUCK he’s like….. REALLY GOOD

like, he does a lot of portraits, but the focus isn't necessarily always the person in the photo

the composition and background are just as important in every shot and it…. shakes u

there’s a few pictures of him too, all of which are v aesthetic

but how could they not be??? have u seen his face????

he also tags literally every person in his pictures whether they’re models or just his friends while they’re hanging out

and he photocreds everyone who takes pics of him!!

you are literally…. fallin’ in love

because he was cute and had a good eye and wrote cute captions and was so humble!!!

ur friend is like “wow we stan a pro”

“he looks seriously familiar tho, right?”

she's like “yeah i'm confused why have i seen his face before”

and ur shook bc like… if u had seen this boy irl there's no way you would forget how cute he is

finally,,, it's the weekend

you get on the train and head to han river early in the morning, dressed up and made up for your ~autumn photoshoot~

as soon as you get to the gates ur like.. holy fuck

it's so pretty

the leaves are a mix of orange and red and green and there's a couple dusting the ground too

no wonder hyunjin wanted to shoot here

ur kinda aimlessly wandering around the gate when u suddenly spot

him

he’s wearing a bomber jacket and has a camera bag over his shoulder

and his neck is literally at a 90° angle while he's looking at his phone

ur like…. that cant be ok

u get a notif while ur walking up to him and its a message from him asking if u were on ur way

“actually, i can't make it”

he looks up and immediately laughs. “hi! y/n?”

u wave. “hi hyunjin!! nice to meet you!!”

y'all exchange pleasantries and he's suddenly like

“your outfit is literally perfect” he steps back to look at u. “exactly what i had in mind”

u put up a peace sign. he laughs again.

uh oh

u really like his laugh

and his smile

and his everything

uh oh

he leads you further into the park where there's less people and more trees

“i brought another jacket and a couple of scarves in case u wanted something different” u say as he's helping you take off ur backpack

“oooooo a professional”

“not even”

he asks you if he can take a boomerang of u for his instagram story and u do a lil twirl

he gasps

“that was cute!!!!”

he giggles while he's posting it

what is with this kid and his giggles

u cant

if he keeps doin it at this rate, it'll probably be the death of u 

which is

cool

he puts your backpack on and pulls his camera out of his bag. “let's take some pics in this outfit and then i'll peek at the other options. i like this look a lot”

and then… he just starts taking pictures

u literally laugh

“where do you want me?”

“wherever,” he goes, checking the pics real fast. “i tend to go for candid shots”

suddenly,,, his entire instagram flashes in your brain

the pictures of people laughing and mid walk and reading books

u thought all the models were just. really comfy and professionals and shit

IT WAS ALL A LIE

“so uhhh…” u literally dont know what to do

u have Never done a shoot Like This

“just walk,” he said. “look around. i'll follow”

you: no fear

hyunjin: just walk

you: one fear

u nervously laugh again and he's hitting his shutter like A MILLION TIMES A SECOND

“okay…… i guess i'll walk then”

u push his shoulder while u walk past him bc he's cheesin at u way too hard for u to handle

“ow”

“that didn't hurt”

“it hurt my heart :(“

ur walking backwards and laughing and he's just. only looking at you through his camera.

so. u wander.

u take a lovely morning walk down the pretty paths at han river

u really were so scared that u would be completely directionless, but hyunjin ends up asking you to do specific things also

“go up on those rocks”

“i'm literally wearing slippery ass boots do you want me to die”

“do it for the shot, y/n”

sIGHHHHHH

so ur up on some rocks trying not to fall into a fucking river

and when hyunjin shows u the pics he takes….

okay

yeah

he was right

the entire time he was shooting, he would just strike up conversation to make you comfy

asking how long you've been pursuing modelling

if u wanna do it as a career or if its just a hobby

about ur family

about ur pets

(he asks a lot about pets)

ur sitting on a bench and he's crouched a few feet away to get those ~angles~ when he asks

“where do u go to school?”

“kyunggi”

hyunjin gasps. “no way! me too!”

you fuckin ALMOST DIE

because u fuckin brainblast and have a recovered memory of seeing hyunjin In Your School's Uniform in the lunchroom and suddenly IT ALL MAKES SENSE

you hop up from the bench and like. YELL.

“OKAY I THOUGHT YOU LOOKED REALLY FAMILIAR ARE YOU KIDDING”

he stands and literally screams and u are. so shocked. “i thought you looked really familiar too!!!! i figured i just had seen your pics on the facebook group!!!! i highkey stalked ur instagram bc i couldn't figure out where i knew you from!!”

okay, wig

he stalked you also which is….. great

“what year are you???”

“i'm a junior!”

you push him.

“boi what the fuck! me too!”

“no way!!!” he's laughing “that's crazy!”

he literally pulls out his phone and opens instagram

u have never seen a person use instagram stories as much as this bitch

like, he intermittently pulls out his phone to get shots for his story

u almost threw hands when u were sliding around on some stupid wet rocks bc he was like “JUMP AGAIN I NEED IT FOR A BOOMERANG”

he does this cute lil hair flip and adjusts his bangs before he starts recording and u…. kinda wanna cry

“I KNEW Y/N LOOKED FAMILIAR”

he spins so ur in the shot with him and puts his arm over your shoulders

“WE'RE LITERALLY IN THE SAME YEAR AT THE SAME SCHOOL”

u laugh out loud

he laughs with you and u have to cover ur mouth so an uwu doesn't fall out

u try not to focus on his literally perfect eye smile as he hunches over his phone to post to his story

like,,,

those crescents

are so cute

and he has this lingering grin every time he laughs

and like. wow. lips. amirite. ladies and gents.

“i cant believe u go to kyunggi,” u say. bc u cant.

“what are the odds. out of all the people in that group, we end up meeting up”

u almost made a joke about it being destiny but then u were like oo no thats creepy dont say that

then hyunjins gasps

and u look at him

and he just looks at you wide eyed

and fucking

whispers

“destiny”

you scream laugh

he's laughing too

but on a real level ur like why would that have been super creepy if u said it but it was cute as hell (and a little heart fluttery) when he did?

he goes on saying it's crazy that you had never had any classes together over the years

“or any clubs,” u said

“yeah!!! what clubs do you do??”

“photography! which is why i'm shocked!!!”

hyunjin gasps again

wtf is up with this boy and his gasps

“i was gonna do photography but they meet the same days as dance!”

BITCH

WHAT THE FUCK

“I DONT DO DANCE BC THEY MEET THE SAME DAYS AS PHOTOGRAPHY”

his entire jaw drops off his damn face

“YOU DANCE TOO?”

“I’M JUST AS SHOCKED AS YOU ARE”

u literally can't believe

“we've been barely missing each other all this time when we could have been best friends :(“

oh ow

ouch hyunjin

that got u right in ur weak heart

like literally u might have a heart condition now bc he just hit u with the “we could have been best friends”

“sorry i already have a best friend”

DGDGSH WHY DID YOU SAY THAT

then he's laughing and ur like… oh fuck wheew

“well, sorry, i'm replacing them now. we have to catch up on lost time.”

and honestly………. he's right

number 1: y'all are both photography nerds

even tho you have begun to skew on the modelling side of it, u always loved taking pictures of scenery and u knew way too much about how cameras worked

and hyunjin really was like a pro

u had watched him adjust settings on his camera for white balance and exposure and everything

and judging by his instagram, he set himself up for some flawless editing too

number 2: y'all are both dance nerds

he tells u basically all his friends are in the dance club and have formed a lil dance crew bc of it

u say u used to take classes when u were younger but now u just go to the gym and hide in a practice room for a few hours every week

he does hip hop! which is so predictable but u still act all surprised

u tell him u used to do ballet but ur much more into urban dance these days

number 3: y'all both don't know how to stop laughing

like literally if either of you do anything remotely funny the other one is fucked for five minutes

ur pretty sure 90% of the pics hyunjin was taking were of you covering your face because ur literally GUFFAWING

and like, y'all ain't even that funny

but the more you laugh the less funny shit has to be for you to be crying

hyunjin told u to stop making him laugh bc his fingers were getting weak and he didnt wanna drop his camera

you, trying not to giggle: its ok u have a strap around ur neck u can drop it

hyunjin, tears flowing freely: PLEASE LET ME BREATHE

number 4: y'all both LOVE UR PETS

like idk man he tells u about kkami and u freak the fuck out because he's just SO EXCITED ABT HIS PUP

and hyunjin almost ditches u right then n there when u say ur more of a cat person BUT he forgives u because ur cat is literally named hot dog

this is highkey the most fun you've ever had on a shoot

like, you feel so comfortable with hyunjin

and every time you take breaks to peek at the pictures he's been taking

u like … literally stop breathing

he's so talented ;;

you eventually swap jackets and scarves and wander around more

and literal hours later hyunjin's like

“are u hungry”

u stare. “always”

he laughs. “do you wanna go to the convenience store and make ramen”

“i thought you'd never ask”

so y'all go to the conbini and pick out ya fave ramen packets

(and some chips and candy bc u have literally no self control)

hyunjin really tries to buy your food for you but you yell at him while ur checking out bc Boi. No.

the cashier: watched the two of you look at food and bump into each other constantly, touching each others arms and giggling the whole time

you: leave me the fuck alone hwang hyunjin or i'm calling the cops!!!

the cashier: ????????

u make ur ramen at the handy dandy hot water dispenser and carefully bring it back to a seating area in the park

“be careful it's hot!!!”

“hyunjin please, u act like i'm not a ramen pro”

“i just didnt want u to burn ur cute lil mouth, damn”

ur entire being goes WEE WOO WEE WOO

u literally almost choke on nothing and you just cough to try to play it off

hyunjin is having none of it

he's laughing his ass off

“wow that got you better than i expected”

“fuck off hwang”

he stands up to leave and u laugh and grab his sleeve

he's giggling before he even sits again

y'all eat ur ramen and chat more about school and hobbies

he tells u about this one time he almost got admitted into a cult

you: wow… pretty AND dumb

hyunjin, flustered: h-hey!

you tell him about how your cat is a rescue and his heart melts

there's a minute where you're staring at nothing in the distance eating chips

and hyunjin is just staring at you

his brain: hoe dont do it

his heart: doki doki

his brain: oh my god

“hey… are you still free all day?”

u look at him. “yeah, why?”

he opens a bag of gummies. “i'm supposed to meet up with some friends to go bowling in like an hour but i wanna keep hanging out. wanna come?”

you groan. “i'm so bad at bowling”

“we can be on a team,” he offers you a gummy bear and you take it. “i'll carry you.”

pls explain why an image of him holding you bridal style popped into ur head sgdhhf

“haha okay. as long as ur friends aren't lame.”

“they are, but i'll be there so it's fine”

“fair enough. i'm in.”

so y'all hop on a bus and head to the bowling alley that (apparently) hyunjin and his buddies frequent

(he's playing pickles with you in the back of the bus and you're giggling so hard that ur struggling to tell him to cut it the fuck out so you don't disturb the people sitting next to you)

((but also feeling his entire body press against you isn't the worst))

you've been to this bowling alley before

it's popular among younger folks because it's cheap lol

the two of you walk in and one of his friends immediately starts yelling

u freeze “dude i thought u said we were gonna be early”

he looked at his phone “we literally are”

this blonde kid is yelling hyunjin's name and ur wide eyed while u follow

“UR LATE”

“I'M NOT”

“IT'S 2:20”

“WE SAID 2:30!!!”

“TELL THAT TO LITERALLY EVERYONE WHO SHOWED UP AT TWO!!!!!”

hyunjin looks over to the group of his friends already bowling a game “oh”

u bust out laughing

hyunjin gets all flustered like “i-i thought it was 2:30!!!”

“who's ur friend, my perpetually late son”

“o-oh,,, this is y/n”

his friend sticks out his hand for you to shake. “hi, i'm chan. were you the model today?”

you grin “are you saying i look like a model?”

“OKAY!” hyunjin grabs your shoulders and you giggle when chan stutters without responding while hyunjin drags you to the counter to rent shoes and pay for a game

hyunjin is: flustered

he's all embarrassed because he was late and got yelled at by his fake dad

and then u went and,,,, u were so smooth with chan

he wondered if you had been flirting with him all morning because you actually liked him or,,, ur just a flirt

he grabbed your wallet out of your hand and shoved it in his pocket so that he could pay for your shoes and game for you.

“hyunjin!!!!!”

“you wouldn't let me buy you food and you wouldn't be here if it wasn't for me if you argue i swear i'll throw you down a lane”

you pout but you let him pay

and ur heart,,, it goes off, dude

like,,,, maybe,,,,,,, u would let him throw you sgdgshsh

y'all walk over to the lane his friends are on, bowling shoes in hand

“y/n!”

your face lights tf up. “seungmin!!”

hyunjin looks between the two of you probably six times while you hug before finally going “w-what”

you and seungmin look at each other, then at hyunjin

hyunjin: you know each other

you and seungmin, in sync: photography club

hyunjin: alright, well,

he announces to everyone your name and you were his new best friend and that if any of them had a problem with it they could talk to his fist

you, softly, but with feeling: f-fuck

y'all change your shoes and watch as his friends finish up their game

while they play, hyunjin points each person out and tells you their name, helping you learn all these new people

since u guys were twenty (20) minutes late, they were already almost done with the first game

they were all pretty good. 

well. most of them were.

the guy hyunjin pointed out as jisung kept getting gutter, but he was having fun

everyone else kept getting strikes or spares and u were like oh god

you keep telling hyunjin that ur really bad at bowling

hyunjin: i'll teach you. it'll be like ghost.

you, softly, but with more feeling: f-fUck

you, realization washing over you: wait how would you even-

hyunjin: *giggles*

hyunjin's giggles.

send tweet.

the entire time you were entirely too conscious of how close he was to you

you could feel the burning on your shoulder, thigh, knee - all the contact points where his body bumped into yours

your knee bobbed involuntarily while you watched the game end, nervously anticipating your turn to hit the gutter

and suddenly, hyunjin's hand was gently placed on your knee

it stopped bobbing

you looked at his hand, then at him

he smiled, but kept looking forward

“relax. even if you're bad, i'll hype you up.”

it was barely above a whisper so you wondered for a sec if he was even talking to you

hhhhHHHHH THIS BOY

yall start bowling.

he was. not all talk.

like who the fuck is good at bowling

hyunjin, apparently

he fuckin. chucked that ball down the lane

it made a smooth curve and took out. every. pin.

you stared at the empty lane in disbelief as hyunjin got a couple high fives from his friends making his way towards you

"not bad, right?"

"bro what the fuck"

he laughed and held out a hand to help you up "we bowl a lot"

you didnt even process fully that he was pulling you out of your seat because it was your turn. 

ur hands: sweaty

ur arms: spaghetti

ur vomit: on ur sweater already

not actually

u picked up the ball hyunjin had helped you pick and looked at him like a deer in headlights

"bro i havent bowled since i was six"

he giggled. "you can do this"

he walked with u and showed you his starting stance, gently adjusting the way your wrists twisted and patting your hip

u. tried to not blush. no word on how well you did.

he guided you through your walk up and when u let go of the ball..

…

……

YOU DIDNT HIT GUTTER

you SCREAMED 

"BRO I HIT A PIN!!!!!!!!!!!!"

hyunjin gave you a Sick High Ten, laughing "now you gotta hit the other nine!"

you froze

fuck

the others were starting to calm down from the excitement of your first half-frame, anticipating your second hit

you watched your ball return from the lane n went over to grab it

hyunjin looked at you Once and was likr….. is that caspar the ghost

the color had DRAINED from you

u…. u hit a pin…… thats like the best u've ever done

n now you gotta TOP THAT?

"its like dancing," he said suddenly. u looked at him, desperate to hear advice in terms u understood. "even if you can go through the motions, it doesnt necessarily make you good. you have to trust your body to remember the motions, give it a little finesse, and that's when you start to get Really good."

you blinked at him

"was that supposed to be helpful"

"can you Shut the Fuck Up and Bowl"

you took a deep breath, adjusting your stance as hyunjin reminded you of the steps you needed to take

another breath

steps

swing

let go…..

roollllingngg…………

*HIGH PITCHED WAILING*

"I HIT FOUR PINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

hyunjin scoops u up in a hug, spinning you around

ur too busy SCREAMING to register whats happening until he puts you down

u stare at him a second

he stares at you

"GOOD JOB Y/N!!!!!"

you turn to seungmin, who also scoops you into a hug, the rest of the boys crowding around you

you didnt even have a chance to be embarrassed about the weird eye contact you n hyunjin made

or about how. everyone in the bowling alley was staring at you guys.

because like…… suddenly

you just made a bunch of new friends

and one of them

helped you hit a pin for the first time.

and maybe….

he was still holding your hand

and maybe that felt really nice.

[ohmyteez]

Ten

This is part one, find part two here, three here, four here, five here, epilogue here

Pairing: Spencer Reid x Reader

Summary: Out of nowhere, Spencer’s girlfriend disappears from her apartment and the only lead is what the surveillance footage shows. The team is given 10 days to find her, only that the first five were already used up by another case. Will they be able to find her in time? Or is it gonna be too late?

Warnings for all chapters: IF YOU’RE UNCOMFORTABLE READING STUFF LIKE THAT I SUGGEST YOU SKIP THIS FIC!!! Angst, mention/description of kidnapping, mention/description of sexual assault, mention/description of starvation, mention/description of beating, loads of sadness, fluff

Word Count: 1.5K

Requested: No

Note: I AM BACK ALREADY with something new. something sad bc Spence having happy and good things happen to him apparently isn’t a thing. 

You would’ve appreciated waking up on your own on a Saturday morning, but Spencer’s phone apparently had a different idea. The constant beeping of it ripped you out of your deep sleep and Spencer groaned as well, sleepily reaching over to grab his phone from the nightstand. 

“Please don’t tell me it’s what I think it is.” You mumbled groggily and buried your head deeper into his chest. Spencer let out a sigh and closed his eyes shortly, hand reaching up behind your back to stroke your hair.

“Unfortunately it is.”

“But it’s supposed to be your weekend off. What time is it, anyway?” You asked and rubbed your eyes, turning Spencer’s phone around in his hand and making it light up, showing you the time. 7:13am. 

“I’m sorry, love.” Spencer said and started to slowly get out of bed, but not before he bent down and placed a kiss on your lips, waking you up a little more, “You can obviously sleep some more. I’ll check in with you whenever I can, and you just text me when you’re awake. Okay?”

You just hummed in response and pulled him down for another kiss, savoring the moment before he had to go get ready for work. That kiss turned into a tired make-out session, making him groan before he pulled away and stroked the side of your face with a tight smile.

“If we keep doing that I might not leave at all. I would love to continue this, but they really need me.” He said with a chuckle and you nodded, finally stretching your body while laying in bed. 

“Mm, I know. Go overwhelm everybody with your brain, I’ll talk to you later then.” You responded, earning a laugh from him. He placed one final kiss onto your head before he fully slipped out of the bed and into the bathroom to get ready. 

Not even ten minutes later, he emerged and called out an “I love you” to which you responded the obvious “I love you, too” before he left your apartment. You turned around and got back into a comfortable sleeping position, deciding to just nap a few more hours before starting your day. You were in no way a morning person, at least not on the weekends, and you valued your sleep a lot. But you also knew that something like that, being woken up early on a weekend because Spencer was called into work, was possible and happened often. You just wished your boyfriend would get a break. 

In the six months you’ve been dating, you’ve maybe had three full weekends together because the BAU needed their genius. You never complained because you understood, of course, but it made you a little sad knowing you’d never really be able to go on vacation or take a trip longer than a day without him being called to work. You thought about joining him on cases plenty of times before, but then again, you wouldn’t be able to see him much then either, although it would allow you to travel so much more. You’d talked to Hotch about it, too. He’d told you it wouldn’t be a problem for anybody if you tagged along, as long as you wouldn’t distract Spencer and/or the case. You might do it someday, but today wasn’t that day as you were way too tired from staying up late last night with Spencer, having done movie night with some wine and sex in the middle of the night. You were always surprised how he wasn’t tired after nights like these, but Spencer was a morning person so you didn’t question it. 

Sleep came over you fast and you were asleep in no time, getting some more well-deserved rest. What you didn’t know was that Spencer had opened the window in your living room prior to leaving, wanting to vent out the room so you could have a cool and non-smelly apartment when you wake up. That was the perfect opportunity for a hooded figure to slip in from the fire escape and tiptoe through the room, quiet and steady so they wouldn’t wake you. They slipped through the slightly open door and saw you on the bed, calm as the night and sat down on the armchair in the corner of the room, just watching. Your vulnerability and calmness drove them wild and the fact that you were wearing nothing but your underwear and Spencer’s shirt had them know that choosing you was the right decision. 

After some time of looking around and taking in your room, they spotted the security camera in one corner of the bedroom and took this as the perfect opportunity to give whoever would see the video a chance of saving you. They walked out the room and went through drawers in your desk out in the living room, looking for a blank piece of paper and sharpie to write with. When successful, they scribbled onto the paper and stuffed the sharpie into their pocket, not wanting to leave anything they’d used behind, even though they were wearing gloves - but better be safe than sorry. With the paper in hand, they walked back into your bedroom and pushed the armchair across the room and under the camera, the commotion making you stir. They stepped onto the chair and held the piece of paper up in front of the camera until they heard you whimper softly and shift in your bed.

“Spence?” You called out softly, making the person whip their head around and stare at you. You opened your eyes slowly, eyes searching the room for any sign of Spencer before they landed on the hooded person. You were suddenly wide awake and scrambled out of bed with a gasp. The person wasn’t too worried, making sure to send a slow and creepy wave into the camera before they jumped off and caught you from behind just as you were about to run out of the bedroom. They reached into their pocket and pulled out a cloth soaked in chloroform, forcing it onto your mouth and waiting patiently for you to inhale it and fall unconscious. They then picked you up and carried you out of the room, removing the hood to seem less obvious when carrying you through the apartment building. 

After they successfully maneuvered you and them out of the building and into their van, they drove off, tires screeching in the process. 

It was now almost 12:30 and Spencer was starting to get worried. He knew you liked to sleep, but you never slept past 10:00 and he hadn’t heard from you since he left. He’d called and texted but nothing came back. 

The BAU was in Colorado, their case being one of what seemed to be ritualistic murders in Superior. There were two victims so far, all of them with their hearts missing and eyes gouged out. The Unsub seemed to go up in the age of his victims, the youngest so far being 12 and the second one being 18. 

Spencer couldn’t keep his mind straight though, making it difficult for him to work the geographical profile as Hotch had ordered on the jet. That also caught the attention of his fellow teammates Derek and Emily. 

“You okay, kid?” Derek asked as he noticed no progress on the board. Spencer turned and pinched the bridge of his nose. 

“No... I don’t know. Y/N hasn’t responded to any of my calls or texts and that’s unlike her. I don’t know if I’m overreacting, but I’m really worried.” Spencer explained while his friends pursed their lips in thought. 

“Do you want Garcia to check in on her?” Emily asked and Spencer nodded slowly. That was until his phone made a “ding”, meaning that he got a message and he whipped it out of his pocket and sighed in relief when he saw it was you who finally responded.

Y/N: Hey! Sorry for only replying now, I slept longer than I thought I would. I must’ve forgotten to set an alarm! I’m doing good, heading out to grab lunch soon. How’s the case going? Do you know when you’ll be back? Love you.

“She just responded.” Spencer announced with a smile, texting you back quickly. 

Spencer: Hi! I’m surprised you slept that long, last night must’ve really tired you out ;) Happy to hear from you though. Working on the geo profile, it’s a tough one and we’re in Colorado! If all goes well we should be back by Tuesday, I’ll keep you posted! Love you too.

The person, who identified themselves as a male, smirked as he locked your phone and put it into the pocket of his pants. He stepped closer to your sitting form on the tiny mattress placed on the floor and then squatted down. He reached his hand out and brushed the hair out of your face, your head immediately flinching away from the unfamiliar touch. 

“Why are you doing this?” You whispered as he rose. 

“Everything happens for a reason, my love. Everything happens for a reason.” Was all he said before he turned around and left the room, the heavy metal door shutting behind him with a bang. You whimpered and hugged your knees, tears spilling freely from your eyes as you thought about Spencer, and if you’d ever see him again. 

[strelitzicae-arts]

I decided to design a quirkless vigilante deku! His vigilante name is Asteroid (mainly just bc it sounds cool and matches the jacket that he found at a thrift shop).

Info about his gear and backstory under the cut!

If you can’t read the picture, it says little details about his gear. 

He has gloves for hand to hand combat, which is his main specialty.  

His mask has a voice modifier built in, with buttons and knobs so that he can change the volume, what voice he is using, turn it off, change the pitch, or mute his voice in general.

He has a knife that he only uses in emergencies, and hes only willing to use it on villain’s arms and legs so he doesn’t critically hurt them

He has eskrima rods, which is what he mainly uses when hand to hand won’t suffice

He has a FAKE gun, which he uses for intimidation purposes in emergencies

He has a backpack, which is thin enough that he can hide it under his jacket

He keeps a gps tracker on him, which he can stick onto a villain or can be used to track him if he is kidnapped

He has a first aid kit for obvious reasons

He keeps no less than 3 water bottles on him because hydration is key to success

He has a burner phone that he can use to call the police or family or whatever in emergencies

He keeps a locked notebook on him, so he can take confidential notes about villains and important events

As for his backstory, he’s still quirkless. After coming home injured from being bullied too many times, Inko signs him up for martial arts and self defense classes. She knows that he’ll need them in the future due to prejudice against quirkless people, but he ends up really enjoying them. He ends up taking multiple disciplines, and going into competitions.

However, he still wants to be a hero to help people, so Inko ends up going with him to start volunteering at soup kitchens, clean ups, etc. At first he doesn’t really get it, but as he volunteers more he becomes more invested in helping other people in small ways. He starts volunteering at bigger projects, like building houses for the homeless, to try and make a difference.

Because of this and school, he doesn’t have as much time for quirk analysis, but he still enjoys theorizing and talking about quirks on forums. He’s rarely at school outside of class due to training and volunteering, so he isn’t bullied all that much either.

However, the years of bullying from his childhood left their mark, and he is very shy and doesn’t trust easily. He has to work in the back at soup kitchens, because he cant handle interacting with so many people at once when helping serve. At clean ups and builds, aside from other people he sees there regularly, he keeps to himself. He doesn’t have any friends from martial arts classes or school, either.

Not to mention his self doubt issues. Despite what everyone says about him being a hard worker or helping others, he has a hard time believing it. 

He never actually intended to become a vigilante. However, one day on the way home he passed by someone who was being mugged in an alley. And because of his nature to help whenever he can, he used his martial arts skills to easily take down the villain. The person thanked him profusely, but he deflected the praise, saying that helping people wasn’t anything special. The person wouldn’t budge, and finally he relented and took a coupon they offered him, and went on his way.

And then it happened again. And again. And again.

By the 20th time, people begin to talk about it. Sure, its nothing big - just a forum thread with less than 100 views, but still, people know him. People think hes a vigilante. 

This isn’t exactly an ideal situation, but he can’t stop himself from helping others. Which leads to him defending a pink haired girl from some bullies who were beating her up.

Thats how he meets Hatsume Mei, 13 year old genius, same age as him. She insists on making him his friend, which he can’t argue against because a. he would like a friends, but friendship is hard b. Hatsume Mei is an unstoppable force, and Izuku is the furthest thing from an immovable object.

And then one day, while their hanging out, Izuku once again steps in to stop a purse snatcher, and Mei has a realization.  

“Hey, are you like, a vigilante or something?”

“Uh, I don’t think so? I just step in when someone is in trouble, which happens, uh, a lot.”

“So you’re a vigilante.”

Despite clarifying that he, a quirkless 13 year old is not a vigilante, Mei decides she will be his tech support. Plus, its good practice to try and get into UA by building Izuku some gear.

So that how Izuku ends up with a thrift shop hoodie with a shit ton of kevlar sewn in, other sturdy gear, some combat boots painted green with stars to match his hoodie, a back pack, a tool belt, and some self defense weapons. In order to not give his mom a heart attack by coming home with a stab wound, he and mei sewed kevlar into just about everything he was wearing, and he kept a gps tracker on him at all times so that, if he was kidnapped, they could find him.

Mei eventually also builds him some smoke bombs, flash bangs, and pepper spray, and in the process of helping her he realizes “oh hey, building things is fun and im good at it.” He even builds himself a pair of goggles with a zoom function, barely needing her help.

He mainly deals with small crime- the things police and heroes don’t notice, but he makes a name for himself. He tells everyone that he is Asteroid- small compared to planets, but still bright enough to be seen in the sky. No one knows who he really is because he covers his freckles with make up, he has a mask with a voice modifier, and he covers his hair with the hoodie, but they still thank his vigilante persona. One girl invited him to go to the bar with her and her friends, and two guys have tried to give him money as thanks.

Being a vigilante was actually pretty fun. He and Mei worked together to build better gear, and all the research that building gear required helped him do good in his science classes also. His teacher recommends him going for a tech school, or even UA’s general or support department.

He would like to go to UA with Mei, but he isn’t an idiot. Anyone who has been online knows who Asteroid is. There are multiple hero forum posts about him, and theres a small subreddit filled with people thanking him for helping them. One wrong move and someone at UA would realize who he is, and he’d be arrested. Sure, it isn’t technically vigilantism because he doesn’t have a quirk, but he’s still using force against others, and he doubts that smoke bombs are something a 14 year old is allowed to have. So, hero school is out of the question.

He thinks about tech school, and almost has his mind set until one night, he finds a villain with a fire quirk. He has scars on his face, and has cornered a few girls in an alley. So Izuku steps in, and probably has his first real fight.

Sure, he’s been in skirmishes before, but nothing as extreme as this. The girls get an opening to run away, but Izuku doesn’t. This guy knows how to fight, and how to use his quirk to help him fight. Izuku is almost impressed. They trade blow for blow. The man with the fire quirk is wearing extremely thin clothes, so he feels Izuku’s blows harder, but Izuku is getting burned easily. Just barely, however, Izuku manages to knock him hard on the head with an eskrima rod (not how it was intended to be used, but it works), sending him down. Some zipties and pinching some pressure points, and the man is completely down. 

As he walks away, nursing his wounds, he thinks about what could’ve been done better. If his fabric was fire proof, he wouldn’t have been burned as hard. If he had something like a taser to shock enemies, he would’ve gone down faster. If he had better gloves, his knuckles wouldn’t be so bloody after that fight. It goes on and on. 

And Izuku knows the best way to gain access to those materials is UA’s support department. 

He calls Mei that night, and with a sigh, reveals probably he stupidest idea since becoming a vigilante.

[mysweetestcreature]

Wish Upon A Star (StepBro!Harry) Extras: Reunion

Request: I need a little blurb of both of them attending one of those school reunion/parties with all their old schoolmates and when they are married and shes pregnant and hot. Everyone probably already know about then because instagrM and gossip but they are still the talk of the party and harry is all smug bc his love look gorgeous carrying his bub and they don’t care for the looks. I don’t know i just love mess and drama lol

A/N: I had to change it up just a bit to match the timeline xx

***

To say they’re a bit anxious to be attending this milestone event would be an understatement. It’s still hard to wrap their minds around having completed their sixth-form, and yet so much has happened since then. They’re married, have real-world jobs, and have two perfect little boys.

“You two look so adorable!” Y/n claps her hands together as she gazes happily at them dressed in matching suspenders and bowties. “Look, Daddy!” she picks up a one-year-old Declan off the bed and waves his arm out to her husband. The baby squeals and excitedly calls for Harry.

Harry looks up from adjusting his sleeves and dramatically gasps and reaches for his son. “Take after me, don’t you, bub?” he coos and tickles his tummy. Giggles bounce off the walls, and Declan can’t help but squirm in glee as the tips of his daddy’s fingers scurry across his plump body. Harry gives him a big kiss to his head, then turns back to his missus. She’s wearing a dark blue satin dress she’d bought for the occasion, that accentuates all the right parts of her figure. If the kids weren’t here with them, he’d be more enticed to see it in a pool around her feet. “Baby, we ready to go?” She holds up her pointer while she tucks Luca’s shirt back into his pants––he’s already getting fussy, a true sign that he’s Harry’s son. 

“It’s only a few hours, alright, my love?” she tells him when he starts pouting. Luca holds his arms up, standing on his tippy toes, in desperate need for his mumma to carry him. With her eldest balanced on her hip, she surveys their hotel room to make sure everything’s in order. “Oh!” she spots the invitation on the nightstand and quickly drops it in her purse. 

***

WELCOME BACK!

The banner is big and bold as it hangs on top of the main entrance. There are a few groups of ex-students spread across the pavement. Y/n recognizes some of them as cheerleaders that used to ask¬¬––beg––her to set them up with her “brother.” One of them spot the family, and it’s all hushed whispers being exchanged, with not-so-sneaky glances their way. 

“Don’t you know it’s rude to stare? Or were you all too busy toying with your hair to learn proper etiquette?” Y/n instantly smiles when she hears the familiar voice. Carrie glares at the group of nosey women, her hands firmly at her hips as she barks another insult their way. When they all disperse in different directions, she turns to her best friend, demeanor having taken a complete 360. “I’m so glad you guys are here!” she squeals, and wraps her arms around Y/n. It’s been a while since they’ve seen each other. Unlike Y/n and Harry, she’d opted to remain in Manchester and runs a cute little boutique in town. 

A slight huff erupts from in between them, and Carrie coos at her cranky godson. “Say hi to Auntie Carrie, bub,” Y/n nudges her youngest. Declan had fallen asleep in the car and has yet to adjust to the new surroundings. He shyly lifts his hand up to wave, before he’s snuggling back into his mumma’s neck.  

“Lemme take him, love,” Harry reaches for Declan, “It’s good to see you, Carrie. Where’s Jameson?” He had been all too amused to learn that the two had gotten together a few years ago. In fact, if he can recall correctly, that particular day had been his and Y/n’s wedding. Carrie blushes and tells them that her fiancé will be arriving a little later. 

The lot walk inside, Y/n holding on to Luca’s hand as they enter the gymnasium that’s been completely transformed into a proper party space. Although, it does sort of give off prom vibes––not that she would know because her and Harry hadn’t even attended––but it’s still a cute attempt. Luca gets excited when he sees a few balloons on the floor, picking one up and showing it to his brother. “Daddy can we take this home with us?” And then he’s gathering as many of them in his small arms as possible, which is only three, but he won’t rain on his son’s parade. 

***

It’s when Harry is getting his missus a refill of her beverage when he feels someone tap lightly on his shoulder. He hands Luca some juice that he had poured a few moments prior before he turns around. Hopefully he isn’t as transparent to the rest of the world as he is to his wife because then the person in front of him would see how he’s just internally groaned. 

“Harry! It’s been too long!” the woman’s shrill voice hurts his ears, and she throws herself onto him. 

He awkwardly pats her shoulder, “Erm…hi, Georgina.” She pulls away and plays with break lines of his jacket. Her fingers fiddle with one the buttons as she smiles up at him, her bottom lip caught between her teeth. 

“You look so good. I heard you’re some hotshot architect in London. Hmm, I always knew you’d do great things,” she says dreamily. Harry tries to politely swat her hand away from him, appearing to be simply dusting off his jacket. He looks down to his son, who’s just gulped up the last bit of his apple juice.

“Want more, bub?”

“Yes, please, Daddy,” Luca holds up his cup, giving Harry a sweet grin. The young boy then stares at the lady who had been touching his daddy. “Who are you?” his voice suspicious. She reminds him a lot of the redhead that’s always annoying Naomi. And he knows very well that the redhead doesn’t like his mumma, and he doesn’t like that. 

“So, the rumors are true then? You married your sis-” she eyes the spawn, but Harry’s taking Luca’s hand in his and gestures over to where his wife and other son sit with Jameson and Carrie.

“C’mon, Mumma’s been waiting for her drink, yeah?” And he’s leading them away. He looks over his shoulder. “Nice talking to you.” They nearly make it safely back to their table when the pang of her voice accompanied by the tapping of her heels has Harry visibly flinching.

Thankfully he’s just caught Y/n’s attention. She gets up, Declan clinging to her like a koala and cocks an eyebrow at her husband. Luca runs over to her, hugging her leg as he whispers something about the Wicked Witch’s sister trailing behind them. Y/n lifts her gaze from her son and her lips purse into a straight line when she sees her. Even ten years after they’ve left this place, and the sight of Georgina Rupert still makes her blood boil. 

“Georgina,” she tightly greets when she comes within close radius of the family. “How lovely to see you.” The last time they’d seen her was when she had tried to convince Harry to take her to prom. Oh, how Y/n would have loved to tell her off then.

“Don’t know if I can say the same,” Georgina says though gritted teeth. “You two have got some nerve, showing up tonight. Caused quite the ruckus when the news erupted because who would have thought that everyone’s favorite siblings have been banging each other all this time. And it seems you’ve brought along the devil spawns.” Her eyes dart between the two boys. Harry’s hand tenses from where it rests on her waist. No one talks about his family like that, it has his insides churching with animosity. But when he looks at his wife, she remains cool and level-headed.

“And it seems that you’re still single,” Y/n replies bluntly. Harry covers his mouth with his wife’s shoulder, but the vibrations erupting from his chest are obvious. He loves it when she drops her filter, there’s something so satisfying about it. “I heard you were engaged. So sad to hear that he cheated on you, and with your own sister? That’s just rotten luck.”

*** 

When it comes time to chat with his former football mates, he has Y/n snug at his side, as they all catch up. While a few of them have known about the relationship for some time––they’d been the ones invited to the wedding––many of the others shift wearily in place. It’s just a bit awkward, as some of them had had a thing for Y/n in their teenage years and didn’t think anything of it because she was their mate’s sister. If he’s being honest, he quite likes that he’s able to show her off to the rest of them, like he wishes he could have done when they were still in school.

From time to time, he’ll just look down to meet her eyes, and then his lips would be on hers for a quick (or not-so-quick) kiss. 

“You know, just because you guys are married doesn’t make the PDA any less weird,” Jameson jokes, but Carrie swats his arm.

“They’re cute and in love, let them be,” she counters. “Maybe you should pay attention and learn a few things from Harry.” She chuckles as Jameson rolls his eyes and pulls her closer to his chest. Harry does the same, kissing her temples as he watches his sons play with some faltered balloons off by the DJ table. 

Luca and Declan had become quite the hit at the party. Everything thought they were the cutest little boys ever. (Their father had so willingly taken credit to their undeniably good looks. If Declan hadn’t shared some of his mum’s features, he would’ve said that he birthed them himself.) He doesn’t even pretend to not to see the jealous looks they’re getting because his life is pretty great. In ten years, he’s got a job that he loves, two kids that he absolutely adores, and a wife that he’s so in love with. 

Who wouldn’t be jealous?

[osetljiv]

(via https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2odvuQkrlARSSv6Pvm41GM?si=sjzD66aFTGa5TkMfcIurtQ)

hi i am doing this solely for myself/my own records so please feel free to ignore!!!!!! i wanted to challenge myself by making a top 10 albums list from the last decade - it was rly difficult because my ass truly cannot cut things down and be decisive, but here it is! 

i know many ppl r not into this kinda thing, but i really really love symbolic gestures - i love the idea that a new year (or a new decade!) can wipe ur slate clean, can give u a chance to be hopeful and excited and look forward to things - i hate change and i hate endings but the one good thing to come of them are beginnings! i love new starts, i love freshness, i love blank slates. i know that the end of the year/decade is arbitrary and doesn’t rly mean anything in the long run but....... it is important and super special to me!!!

i’m really not good with words/proper descriptions of the music itself, so i mainly just describe memories/associations i make to the albums, so don’t expect a proper music critic’s review or anything LOL… i am also not ranking by objective quality, but influence - these r the albums that personally made the biggest impact on me since 2010. i started off the decade age 13 and finished it in 2019 at age 23..... so clearly that is a very big difference in stages of life!!! i completed my teenage years, graduated from elementary school, high school & university.... i went thru many different friend groups, many different personality changes...... several big life events occurred…. many many hours were spent listening to music. and now i’m here! 

my only rules were 1. had to be on repeat for a significant amount of time, 2. preferably only one album per artist (to force me to pick between them), and 3. i had to consistently listen to the album as a whole (as opposed to just a few songs out of it)...... some of my fav songs in the world aren’t on these albums bc they were either released before 2010 or i didn’t listen to the rest of the album except for a handful of songs (as is usually the case for me). so the albums on this list are markers in my life, and i could (and did!) listen to them front and back. and ALSO they are not ranked from 1-10...... it was literally difficult enough choosing just 10 and i truly would not survive having to rank them as well. in release date order, here they are!!!!!

 owen pallett - heartland (jan 12th, 2010)

okay i know i just said i wouldn’t rank these but........... well this one is #1 regardless lol!!! the rest are not in any sort of order but this one has to be first (and how lucky that it was released first too!!!) this is the most important/special album to me in the world - it’s the first album released by my favourite musician under his real name, it has some of my most favourite songs of all time on it - it’s probably the first album in my life that i loved and listened to as a whole! when I was younger i never used to have favourite singers or favourite writers or favourite artists - i would have one favourite song/book/painting but never look into the creator’s other work, never had any interest in organizing things that way. but this is the first time i thought - “i adore this song..... and i adore all the other songs this person makes.... so i guess i like this whole album?” not to mention it’s a whole story and world - heartland tells a whole fable and sounds so beautiful doing so. owen was also the first concert i’ve ever been to! he is so beautiful and wonderful and this album is perfect and has my heart and can do no wrong! and as a plus it was released right at the beginning of 2010 so it truly started off the decade and set the pace. i really don’t know what else to say! heartland was a constant throughout the last ten years - i can’t tie it to one specific moment or feeling the way i can with the other albums. this one was really just the background of my whole adolescence, i guess, and i’ll love owen and this album forever!!!! love love love

 gorillaz - plastic beach (march 3, 2010)

i honestly didn’t listen to this album as a whole until the summer after grade 11/before grade 12 when i had to take summer school for math bc i failed (first class i had ever failed :’)!!) and needed the credit for my grade 12 courses (many of which i ended up failing anyway lol) BUT i still had hope at this point so this summer wasn’t that bad..... i remember i had to buy my own bus pass for the summer w my own work money for the first time and walk to the mall bus stop every day all summer to take the city bus downtown to the highschool that used to b a prison (RIP, it got torn down this year) to take summer math from 8-3, 5 days a wk. i loved those classes surprisingly? i remember that summer i dressed so cute every day, i would wear my extra ass dresses and knee high socks and do my hair all cute...... i’d steal my mom’s old lady sweaters w mini skirts and make my own coffee to bring w me and felt so adult..... i didn’t make any friends bc i thought they were all too cool but later learned that the girls in class rly liked me and remembered me the next year when i’d see them at their highschool when visiting for a trivia tournament (don’t judge!!!!) also the first time i got hit on bc a 30 yr old man in my class somehow got my email from the teacher and sent me a creepy email asking me out and i was too scared to go to school the next day lol..... truly feels surreal. but yes i would listen to this album (and demon dayz!) on repeat cuz i found the full albums uploaded to youtube so i remember i would just listen to the entire album all the way thru for the duration of the bus ride while looking out the window and daydreaming bc i couldn’t skip any songs and I couldn’t go on my phone bc the music only plays if u keep the youtube app open…. so it’s hard to listen to the songs individually now because i just picture the transitions every time!

 caribou - swim (april 20, 2010)

this was my summer between grade 8 - grade 9! up until this point i only had a handful of western artists that i listened to (before highschool i listened almost exclusively to Japanese doujin groups that remixed video game music…. do NOT judge!!!) and i felt soooo cool when i started listening to this album/others like it… had odessa downloaded on my zen creative mp3.... so freaking good!! got so embarrassed of my music taste after this LOL cuz my brother saw the album cover on my phone in highschool and asked what hipster shit i was listening to. little did he know.... its GOOD!!!! such a great album to just listen to all the way through. perfect background music for studying/ /walking/smoking/literally doing anything to! i can still listen to it and pinpoint different/new melodies in the back in certain songs. so good!!!

 crystal castles - (II) (april 23, 2010)

so many 2010 albums wow but LISTEN....... i first heard crystal castles in either 2010 or 2011, immediately after i first made a tumblr in grade 9.... this was the era when offensive bloggers and hipster british bloggers were like the only 2 sections of tumblr...... one of the first ppl i followed was this one super popular british blogger, this kid from london who was probs 15 and he had like, a pale grunge aesthetic and rly long bangs that covered his eyes.... i forget his name omg i wish i could see what he was doing now! but ya i loved him i thought he was the coolest thing ever, i went on his blog and he had autoplay and pap smear was the first song that started playing...... i remember being like wtf is this??? first time i heard music like that, with the video game sounds mixed in and the vocals so distorted. i literally was enamoured like i remember thinking i should hate it and wtf r these british freaks listening to but like..... i could NOTTTT STOP and i remember i wouldn’t even bother looking up the song on youtube or anything, when i wanted to listen to the song i would just go to this guy’s tumblr LOOOOOL god!!!! on the outside i was a cutesy girly girl but on the inside i was a pale grunge hipster british tumblr user!

 beach house - bloom (may 15, 2012)

this album is just the sweetest, prettiest memory…. it’s so.. crisp? and clear and pure and loving! beach house was (unsurprisingly) my spotify artist of the decade and i don’t care what rep they get or how similar their music may sound i love them with my entire heart! discovered them from tumblr (as i did most of my fav highschool albums) - first beach house song i ever heard was wild - i remember the first time i started being (SLIGHTLY) less mortified of talking about my music taste to other people, it was maybe in first year? i had gotten into my friend’s car, before we got super close, and she was playing a song off of bloom i think! and i remember my heart just stopped!!!! and i was so absolutely terrified of saying anything, but even moreso excited to see someone whose opinion i cared about who was listening to music that i liked, and so i gathered all my strength and tried to be super casual and say something like “oh, you like beach house, too?” (meanwhile i was literally shaking with nerves…..) and she just so easily said “yeah, i love this song!” and it was the most validating, comforting thing! and a while after that, one of my favourite memories: my other friend got hired at a local café/tea shop, the teeniest little place – it was like 3x4 metres, max – and she would close the store alone, and it was always completely dead, so the group of us would go and sit with her for her entire shift in this sweet warm little store – we’d have tea and coffee and scones – and over the store speakers, she would play whatever we wanted – and for a while i didn’t make suggestions, let everyone else choose, but! i worked my way up to suggesting she play bloom – and she would play the album all the way through, and she surprisingly really liked it?? and then it became the default soundtrack to our tiny hangouts in the tiny café :’)

 toro y moi - anything in return (jan 16, 2013)

WOWWWW truly such a throwback....... this is the first time i felt cool, TRULY cool listening to music LMAOOOO SO EMBARRASSING!!! i remember the day it came out, grade 11 i guess??? but i swear it must have leaked way earlier cuz i remember listening to this way before.... my fav tumblr user at the time (kiki deerhoof LMFAO now THAT is a throwback!!!!) was always posting abt toro y moi and made a mixtape w his music on it and i fell in love..... and i wanted to be cool too! so i would obsessively listen to this album when it dropped. the album drop also overlapped w the moment my grades/effort in school went on a steep decline (not that it caused it ofc but this was like…. the background music to my demise, in a way!) i’ll never forget listening to so many details on my chilly walk past my old elementary school at 6am to get to my bus stop - way too cool for school

 mac demarco - salad days (apr 1, 2014)

how fitting that chamber of reflection is playing in the coffee shop as i type this :’) this album was the soundtrack to my late grade 12/entire grade 13 experience. i was SO thoroughly and unbearably depressed LOOOOL it was really awful… i’m laughing now thinking back at it but honestly the feeling of being left behind by all of your friends and having to come to terms with not meeting ur own expectations of urself… having to repeat a year and being the oldest one in ur classes…… SO AWFUL!!!! really truly idk how i did it! but the whole time, all year, i would listen to this album. i would always play it on my walk to the city bus (in grade 13 i never made the actual school bus and i don’t even know how much money i must have paid taking the city bus every day bc i truly could not get out of bed early enough to take the free school bus but ALAS……) and i swear to you that entire year was grey and foggy and cold and damp… and i would play salad days (the song itself) and my emo ass would associate 100% with mac singing “oh mama, acting like my life’s already over….. oh dear, act your age and try another year,” and i swear he was singing it just for me, trying to slap me out of my stupor by saying “calm down, ur fine, ur life isn’t over, it’s just one year and you’ll be back on track!” and sometimes, SOMETIMES!! it worked!

 azealia banks - broke with expensive taste (nov 7, 2014)

i know i know..... i’m aware how we feel about azealia now....... and i know how overstated it is when ppl say “she may be problematic but she was an artistic GENIUS!!!” so i will not add more to the conversation but....... is this album not pristine? like what a masterpiece????? this album straight up defined my highschool experience even tho it was released at the beginning of grade 12..... all of grade 12/13 i was blasting this album while walking down the hallway hating literally everything! i grew up idolizing my bro and all he listened to (techno/house/etc) and loving it but being too embarrassed of copying him to get too into it, but then hearing azealia sound cute and sexy and scary while interpolating all these house beats. LITERALLY chicken soup for the soul… it felt like she made it just for me!! and even before bwet actually dropped, listening to 212 and all of her other singles waiting for her to finally drop the album she was tweeting about for years, like i don’t remember the last time i anticipated an album for soooo long? and she dropped it days after my 17th bday which really was such a perfect gift. listening to this w my friend who also loved azealia, pretending we were cool as SHIT and so grown up...... beyond influential

 frank ocean - blonde (aug 20, 2016)

ur lying if this album wasn’t a pivotal moment for u......... blonde is the sole reason summer 16 is viewed as a cultural landmark. i SWEAR!!!! i may have spent 8 hours a day on tumblr in 2016 but my ass was NOT cool enough to have been listening to frank ocean prior to blonde..... no i never listened to channel orange before this, yes i know i was behind the times! 2016 was the summer after my 1st year of uni, august i had just finished my summer school course so my summer was just starting (i was re-taking 1st year math bc i failed..... some things never change huh!!!! lied to my dad and told him i was tryna get ahead by taking bio in summer school... he believed me till he caught me in a lie by chatting w my friend he bumped into at walmart LOL.... and yet he never said a word :’) an angel) this was also the summer my dad left for a few months to go travelling across canada, he was gone all summer and my bro was busy working and so was my mom and i had the car all to myself for the first time. went on SOOO many drives this summer blasting this album. not to mention that since my dad wasn’t home the responsibility to drive my mom to work fell on me and wow i LOVED it? i realized i love having little responsibilities and having ppl rely on me in little ways like this..... i loved going to bed at 3am and having my mom gently wake me up at 5:30am, having a coffee with her before leaving in my ratty pajamas to drive her to work, the sun was just rising but it was already sooo hot, that summer i remember i couldn’t even hold the steering wheel cuz it was burning and my car didn’t (still doesn’t!) have AC, i’d drop her off to work up on the mountain and as i drove down the escarpment i would roll down the windows and blast pink + white right as the sun began to peek over the clouds and i would take a pretty sunrise pic every time before driving around for a bit, listening to this album, going home, and going back to sleep till 2pm

 blood orange - negro swan (aug 24, 2018)

i fully expected this list to be mainly albums released earlier in the decade, which makes sense – they would’ve had more time to have an effect on me – but as the final/most recent entry on my list, this album was beautiful enough to be a consistent part of the most recent year-and-a-half of my life!!! it’s also unique in that it’s one of the only albums on this list, i think, where i had already been a big fan of the artist’s previous work and was waiting for the album to drop. not 2 sound like one of THOSE people but i often find myself liking the first albums i heard from an artist/their older music better than newer work they release (not always!!! but often!), not from any kind of elitism or anything but honestly probably just nostalgia fogging my taste? especially for my first listen of a new album – it usually takes some time and a few re-listens before i really enjoy a newer release – BUT! from the moment dev released the album cover (which is so beautiful? one of my fav album covers off the top of my head) and dropped the first 2 singles, ESPECIALLY charcoal baby, i was so so enamoured with the album, right from the start. that whole summer i had it on repeat – early the next year i saw dev play in Toronto, and it was one of the best concerts i’ve ever been to – the lighting and colours and his dancing and demeanour, the other vocalists, plus we were right up at the stage, it was so stunning!!!!! this album has consistently appeared on all of my various spotify playlists, it rly can suit all moods and occasions, i love it very much and it’s the perfect album to round out my past decade in music!

 honourable mentions: SPEED ROUND

yes i’m a CHILD that cannot commit to cutting things down...... but tbh i’m surprised enough that i was able to preen my list into a top 10 anyway. so these r the honourable mentions that i couldn’t live with myself if i didn’t mention in some way!!!! all also very good and important and special to me, in no particular order!

mount kimbie - love what survives: i won’t lie this one hurt to not include on my top 10 :( i’m surprised too.... my friend rly fought for this to be included but i had to listen to my heart!!! however ofc i HAD to include it here at the very least. i was so shocked when it dropped, it was nothing like the rest of mount kimbie’s stuff i had previously heard.... i discovered them randomly when i was studying and spotify did that annoying thing where it plays “artist radio” or whatever so one of their older songs came on shuffle and WOW it was so good! and then i properly listened to them after hearing their songs with king krule... anyway this album is stunning and i am SO sad i didn’t get to see them when they came to toronto but i promise myself (and u!) that i will go the next time they come by!!!! u have my word!

foals - holy fire: this one also hurts a lot to not include :((( a LOT a lot! this one i’m really fond of, my fav foals album and one of the main albums i associate with highschool! so pretty, i’ll never forget hearing holy fire (the song itself) for the first time, so angry and satisfying and GOOD!!!

king krule - 6ft beneath the moon/the ooz: love both these albums soooo so much, i think 6fbtm came closer to almost being in the top 10 but others had it beat juuust slightly - these albums defined the beginning/end of my uni career, respectively, and i’ll cherish them forever! love archie’s ugly ginger ass with my whole heart

james blake - the colour in anything: was such a fan of james and was so excited when this album dropped - it was the start of summer i think? and i would always play it when i went for bike rides to the beach with my dad! such pretty music to drive ur bike to beside the water, all the way down the waterfront until we got to the next city over, riding past all the rich ppl’s mansions and trying to sneak a glance into their windows as we rode by

beyonce - self-titled: obviously the day this dropped - w no promo whatsoever - was a critical moment in music history!! we played this obsessively in high school, blasted this album the entire Europe trip in grade 12 and it just reminds me of travelling and planes and France…. so sexy!

solange - a seat at the table: rly truly a gorgeous album!! we played this in the car when my friends and i trekked to Toronto early one fall morning right after it dropped, we skipped school to go to some event at a café, and we had to wake up DUMB early, like 4:30AM, and i went to go pick them up and we were all way too tired to talk to eachother and stressed cuz we absolutely COULDN’T miss the train so i played this album the whole drive there while the sun was rising and it was so calming and pretty and special

[jaeminlore]

Enchanted Pt 2 // Moon Bin

-

Pt. 1

the prompt: could you pretty please write a continuation/spin off/sequel of the mermaid Moonbin AU?? If you WANT to make the sequel have a happy ending, I won’t complain~

words: 4011

category: angst + fluff

warnings: torture

author note: you guys I had this planned before I put the first part up, no lie. I’ll do Eunwoo’s spin-off story eventually, although it’ll take awhile. Also I left this ending kinda open. I might do a part 3, but I knife like how this ends.

- destinee

the entire second part was planned bc of this gif right here i wasn't going to have one until i saw this gif

-

You sat at your kitchen table. The screen door facing the ocean was wide open, and you gladly let the ocean breeze blow through your hair. You were doing your homework, struggling to bring your grades back up after missing school for a week.

Your father took you to the doctor, afraid you had developed depression. He thought it must be related to your mother’s leaving the two of you, although that was years ago. Your change in mood had started a week ago. As you sat in the therapists office, you couldn’t answer any of the questions she gave you.

No matter how much you tried, you couldn’t remember why you had been so unsocial the past week. You had no memory of those days.

“Y/n!” Your father bounded through the screen door, a few bags in his hand.

“Hey, Dad,” you said, smiling. “Did you find everything you needed in town?”

“Yes. I got something special for you.” He set one of the bags on the table, “I got you some custom shoes.”

Your father was a fisherman, and he had a knack for finding special scales that looked beautiful and glowed in the sun rays. He would take them to a place and have them sewed onto shoes or a bag just for you.

You eagerly opened the bag and pulled out a pair of wedged heels, decorated in cobalt blue scales. A sense of déjà vu came over you, but you couldn’t place where or why. “What fish did this come from?”

You never asked about the fish your dad harvested. You didn’t like the smell of dead fish, so you never came down to the dock on the days he brought home whatever he caught. You only went to the dock to help him unpack or pack his fishing boat.

“I actually think you’re old enough, Y/n. Why don’t you come on the boat with me and see?”

You crinkled your nose. “No, thanks.”

“C'mon,” your dad coaxed. “These fish don’t smell. I promise you won’t regret seeing them. The fish these scales came from got away, so we’re going to go after him tomorrow. Wanna come?”

As strange as his phrase sounded, you couldn’t help but want to see what fish these such beautiful scales belonged to. “Okay, I’ll go.”

-

The ocean water smelt of salt and fish, and it sprayed you every now and again. You stood against the railing of your father’s fishing boat, a life jacket over your chest.

Men from your father’s crew were bustling around, dragging heavy ropes behind them. You looked down at your own rubber boots and smiled, liking the feeling of being counted a fisherman like your father.

You waited anxiously to see the colorful fish he would bring up.

“He’s been spotted!” Your dad said, running over to you eagerly.

The day was getting colder as winds picked up. Something about your father’s voice reminded you of Captain Ahab, constantly hunting for Moby Dick. He sounded desperate, and unwilling to comply to anyone else’s orders. You wondered why he sounded so strange.

“How do you know it’s a he?” You asked, peering down into the ocean. “Isn’t it just a fish.”

“I’ve been meaning to tell you,” your father said, also peering down into the water. “I don’t fish for fish.”

“What do you fish then?” You asked innocently. “What else has beautiful scales besides a fish…”

As your voice trailed off in recognition, you father waited patiently for your reply.

Mermaids weren’t a myth in your town, you knew. However, you grew up knowing the legend: that mermaids and mermen could draw people in with a simple note of song.

You knew they lived in your ocean. You knew there were communities of merpeople swimming beneath the surface. However, there was an unspoken rule between both species, and that was the simple don’t bother us and we won’t bother you rule.

Mermaid poaching was illegal, and considered murder. Especially by you, who had always spoken vocally against the poaching of innocent merpeople.

You felt dirty, knowing that the shoes you had been wearing to school were made from some mermaid’s beautiful tail. You felt dirty knowing this is what your father did without your knowledge.

“Now, Y/n, before you get worked up, we don’t kill the mermaids.”

“Then what do you do?” You asked, hoping for any answer that would make your dad seem less like the monster you were beginning to think he was.

“We just capture them and scrape the scales off of their tales,” you father explained. “Their scales regenerate, so it’s not like we’re hurting them.”

“Doesn’t it hurt to get the scales off?” You asked, still not believing your father.

“Not at all,” he assured you. “It’s the equivalent to shaving your legs.”

Still skeptical, you followed your father to the edge of the boat, where men were casting nets down. “Don’t let him get away!”

You listened to the roughness in your father’s voice. What if he was lying to you? Were you to sit around while they hurt innocent merpeople?

While everyone was on deck, struggling to situate the nets so that they would catch the merman, you ran under deck.

While under there, you walked up to the porthole and peaked through, hoping to spot the merman they so desperately wanted to catch.

When you caught it, a fleeting flash of cobalt against the green tinted water, you banged on the window as loud as you could, hoping to distract the mermaid into coming towards you, where no net was.

If he swam to the other side of the boat, he would surely be caught.

You kept banging on the glass loudly, and when you finally locked eyes with the merman, you gasped in excitement.

His eyes were wide and brown, and his eyelids dropped almost sleepily as he looked at you. His brown hair floated around is face like a soft, underwater halo.

A strange look came over his face as he swam closer. Finally, there was only the porthole spreading the two of you, and you watched him silently as he pressed both his hands against the wall of the ship.

His mouth moved, and you could’ve sworn he spoke your name.

Though you had no idea who this merman was, he seemed to have a clear indication of who you were.

You made an X shape with your forearms and pointed to the other side of the ship, alerting him that he shouldn’t go that way.

As if he understood, he nodded.

“Y/n! You’re a genius!” Your father’s voice came out of nowhere. He was just climbing down the stairs to find you, and upon seeing the merman, he turned back around and began to shout at his men to change directions of the net.

“Oh no,” you mumbled. Then you turned back to the porthole with wide eyes and made shooing motions.

“Get away!” You shouted, hoping he would be able to hear you.

The merman looked up, and then back at you with a look of fear on his face. A net suddenly fell upon his head, encasing him.

You watched helplessly as he was pulled up towards the surface. That’s when you saw it, patches of dark blue scales were missing from his tail. Red, irritated skin could be seen in the empty places.

There was no way that didn’t hurt him.

You made you mind then and there. You were going to do whatever you could to save this merman.

-

Moonbin felt like crying. No matter where he searched, he couldn’t find Eunwoo anywhere.

Although he trusted his friend to be responsible, mermaid poachers had been bothering their hidden reef lately, and Moonbin was a fair Eunwoo would be caught.

Moonbin already knew what it was like to be caught by those horrific men. Only a day after he made you take the potion, he had been in the reefs, looking for shells to distract himself from thinking about you.

He was so busy, he didn’t see the shadow of the net as it was cast above him, trapping him.

He was pulled above the surface and met with the faces of jeering humans, some with frightening harpoons in their hands.

Once of the deck of the boat, Moonbin was strapped and tied down until he lay absolutely rigid with a gag in his mouth that made him unable to protest the horrors that continued.

One of the men took what looked to be a large, flat knife, and placed it against the grain of Moonbin’s sales.

White hot flashes of pain flashed in Moonbin’s head as the man scraped the knife upward, causing tons of individual scales to fly off in every direction.

Moonbin gritted his teeth and writhed around, hot tears falling out of his eyes. He had never been in so much physical pain before. He had to wonder if he would survive the torture he felt in that moment.

Eventually, the man stopped. Moonbin breathed deeply, his chest heaving up and down as he finally felt some sort of peace from the pain.

It was all over as the men grabbed him harshly and threw him over the side of the boat.

The salt water added more pain to the sore areas, and Moonbin swam home as quickly as he could, hoping to get to the doctor before he passed out from the pure shock of it all.

-

Now Moonbin was back, playing with the fish in a different part of the ocean.

This time he saw the shadow of the ship, and he darted away quickly. Only when he heard receptive knocking did he turn around.

He made eye contact with you, and his heart nearly dropped. Y/n? Were you okay? Why were you signaling him?

He swam forward, pressing his palms against the side of the ship and watching you from the other side of the glass. You made continual negative signs, and he understood that you were warning him to get far away.

However, before he could, the familiar weight of a net fell upon his shoulders, cementing him to the ocean floor as bait.

You looked back at the porthole, hoping to glance at your face one more time, yet you were gone.

-

“Dad! What are you doing?” You asked, hysterically pulling on your father’s elbow.

Your eyes drifted to the helpless mermaid on the deck. He looked pitiful, his eyes closed tightly as your father’s crew jeered at him.

“Stop!” You spoke once again, this time louder and more authoritative.

You pushed through the crowd of men and fell to your knees in front of the merman. Hesitantly, you reached for the ropes that held his wrists together.

As soon as your skin made contact with his, his eyes darted open and he winced.

“It’s okay,” you whispered in a motherly tone.

As his gaze softened and his breathing slowed, you continued to untie him.

“Get away, Y/n.” Your father’s gruff voice spoke. He grabbed you by the elbow and pulled you back. “I told you we don’t hurt him.”

“That’s bull,” you spat. “Look at the fear in his eyes! You obviously hurt him enough last time to make him afraid of you.”

You shoved your father away and glared at him. “Leave him alone.”

“Honey, this is how I make money. I can’t just let one of the most beautiful tails go.”

“He’s a merman, he has emotions and can feel pain just like you! His tail is a part of his body and something you have no right to.”

“Didn’t you like your shoes?” Your father asked.

“You told me they were made from fish scales. Fish that you eat! Not a merperson!” You shouted, feeling absolutely horrible for ever liking those shoes.

Your father sighed. “I didn’t want to have to do this, Y/n.” He then turned to one of his crew members, “Lock her up downstairs.”

You protested greatly, but in the end you were no match for the large man who pushed you downstairs, locking the door behind him. You made a ruckus, shouting loudly. “Don’t you hurt him!”

You quickly extracted your phone and called the police. “Hello, I need to report a mermaid poaching. Please come arrest these men before they hurt another mermaid.”

After giving them your information and asking them to send out a rescue boat, you slid down the wall and covered your ears, hating the pleads of mercy that came from the poor boy’s mouth. Especially because you could do nothing about it.

-

Moonbin woke up in a confined space, his arms constricted to his sides, yet not tied up. Blinking slowly, Moonbin managed to gaze up at a white ceiling.

He looked around, taking notice of the ivory toilet and sink. He was in a human bathroom.

That would explain why he felt constricted. He was sitting in a bathtub, with lukewarm water coming up to his ribs.

A confused look appeared on his face when he gazed at his tail, which was covered with some kind of clear paste.

“Oh, you’re awake.” Your voice jolted him out of his thoughts.

“Y/n,” he breathed.

“How do you know my name?” You asked, not seeming very bothered as you sat criss-crossed on the tiled floor.

“Uh, your father called you by it. I’m Moonbin.” Moonbin quickly covered himself, not knowing how to tell you that you were once under his curse.

He wasn’t sure what hurt more: his tail wounds or the fact that you still didn’t remember him.

You handed him half of a sandwich. “Hello, Moonbin. I don’t really know what you people eat, so I hope you like peanut butter and jelly.”

Moonbin’s heart swelled as he tasted the familiar food. “Thank you,” he whispered.

“I couldn’t let you starve, could I?”

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Moonbin began, “Where is your dad? And those other men?”

You looked down at your hands, embarrassed. “They’ve been arrested. You passed out before the police arrived, and they helped me transfer you here. This is my house.”

“Why didn’t you put me back in the ocean?”

Red colored your cheeks as you answered, “I wanted to make sure you were okay. This is going to sound weird, but I feel like we’ve met before.”

“That’s not weird at all,” Moonbin said, smiling at you. He felt the urge to tell you the truth, but he was also afraid of scaring you. “But how am I going to get back into the ocean?”

You bit your lip and shrugged shyly. “I didn’t think that far. I’ll call my friend to help me.”

“My tail is really heavy,” Moonbin said.

“Rocky is strong,” you said. “I’ll call Jinwoo as well, though.”

Moonbin frowned. His head pricked with insecure and jealous thoughts. Wouldn’t you prefer a human over a merman anyway? You probably had a crush on one of the boys you mentioned. Why wouldn’t you? If you didn’t have a crush on them, one of them certainly had to have a crush on you.

Moonbin felt panic rise in his heart. What if you were already dating someone? That was possible, since you would’ve forgotten about them under the curse.

It still hurt the merman that your feelings were fabricated. His feelings for you were still very real and it pained him to see that you had no recollection of your time together.

“I wish I was a mermaid,” you mumbled, eyeing Moonbin’s tail. “I would want a light blue tail.”

“Y-You can’t pick your tail color,” Moonbin repeated the words he had said just days ago.

You replied exactly as you had then. “It’s just a dream. I can have whatever tail I want.”

Moonbin was about to reply when you whispered in a low voice. “I feel like you guys have more fun in the ocean. Besides, I think I would look pretty with seashells in my hair.”

“You would,” Moonbin quietly agreed before he could stop himself.

You were too busy staring at his tail to notice. “My father said your scales would regenerate. Was he lying?”

“No,” Moonbin said. “They do regenerate, but it will take a few months. It’s like losing hair and having to grow it back.”

“Oh.” You looked at him, inquisitive, “Can I touch it?”

“If you want. I’ve heard people say it feels like a dead fish.” Moonbin was pulling out every conversation he had had with you in the hopes that something would click in your mind and revive your memory.

He received nothing.

You poked his tail hesitantly. “I thought a mermaid tail would be light, but it’s really heavy, like you said,” you spoke, thinking back to how many police had to carry him into the house. “And sorry to say, but that person was right. It does feel like a dead fish.”

You shot him a smile, which he returned, his eyes soft with an unreadable emotion.

Then you turned back to his tail, eyeing the angry patches of red. “I’m sorry my father did this to you. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him.”

“You tried,” Moonbin whispered, for he remembered how hard you fought the men before they locked you up.

You stroked his tail calmly, almost like you were petting the back of a dog. “I know, but I still hate they’ve hurt you. You didn’t deserve it. And your tail is my favorite color…”

“Are you crying,” Moonbin pushed himself up and reached towards you. He brushed a stray tear out from under your eye with the pad of his thumb. “Why are you crying?”

“I wore the shoes!” You said. “My father made shoes out of your scales and I wore them to school! I bragged about them! I’m just as horrible as he is!”

“Hey,” Moonbin cooed softly, “You didn’t know, okay? How were you to know if he didn’t tell you?”

You sniffed and met his eyes. His big, brown eyes that were so soft and personal, as if he were your closest friend. They were open, as if he trusted you with everything.

“You should be fussing at me,” you said. “You should be angry.”

“I’m not,” Moonbin replied. “Y/n, I’m not mad at you.”

You folded your arms over the edge of the tub and sighed. “I know. I’m just mad at myself.”

“Don’t be,” Moonbin said. He reached over and pulled your hand away from your folded grip. He squeezed your hand, “I’m okay now. It’s only a memory.”

You looked at his large hand incasing your own. He was still looking at you, his lips quirking into a smile as you let go and instead began to play with his fingers.

“I can’t get rid of this feeling like I’ve met you before. Nothing between us feels awkward or strange.”

Moonbin bit his lip. He wanted to tell you. Taking a deep breath, he blurted out before he could stop himself, “We have met before, Y/n.”

You stopped playing with his hands and looked at him. “Are you serious? How? When?”

Moonbin’s voice came out softer as he dropped his hands into the now-cold bath water. “I, uh, cursed you?”

“What?” You weren’t sure you heard that right. “What curse?”

“The merman’s curse,” Moonbin answered. “If a human hears a mermaid sing, they become enchanted.”

“I’ve never heard you sing,” you said.

“You have,” Moonbin insisted. “I got a potion from a sea witch that would reverse the enchantment. You…you told me you loved me and I would feel sorry once you took it and nothing happened. You were wrong.”

You plopped onto the bathroom floor, shocked. There was no way. You would’ve remembered being cursed by a boy like him.

However, the more you thought about it, the more it made sense. There was that week or so you couldn’t remember no matter how hard you tried.

You looked up at Moonbin, “D-Did I love you?”

Moonbin sat back and looked straight towards his tail. “Not really. Any love you had for me was fabricated by the spell.”

“That didn’t answer my question. I loved you, didn’t I?”

The look on Moonbin’s face answered your question. It answered another question too.

“You loved me back,” you spoke quietly, afraid you had read his expression wrong.

Moonbin cut his gaze towards your face. “So what if I did?”

“Did?” You asked. “Are you over me?”

“No,” Moonbin mumbled. Then he sat up quickly and turned so that nearly half his torso was out of the bath. “So now that I’ve made it awkward, can you please call your friends to let me back in the ocean?”

“Y-Yeah,” you said, scrambling into a standing position and grabbing your phone. “Wait…No.”

Moonbin looked at you as you typed something on your phone before pocketing it. “What do you mean? You’re not going to call them?”

“I texted them,” you answered with a shrug. “I’m more interested in you, however. I want to know why you loved me in the first place.”

“Oh.” Moonbin’s ears grew red as he struggled to find the words to say. “I used to watch you help your dad at the dock. I always thought you were beautiful. Then I accidentally hummed and you heard me. From there we became friends and something a bit more than friends. But you were becoming delusional, and I was afraid you would drown yourself trying to follow me. So I made you drink the potion. I love you because you are the sweetest human I’ve ever met. The curse may cause fake feelings, but personality never changes. I fell in love with your personality and I’m still in love with it; with you. I understand if it’s weird or awkward because you technically don’t know me, but I’m just telling you the truth.”

You stayed quiet, not quite sure how to respond. Honestly, how do you reply to a merman confessing his love for you? “Moonbin…”

“I know you don’t love me back,” Moonbin chuckled. “I don’t expect you to, so don’t feel pressured.”

You breathed a sigh of relief. Still, you felt sorry for the boy. “I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t like you, it’s just because I don’t know you.”

Moonbin smiled. “I know, Y/n.”

You looked at him and cocked your head sideways, studying his face. Your cheeks suddenly heated up as you made eye contact with him. “I don’t think I would mind getting to know you, though.”

“Really?” Moonbin perked up at this, his mood brightening.

“Yeah,” you answered. “I really like you, so I don’t want this to be the last time we meet.”

“Then it won’t be,” Moonbin said, smiling. “How about we meet on our rock, every Thursday at sundown.”

You furrowed your brows, “Where’s our rock?”

“Oh, sorry!” Moonbin said, a chuckle leaving his mouth. “I got excited for a minute and forgot you didn’t know. It’s the large clay one down a ways from the pier.”

“The one that sticks out of the water?”

“Yeah!” Moonbin said.

“Wait…” You pointed your finger at him. “That time I woke up on that rock randomly and found a half-eaten sandwich: that was you?”

“That was the day you took the reversal potion.” Moonbin said. “I watched from behind the rocks.”

“Wow,” you breathed. “How did fate bring us back together?”

“I know, right?” Moonbin looked at his tail. “Fate could’ve done it in a less painful way.”

You snorted, although his joke was more sadistic than funny. “Don’t joke about things like that.”

Moonbin shrugged, “It doesn’t hurt much anymore, so it’s okay.”

You were about to reply when the doorbell rang. “That’s the boys!”

Moonbin watched you go, no longer worried or jealous. You agreed to give him a chance, and that’s all he could ever ask for.

~the end~

[marsreds]

a not-at-all short introduction to Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series (with quotes and without spoilers)

Sooooo this is a thing. That has happened.

Before we begin, a few notes:

This thing is loooong. Like super long. Like 29.2k words long.

It is an actual spoiler free introduction, meant for people who know nothing or very little about the series.

It is split into three parts: 1) Me summarising and quoting individual books (except the last three, on account of not having read them yet) 2) Me talking about how and where to start for maximum reader satisfaction (based on my personal preferences) and 3) Miscellaneous (Adaptations, Fandom, etc.)

The quotes are there to give you a feeling of the writing, and were chosen either because they’re spoiler-free or require context to count as spoilers. (This means that some of the most memorable were left out.)

The quotes that are from the specific book that I am talking about at the moment are both blockquoted and in italics. Other quotes are merely in italics.

If/when I have something I wanna say during a quote I’ll put it in {}

Alright. First the bare bones:

Discworld’s a series of 41 books written by English author Terry Pratchett. They take place on the titular Discworld which is a flat world that sits on the backs of four elephants that stand on a turtle, Great A’Tuin.

While technically most of these books are self-contained, the whole of the series is usually divided into sub-series that follow a recurring set of main characters and share themes.

The sub series are:

Rincewind (and the wizards),

The Witches,

Death (and family),

The City Watch,

The Moist Von Lipwig series,

The Tiffany Aching series,

Stand-alones

Continued under the cut.

The books

-The first book, The Colour of Magic, was written in 1983 as a straight up parody of The Standard Fantasy Novel. It introduces us to Rincewind the “Wizzard“ (bc he can’t spell. God I’m still angry abt this) and sets the formula for his books. Which is, more or less: Rincewind does NOT want to be a hero. Fate and the Universe do not care. Rincewind tries to run away. Just runs into waaaay more trouble. Somehow, by accident, manages to save the day anyway. I don’t... actually care about Rincewind? I find his books repetitive, so the best I can do is point you towards @bookhobbit​ in general, and this post in particular.

This book also introduces Twoflower, the Disc’s very first tourist, his man-eating, walking Luggage, Death (although he doesn’t actually come into his own until later) who TALKS LIKE THIS, and the city of Ankh-Morpork, while it’s burning to the ground.

There was, for example, the theory that A’Tuin had come from nowhere and would continue at a uniform crawl, or steady gait, into nowhere, for all time. This theory was popular among academics. An alternative, favoured by those of a religious persuasion, was that A’Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, as were all the stars in the sky which were, obviously, also carried by giant turtles. When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis.

By now the whole of downtown Morpork was alight, and the richer and worthier citizens of Ankh on the far bank were bravely responding to the situation by feverishly demolishing the bridges.

… if complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he’d be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet armour and shouting “All gods are bastards”.

Rincewind opened his mouth to reply but felt the words huddle together in his throat, reluctant to emerge into a world that was rapidly going mad.

‘I assure you the thought never crossed my mind, lord.’ ‘Indeed? Then if I were you I’d sue my face for slander’.

… what he didn’t like about heroes was that they were usually suicidally gloomy when sober and homicidally insane when drunk.

The Watch were always careful not to intervene too soon in any brawl where the odds were not stacked heavily in their favour. The job carried a pension, and attracted a cautious, thoughtful kind of man.

-Then Pratchett realised that that one didn’t really have any plot, so he wrote a sequel—the only actual direct sequel in the series—The Light Fantastic. I don’t actually remember much of this one: we’re still with Rincewind and Twoflower, we meet Cohen the Barbarian and with him the “Survival is a matter of practice” school of thought, and things from the Dungeon Dimensions try to get out.

Introduces Death’s (adopted) daughter and we learn that Death’s horse is named Binky.

When light encounters a strong magical field it loses all sense of urgency.  It slows right down. And on the Discworld the magic was embarrassingly strong, which meant that the soft yellow light of dawn flowed over the sleeping landscape like the caress of a gentle lover or, as some would have it, like golden syrup.

 …fake fossil bones put there by a Creator with nothing better to do than upset archaeologists and give them silly ideas.

It looked the sort of book described in library catalogues as ‘slightly foxed’, although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had been badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well.

 It is said that the opposite of noise is silence. This isn’t true. Silence is only the absence of noise.

 It is well known that things from undesirable universes are always seeking an entrance into this one…

The Disc, being flat, has no real horizon. Any adventurous sailors who got funny ideas from staring at eggs and oranges for too long and set out for the antipodes soon learned that the reason why distant ships sometimes looked as though they were disappearing over the edge of the world was that they were disappearing over the edge of the world.

The important thing about having lots of things to remember is that you’ve got to go somewhere afterwards where you can remember them, you see. You’ve got to stop. You haven’t really been anywhere until you’ve got back home.

- Equal Rites is the first book in the Witches series, but also considered apart from it since the only witch they share is Granny Weatherwax (who isn’t yet herself here).

The story follows Esk, a little girl who, due to a mix-up, ended up with a wizard staff. in a world where magic is strictly gender-segregated.

However, it is primarily a story about the world. Here it comes now. Watch closely, the special effects are expensive.

…no one had a bad word to say about witches. At least, not if he wanted to wake up in the morning the same shape as he went to bed.

…magic has a habit of lying low, like a rake in the grass.

‘If a thing’s worth doing, it’s worth doing badly,’ said Granny, fleeing into aphorisms, the last refuge of an adult under siege.

‘They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.’

…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.

A witch relied too much on words ever to go back on them.

The landlord, whose name was Skiller, found himself looking directly down at a small child who seemed to be squinting. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Milk,’ said the child, still focusing furiously. ‘You get it out of goats. You know?’ Skiller sold only beer, which his customers claimed he got out of cats.

‘If you were a boy I’d say are you going to seek your fortune?’ ‘Can’t girls seek their fortune?’ ‘I think they’re supposed to seek a boy with a fortune.’

Zoon tribes are very proud of their Liars. Other races get very annoyed about all this. They feel that the Zoon ought to have adopted more suitable titles, like ‘diplomat’ or ‘public relations officer’. They feel they are poking fun at the whole thing.

…she was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don’t apply to you.

‘I didn’t have white hair in those days,’ said Granny. ‘Everything was a different colour in those days.’ ‘That’s true.’ ‘It didn’t rain so much in the summer time.’ ‘The sunsets were redder.’ ‘There were more old people. The world was full of them,’ said the wizard. ‘Yes, I know.  And now it’s full of young people. Funny, really. I mean, you’d expect it to be the other way round.’

Also relevant to the above is this essay titled: Why Gandalf Never Married.

Equal Rites also gives us the first instance where Pratchett shows that he Understands the value of “women’s work” [Granny and Esk hit the road to get Esk to Unseen University, to get proper wizard training, on the way they meet another witch]:

The council have tried to run me out once or twice, you know, but they all have wives and somehow it never quite happens. They say I’m not the right sort, but I say there’d be many a family in town a good deal bigger and poorer if it wasn’t for Madame Goatfounder’s Pennyroyal Preventives. I know who comes in my shop, I do. I remember who buys buckeroo drops and ShoNuff Ointment, I do. Life isn’t bad. And how is it up at your village with the funny name?

- Mort is the first novel in the Death sub-series.

Death gets an apprentice, then goes on holiday. It goes about as well as you’d expect. Also solidifies Death’s job and character.

‘But you’re Death,’ said Mort. ‘You go around killing people!’  I? KILL? said Death, obviously offended. CERTAINLY NOT. PEOPLE GET KILLED, BUT THAT’S THEIR BUSINESS. I JUST TAKE OVER FROM THEN ON. AFTER ALL, IT’D BE A BLOODY STUPID WORLD IF PEOPLE GOT KILLED WITHOUT DYING, WOULDN’T IT?

Something like a small blue supernova flared for a moment in the depths of his eyesockets. It dawned on Mort that, with some embarrassment and complete lack of expertise, Death was trying to wink.

WHAT IS SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN? 'How many drinks have you had?' FORTY-SEVEN. 'Just about anything, then,' said the barman and, because he knew his job and knew what was expected of him when people drank alone in the small hours, he started to polish a glass with the slops cloth and said, 'Your lady thrown you out, has she?' PARDON? 'Drowning your sorrows, are you?' I HAVE NO SORROWS. 'No, of course not. Forget I mentioned it.' He gave the glass a few more wipes. 'Just thought it helps to have someone to talk to,' he said. The stranger was silent for a moment, thinking. Then he said: YOU WANT TO TALK TO ME? 'Yes. Sure. I'm a good listener.' NO-ONE EVER WANTED TO TALK TO ME BEFORE. 'That's a shame.' THEY NEVER INVITE ME TO PARTIES, YOU KNOW. 'Tch.' THEY ALL HATE ME. EVERYONE HATES ME. I DON’T HAVE A SINGLE FRIEND. 'Everyone ought to have a friend,' said the barman sagely. I THINK — 'Yes?' I THINK . . . I THINK I COULD BE FRIENDS WITH THE GREEN BOTTLE.

'And what was your previous position?' I BEG YOUR PARDON? 'What did you do for a living?' said the thin young man behind the desk. The figure opposite him shifted uneasily. I USHERED SOULS INTO THE NEXT WORLD. I WAS THE GRAVE OF ALL HOPE. I WAS THE ULTIMATE REALITY. I WAS THE ASSASSIN AGAINST WHOM NO LOCK WOULD HOLD. 'Yes, point taken, but do you have any particular skills?' Death thought about it. I SUPPOSE A CERTAIN AMOUNT OF EXPERTISE WITH AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS? he ventured after a while. The young man shook his head firmly. NO?

WHAT IS IT CALLED WHEN YOU FEEL WARM AND CONTENT AND WISH THINGS WOULD STAY THAT WAY? 'I guess you'd call it happiness,' said Harga. Inside the tiny, cramped kitchen, strata'd with the grease of decades, Death spun and whirled, chopping, slicing and flying. His skillet flashed through the fetid steam. He'd opened the door to the cold night air, and a dozen neighbourhood cats had strolled in, attracted by the bowls of milk and meat – some of Harga's best, if he'd known – that had been strategically placed around the floor. Occasionally Death would pause in his work and scratch one of them behind the ears. 'Happiness,' he said, and puzzled at the sound of his own voice.

{and then you cry for years and years about a seven-foot-tall skeleton}

- Sourcery. Rincewind’s back. So are the Dungeon Dimensions. And all he’s got is a half-brick in a sock.

Deals with themes of identity and self-determination and can a wizard be a wizard if he can’t spell? (if u think i’ll ever let that one go, u are Wrong)

NOTHING IS FINAL. NOTHING IS ABSOLUTE. EXCEPT ME, OF COURSE.

‘I meant,’ said Iplsore bitterly, ‘what is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?’ Death thought about it. ‘CATS,’ he said eventually, ‘CATS ARE NICE.’

YOU’RE ONLY PUTTING OFF THE INEVITABLE, he said. ‘That’s what being alive is all about.’

When it comes to glittering objects, wizards have all the taste and self-control of a deranged magpie. …senior wizards tended to look upon actual magic as a bit beneath them. They tended to prefer administration, which was safer and nearly as much fun, and also big dinners.

 …to say that wizards are healthily competitive by nature is like saying that piranhas are naturally a little peckish.

It takes more than a bit of magic and someone being blown to smoke in front of him to put a wizard off his food.

…‘to call his understanding of magic theory abysmal is to leave no suitable word to describe his grasp of its practice.’

This was the type of thief that could steal the initiative, the moment and the words right out of your mouth.

‘Sorry. I don’t know why, but the prospect of certain death in unknown lands at the claws of exotic monsters isn’t for me. I’ve tried it, and couldn’t get the hang of it. Each to their own, that’s what I say, and I was cut out for boredom.’

 ‘Quick, you must come with me,’ she said. ‘You’re in great danger!’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because I will kill you if you don’t.'

- Wyrd Sisters. The second Witches book.

The king is murdered. His son is sent away with a theatre troupe. Also Shakespeare. So much Shakespeare like you cannot believe.

Really introduces Granny Weatherwax, as well as the rest of her coven: Nanny Ogg, Granny’s best friend since childhood, matriarch of the Ogg clan, has been married three times, last husband died thirty years ago. Youngest child is in his late teens. No-one dares question this. And Magrat Garlick, a new-age hippie, wishy-washy sort of witch.

Sets up the central theme of the Witches series which is the Power of Stories. And how everyone has a role, but that doesn’t mean you have to fulfill it and it does so by example because if there ever was a typical Evil Witch it’s Granny Weatherwax—except that she refuses. She refuses to be anything less than Good, and she doesn’t want to but there’s no one else around to do it so she must and if there’s one thing Esme Weatherwax knows about being a witch is that being a witch means Getting Shit Done (but this doesn’t mean that she’s gonna be nice about it).

(“What’s empowerin’ about witchcraft anyway?” said Granny. “It’s a daft sort of a word.” “Search me,” said Nanny. “I did start out in witchcraft to get boys, to tell you the truth.” “Think I don’t know that?” “What did you start out to get, Esme?” Granny stopped, and looked up at the frosty sky and then down at the ground. “Dunno,” she said, at last. “Even, I suppose.” And that, Nanny thought, was that. -From “The Sea and Little Fishes” , a Discworld short story)

The night was as black as the inside of a cat.  It was the kind of night, you could believe, on which the gods moved men as though they were pawns on the chessboard of fate.  In the middle of the elemental storm a fire gleamed among the dripping furze bushes like the madness in a weasel’s eye.  It illuminated three hunched figures.  As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked:  ‘When shall we three meet again?’ There was a pause. Finally another voice said in far more ordinary tones:  ‘Well I can do next Tuesday.’

Unlike wizards, who like nothing better than a complicated hierarchy, witches don’t go in much for the structured approach to career progression.  It’s up to each individual witch to take on a girl to hand the area over to when she dies. Witches are not by nature gregarious, at least with other witches, and they certainly don’t have leaders. Granny Weatherwax was the most highly-regarded of the leaders they didn’t have.

‘I hate cats.’ Death’s face became a little stiffer, if that were possible. The blue glow in his eye sockets flickered red for an instant. I SEE, he said. The tone suggested that death was too good for cat-haters.

‘Something comes,’ she said. ‘Can you tell by the pricking of your thumbs?’ said Magrat earnestly. Magrat had learned a lot about witchcraft from books. ‘The pricking of my ears,’ said Granny.

She walked quickly through the darkness with the frank stride of someone who was at least certain that the forest, on this damp and windy night, contained strange and terrible things and she was it.

Granny Weatherwax didn’t hold with looking at the future, but now she could feel the future looking at her. She didn’t like the expression at all.

It was one of the few sorrows of Granny Weatherwax’s life that, despite all her efforts, she’d arrived at the peak of her career with a complexion like a rosy apple and all her teeth. No amount of charms could persuade a wart to take root on her handsome if slightly equine features, and vast intakes of sugar only served to give her boundless energy.  A wizard she’d consulted had explained it was on account of her having a metabolism, which at least allowed her to feel vaguely superior to Nanny Ogg, who she suspected had never even seen one.

Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things. Well-known fact,’ said Granny.

Like most people, witches are unfocused in time. The difference is that they dimly realise it, and make use of it. They cherish the past because part of them is still living there, and they can see the shadows the future casts before it.

Particles of raw inspiration sleet through the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light bulbs wear out in half the time. But most of them miss. Most people go through their lives without being hit by even one. Some people are even more unfortunate.They get them all.

There was plenty of flat ground in the Ramtops. The problem was that nearly all of it was vertical.

It’s not much using being a witch unless you look like one.

‘Actors,’ said Granny, witheringly. ‘As if the world weren’t full of enough history without inventing more.’

Granny subsided into unaccustomed, trouble silence, and tried to listen to the prologue. The theatre worried her. It had a magic of its own, one that didn’t belong to her, one that wasn’t in her to control. It changed the world, and said things were otherwise than they were. And it was worse than that. It was magic that didn’t belong to magical people. It was commanded by ordinary people, who didn’t know the rules. They altered the world because it sounded better.

‘I’d like to know if I could compare you to a summer’s day. Because - well, June 12th was quite nice...’

Granny Weatherwax was often angry. She considered it one of her strong points. Genuine anger is one of the world’s great creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn’t mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it, carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard steam of wrath power the turbines of revenge.

Magrat knew she had lost. You always lost against Granny Weatherwax, the only interest was in seeing exactly how.

- Pyramids. Stand-alone.

Heir to the throne of an ancient Egypt rip-off gets a modern education. Inherits throne. Tries to figure out why is there an ancient Egypt type place when everywhere else is late medieval/renaissance. Turns out there’s a reason. It involves gods.

"Therefore I will have dinner sent in," said the priest. "It will be roast chicken." "I hate chicken." Dios smiled. "No sire. On Wednesdays the King always enjoys chicken, sire."

- Guards! Guards!  The first City Watch book. According to Pratchett, the first time he wrote the jokes to fit the story and not the other way around.

Young Carrot, having been raised by dwarves, goes to the Big City to join the Watch and learn to be a Man. The city is Ankh-Morpork. It actually does not go as you would expect. At the same time Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night are trying to overthrow the Patrician. By summoning dragons. That one does go as you’d expect. And Sam Vimes really, really, really wants a drink.

Introduces us to:

The (initial) members of the decaying and downtrodden Ankh-Morpork City Watch:

Captain Sam Vimes (the main-est character of the Watch books) an angry (so, so, so angry), cynical, noir detective-type man who has spent the better part of the last thirty years looking at the world through the bottom of a bottle. And yet, still strives to be Good. Strives and struggles and pretty much drags himself kicking and screaming into the light—

(”Who watches the Watchman?” “I do, always.”)

Gets one of the most satisfying character development arcs over the series, like words cannot describe how satisfying it is to watch Sam Vimes grow.

Carrot Ironfoundersson, raised by dwarves. Genuinely believes that everyone is actually really the decent sort, and, really, we should all get along. Has an extremely ordinary sword.

Sargent Fred Colon and Corporal Nobby Nobbs. Those two guys. You know the ones. The first one is the quintessential man from the street and the second needs official papers that prove he’s actually human.

Guards! Guards! also properly introduces Lord Vetinari, the Patrician, the man responsible for making Ankh-Morpork what it is.

And, of course: Lady Sybil Rampkin, richest woman in Ankh-Morpork, tall, bald, in her forties, breeds swamp dragons.

Also, since I forgot him before: The Librarian of Unseen University, real name unknown and unimportant, who due to a series of magical mishaps ended up as an orangutan, then promptly decided that it is far easier to enforce the rules of the library when you are a hundred kilos of muscle, and refused all attempts to turn him back. Also L-space. Just L-space.

“Oh, the caged whale. You want the Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night. Three doors down.” “Who're you, then?” “We're the Illuminated and Ancient Brethren of Ee.” "I thought you met over in Treacle Street,'' said the damp man, after a while. “Yeah, well. You know how it is. The fretwork club have the room Tuesdays. There was a bit of a mix-up.” “Oh? Well, thanks anyway.” “My pleasure.” The little door slammed shut.

Now pull back briefly from the dripping streets of Ankh-Morpork, pan across the morning mists of the Disc, and focus in again on a young man heading for the city with all the openness, sincerity and innocence of purpose of an iceberg drifting into a major shipping lane.

People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind rocks then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else."

All dwarfs have beards and wear up to twelve layers of clothing. Gender is more or less optional.

{this is a joke here, but keep it in mind, it’ll come back}

Fabricati diem, Pvnc.

-The motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch

One of the Patrician’s greatest contributions to the reliable operation of Ankh-Morpork had been, very early in his administration, the legalizing of the ancient Guild of Thieves. Crime was always with us, he reasoned, and therefore, if you were going to have crime, at least it should be organized crime. And so the Guild had been encouraged to come out of the shadows and build a big Guildhouse, take their place at civic banquets, and set up their training college with day-release courses and City and Guilds certificates and everything. In exchange for the winding down of the Watch, they agreed, while trying to keep their faces straight, to keep crime levels to a level to be determined annually. That way, everyone could plan ahead, said Lord Vetinari, and part of the uncertainty had been removed from the chaos that is life. And then, a little while later, the Patrician summoned the leading thieves again and said, oh, by the way, there was something else. What was it, now? Oh, yes … I know who you are, he said. I know where you live. I know what kind of horse you ride. I know where your wife has her hair done. I know where your lovely children, how old are they now, my, doesn’t time fly, I know where they play. So you won’t forget about what we agreed, will you? And he smiled.

‘I shall deal with the matter momentarily,’ [the Patrician] said. It was a good word. It always made people hesitate. They were never quite sure whether he meant he’d deal with it now, or just deal with it briefly. And no-one ever dared ask. 

The thief shuffled out.  It was always like this with the Patrician, he reflected bitterly.  You came to him with a perfectly reasonable complaint. Next thing you knew, you were shuffling backwards, bowing and scraping, relieved simply to be getting away.  You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly.  If you didn’t, he sent men to come and take it away.

One of the remarkable innovations introduced by the Patrician was to make the Thieves’ Guild responsible for theft, with annual budgets, forward planning and, above all, rigid job protection. Thus, in return for an agreed average level of crime per annum, the thieves themselves saw to it that unauthorised crime was met with the full force of Injustice, which was generally a stick with nails in it.

He was vaguely aware that he drank to forget. What made it rather pointless was that he couldn’t remember what it was he was forgetting any more. In the end he just drank to forget about drinking.

{Oh, Vimes}

Sergeant Colon owed thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs. Colon worked all day and Sergeant Colon worked all night. They communicated by means of notes. He got her tea ready before he left at night, she left his breakfast nice and hot in the oven in the mornings. They had three grown-up children, all born, Vimes had assumed, as a result of extremely persuasive handwriting.

The only reason you couldn’t say that Nobby was close to the animal kingdom was that the animal kingdom would get up and walk away.

His age was indeterminate. But in cynicism and general world weariness, which is a sort of carbon dating of the personality, he was about seven thousand years old.

There are many horrible sights in the multiverse. Somehow, though, to a soul attuned to the subtle rhythms of a library, there a few worse sights than a hole where a book ought to be.

Ankh-Morpork! Brawling city of a hundred thousand souls!  And, as the Patrician privately observed, ten times that number of actual people. The fresh rain glistened on the panorama of towers and rooftops, all unaware of the teeming, rancorous world it was dropping into. Luckier rain fell on upland sheep, or whispered gently over forests, or pattered somewhat incestuously into the sea. Rain that fell on Ankh-Morpork, though, was rain that was in trouble. They did terrible things to water, in Ankh-Morpork. Being drunk was only the start of its problems.

... laws governing the animal kingdom did not apply to the Librarian. On the other hand, the Librarian himself was never very interested in obeying the laws governing the human kingdom, either. He was one of those little anomalies you have to build around.​

Vimes knew that the barbarian hublander folk had legends about great chain-mailed, armour-bra’d, carthorse-riding maidens who swooped down on battlefields and carried off dead warriors on their cropper to a glorious roistering afterlife, while singing in a pleasing mezzo-soprano. Lady Ramkin could have been one of them. She could have led them. She could have carried off a battalion.

He couldn’t help remembering how much he’d wanted a puppy when he was a little boy. Mind you, they’d been starving – anything with meat on it would have done.

{Oh, Vimes}​

‘A book has been taken. A book has been taken? You summoned the Watch,’ Carrot drew himself up proudly, ‘because someone’s taken a book? You think that’s worse than murder?’

The Librarian gave him the kind of look other people would reserve for people who said things like ‘What’s so bad about genocide?’​

The Guild of Firefighters had been outlawed by the Patrician the previous year after many complaints. The point was that, if you bought a contract from the Guild, your house would be protected against fire. Unfortunately, the general Ankh-Morpork ethos quickly came to the fore and fire fighters would tend to go to prospective clients’ houses in groups, making loud comments like ‘Very inflammable looking place, this’ and ‘Probably go up like a firework with just one carelessly-dropped match, know what I mean?’

​It was the usual Ankh-Morpork mob in times of crisis; half of them were here to complain, a quarter of them were here to watch the other half, and the remainder were here to rob, importune or sell hot dogs to the rest.

... Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler, purveyor of absolutely anything that could be sold hurriedly from an open suitcase in a busy street and was guaranteed to have fallen off the back of an oxcart.

{Another reoccurring character, and that up there is all you need to know}

It always amazed Vimes how Nobby got along with practically everyone. It must, he’d decided, have something to do with the common denominator. In the entire world of mathematics there could be no denominator as common as Nobby.

...when the Patrician was unhappy, he became very democratic. He found intricate and painful ways of spreading that unhappiness as far as possible.

For a moment the rank felt as though they had just returned from single-handedly conquering a distant province. They felt, in fact, tremendously bucked-up, which was how Lady Ramkin would almost certainly have put it and which was definitely several letters of the alphabet away from how they normally felt.

Say what you like about the people of Ankh-Morpork, they had always been staunchly independent, yielding to no man their right to rob, defraud, embezzle and murder on an equal basis. This seemed absolute right, to Vimes’s way of thinking. There was no difference at all between the richest man and the poorest beggar, apart from the fact that the former had lots of money, food, power, fine clothes, and good health. But at least he wasn’t any better.

People were stupid, sometimes. They thought the Library was a dangerous place because of all the magical books, which was true enough, but what made it really one of the most dangerous places there could ever be was the simple fact that it was a library.

‘Might have just been an innocent bystander, sir,’ said Carrot ‘What, in Ankh-Morpork?’ ‘Yes, sir.’ ‘We should have grabbed him, then, just for the rarity value.’

If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn’t as cynical as real life.

{Oh, Vimes}

Colon didn’t reply. I wish Captain Vimes were here, he thought. He wouldn’t have known what to do either, but he’s got a much better vocabulary to be baffled in.

Vimes lowered the ape, who wisely didn’t make an issue of it because a man angry enough to lift 300 lbs of orangutan without noticing is a man with too much on his mind.

‘I believe you find life such a problem because you think that there are the good people and the bad people,’ said the man. ‘You’re wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.’ 

A couple of women were moving purposefully among the boxes. Ladies, rather. They were far too untidy to be mere women. No ordinary women would have dreamed of looking so scruffy; you need the complete self-confidence that comes with knowing who your great-great-great-great-grandfather was before you could wear clothes like that.

That was how you got to be a power in the land, he thought. You never cared a toss about whatever anyone else thought and you were never, ever, uncertain about anything.

And eventually, under siege, you did what Ankh-Morpork had always done – unbar the gates, let the conquerors in, and make them your own.

- Faust Eric Rincewind again.

Was first an illustrated novel, then became a novel-novel. Rincewind gets mistaken for a wish-granting demon. Hijinks ensue.

- Moving Pictures Stand-alone, sort of.

Hollywood has come to the Disc! More film references than you could shake a stick at! Star power! Eldritch horrors! Talking dogs!

The first book to have the senior staff of Unseen University as more than bit parts. Introduces Mustrum Ridcully, the new Archchancellor, hired because they thought that an outdoorsy type would be easy to get rid of. Turns out he’s Teddy Roosevelt.

There’s a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork, greatest of Discworld cities. At least there’s a saying that there’s a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork. And it’s wrong.  All roads lead away from Ankh-Morpork, but sometimes people just walk along them the wrong way.

…Ridcully the Brown did speak to the birds. In fact he shouted at birds, and what he normally shouted was ‘Winged you, yer bastard!’

There was always this trouble with the Librarian. Everyone had got so accustomed to him it was hard to remember a time when the Library was not run by a yellow-fanged ape with the strength of three men.

‘Students?’ barked the Archchancellor. ‘Yes, Master. You know? They’re the thinner ones with the pale faces? Because we’re a university? They come with the whole thing, like rats-’

… Victor Tugelbend was also the laziest person in the history of the world. Not simply, ordinarily lazy. Ordinary laziness was merely the absence of effort. Victor has passed through there a long time ago, had gone straight through commonplace idleness and out the far side. He put more effort into avoiding work than most people put into hard labour.

Victor eyed the glistening tubes in the tray around Dibbler’s neck. They smelled appetizing. They always did. And then you bit into them, and learned once again that Cut-me-own-Throat Dibbler could find a use for bits of an animal that the animal didn’t know it had got.

… Throat was one of those people who could identify the thought at the other end of the process, in this case I am now very rich, draw a line between the two, and then think his way along it, slowly and patiently, until he got to the other end.

‘Make him a star? What’d he want a star for?’ ‘I didn’t know you could make stars… I thought they were like, you know, stuck to the sky…’ ‘I think he meant make him a star. You know, him himself. Turn him into a star.’ ‘How can you make anyone into a star?’ ‘I dunno. I suppose you compress them right up small and they burst into this mass of flaming hydrogen?’

‘What’re you supposed to be?’ he said at last. ‘A leader of a pack of desert bandits, apparently,’ said Victor. ‘Romantic and dashing.’ ‘Dashing where?’ ‘Just dashing generally, I guess.’

​Camels are far too intelligent to admit to being intelligent.

All dwarfs have beards and wear many layers of clothing. Their courtships are largely concerned with finding out, in delicate and circumspect ways, what sex the other dwarf is.

Real magic is the hand around the bandsaw, the thrown spark in the powder keg, the dimension-warp linking you straight into the heart of a star, the flaming sword that burns all the way down to the pommel. Sooner juggle torches in a tar pit than mess with real magic. Sooner lie down in front of a thousand elephants. At least, that’s what wizards say, which is why they charge such swingeingly huge fees for getting involved with the bloody stuff.

‘Fate doesn’t like it when people take up more space than they ought to.’

​Anyone with a bit of intelligence and enough perseverance could do magic, which was why the wizards cloaked it with rituals and the whole pointy-hat business. The trick was to do magic and get away with it.

According to the history books, the decisive battle that ended the Ankh-Morpork Civil War was fought between two handfuls of bone-weary men in a swamp early one misty morning and, although one side claimed victory, ended with a practical score of Humans 0, ravens 1,000, which is the case with most battles.

The whole of life is just like watching a click, he thought. Only it’s as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out yourself from the clues. And you never, never get a chance to stay in your seat for the second house.

​…inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.

If heroes didn’t arrive in the nick of time, where was the sense in anything?

- Reaper Man. Second Death book.

Death gets fired. People stop dying. One of them is a Senior Wizard or UU. It’s a mess.

Introduces the Auditors of Reality.

Y’all know the Death and the Maiden troupe? Where Death goes and falls in love with a young woman, except it’s not a woman but a metaphor for Life? Well it’s like that, except there is no young woman, there is no metaphor, there’s just Life and Living and you continue to cry about a seven-foot-tall skeleton. Forever.

"Windle!” he said. “We thought you were dead!” He had to admit that it wasn’t a very good line. You didn’t put people on a slab with candles and lilies all round them because you think they’ve got a bit of a headache and want a nice lie down for half an hour.

It is true that the undead cannot cross running water. However, the naturally turbid river Ankh, already heavy with the mud of the plains, does not, after having passed through the city (pop. 1,000,000), qualify under the term ‘running’ or, for that matter, ‘water.’

The Shades was the oldest part of the city. If you could do a sort of relief map of sinfulness, wickedness and all-round immorality, rather like those representations of the gravitational field around a Black Hole, then even in Ankh-Morpork the Shades was remarkably like the aforesaid well-known astronomical phenomenon: it had a certain strong attraction, no light escaped from it, and it could indeed become a gateway to another world. The next one.

“I haven’t felt like this since Mrs. Cake was one of my flock.” “Mrs. Cake? What’s a Mrs. Cake?” “You have . . . ghastly Things from the Dungeon Dimensions and things, yes? Terrible hazards of your ungodly profession?” “Yes.” “We have someone called Mrs. Cake.”

He knew from experience that the living never found out half of what was really happening, because they were too busy being the living. The onlooker sees most of the game, he told himself. It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because life was too full of the boring and mundane.

Mrs Evadne Cake was a medium, verging on small.

{Ah, puns}

Belief is one of the most powerful organic forces in the multiverse. It may not be able to move mountains, exactly. But it can create someone who can.

‘Yeah, it’s always the same,’ said Reg Shoe bitterly. ‘Once you’re dead, people just don’t want to know, right? They act as if you’ve got some horrible disease. Dying can happen to anyone, right?’

Bill Door made the mistake millions of people had tried before with small children in slightly similar circumstances. He resorted to reason.

‘It can’t be intelligent, can it?’ said the Bursar. ‘All it’s doing is moving around slowly and eating things,’ said the Dean. ‘Put a pointy hat on it and it’d be a faculty member,’ said the Archchancellor.

I’VE NEVER BEEN VERY SURE ABOUT WHAT IS RIGHT, said Bill Door.  I AM NOT SURE THERE IS SUCH A THING AS RIGHT. OR WRONG.  JUST PLACES TO STAND.

‘Oook.’ ‘You? We can’t take you,’ said the Dean, glaring at the Librarian. ‘You don’t know a thing about guerrilla warfare.’ ‘Oook!’ said the Librarian, and made a surprisingly comprehensive gesture to indicate that, on the other hand, what he didn’t know about orangutan warfare could be written on the very small pounded-up remains of, for example, the Dean.

There was never anything to be gained from observing what humans said to one another - language was just there to hide their thoughts.

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

I HAVE RECEIVED THE BADLY-WRITTEN NOTE OF THE BANSHEE.

DROP THE SCYTHE, AND TURN AROUND SLOWLY.

- Witches Abroad. Witches series.

Magrat inherits a fairy godmother wand. Sets off to Discworld New Orleans to do the job. Nanny and Granny come along. On the way there pass through about 15678635 different fairy tales. Granny can’t be having with that.

Again about the power of Stories. Has one of the most heartbreaking deconstructions of the talking animal trope I’ve ever read.

Stories don’t care who takes part in them. All that matters is that the story gets told, that the story repeats. Or, if you prefer to think of it like this: stories are a parasitical life form, warping lives in the service only of the story itself. It takes a special kind of person to fight back, and become the bicarbonate of history.

... it used to be so simple, once upon a time. Because the universe was full of ignorance all around and the scientist panned through it like a prospector crouched over a mountain stream, looking for the gold of knowledge among the gravel of unreason, the sand of uncertainty and the little whiskery eight-legged swimming things of superstition. Occasionally he would straighten up and say things like ‘Hurrah, I’ve discovered Boyle’s Third Law.’  And everyone knew where they stood.  But the trouble was that ignorance became more interesting, especially big fascinating ignorance about huge and important things like matter and creation, and people stopped patiently building their little houses of rational sticks in the chaos of the universe and started getting interested in the chaos itself – partly because it was a lot easier to be an expert on chaos, but mostly because it made really good patterns that you could put on a t-shirt. 

The waterfall was the second highest anywhere on the Disc and had been discovered in the Year of the Revolving Crab by the noted explorer Guy de Yoyo (Of course, lots of dwarfs, trolls, native people, trappers, hunters and the merely badly lost had discovered it on an almost daily basis for thousands of years. But they weren’t explorers and didn’t count.)

Most witches don't believe in gods. They know that the gods exist, of course. They even deal with them occasionally. But they don't believe in them. They know them too well. It would be like believing in the postman.

The Yen Buddhists are the richest religious sect in the universe. They hold that the accumulation of money is a great evil and burden to the soul. They therefore, regardless of personal hazard, see it as their unpleasant duty to acquire as much as possible in order to reduce the risk to innocent people.

Asking someone to repeat a phrase you'd not only heard very clearly but were also exceedingly angry about was around Defcon II in the lexicon of squabble.

People like Nanny Ogg turn up everywhere  It’s as if there’s some special morphic generator dedicated to the production of old women who like a laugh and aren’t averse to the odd pint, especially of some drink normally sold in very small glasses. You find them all over the place, often in pairs.

This is called the theory of narrative causality and it means that a story, once started, takes a shape. It picks up all the vibrations of all the other workings of that story that have ever been. This is why history keeps on repeating all the time.

Forever didn’t seem to last as long these days as once it did.

Fairy godmothers develop a very deep understanding about human nature, which makes the good ones kind and the bad ones powerful.

‘Nothing wrong with being self-assertive,’ said Nanny. ‘Self-asserting’s what witching’s all about.’ ‘I never said there was anything wrong with it,’ said Granny. ‘I told her there was nothing wrong with it. You can be as self-assertive as you like, I said, just so long as you do what you’re told.’

‘Look,’ said Magrat desperately, ‘why don’t I go by myself?’ ‘‘Cos you ain’t experienced at fairy godmothering,’ said Granny Weatherwax. This was too much even for Magrat’s generous soul. ‘Well, nor are you,’ she said. ‘That’s true,’ Granny conceded. ‘But the point is…the point is…the point is we’ve not been experienced for a lot longer than you.’

It was one of the weak spots of Granny Weatherwax’s otherwise well-developed character that she’d never bothered to get the hang of steering things. It was alien to her nature. She took the view that it was her job to move and the rest of the world to arrange itself so that she arrived at her destination.

Greebo turned upon Granny Weatherwax a yellow-eyed stare of self-satisfied malevolence, such as cats always reserve for people who don’t like them, and purred. Greebo was possibly the only cat who could snigger in purr.

Genua had once controlled the river mouth and taxed its traffic in a way that couldn't be called piracy because it was done by the city government.

Infinity contains more than you think. Everything, for a start.

… people are riddled with Doubt. It is the engine that drives them through their lives. It is the elastic band in the little model aeroplane of their soul, and they spend their time winding it up into knots. Early morning is the worst time – there’s that little moment of panic in case You have drifted away in the night and something else has moved in. This never happened to Granny Weatherwax. She went straight from fast asleep to instant operation on all six cylinders. She never needed to find herself because she always knew who was doing the looking.  

‘You’d have to go a long day’s journey to find someone basically nastier than Esme,’ said Nanny Ogg, ‘and this is me sayin’ it. She knows exactly what she is.  She was born to be good and she don’t like it.’

‘You can’t make happiness ...’ Granny Weatherwax stared at the distant city. ‘All you can do,’ she said, ‘is make an ending.

Cats are like witches. They don’t fight to kill, but to win. There is a difference. There’s no point in killing an opponent. That way, they won’t know they’ve lost, and to be real winner you have to have an opponent who is beaten and knows it. There’s no triumph over a corpse, but a beaten opponent, who will remain beaten every day of the remainder of their sad and wretched life, is something to treasure.

- Small Gods. Stand-alone.

In the empire of Omnia worship of the Great God ("holy horns") Om - dominates all aspects of life. Novice Brutha just wanted to tend to the melons. Instead, he finds a tortoise claiming to be The Great God himself. Exploration of Religion, Belief and the difference between the two ensues. Also philosophy and math jokes.

If you have decided that you’re just gonna read one Discworld book ever, my advice is for it to be this one.

The tortoise is a ground-living creature. It is impossible to live nearer the ground without being under it.  Its horizons are a few inches away. It has about as good a turn of speed as you need to hunt down a lettuce. It has survived while the rest of evolution flowed past it by being, on the whole, no threat to anyone and too much trouble to eat.

Gravity is a habit that is hard to shake off.

One of the recurring philosophical questions is: ‘Does a falling tree in the forest make a sound when there is no one to hear?’ Which says something about the nature of philosophers, because there is always someone in the forest. It may only be a badger, wondering what that cracking noise was, or a squirrel a bit puzzled by all the scenery going upwards, but someone.

Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.

Things just happen, one after another. They don’t care who knows. But history … ah, history is different. History has to be observed. Otherwise it’s not history. It’s just … well, things happening one after another.

Many stories start long before they begin …

…there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot be easily duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes into work every day and has a job to do.

The people who really run organisations are usually found several levels down, where it’s still possible to get things done.

Humans! They lived in a world where the grass continued to be green and the sun rose everyday and flowers regularly turned into fruit, and what impressed them? Weeping statues. And wine made out of water! A mere quantum-mechanistic tunnel effect that would happen anyway if you were prepared to wait a few million years. As if the turning of sunlight into wine by means of grapes and time and enzymes wasn’t a thousand times more impressive and happened all the time.

There were all sorts of ways to petition the Great God, but they depended largely on how much you could afford, which was right and proper and exactly how things should be. After all, those who had achieved success in the world clearly had done it with the approval of the Great God, because it was impossible to believe that they had managed it with His disapproval.

It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary grey goo if its only real purpose was, for example, to serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys.  It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.

Many feel they are called to the priesthood, but what they really hear is an inner voice saying, ‘It’s indoor work with no heavy lifting’ …

Fear is a strange soil. Mainly it grows obedience like corn, which grows in rows and makes weeding easy. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourishes underground.

You couldn’t put off the inevitable. Because sooner or later, you reached the place where the inevitable just went and waited.

When the least they could do to you was everything, then the most they could do to you suddenly held no terror.

Words are the litmus paper of the minds. If you find yourself in the power of someone who will use the word ‘commence’ in cold blood, go somewhere else very quickly. But if they say ‘Enter’, don’t stop to pack.

Brutha had never been any good at lying. The truth itself had always seemed so incomprehensible that complicating things even further had always been beyond him.

 ‘Winners never talk about glorious victories. That’s because they’re the ones who see what the battlefield looks like afterwards. It’s only the losers who have glorious victories.'

‘What’s a philosopher?’ said Brutha. ‘Someone who’s bright enough to find a job with no heavy lifting,’ said a voice in his head.

‘That’s why it’s always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it’s all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does A Falling Tree in the Forest Make A Sound if There’s No one There to Hear It, and then just when you think they’re going to start dribbling one of ‘em says, Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy’s ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles…’

People think that professional soldiers think a lot about fighting, but serious professional soldiers think a lot more about food and a warm place to sleep, because these are two things that are generally hard to get, whereas fighting tends to turn up all the time.

His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools - the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans - and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, ‘You can’t trust any bugger further than you can throw him, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so let’s have a drink.’

‘Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave,’ said Vorbis. ‘So I understand,’ said the Tyrant. ‘I imagine that fish have no word for water.’

The Captain frowned. ‘It’s a funny thing,’ he said, ‘but why is it that the heathens and the barbarians seem to have the best places to go when they die?’ ‘A bit of a poser, that,’ agreed the mate. ‘I s’pose it makes up for ‘em ... enjoying themselves all the time when they’re alive, too?’  He looked puzzled.  Now that he was dead, the whole thing sounded suspicious.

‘Just because you can explain it doesn’t mean it’s not still a miracle.’

‘Take it from me, whenever you see a bunch of buggers puttering around talking about truth and beauty and the best way of attacking Ethics, you can bet your sandals it’s all because dozens of other poor buggers are doing all the real work around the place…’

And they were engaged in religion. You could tell by the knives (it’s not murder if you do it for a god).

Bishops move diagonally. That’s why they often turn up where the kings don’t expect them to be.

Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent-protection.

‘No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for.’

‘You can die for your country or your people or your family, but for a god you should live fully and busily, every day of a long life.’

Death paused. YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE, he said, THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE? "Yes. Yes, of course." Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.

‘I used to think that I was stupid, and then I met philosophers.’

 ‘Everything happens because things have happened before. Stupid.’

- Lords and Ladies. Witches series. Plus a side appearance by the Wizards.

Directly follows Witches Abroad, (but not a sequel, everything you need to know from there is explained in a 3-4 paragraph foreword). The Fair Folk are here and well...

Also our first glimpse of the “modern“ witches.

There are very few starts. Oh, some things seem to be beginnings. The curtain goes up, the first pawn moves, the first shot is fired* – but that’s not the start.  The play, the game, the war is just a little window on a ribbon of events that may extend back thousands of years.  The point is, there is always something before.  It’s always a case of Now Read On.

*Probably at the first pawn.

 Much human ingenuity has gone into finding the ultimate Before. The current state of knowledge can be summarized thus: In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.

Other theories about the ultimate start involve gods creating the universe out of the ribs, entrails and testicles of their father.* There are quite a lot of these. They are interesting, not for what they tell you about cosmology, but for what they say about people.

*Gods like a joke as much as anyone else.

But what we have here is not a nice girl, as generally understood. For one thing, she’s not beautiful. There’s a certain set to the jaw and arch to the nose that might, with a following wind and in the right light, be called handsome by a good-natured liar. Also, there’s a certain glint in her eye generally possessed by those people who have found that they are more intelligent than most people around them but who haven’t yet learned that one of the most intelligent things they can do is prevent said people ever finding this out. Along with the nose, this gives her a piercing expression which is extremely disconcerting. It’s not a face you can talk to. Open your mouth and you’re suddenly the focus of a penetrating stare which declares: what you’re about to say had better be interesting.

{Do you ever read something and you cringe at how relatable it is?}

He had in fact been raised to be a Fool, a man whose job it was to caper and tell jokes and have custard poured down his trousers. This had naturally given him a grave and solemn approach to life and a grim determination never to laugh at anything ever again, especially in the presence of custard.

...[he] would rather cut his own leg off than put a witch in prison, since it’d save trouble in the long run and probably be less painful.

There are no delusions for the dead. Dying is like waking up after a really good party, when you have one or two seconds of innocent freedom before you recollect all the things you did last night which seemed so logical and hilarious at the time, and then you remember the really amazing thing you did with a lampshade and two balloons, which had them in stitches, and now realize you’re going to have to look at lot of people in the eye today and you’re sober now and so are they but you can both remember.

The Librarian was always up early because he was an orang-utan, and they are naturally early risers, although in his case he didn’t bellow a few times to keep other males off his territory. He just unlocked the Library and fed the books.

‘We taught her everything she knows,’ said Granny Weatherwax. ‘Yeah,’ said Nanny Ogg, as they disappeared into the bracken. ‘D’you think ... maybe...?’ ‘What?’ ‘D’you think maybe we ought to have taught her everything we know?’ ‘It’d take too long.’

Mustrum Ridcully did a lot for rare species. For one thing, he kept them rare.

… all books, everywhere, affect all other books. This is obvious: books inspire other books written in the future, and cite books written in the past. But the General Theory of L-Space suggests that, in that case, the contents of books as yet unwritten can be deduced from books now in existence.

‘I don’t hold with paddlin’ with the occult,’ said Granny firmly. ‘Once you start paddlin’ with the occult you start believing in spirits, and when you start believing in spirits you start believing in demons, and then before you know where you are you’re believing in gods. And then you’re in trouble.’ ‘But all them things exist,’ said Nanny Ogg. ‘That’s no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages ‘em.’

Knowing the time of your death is one of those strange bonuses that comes with being a true magic user. And, on the whole, it is a bonus. Many a wizard has passed away happily drinking the last of his wine cellar and incidentally owing very large sums of money.

The land between Ankh-Morpork and the Ramtops was fertile, well-cultivated, and dull, dull, dull. Travel broadens the mind. This landscape broadened the mind because the mind just flowed out from the ears like porridge.

It wasn’t that Ridcully was stupid. Truly stupid wizards have the life expectancy of a glass hammer. He had quite a powerful intellect, but it was powerful like a locomotive, and ran on rails and was therefore almost impossible to steer.

The universe doesn’t much care if you tread on a butterfly. There are plenty more butterflies. Gods might note the fall of a sparrow but they don’t make an effort to catch them. Shoot the dictator and prevent the war? But the dictator is merely the tip of the whole festering boil of social pus from which dictators emerge; shoot one, and there’ll be another one along in a minute. Shoot him too? Why not shoot everyone and invade Poland? In fifty years’, thirty years’, ten years’ time the world will be very nearly back on its old course. History always has a great weight of inertia.

{^^^^^!!!!!}

Strictly speaking, Hodgesaargh wasn’t his real name. On the other hand, on the basis that someone’s real name is the name they introduce themselves to you by, he was definitely Hodgesaargh. This was because the hawks and falcons in the castle mews were all Lancre birds and therefore naturally possessed of a certain ‘sod you’ independence of mind.  After much patient breeding and training Hodgesaargh had managed to get them to let go of someone’s wrist, and now he was working on stopping them viciously attacking the person who had just been holding them i.e., invariably Hodgesaargh.

…the thaum, hitherto believed to be the smallest possible particle of magic, was successfully demonstrated to be made up of resons* or reality fragments.  Currently research indicates that each reson is itself made up of a combination of at least five ‘flavours’, known as ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘sideways’, ‘sex appeal’ and ‘peppermint’.

* Lit: ‘Thing-ies’.

Nanny Ogg looked under her bed in case there was a man there. Well, you never knew your luck.

‘Glamour. Elves are beautiful. They’ve got,’ she spat the word, ‘style. Beauty. Grace. That’s what matters. If cats looked like frogs we’d realize what nasty cruel little bastards they are.’

'Being alone isn't the same as not having other people around,' said Granny.

‘But they’re witches. I don’t like to ask them questions.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘They might give me answers. And then what would I do?’

‘You can’t cross the same river twice, Archchancellor,’ he said. Ridcully stared at him. ‘Why not? This is a bridge.’

‘Witches! Let me tell you about the witches round here-’ ‘Our mum’s a witch,’ said Shawn conversationally, rummaging in the sack. ‘As fine a body of women as you could hope to meet,’ said Ridcully, with barely a hint of mental gear-clashing. ‘And not a bunch of interfering power-mad old crones at all, whatever anyone might say.’

‘Personal’s not the same as important. People just think it is.’

 …Nanny Ogg was an attractive lady, which is not the same as being beautiful. She fascinated Casanunda. She was an incredibly comfortable person to be around, partly because she had a mind so broad it could accommodate three football fields and a bowling alley.

She’d have to stop thinking like this. She seemed to have spent her whole life trying to make herself small, trying to be polite, apologizing when people walked over her, trying to be good-mannered. And what had happened? People had treated her as if she was small and polite and good-mannered.

Technically, a cat locked in a box may be alive or it may be dead. You never know until you look. In fact, the mere act of opening the box will determine the state of the cat, although in this case there were three determinate states the cat could be in: these being Alive, Dead, and Bloody Furious.

People remember badly. But societies remember well, the swarm remembers, encoding the information to slip it past the censors of the mind, passing it in from grandmother to grandchild in little bits of nonsense they won't bother to forget. Sometimes the truth keeps itself alive in devious ways despite the best efforts of the official keepers of information.

The shortest unit of time in the multiverse is the New York Second, defined as the period of time between the traffic lights turning green and the cab behind you honking.

​'Being noticed is what a witch is all about.'

The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.

‘I love the way humans think. They think like songs.’

‘…I had to learn. All my life. The hard way. And the hard way’s pretty hard, but not so hard as the easy way.’

{Favourite favourite favourite}

All she could do for all of them was be herself, here and now, as hard as she could.

‘The price for being the best is always…having to be the best.’

‘Act your age, Gytha.’ ‘Act?  Don’t have to act, can do it automatic,’ said Nanny. ‘Acting half my age…now that’s the difficult trick.’

- Men at Arms. Watch series.

Someone wants to assassinate kill the Patrician (in this case Edward d’Eath) and resurrect the Monarchy and the Good Old DaysTM and the Watch has to stop them. a.k.a. “Sam Vimes And Put That King Back Where You Found Him Or So Help Me” Part I.

Begins and ends as a murder mystery.

Introduces Angua, Cuddy the dwarf, expands the character of Detritus the troll, and deals a bit with Troll-Dwarf relations, which will be expanded further along.

He could think in italics. Such people need watching. Preferably from a safe distance.

It was said later that he came under bad influences at this stage.  But the secret of the history of Edward d’Eath was that he came under no outside influences at all, unless you count all those dead kings.  He just came under the influence of himself.

‘What’s so hard about pulling a sword out of a stone? The real work’s already been done. You ought to make yourself useful and find the man who put the sword in the stone in the first place, eh?

From the back, Vetinari looked like a carnivorous flamingo.

The Battle of Koom Valley is the only one known to history where both sides ambushed each other.

Young Edward thinks that there is no lake of blood too big to wade through to put a rightful king on a throne, no deed too base in defence of a crown. A romantic, in fact.

A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.

But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.

{coincidentally, Men at Arms is the point where Pratchett runs out of fucks to give}

‘Dwarfs and trolls get along like a house on fires’, said Nobby. ‘Ever been in a burning house, miss?’

Carrot often struck people as simple. And he was. Where people went wrong was thinking that simple meant the same thing as stupid.

‘Hah! Your uniform doesn’t scare me,’ he said. Vimes looked down at his battered breastplate and worn mail. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘This is not a scary uniform. I’m sorry. Forward, Corporal Carrot and Lance-Constable Detritus.’ The Assassin was suddenly aware of the sunlight being blocked out. ‘Now these, I think you’ll agree,’ said Vimes, from somewhere behind the eclipse, ‘are scary uniforms.’

…all dogs don’t talk.  Ones that do are merely a statistical error, and can therefore be ignored.

{this book was published in 1993}

The most dangerous man in the world should be introduced. He has never, in his entire life, harmed a living creature. He has dissected a few, but only after they were dead, and had marvelled at how well they’d been put together considering it had been done by unskilled labour. For several years he hadn’t moved outside a large, airy room, but this was OK, because he spent most of his time inside his own head in any case. There’s a certain type of person it’s very hard to imprison.

That was the thing about death.  When it happened to you, you were among the first to know.

… when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it’s nice to be able to blaspheme.

Murder was in fact a fairly uncommon event in Ankh-Morpork, but there were a lot of suicides. Walking in the night-time alleyways of The Shades was suicide. Asking for a short in a dwarf bar was suicide. Saying ‘Got rocks in your head?’ to a troll was suicide. You could commit suicide very easily, if you weren’t careful.

The Ramkins were more highly bred than a hilltop bakery...

{Probably my favourite pun}

He’d faced trolls and dwarf and dragons, but now he was having to meet an entirely new species. The rich.

The River Ankh is probably the only river in the universe on which the investigators can chalk the outline of the corpse.

No clowns were funny. That was the whole purpose of a clown. People laughed at clowns, but only out of nervousness. The point of clowns was that, after watching them, anything else that happened seemed enjoyable. It was nice to know there was someone worse off than you. Someone had to be the butt of the world.

So many crimes are solved by a happy accident—by the random stopping of a car, by an overheard remark, by someone of the right nationality happening to be within five miles of the scene of the crime without an alibi…

The Axiom 'Honest men have nothing to fear from the police' is currently under review by the Axioms Review Board.

{as i said, no fucks were given}

... mysterious caves and tunnels always have luminous fungi, strangely bright crystals or at a pinch merely an eldritch glow in the air, just in case a human hero comes in and needs to see in the dark. Strange but true.

Klatchian coffee has an even bigger sobering effect than an unexpected brown envelope from the tax man. In fact, coffee enthusiasts take the precaution of getting thoroughly drunk before touching the stuff, because Klatchian coffee takes you back through sobriety and, if you’re not careful, out the other side, where the mind of man should not go.

The Alchemist's Guild is opposite the Gambler's Guild. Usually. Sometimes it's above it, or below it, or falling in bits around it.

The Librarian was, of course, very much in favour of reading in general, but readers in particular got on his nerves. There was something, well, sacrilegious about the way they kept taking books off the shelves and wearing out the words by reading them.

You couldn’t be a real copper in Ankh-Morpork and stay sane. You had to care. And caring in Ankh-Morpork was like opening a tin of meat in the middle of a piranha school.

When you were a Watchman, you were a Watchman all the time, which was a bit of a bargain for the city since it only paid you to be a Watchman for ten hours of every day.

‘People ought to think for themselves, Captain Vimes says. The problem is, people only think for themselves if you tell them to.’

Dogs are not like cats, who amusingly tolerate humans only until someone comes up with a tin opener that can be operated with a paw.

If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat.They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.

- Soul Music. Death series.

Rock’n’Roll is an eldritch abomination. It’s come to Discworld. At the same time Death has gone missing because [spoilers] and The Duty falls to Death’s granddaughter, his first naturally born heir.

Introduces aforementioned granddaughter, Susan, as well as Hex, the thinking engine.

Mostly music references but also, you know, the continuing saga of crying-about-a-7-foot-tall-skeleton.

But, if it is true that the act of observing changes the thing which is observed, it’s even more true that it changes the observer.

... she was brilliant in the same way that a diamond is brilliant, all edges and chilliness.

{about Susan}

It is said that whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In fact, whosoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on the side. It’s more interesting, and doesn’t take so long.

And, if they're said with the right passion and the gods are feeling bored, sometimes the universe will reform itself around words like that. Words have always had the power to change the world.

He liked black. It went with anything. It went with everything, sooner or later.

Miss Eulalie Butts and her colleague, Miss Delcross, had founded the college on the astonishing idea that, since gels had nothing much to do until someone married them, they might as well occupy themselves with learning things.

The question seldom addressed is where Medusa has snakes. Underarm hair is an even more embarrassing problem when it keeps biting off the top of the deodorant bottle.

Susan hated Literature. She’d much prefer to read a good book.

She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept trying to interfere with it.

'But alcohol debilitated the body and is a poison to the soul.' SOUNDS GOOD TO ME.

'What do you do with them?' he said. 'I bang them together.' 'And then what?' 'What do you mean, "And then what?"' 'What do you do after you've banged them together?' 'I bang them together again,' said Lias, one of nature's drummers.

You could say to the universe, this is not fair. And the universe would say: Oh, isn’t it? Sorry.

The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants really quickly. Had they bothered to learn to read and acquire some history books they'd have learned about the uncertain merits of things like scythes and pitchforks when used in battle against crossbows and broadswords.

‘Look,’ said Susan, ‘I’d just like you to know that I don’t believe any of this. I don’t believe there’s a Death of Rats in a cowl carrying a scythe.’ ‘He’s standing in front of you.’ ‘That’s no reason to believe it.’ ‘I can see you’ve certainly had a proper education.’

... the Hogfather is a winter myth figure who, on Hogswatchnight, gallops from house to house on a crude sledge drawn by four tusked wild boars to deliver presents of sausages, black puddings, pork scratchings, and ham to all children who have been good. He says ‘Ho ho ho’ a lot. Children who have been bad get a bag full of bloody bones (it’s these little details which tell you it’s a tale for the little folk). There’s a song about him. It begins: You’d Better Watch Out...

{guess what the next Death book is about}

The important thing, she decided, was to stay calm. There was always a logical explanation for everything, even if you had to make it up.

The Library didn’t only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren’t also dangerous, just because reading them didn’t make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader’s brain.

The Quirm College for Young Ladies encouraged self-reliance and logical thought. Her parents had sent her there for that reason. They'd assumed that insulating her from the fluffy edges of the world was the safest thing to do. In the circumstances, this was like not telling people about self-defence so that no-one would ever attack them.

Unseen University was used to eccentricity among the faculty. After all, humans derive the notions of what it means to be a normal human being by constant reference to the humans around them, and when those humans are other wizards the spiral can only wiggle downwards.

Parents were never young. They were merely waiting to become Parents.

'In my experience,' said Glod, 'what every true artist wants, really wants, is to be paid.

‘Students?’ ‘Er. Yes?’ said Ponder, backing away. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, this is a university…’ Ridcully scratched his ear. The man was right of course. You had to have some of the buggers around, there was no getting away from it.

Chrysoprase had been a very quick learner when he arrived in Ankh-Morpork. He began with an important lesson: hitting people was thuggery. Paying other people to do the hitting on your behalf was good business.

Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time.

‘Of course, just because we’ve heard a spine-chilling blood-curdling scream of the sort to make your very marrow freeze in your bones doesn’t automatically mean there’s anything wrong.’

There is no such thing as a whisper in Ankh-Morpork when the sum involved had the word 'thousand' in it somewhere; people could hear you think kind of money in Ankh-Morpork.

Death was used to travelling fast. In theory he was already everywhere, waiting for almost anything else. The fastest way to travel is to be there already.

- Interesting Times. Rincewind series.

Cohen the Barbarian and his Silver Horde are attacking the Agatean Empire an Imperial China (Japan?) rip-off. Rincewind gets swept up.

Much closer in feel to the Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic than the previous books and, no sugar-coating, kinda racist. Not the malicious sort, just the I-have-done-absolutely-no-research-but-I-am-still-writing-about-this sort of racist. So keep that in mind.

Fate always wins. Most of the gods throw dice but Fate plays chess, and you don't find out until it's too late that he's been using two queens all along.

When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances they say that’s a miracle. But of course if someone is killed by a freak chain of events – the oil spilled just there, the safety fence broken just there – that must also be a miracle. Just because it’s not nice doesn’t mean it’s not miraculous.

‘I didn’t know they were noble,’ said Io. ‘They’re all very rich and have had millions of people butchered or tortured to death merely for reasons of expediency and pride,’ said the Lady. The watching gods nodded solemnly. That was certainly noble behaviour. That was exactly what they would have done.

‘Am I alone in thinking, by the way, that it doesn’t add to the status of the University to have an ape on the faculty?’  ‘Yes,’ said Ridcully flatly. ‘You are. We’ve got the only librarian who can rip off your arm with his leg. People respect that.’

Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in another forty-four.

‘How will I get back?’ he said. ‘Same way you went. We’ll find you and bring you out. With surgical precision.’ Rincewind groaned. He knew what surgical precision meant in Ankh-Morpork. It meant ‘to within an inch or two, accompanied by a lot of screaming, and then they pour hot tar on you just where your leg was.’ There was something about Cohen. People caught optimism off him as though it was the common cold.

‘… I decided to give it up and make a living by the sword.’ ‘After being a teacher all your life?’ ‘It did mean a change of perspective, yes.’ ‘But...well…surely…the privation, the terrible hazards, the daily risk of death…’ Mr Saveloy brightened up.  ‘Oh, you’ve been a teacher, have you?’

‘Luck is my middle name,’ said Rincewind, indistinctly. ‘Mind you, my first name is Bad.’

Cohen’s father had taken him to a mountain top, when he was no more than a lad, and explained to him the hero’s creed and told him that there was no greater joy than to die in battle. Cohen had seen the flaw in this straight away, and a lifetime’s experience had reinforced his belief that in fact a greater joy was to kill the other bugger in battle and end up sitting on a heap of gold higher than your horse.

'I always live in interestin' times,' said Cohen, in the satisfied voice of someone who did a lot to keep them interesting.

But some did make it to the great melting pot called Ankh-Morpork.  They arrived with no money – sailors charged what the market would bear, which was everything – but they had a mad gleam in their eye and they opened shops and restaurants and worked twenty-four hours a day. People called this the Ankh-Morpork Dream (of making piles of cash in a place where your death was unlikely to be a matter of public policy). And it was dreamed all the stronger by people who didn’t sleep.

‘Hit a man too hard and you can only rob him once; hit him just hard enough and you can rob him every week.’

Freedom did, of course, include man's age-old right to starve to death.

Grand Viziers were always scheming megalomaniacs. It was probably in the job description: ‘Are you a devious, plotting, unreliable madman? Ah, good, then you can be my most trusted minister.'

No, of course, Twoflower never wanted to cause any trouble. Some people never did. Probably the last sound heard before the Universe folded up like a paper hat would be someone saying ‘What happens if I do this?

The best thing you can do with the peasants is leave them alone. Let them get on with it. When people who can read and write start fighting on behalf of people who can’t, you just end up with another kind of stupidity. If you want to help them, build a big library or something somewhere and leave the door open.

A wizard would sooner go without his robe and trousers than forgo his hat. Without his hat, people might think he was an ordinary person.

- Maskerade. Witches series.

Builds of of the previous books. Mostly a Phantom of the Opera spoof though.

Introduces Agnes and Perdita.

His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability which affects all too few people.

Ahahahahaha! Ahahahaha! Aahahaha! BEWARE!!!!! Yrs sincerely The Opera Ghost

People who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were the kind of people who didn't need people.

"What sort of person," said Salzella patiently, "sits down and writes a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. Opera can do that to a man."

Though there may be some superficial similarities between a psychiatrist and a headologist, there is a huge practical difference. A psychiatrist, dealing with a man who fears he is being followed by a large and terrible monster, will endeavour to convince him that monsters don’t exist. Granny Weatherwax would simply give him a chair to stand on and a very heavy stick.

She could feel a future trying to land on her. She’d caught herself saying “poot!” and “dang!” when she wanted to swear, and using pink writing paper. She’d got a reputation for being calm and capable in a crisis. Next thing she knew she’d be making shortbread and apple pies as good as her mother’s, and then there’d be no hope for her.

Good and Evil were quite superfluous when you’d grown up with a highly developed sense of Right and Wrong.

There was a crash from the direction of the kitchen, although it was really more of a crashendo—the long-drawn-out clatter that begins when a pile of plates begins to slip, continues when someone tries to grab at them, develops a desperate counter-theme when the person realizes they don’t have three hands, and ends with the roinroinroin of the one miraculously intact plate spinning around and around on the floor.

She could feel the auditorium in front of her, the huge empty space making the sound that velvet would make if it could snore. It wasn’t silence. A stage is never silent. It was the noise produced by a million other sounds that have never quite died away—the thunder of applause, the overtures, the arias. They poured down…fragments of tunes, lost chords, snatches of song.

A catastrophe curve, Mr Bucket, is what opera runs along. Opera happens because a large number of things amazingly fail to go wrong, Mr Bucket. It works because of hatred and love and nerves. All the time. This isn’t cheese. This is opera. If you wanted a quiet retirement, Mr Bucket, you shouldn’t have bought the Opera House. You should have done something peaceful, like alligator dentistry.

Bergholt Stuttley (“Bloody Stupid”) Johnson was Ankh-Morpork’s most famous, or rather most notorious, inventor. He was renowned for never letting his number blindness, his lack of any skill whatsoever or his complete failure to grasp the essence of a problem stand in the way of his cheerful progress as the first Counter-Renaissance man. Shortly after building the famous Collapsed Tower of Quirm he turned his attention to the world of music, particularly large organs and mechanical orchestras. Examples of his handiwork still occasionally come to light in sales, auctions, and quite frequently, wreckage.

It is the fate of all banisters worth sliding down that there is something nasty waiting at the far end.

- Feet of Clay. Watch series.

Someone wants to assassinate dispose of the Patrician (in this case several someones) and resurrect the Monarchy and the Good Old DaysTM and the Watch has to stop them. a.k.a. “Sam Vimes And Put That King Back Where You Found Him Or So Help Me” Part II.

Begins as a murder mystery ends as an exploration of what makes a person.

Takes the joke about Lady dwarves and makes an actual wonderful compelling plot out of it!!

People look down on stuff like geography and meteorology, and not only because they’re standing on one and being soaked by the other. They don’t look quite like real science. But geography is only physics slowed down and with a few trees stuck on it, and meteorology is full of excitingly fashionable chaos and complexity.

 …summer isn’t a time.  It’s a place as well.  Summer is a moving creature and likes to go south for the winter.

Dwarfs regard baking as part of the art of warfare. When they make rock cakes, no simile is intended.

I AM DEATH, NOT TAXES. I TURN UP ONLY ONCE.

What changed history were the smaller things. Often a few strokes of the pen would go the trick.

‘Oh, well, if you prefer, I can recognize handwriting,’ said the imp proudly. ‘I’m quite advanced.’ Vimes pulled out his notebook and held it up. ‘Like this?’ he said. The imp squinted for a moment. ‘Yep,’ it said. ‘That’s handwriting, sure enough. Curly bits, spiky bits, all joined together. Yep. Handwriting. I’d recognize it anywhere.’

 Anatomy was an important study at the Alchemists’ Guilde, owing to the ancient theory that the human body represented a microcosm of the universe, although when you saw one opened up it was hard to imagine which part of the universe was small and purple and went blomp-blomp when you prodded it.

Rumour is information distilled so finely that it can filter through anything. It does not need doors or windows – sometimes it doesn’t even need people. It can exist free and wild, running from ear to ear without ever touching lips.

‘Do you want me to get a doctor?’ ‘Are you mad? We want him to live!’

Corporal Nobbs sidled in. It was another special trait of his that he could sidle forwards as well as sideways.

Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again.

Vimes sighed. He was an honest man. He’d always felt that was one of the bigger defects in his personality.

When Nobby had gone Vimes reached behind the desk and picked up a faded copy of Twurp’s Peerage or, as he personally thought of it, the guide to the criminal classes. You wouldn’t find slum dwellers in these pages, but you would find their landlords. And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions.

...where Nobby went wrong was thinking small. He sidled into places and punched things that weren't worth much. If only he'd sidled into continents and stolen entire cities, slaughtering many of the inhabitants in the process, he'd have been a pillar of the community.

They were men who felt that The Time Had Come. Regimes can survive barbarian hordes, crazed terrorists and hooded secret societies, but they're in real trouble when prosperous and anonymous men sit around a big table and think thoughts like that.

This always happens in any police chase anywhere. A heavily-laden lorry will always pull out of a side alley in front of the pursuit. If vehicles aren’t involved, then it’ll be a man with a rack of garments. Or two men with a large sheet of glass. There’s probably some kind of secret society behind all this.

‘It’s like that in the Watch, too,’ said Angua. ‘You can be any sex you like provided you act male. There’s no men and women in the Watch, just a bunch of lads. You’ll soon learn the language. Basically it’s how much beer you supped last night, how strong the curry was you had afterwards, and where you were sick. Just think egotesticle.’

…Cockbill Street was where people lived who were worse than poor, because they didn’t know how poor they were. If you asked them they would probably say something like ‘mustn’t grumble’ or ‘there’s far worse off than us’ or ‘we’ve always kept uz heads above water and we don’t owe nobody nowt.’ He could here his granny speaking. ‘No one’s too poor to buy soap.’ Of course, many people were.  But in Cockbill Street they bought soap just the same. The table might not have any food on it but by gods, it was well scrubbed. That was Cockbill Street, where what you mainly ate was your pride.

What a mess the world was in, Vimes reflected. Constable Visit had told him the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve that?

People said that there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasn’t true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless. All the laws and rules were for those people stupid enough to think like Cockbill Street people.

There were no public health laws in Ankh-Morpork. It would be like installing smoke detectors in Hell.

‘D*mn!’ said Carrot, a difficult linguistic feat

‘The common people?’ said Vimes. ‘They’re nothing special. They’re no different from the rich and powerful except they’ve got no money or power. But the law should be there to balance things up a bit.’

Only crimes could take place in darkness. Punishment had to be done in the light. That was the job of a good watchman...

- Hogfather. Death series.

The Auditors are back. They’ve hired an assassin to inhume Santa Claus the Hogfather.

It’s up to Death and his granddaughter to save Christmas Hogswatch. The Tooth Fairy is relevant to all of this.

(Probably my favourite summary of any Discworld book? Like, you could try to make this up, but it already exists.)

Explores the nature of Belief, Humanity, Faith and other Capital First Letter words.

Also, crying-about-a-7-foot-tall-skeleton Part-I-don’t-even-know.

Everything starts somewhere, although many physicists disagree.

Lord Downey was an assassin. Or, rather, an Assassin. The capital letter was important. It separated those cuts who went around murdering people for money from the gentlemen who were occasionally consulted by other gentlemen who wished to have removed, for a consideration, any inconvenient razorblades from the candyfloss of life.

In fact the Guild, he liked to think, practised the ultimate democracy. You didn’t need intelligence, social position, beauty or charm to hire it. You just needed money which, unlike the other stuff, was available to everyone. Except for the poor, of course, but there was no helping some people.

Mister Teatime had a truly brilliant mind, but it was brilliant like a fractured mirror, all marvellous facets and rainbows but, ultimately, also something that was broken. Mister Teatime enjoyed himself too much. And other people, also.

Like many people with no actual morals, Lord Downey did have standards….

‘Real children don’t go hoppity-skip unless they are on drugs.’

The previous governess had used various monsters and bogeymen as a form of discipline. There was always something waiting to eat or carry off bad boys and girls for crimes like stuttering or defiantly and aggravatingly persisting in writing with their left hand. There was always a Scissor Man waiting for a little girl who sucked her thumb, always a bogeyman in the cellar. Of such bricks is the innocence of childhood constructed.

Education had been easy. Learning things had been harder.

‘...and then Jack chopped down the beanstalk, adding murder and ecological vandalism to the theft, enticement and trespass charges already mentioned, but he got away with it and lived happily ever after without so much as a guilty twinge about what he had done. Which proves that you can be excused just about anything if you’re a hero, because no one asks inconvenient questions.’

‘Sit down, will you? Assassin’s are always late. ‘cos of style, right?’ ‘This one’s mental.’ ‘Eccentric.’ ‘What’s the difference?’ ‘A bag of cash.’

‘Well, the night is young,’ said Albert, sitting back in the sacks. THE NIGHT IS OLD. THE NIGHT IS ALWAYS OLD. The pigs galloped on. Then, ‘No, it ain’t.’ I’M SORRY? ‘The night isn’t any older than the day, master. It stands to reason. There must have been a day before anyone knew what the night was.’ YES, BUT IT’S MORE DRAMATIC. ‘Oh. Right, then.'

‘You can't give her that!' she screamed. 'It's not safe!' IT'S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY'RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE. 'She's a child!' shouted Crumley. IT'S EDUCATIONAL. 'What if she cuts herself?' THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON.

Susan had never been able to see the attraction in cats. They were owned by the kind of people who liked puddings. There were actual people in the world whose idea of heaven would be a chocolate cat.

Many people are aware of the Weak and Strong Anthropic Principles. The Weak One says, basically, that it was jolly amazing of the universe to be constructed in such a way that humans could evolve to a point where they make a living in, for example, universities, while the Strong One says that, on the contrary, the whole point of the universe was that humans should not only work in universities but also write for huge sums books with words like “Cosmic” and “Chaos” in the titles. The UU Professor of Anthropics had developed the Special and Inevitable Anthropic Principle, which was that the entire reason for the existence of the universe was the eventual evolution of the UU Professor of Anthropics.

‘That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?

The path to wisdom does, in fact, begin with a single step. Where people go wrong is in ignoring all the thousands of other steps that come after it. They make the single step of deciding to become one with the universe, and for some reason forget to take the logical next step of living for seventy years on a mountain and a daily bowl of rice and yak-butter tea that would give it any kind of meaning. While evidence says that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, they’re probably all on first steps.

I THOUGHT IT WAS THE SEASON TO BE JOLLY, said Death. ‘Ah, well, yes, you see, one of the things that makes folks even more jolly is knowing there’re people who ain’t,’ said Albert, in a matter-of-fact voice.

Ignorant: a state of not knowing what a pronoun is, or how to find the square root of 27.4, and merely knowing childish and useless things like which of the seventy almost identical-looking species of the purple sea snake are the deadly ones, how to treat the poisonous pith of the Sago-sago tree to make a nourishing gruel, how to foretell the weather by the movements of the tree-climbing Burglar Crab, how to navigate across a thousand miles of featureless ocean by means of a piece of string and a small clay model of your grandfather, how to get essential vitamins from the liver of the ferocious Ice Bear, and other such trivial matters. It’s a strange thing that when everyone becomes educated, everyone knows about the pronoun but no one knows about the Sago-sago.

Credulous: having views about the world, the universe and humanity’s place in it that are shared only by very unsophisticated people and the most intelligent and advanced mathematicians and physicists.

‘Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.'

Humans Are Not Always Wrong

Ponder was a great believer in logic, in the face of all local evidence ...

The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.

IT IS ... UNFAIR. ‘That’s life, master.’ BUT I’M NOT. ‘I meant this is how it’s supposed to go, master,’ said Albert. NO. YOU MEAN THIS IS HOW IT GOES.

The wizards shuddered. They weren’t against the outdoors, it was simply their place in it they objected to.

IT WASN’T STEALING. IT WAS JUST ... REDISTRIBUTION. IT WILL BE A GOOD DEED IN A NAUGHTY WORLD. ‘No, it won’t!’ THEN IT WILL BE A NAUGHTY DEED IN A NAUGHTY WORLD AND WILL PASS COMPLETELY UNNOTICED.

Somewhere almost out of hearing, children were at play. It was always a pleasant, lulling sound. Always provided, of course, you couldn’t hear the actual words.

‘He’s had a near-death experience!’ ‘We all have. It’s called “living”,’ said the Archchancellor shortly.

IT GETS UNDER YOUR SKIN, LIFE, said Death, stepping forward. SPEAKING METAPHORICALLY, OF COURSE. IT’S A HABIT THAT’S HARD TO GIVE UP. ONE PUFF OF BREATH IS NEVER ENOUGH. YOU’LL FIND YOU WANT TO TAKE ANOTHER.

THERE IS ALWAYS TIME FOR ANOTHER LAST MINUTE.

- Jingo. Watch series.

The sunken island of Leshp rises again. Ankh-Morpork and the Arabic-like Klatch both claim it, leading to diplomacy then riots, assassinations, and eventually war.

Deals with racism, xenophobia, nationalism and the point and purpose of the International Community.

Written with particular reference to the Falklands Conflict and the first Gulf War of 1990-1.

(Probably the most currently relevant of the books, which is kind of depressing)

As every student of exploration knows, the prize goes not to the explorer who first sets foot upon the virgin soil but to the one who gets that foot home first. If it is still attached to his leg, this is a bonus.

People live for ages side by side, nodding at one another amicably on their way to work every day, and then some trivial thing would happen and someone would be having a garden fork removed from their ear.

Why are our people going out there,” said Mr. Boggis of the Thieves’ Guild. "Because they are showing a brisk pioneering spirit and seeking wealth and … additional wealth in a new land,” said Lord Vetinari. “What’s in it for the Klatchians?” said Lord Downey. “Oh, they’ve gone out there because they are a bunch of unprincipled opportunists always ready to grab something for northern,” said Lord Vetinari. “A mastery summation, if I may say so, my lord,” said Mr. Burleigh. The Patrician looked down again at his notes. “Oh, I do beg your pardon, I seem to have read those last to sentences in the wrong order…

‘Taxation, gentlemen, is very much like dairy farming. The task is to extract the maximum amount of milk with the minimum of moo. And I am afraid to say that these days all I get is moo.’

Sergeant Colon had had a broad education. He’d been to the School of My Dad Always Said, the College of It Stands to Reason, and was now a postgraduate student at the University of What Some Bloke In the Pub Told Me.

‘Well, there’s…’ Colon racked his brains.  ‘There’s al-gebra.  That’s like sums with letters.   For…for people whose brains aren’t clever enough for numbers, see?’

She sighed again. She was familiar with the syndrome. They said they wanted a soulmate and helpmeet but sooner or later the list would include a skin like silk and a chest fit for a herd of cows.

It wasn’t proper police work, Vimes considered, unless you were doing something that someone somewhere would much rather you weren’t doing.

And there was nothing finer than a wizard dressed up formally, until someone could find a way of inflating a Bird of Paradise, possibly by using an elastic band and some kind of gas.

'Can't argue with the truth, sir.' 'In my experience, Vimes, you can argue with anything.'

'One of the advantages of horses that people often point out,' said Vetinari, after some thought, 'is that they very seldom explode.'

... you couldn't really imprison someone like Leonard of Quirm. The most you could do was lock up his body. The gods alone knew where his mind went.

No wonder this man was a diplomat. You couldn’t trust him an inch, he thought in loops, and you couldn’t help liking him despite it.

I'm not a natural killer! See this? See what it says? I'm supposed to keep the peace, I am! If I kill people to do it, I'm reading the wrong manual!

Oh, there’s all the jokes about funny food and foreigners, but surely . . . Not very funny jokes, come to think of it.

No-one could be so simple, no-one could be so creatively dumb, without being very intelligent. It was like being an actor. Only a very good actor was any good at being a bad actor.

It is a long-cherished tradition among a certain type of military thinker that huge casualties are the main thing. If they are on the other side then this is a valuable bonus.

“Look, Nobby, when all’s said and done they ain’t the right colour, and there’s an end to it.” “Good job you found out, Fred!” said Nobby, so cheerfully that Sergeant Colon was almost sure he meant it. “Well, it’s obvious,” he conceded. “Er… what is the right colour?” said Nobby. “White, of course!” “Not brick-red, then? ‘Cos you–” “Are you winding me up, Corporal Nobbs?” “‘Course not, sarge. So… what colour am I?” That caused Sergeant Colon to think. You could have found, somewhere on Corporal Nobbs, a shade appropriate to every climate on the disc and a few found only in specialist medical books. “White’s… white’s a state of, you know… mind,” he said. “It’s like… doing an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay, that sort of thing. And washing regular.” “Not lazing around, sort of thing.” “Right.” “Or… like… working all hours like Goriff does.” “Nobby–” “And you never see those kids of his with dirty clo–” “Nobby, you’re just trying to get me going, right? You know we’re better’n Klatchians. Otherwise, what’s the point?”

One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than its operating manual.

‘My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure,’ said Carrot. ‘Really?  Well, there’s eleven of them.’

…he wanted there to be conspirators.  It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy.  You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable then of going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people.  It was much easier to blame it on Them.  It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us.  If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault.  If it was Us, what did that make Me?

The Librarian shyly held out a small, battered green book. Vimes had been expecting something bigger, but he took it anyway. It paid to look at any book the orang-utan gave you. He matched you up to books. Vimes supposed it was a knack, in the same way that an undertaker was very good at judging heights.

... history was full of the bones of good men who'd followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started to follow bad orders.

To history, choices are merely directions.

…the Patrician was against printing, because if people knew too much it would only bother them.

‘Odd thing, ain’t it…you meet people one at a time, they seem decent, they got brains that work, and then they get together and you hear the voice of the people. And it snarls.’

71-hour Ahmed was not superstitious.  He was substitious, which put him in a minority among humans.  He didn’t believe in the things everyone believed in but which nevertheless weren’t true.  He believed instead in the things that were true in which no-one else believed.

The sudden appearance of a naked woman always caused a rethink of anyone’s immediate plans.

She was aware that she had a slight advantage over male werewolves in that naked women caused fewer complaints, although the downside was that they got some pressing invitations. Some kind of covering was essential, for modesty and the prevention of inconvenient bouncing, which was why fashioning impromptu clothes out of anything to hand was a lesser-known werewolf skill.

“Give a man a fire and he’s warm for a day, but set fire to him and he’s warm for the rest of his life.”

Night poured over the desert.  It came suddenly, in purple.  In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated.  When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way.

The night is always old.  He’d walked too often down dark streets in the secret hours and felt the night stretching away, and known in his blood that while days and kings and empires come and go, the night is always the same age, always aeons deep.

‘Putting up a statue to someone who tried to stop a war is not very, um, statuesque.  Of course, if you had butchered five hundred of your own men out of arrogant carelessness, we’d be melting the bronze already.’

’A watchman IS a civilian, you inbred streak of piss!’

- The Last Continent. Rincewind series.

Rincewind has to save the world. This time in magical Australia.

People don’t live on the Disc any more than, in less hand-crafted parts of the multiverse, they live on balls.  Oh, planets may be the place where their body eats its tea, but they live elsewhere, in worlds of their own which orbit very handily around the centre of their heads.

We might find out why mankind is here, although that is more complicated and begs the question ‘Where else should we be?’  It would be terrible to think that some impatient deity might part the clouds and say, ‘Damn, are you lot still here?’

Light travels slowly on the Disc and is slightly heavy, with a tendency to pile up against high mountain ranges. Research wizards have speculated that there is another, much speedier type of light which allows the slower light to be seen, but since this moves too fast to see they have been unable to find a use for it.

Wasn't it a basic principle never to let your employer know what it is you actually do all day?

Palaeontology and archaeology and other skulduggery were not subjects that interested wizards.  Things are buried for a reason, they considered.  There’s no point in wondering what it was.  Don’t go digging things up in case they won’t let you bury them again.

Ponder Stibbons was one of those unfortunate people cursed with the belief that if only he found out enough things about the universe it would all, somehow, make sense.

Knowledge is dangerous, which is why governments often clamp down on people who can think thoughts above a certain calibre.

‘But we’re a university!  We have to have a library!’ said Ridcully.  ‘It adds tone.  What sort of people would we be if we didn’t go into the Library?’ ‘Students,’ said the Senior Wrangler morosely.

‘…when you’ve been a wizard as long as I have, my boy, you’ll learn that as soon as you find anything that offers amazing possibilities for the improvement of the human condition it’s best to put the lid back on and pretend it never happened.’

Rincewind woke with a scream, to get it over with.

Creators aren’t gods. They make places, which is quite hard. It’s men that make gods. This explains a lot.

A wizard without a hat was just a sad man with a suspicious taste in clothes.

Discworld constellations changed frequently as the world moved through the void, which meant that astrology was cutting edge research rather than, as elsewhere, a clever way of avoiding a proper job.  It was amazing how human traits and affairs could so reliably and continuously be guided by a succession of big balls of plasma billions of miles away, most of whom have never even heard of humanity

‘Haven’t you ever noticed that by running away you end up in more trouble?’ ‘Yes, but, you see, you can run away from that too,’ said Rincewind.  ‘That’s the beauty of the system.  Dead is only for once, but running away is for ever.’ ‘Ah, but it is said that a coward dies a thousand deaths, while a hero dies only one.’ ‘Yes, but it’s the important one.’

It was an amazing phrase. It was practically magical all by itself. It just ... made things better. A shark’s got your leg? No worries. You’ve been stung by a jellyfish? No worries! You’re dead? She’ll be all right! No worries!

And they acted like savages*. * Again, when people like Mrs Whitlow use this term they are not, for some inexplicable reason, trying to suggest that the subjects have a rich oral tradition, a complex system of tribal rights and a deep respect for the spirits of their ancestors. They are implying the kind of behaviour more generally associated, oddly enough, with people wearing a full suit of clothes, often with the same insignia.

…the great, open ingenious purpose of UU was to be the weight on the arm of magic, causing it to swing with grave majesty like a pendulum rather than spin with deadly purpose like a morningstar.  Instead of hurling fireballs at one another from fortified towers the wizards learned to snipe at their colleagues over the interpretation of Faculty Council minutes, and long ago were amazed to find that they got just as much vicious fun out of it. They consumed big dinners, and after a really good meal and a fine cigar even the most rabid Dark Lord is inclined to put his feet up and feel amicable towards the world, especially if it offered him another brandy.

Once upon a time the plural of 'wizard' was 'war'.

The ability to ask questions like ‘Where am I and who is the “I” that is asking?’ is one of the things that distinguishes mankind from, say, cuttlefish.* *Although of course it’s not the most obvious thing and there are, in fact, some beguiling similarities, particularly the tendency to try to hide behind a big cloud of ink in difficult situations.

- Carpe Jugulum. Witches series.

The King accidentally invites a family of vampires to his daughter’s naming ceremony, and now that they’ve been invited in, they intend to make themselves at home.

Featuring the best, most scathing Twilight parody ever. Written about seven years before Twilight.

The wording began: ‘You are cordially invited…’ …and was in that posh runny writing that was hard to read but ever so official. Nanny Ogg grinned and tucked the card back on the mantelpiece.  She liked the idea of ‘cordially’.  It had a rich, a thick and above all an alcoholic sound.

In fact there are many things everyone knows about vampires, without really taking into account that perhaps the vampires know them by now, too.

When people were in serious trouble they went to a witch.* *Sometimes, of course, to say, ‘Please stop doing it.’

Lancre operated on the feudal system, which was to say, everyone feuded all the time and handed on the fight to their descendants. The chips on some shoulders had been passed down for generations. Some had antique value. A bloody good grudge, Lancre reckoned, was like a fine old wine. You looked after it carefully and left it to your children.

…one of the things a witch did was stand right on the edge, where the decisions had to be made.  You made them so that others didn’t have to, so that others could even pretend to themselves that there were no decisions to be made, no little secrets, that things just happened.

The people of Lancre wouldn’t dream of living in anything other than a monarchy. They’d done so for thousands of years and knew that it worked.  But they’d also found that it didn’t do to pay too much attention to what the King wanted, because there was bound to be another king along in forty years or so and he’d be certain to want something different and so they’d have gone to all that trouble for nothing. In the meantime, his job as they saw it was to mostly stay in the palace, practice the waving, have enough sense to face the right way on coins and let them get on with the ploughing, sowing, growing and harvesting. It was, as they saw it, a social contract. They did what they always did, and he let them.

She’d never, ever asked for anything in return. And the trouble with not asking for anything in return was that sometimes you didn’t get it.

Attractive men were not in plentiful supply in Lancre, where licking your hand and smoothing your hair down before taking a girl out was considered swanky.

‘But that’s just a bit of superstition, isn’t it? Witches don’t have to come in threes.’ ‘Oh, no. Course not,’ said Nanny. ‘You can have any number up to about, oh, four or five.’ ‘What happens if there’s more, then? Something awful?’ ‘Bloody great row, usually,’ said Nanny.

‘Vampires are very anal-retentive, you see?’ ‘I shouldn’t like meeting one that was the opposite,’ said Nanny.

‘Am I dyin’?’ YES. ‘Will I die?’ YES. Granny Weatherwax thought this over.  ‘But from your point of view, everyone is dying and everyone will die, right?’ YES. ‘So you aren’t actually bein’ a lot of help, strictly speakin’.’

‘You wouldn’t let a poor old lady go off and confront monsters on a wild night like this, would you?’ They watched him owlishly for a while just in case something interestingly nasty was going to happen to him. The someone near the back said, ‘So why should we care what happens to monsters?’ And Shawn Ogg said, ‘That’s Granny Weatherwax, that is.’ ‘But she’s an old lady!’ Oats insisted. The crowd took a few steps back. Oats was clearly a dangerous man to be around. ‘Would you go out alone on a night like this?’ he said. The voice at the back said, ‘Depends if I knew where Granny Weatherwax was.’

‘Once people find out you’re a vampire they act as if you’re some kind of monster.

'All it takes is a little prick-' 'It's not going to be yours, mister!'

‘There’s no greys, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’ ‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’ ‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.’ ‘Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes—’ ‘But they starts with thinking about people as things. . .’

He was trying to find some help in the ancient military journals of General Tacticus, whose intelligent campaigning had been so successful that he’d lent his very name to the detailed prosecution of martial endeavour, and had actually found a section headed What to Do If One Army Occupies a Well-fortified and Superior Ground and the Other Does Not, but since the first sentence read ‘Endeavour to be the one inside’ he’d rather lost heart.

Holiness is where you find it.

-The Fifth Elephant. Watch series.

Politics, diplomacy, fat mines (fat mines!!!), werewolves, vampires, Modernity and Dwarf society and religion.

And Change. The big important kind.

This book introduces the Clacks and by doing that completely obliterates one of the pillars of Fantasy: Medieval Stasis (like, tbh, it was a process that started in Guards! Guards!—but more on that in Part 2) therefore marks a sort of point of no return: from here on I’m gonna give (even more) vague summaries because this book and pretty much every subsequent builds off (far more directly) of previous developments.

It is in the nature of the universe that the person who always keeps you waiting ten minutes will, on the day you are ten minutes tardy have been ready ten minutes earlier and will make a point of not mentioning this.

Dwarf bread was made as a meal of last resort and also as a weapon and a currency.

It was so thickly forested, so creased by little mountain ranges and beset by rivers, that it was largely unmapped. It was mostly unexplored, too*. *At least by proper explorers. Just living there doesn’t count.

It was funny how people were people everywhere you went, even if the people concerned weren’t the people the people who made up the phrase ‘people are people everywhere’ had traditionally thought of as people.

‘Tell me, Leonard,’ he said. ‘Has it ever occurred to you that one day wars will be fought with brains?’ Leonard picked up his cup of coffee. ‘Oh dear. Won’t that be rather messy?’ he said.

‘Can you think of any reason why someone would kill him?’ The troll scratched his head. ‘Well, ‘cos dey wanted him dead, I reckon. Dat’s a good reason.’

A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.

The little flickering part of his brain that was still sparking coherent thought through the fog of mind-numbing terror that filled Colon’s head was telling him that he was so far out of his depth that the fish had lights on their noses.

Killing a stranger without malice or satisfaction, other than the craftsman’s pride in a job well done, is such a rare talent that armies spend months trying to instil it into their young soldiers.

‘…a lot of diplomacy lies in appearing to be a lot more stupid than you are.’

People in drought-stricken areas would have paid good money to have Igor pronounce ‘sausages’.

There was no such thing as a dwarfish female pronoun or, once the children were on solids, any such thing as women's work.

‘Here, a butcher can be hanged if his sausages are not all meat, and at that it must be from a named domesticated animal, and I perhaps should add that by named I do not mean that it should have been called ‘Spot’ or ‘Ginger’…’

...there was probably an expensive problem here, so the guards were inclined to leave it to someone who earned more money than them.

‘When people say “We must move with the times,” they really mean “You must do it my way.”’

Well, he thought, so this is diplomacy. It’s like lying, only to a better class of people.

‘Dem diplomatics all want you to come for drinky-poos an’ stories about chickens,’ the troll added helpfully. ‘Cocktails, I think you’ll find,’ said Vimes...

...Sam Vimes had learned a lot from watching Lady Sybil. She didn’t mean to act like that, but she’d been born to it, into a class that had always behaved this way: you went through the world as if there was no possibility that anyone would stop you or question you, and most of the time that’s exactly what didn’t happen.

‘Ah, this must be the famous Ankh-Morpork sense of humour, yes?’ ‘No, that was just irony,’ Vimes shouted, still looking for an arboreal escape route. ‘You’ll know when we’ve got on to the famous Ankh-Morpork sense of humour when I start talking about breasts and farting, you smug bastard!’

‘It wasn’t until ten years ago that they replaced trial by ordeal here with trial by lawyer, and that was only because they found that lawyers were nastier.’

It wasn’t just that his brain was writing cheques that his body couldn’t cash. It had gone beyond that. Now his feet were borrowing money that his legs hadn’t got, and his back muscles were looking for loose change under the sofa cushions.

Now this he understood. He was never at ease with politics, where good and bad were just, apparently, two ways of looking at the same thing or, at least, were described like that by the people who were on the side Vimes thought of as ‘bad’. It was all too complicated and, where it was complicated, it meant that someone was trying to fool you.

- The Truth. Stand-alone, sort of, since it’s set in Ankh-Morpork.

Continues with the themes of Change and Modernity, this time with movable type.

Also depressingly relevant.

The world is made up of four elements: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. This is a fact well known even to Corporal Nobbs. It’s also wrong. There’s a fifth element, and generally it’s called Surprise.

…the dwarfs found out how to turn lead into gold by doing it the hard way. The difference between that and the easy way is that the hard way works.

"The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret"

They were small, brightly coloured, happy little creatures who secreted some of the nastiest toxins in the world, which is why the job of looking after the large vivarium where they happily passed their days was given to first-year students, on the basis that if they got things wrong there wouldn’t be too much education wasted.

There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: ‘What’s up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don’t think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass), or who has no glass at all, because they were at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman’s eye.

It was a puzzle why things were always dragged kicking and screaming.  No one ever seemed to want to, for example, lead them gently by the hand.

‘And these are your reasons, my Lord?’ ‘Do you think I have others?’ said Lord Vetinari. ‘My motives, as ever, are entirely transparent.’ Hughnon reflected that ‘entirely transparent’ meant either that you could see right through them or that you couldn’t see them at all.

‘We’ve always looked beyond the walls for the invaders,’ he said. ‘We always thought change came from outside, usually on the point of a sword. And then we look around and find that it comes from the inside of the head of someone you wouldn’t notice in the street. In certain circumstances it may be convenient to remove the head, but there seem to be such a lot of them these days.’

He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where ‘traditional values’ meant ‘hang someone’.

‘People like to be told what they already know. Remember that. They get uncomfortable when you tell them new things. New things…well, new things aren’t what they expect. They like to know that, say, a dog will bite a man. That is what dogs do. They don’t want to know that a man bites a dog, because the world is not supposed to happen like that. In short, what people think they want is news, but what they really crave is olds.’

Moving his hands carefully, Dibbler opened the special section of his tray, the high-class one that contained sausages whose contents were 1) meat, 2) from a known four-footed creature, 3) probably land-dwelling.

…William wondered why he always disliked people who said ‘no offence meant’.  Maybe it was because they found it easier to say ‘no offence meant’ than actually refrain from giving offence.

Truth was what he told. Honesty was sometimes not the same thing.

‘Hold on, hold on, there must be a law against killing lawyers.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘There’re still some around, aren’t there?’

When people say clearly something, that means there’s a huge crack in their argument and they know things aren’t clear at all.

‘But I’m not doing anything wrong,’ said William. ‘No, it may just be you’re not doing anything illegal,’ said Vimes.

Just for a moment there was an unusual feeling of bliss. Strange word, he thought. It’s one of those words that describes something that does not make a noise, but if it did make a noise would sound just like that. Bliss.

Character assassination. What a wonderful idea. Ordinary assassination only works once, but this one works every day.

Goodmountain grinned. ‘Don’t worry too much about your father, lad. People change. My grandmother used to think humans were sort of hairless bears. She doesn’t anymore.’ ‘What changed his mind?’ ‘I reckon it was the dying that did it.’

…sometimes glass glitters more than diamonds because it has more to prove.

‘…a lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on…’

- Thief of Time. Death series. Actually about the History Monks- “The Men In Saffron“.

The Auditors are back again, Susan is sick and tired of it all, and Lobsang Ludd and Jeremy Clockson are very strange young men. Basically Men in Black+James Bond+A Whole Lot Of Kung Fu Films. Also death by chocolate.

‘I have heard the heartbeat of the universe. I know the answers to many questions. Ask me.’ The apprentice gave him a bleary look. It was too early in the morning for it to be early in the morning. That was the only thing he currently knew for sure. ‘Er…what does master want for breakfast?’ he said. Wen looked down in their camp and across the snowfields and purple mountains to the golden daylight creating the world, and mused upon certain aspects of humanity. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘One of the difficult ones.’

‘Sometimes I really think people ought to have to pass a proper exam before they're allowed to be parents. Not just the practical, I mean.’

‘‘scuse me,’ said the raven, ‘but how come Miss Ogg became Mrs Ogg?  Sounds like a bit of a rural arrangement, if you catch my meaning.’ WITCHES ARE MATRILINEAL, said Death.  THEY FIND IT MUCH EASIER TO CHANGE MEN THAN TO CHANGE NAMES.

 Jeremy tried to be an interesting person. The trouble was that he was the kind of person who, having decided to be an interesting person, would first of all try to find a book called How to Be An Interesting Person and then see whether there were any courses available. He was puzzled that people seemed to think he was a boring conversationalist. Why, he could talk about all kinds of clocks.  Mechanical clocks, magical clocks, sand clocks, cuckoo clocks, the rare Hershebian beetle clocks… But for some reason he always ran out of listeners before he ran out of clocks.

‘Questions don’t have to make sense, Vincent,’ said Miss Susan. ‘But answers do.’

‘…as you accumulate years, you will learn that most answers boil down, eventually, to “Because”.’

‘Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.’

‘Dojo! What is Rule One?’ Even the cowering challenger mumbled along to the chorus: ‘Do not act incautiously when confronting little bald wrinkly smiling men!’

‘We’re the most secret society you can imagine.’ ‘Really? Who are you, then?’ ‘The Monks of History.’ ‘Huh? I’ve never heard of you!’ ‘See? That’s how good we are.’

If children were weapons, Jason would have been banned by international treaty. Jason had doting parents and an attention span of minus several seconds, except when it came to inventive cruelty to small furry animals, when he could be quite patient. Jason kicked, punched, bit and spat.  His artwork even frightened the life out of Miss Smith, who could generally find something nice to say about any child. He was definitely a boy with special needs. In the view of the staffroom, these began with an exorcism.

‘No one would be that stu-’ Susan stopped. Of course someone would be that stupid. Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying ‘End-of-the-World-Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH’, the paint wouldn’t even have time to dry.

This is true. A chocolate you did not want to eat does not count as chocolate. This discovery is from the same branch of culinary physics that determined that food eaten while walking contains no calories.

‘When in doubt, choose to live.’

Around her, historians climbed library ladders, fumbled books onto their lecterns and generally rebuilt the image of the past to suit the eyesight of today.

Of the very worst words that can be heard by anyone high in the air, the pair known as ‘Oh-oh’ possibly combine the maximum bowel-knotting terror with the minimum wastage of breath.

‘You know the secret wisdoms that everyone seeks, monk.’ The bottle-washer paused. ‘No, I even suspect that you know the explicit wisdoms, the ones hidden in plain view, which practically no one looks for.’

Lu-Tze had long considered that everything happens for a reason, except possibly football.

Susan was sensible. It was, she knew, a major character flaw. It did not make you popular, or cheerful, and – this seemed to her to be the most unfair bit – it didn’t even make you right. But it did make you definite…

‘…because in this world, after everyone panics, there’s always got to be someone to tip the wee out of the shoe.’

- The Last Hero. Sort of Rincewind, sort of Watch series, actually Cohen the Barbarian.

You know that poem? The one that goes “old age- something something- rage against the dying light“? well it’s like that x10000.

Pretty much hits you on the head with a mallet that we are no longer in the realm of Tolkienesque/Epic/Whossname Fantasy.

Actually an illustrated novel, with art by Paul Kidby and is ~~**~~*beautifuuull*~*~**~

That’s the advantage of space. It’s big enough to hold practically anything, and so, eventually, it does.

People think that it is strange to have a turtle ten thousand miles long and an elephant more than two thousand miles tall, which just shows that the human brain is ill-adapted for thinking and was probably originally designed for cooling the blood.  It believes mere size is amazing. There’s nothing amazing about size. Turtles are amazing, and elephants are quite astonishing. But the fact that there’s a big turtle is far less amazing that the fact that there is a turtle anywhere.

Most gods were people-shaped; people don’t have much imagination, on the whole.  Even Offler the Crocodile God was only crocodile-headed. Ask people to imagine an animal god and they will, basically, come up with the idea of someone in a really bad mask.  Men have been much better at inventing demons, which is why there are so many.

Their eyes said that wherever it was, they had been there. Whatever it was, they had done it, sometimes more than once. But they would never, ever, buy the T-shirt. And they did know the meaning of the word 'fear'. It was something that happened to other people.

‘The feeling stealing over me is that all these terms are defined by the hero. You could say: I am a hero, so when I kill you that makes you de facto, the kind of person suitable to be killed by a hero. You could say that a hero, in short, is someone who indulges every whim that, within the rule of law, would have him behind bars or swiftly dancing what I believe is known as the hemp fandango.  The words we might use are: murder, pillage, theft and rape.’

Too many people, when listing all the perils to be found in the search for lost treasure or ancient wisdom, had forgotten to put at the top of the list ‘the man who arrived just before you’.

‘I can read and write,’ said Evil Harry. ‘Sorry. Part of the job. Etiquette, too. You’ve got to be polite to people when you march them out on the plank over the shark tank... it makes it more evil.’

‘Some people say you achieve immortality through your children,’ said the minstrel. ‘Yeah?’ said Cohen. ‘Name one of your great-granddads, then.’

‘It doesn’t matter how you live and die, it’s how the bards wrote it down.’

What goes around, comes around. If not examined too closely, it passes for justice.

‘I’ve got a sword and it’s a good one, but all the bleedin’ thing can do is keep someone alive, listen. A song can keep some immortal.’

‘So much universe, and so little time.’

No one remembers the singer. The song remains.

- The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. Stand-alone.

A retelling of The Pied Piper story, sort of. Featuring clever rats, a very clever cat and a stupid looking kid.

First of the Young Adult Discworld books, although as far as Pratchett was concerned that’s only a matter of marketing. It shows.

Deals a lot with the glaring irony of humanity’s relationship with talking vs. non talking animals (makes sense in context).

‘Listen, Peaches, trickery is what humans are all about,’ said the voice of Maurice. ‘They’re so keen on tricking one another all the time that they elect governments to do it for them.’

‘Everyone needs their little dreams.’ Maurice truly believed that, too. If you knew what it was that people, really, really wanted, you very nearly controlled them.

Cats didn’t have to think. They just had to know what they wanted. Humans had to do the thinking. That’s what they were for.

The trouble with thinking was that, once you started, you went on doing it.

‘And our lady friend, she thinks life works like a fairytale.’ ‘Well, that’s harmless, isn’t it?’ said Keith. ‘Yeah, but in fairy-tales, when someone dies…it’s just a word.’

It was very unusual for Maurice to feel sympathetic to anyone who wasn't Maurice. In a cat, that is a major character flaw.

‘If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become part of someone else’s story.’ ‘And what if your story doesn’t work?’ ‘You keep changing it until you find one that does.’

‘This is inhuman!’ said Rat-catcher 2. ‘No, it’s very human,’ said Keith. ‘It’s extremely human. There isn’t a beast in the world that’d do it to another living thing…’

Light has a smell. In the dank, damp cellars the sharp sulphur stink of the match flew like a yellow bird, rising on drafts, plunging through cracks. It was a clean and bitter smell and it cut through the dull underground reek like a knife.

‘A good plan isn’t one where someone wins, it’s where nobody thinks they’ve lost.’

- Night Watch. Watch series.

Happens nearly simultaneously with Thief of Time.

Sam Vimes, time travel, Revolution (so many Les Misérables references so many), Police brutality, totalitarian regimes, Change and Progress.

Every year he forgot. Well, no. He never forgot. He just put the memories away, like old silverware that you didn’t want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart.

‘This is stupid. There’s barely a dozen of you. What can you do? All that stuff about “keeping the peace” – it’s rubbish, lads. Coppers do what they’re told by the men in charge. It’s always like that. What’ll you do when the new captain comes in, eh? And who’re you doing this for? The people? They attacked the other Houses, and what’s the Night Watch ever done to hurt them?’ ‘Nothing,’ said Vimes. ‘There you are, then.’ 'I mean the Watch did nothing, and that’s what hurt them.’

That was always the dream, wasn’t it? ‘I wish I’d known then what I know now’? But when you got older you found out that you now wasn’t the you then. You then was a twerp. You then was what you had to be to start out on the rocky road of becoming you now, and one of the rocky patches on that road was being a twerp. A much better dream, one that’d ensure sounder sleep, was not to know now what you didn’t know then.

Ninety per cent of most magic merely consists of knowing one extra fact.

…trouble is always easy to find, when you have enough people looking for it.

One of the hardest lessons of young Sam’s life had been finding out that the people in charge weren’t in charge. It had been finding out that governments were not, on the whole, staffed by people who had a grip, and that plans were what people make instead of thinking.

People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.

It wasn’t a city, it was a process, a weight on the world that distorted the land for hundreds of miles around. People who’d never see it in their whole life nevertheless spent that life working for it. Thousands and thousands of green acres were part of it, forests were part of it. It drew in and consumed… and gave back the dung from its pens, and the soot from its chimneys, and steel, and saucepans, and all the tools by which its food was made. And also clothes, and fashions, and ideas, and interesting vices, songs, and knowledge, and something which, if looked at in the right light, was called civilisation. That was what civilisation meant. It meant the city.

{i really love this. i really really really love this. i could write a whole separate essay on why and how much i love this paragraph}

- The Wee Free Men. Tiffany Aching series. Young Adult novel.

Introduces Tiffany Aching, a.k.a. light of my life a.k.a. most relatable character in fiction a.k.a. the hero which every little girl ever needs and deserves. I cannot even begin to explain how much Tiffany means to me:

She had decided to become a witch.

She decided okay? not she was chosen not she had to, she decided. Like, if you have a young and/or impressionable relative (or just simply need comfort on the value of your choices) give them this book. And then the next one. And then the next. And by then they should be old enough to get the next one themselves.

Also introduces the Nac Mac Feagle- tiny blue men with Scottish accents (basically Highlander extras; all of them).

And all the stories had, somewhere, the witch. The wicked old witch. And Tiffany had thought: Where’s the evidence?

Susurrus…according to her grandmother’s dictionary, it meant ‘a low soft sound, as of whispering or muttering’. Tiffany liked the taste of the word. It made her think of mysterious people in long cloaks whispering important secrets behind a door…susurrususssurrusss…

They didn’t have to be funny, they were father jokes.

They looked like tinkers, but there wasn’t one amongst them, she knew, who could mend a kettle. What they did was sell invisible things. And after they had sold what they had, they still had it. They sold what everyone needed but didn’t often want. They sold the key to the universe to people who didn’t know it was locked. ‘I can’t do,’ said Miss Tick, straightening up. ‘But I can teach!’

They went from village to village delivering short lessons on many subjects. They kept apart from the other travellers, and were quite mysterious in their ragged robes and strange square hats. They used long words like ‘corrugated iron’. They lived rough lives, surviving on what food they could earn from giving lessons to anyone who would listen. When no one would listen, they lived on baked hedgehog. They went to sleep under the stars, which the maths teachers would count, the astronomy teachers would measure and the literature teachers would name. The geography teachers got lost in the woods and fell into bear traps.

If you didn't find some way of stopping it, people would go on asking questions.

‘I would like a question answered today,’ said Tiffany. ‘Provided it’s not the one about how you get baby hedgehogs,’ said the man. ‘No,’ said Tiffany patiently. ‘It’s about zoology.’ ‘Zoology, eh? That’s a big word, isn’t it.’ ‘No, actually it isn’t,’ said Tiffany. ‘Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short.’

'I can see we're going to get along like a house on fire,' said Miss Tick. 'There may be no survivors.'

And it didn’t stop being magic just because you found out how it was done.

…if you trust in yourself…’ ‘Yes?’ ‘…and believe in your dreams…’ ‘Yes?’ ‘…and follow your star…’ Miss Tick went on. ‘Yes?’ ‘…you’ll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren’t so lazy. Goodbye.’

There was a lot of mist around, but a few stars were visible overheard and there was a gibbous moon in the sky. Tiffany knew it was gibbous because she’d read in the Almanack that ‘gibbous’ meant what the moon looked like when it was just a bit fatter than half full, and so she made a point of paying attention to it around those times just so that she could say to herself: ‘Ah, I see the moon’s very gibbous tonight…’

That’s the trouble with a brain: it thinks more than you sometimes want it too.

‘Ye can just rush in. We always just rush in.’ ‘Aye, Big Yan, point well made. But ye gotta know where ye’re just gonna rush in. Ye cannae just rush in anywhere. It looks bad, havin’ to rush oout again straight awa’.’

‘What’s your name, pictsie?’ she said. ‘No’-as-big-as-Medium-Sized-Jock-but-bigger-than-Wee-Jock-Jock, mistress. There’s no’ that many Feegle names, ye ken, so we ha’ to share.’

It’s amazing what a child who is quiet and observant can learn, and this includes things people don’t think she is old enough to know.

‘Them as can do, has to do for them as can’t. And someone has to speak up for them as has no voices.

‘…it was better to belong where you don’t belong than not belong where you used to belong, remembering when you used to belong there…’

Being right doesn’t always work.

No wonder we dream our way through lives. To be awake, and see it all as it really was…no one could stand that for long.

First you get the test, and then afterwards you spend years findin’ out how you passed it. It’s a bit like life in that respect.

Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because they are mine!

- Monstrous Regiment. Stand-alone.

Polly Perks dresses up as a man to join the army to look for her brother. Has some of the most gratifying twists if fiction.

Talks about gender roles, gender equality, war, power of belief, you know, the usual.

Think young male, that was the thing. Fart loudly and with self-satisfaction at a job well done…

‘Look, you know what I mean. You take a bunch of people who don’t seem any different from you and me, but when you add them all together you get this sort of huge raving maniac with national borders and an anthem.’

Several copies of the pamphlet seemed to have reached every home, even so.  It was very patriotic. That is, it talked about killing foreigners.

‘It’s only your country when they want you to get killed!’ said Tonker.

‘…keep out of the way of officers, ‘cos they ain’t healthy. That’s what you learn in the army. The enemy dun’t really want to fight you, ‘cos the enemy is mostly blokes like you who want to go home with all their bits still on. But officers’ll get you killed.’

Polly had been soldiering for only a couple of days, but already an instinct had developed. In summary, it was this: lie to officers.

…you are not the only one watching the world. Other people are people; while you watch them they watch you, and they think about you while you think about them. The world isn’t just about you.

‘Bein’ a soldier is not hard. If it was, soldiers would not be able to do it.’

There was this about vampires: they could never look scruffy. Instead, they were…what was the word…deshabille. It meant untidy, but with bags and bags of style.

‘…he might be worth listening to. Even if you think he’ll only tell us lies.  Because sometimes, sir, the way people tell you lies, if they tell you enough lies, well, they sort of…show you what shape the truth is, sir.’

It’s hard to be an ornithologist and walk through a wood when all around you the world is shouting: ‘Bugger off, this is my bush! Aargh, the nest thief! Have sex with me, I can make my chest big and red!'

The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to those who think they’ve found it.

…you only thought the world would be better if it was run by women if you didn’t actually know many women. Or old women, at least. Take the whole thing about the dimity scarves. Women had to cover their hair on Fridays, but there was nothing about this in the Book, which was pretty dar- pretty damn rigorous about most things. It was just a custom. It was done because it was always done. And if you forgot, or didn’t want to, the old women got you.

The pen might not be mightier than the sword, but maybe the printing press was heavier than the siege weapon. Just a few words can change everything…

-A Hat Full of Sky. Tiffany series.

The Tiffany books are more closely related than the other series sooo...

I can say that it features magical-alien possession though.

Over the last year or so Tiffany’s mother had been quite surprised, and a little worried, at Tiffany’s sudden thirst for education, which people in the village thought was a good thing in moderation but if taken unwisely could lead to restlessness.

It’s quite easy to accidentally overhear people talking downstairs if you hold an upturned glass to the floorboards and accidentally put your ear to it.

Even if it’s not your fault it’s your responsibility. Witches deal with things.

‘It’s a bad case o’ the thinkin’ he’s caught, missus. When a man starts messin’ wi’ the readin’ and the writin’ then he��ll come doon with a dose o’ the thinkin’ soon enough. I’ll fetch some o’ the lads and we’ll hold his heid under water until he stops doin’ it, ‘tis the only cure. It can kill a man, the thinkin’.

‘AAaargwannawannaaaagongongonaargggaaaaBLOON!’ which is the traditional sound of a very small child learning that with balloons, as with life itself, it is important to know when not to let go of the string. The whole point of balloons is to teach small children this.

Joy is to fun what the deep sea is to a puddle. It’s a feeling inside that can hardly be contained.

- Going Postal. Moist Von Lipwig series.

Set in Ankh-Morpork. Continues with the Change and Progress theme, just a lot more explicitly than before.

Introduces Moist Von Lipwig, master conman, visited by an angel.

This book is also the one where that GNU thing comes from, you may or may not have seen it used instead of RIP when people talk about Pterry’s passing.

They say that the prospect of being hanged in the morning concentrates a man’s mind wonderfully; unfortunately, what the mind inevitably concentrates on is that it is in a body that, in the morning, is going to be hanged.

There is a saying ‘You can’t fool an honest man’ which is much quoted by people who make a profitable living by fooling honest men.

'Money is not a thing, it is not even a process. It is a kind of shared dream. We dream that a small disc of common metal is worth the price of a substantial meal. Once you wake up from that dream, you can swim in a sea of money.’

Women are always significantly under-represented in secret orders.

‘…this place is curséd.’ ‘That’s cursed with an extra ed?’ ‘Yes sir.  The worst kind.’

‘I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr. Pump. I may be... all those things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!’ 'No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded, And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr. Lipwig. You Have Ruined Business And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Did Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Food From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr. Lipwig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.’

‘Always move fast Mr Spools. You never know who’s catching up.’

People flock in, nevertheless, in search of answers to those questions only librarians are considered able to answer, such as ‘Is this the laundry?’ ‘How do you spell surreptitious?’ and, on a regular basis: ‘Do you have a book I remember reading once? It had a red cover and it turned out they were twins.’ 

‘Gods tend to be more interested in prophets, not profits, a-ha.’ There were some blank looks from his fellow directors. ‘Didn’t quite get that one, old chap,’ said Stowley. ‘Prophets, I said, not profits,’ said Gilt. He waved his hand. ‘Don’t worry yourselves, it will look better written down.’

Always remember that the crowd which applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.

You should promise to do the impossible, because sometimes the impossible was possible, if you could find the right way, and at least you could often extend the limits of the possible. And if you failed, well, it had been impossible.

A man’s not dead while his name is still spoken.

- Thud! Watch series.

Troll-dwarf politics. Also demonic possession.

…as the dwarfs say, where there is trouble you will always find a troll.

It started out as a perfect day.  It would soon enough be an imperfect one, he knew, but just for these few minutes it was possible to pretend that it wouldn’t be.

…he talked about history and destiny and all the other words that always got trotted out to put a gloss on slaughter. It was heady stuff, except that brains weren’t involved.

He knew in his heart that spinning upside down around a pole wearing a costume you could floss with definitely was not Art, and being painted lying on a bed wearing nothing but a smile and a small bunch of grapes was good solid Art, but putting your finger on why this was the case was a bit tricky.

‘War, Nobby. Huh! What’s it good for?’ he said. ‘Dunno, sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?’ ‘Absol- Well, okay.’ ‘Defending yourself from a totalitarian aggressor?’ ‘All right, I’ll grant you that, but -’

Vimes had never got on with any game more complex than darts. Chess in particular had always annoyed him. It was the dumb way the pawns went off and slaughtered their fellow pawns while the kings lounged about doing nothing that always got him; if only the pawns united, maybe talked the rooks round, the whole board could’ve been a republic in a dozen moves.

‘…if dere was a PhD in bein’ fick, youse wouldn’t be able to find a pencil.’

Coffee was only a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your slightly older self.

Beating people up in little rooms…he knew where that led. And if you did it for a good reason, you’d do it for a bad one. You couldn’t say ‘We’re the good guys’ and do bad-guy things.

Home was where you had to feel safe. If you didn’t feel safe, it wasn’t home.

‘…and that’s why I don’t like magic, captain. ’Cos it’s magic.  You can’t ask questions, it’s magic. It doesn’t explain anything, it’s magic. You don’t know where it comes from, it’s magic! That’s what I don’t like about magic, it does everything by magic!’

Treat this as a learning experience. Find out why the world is not as you thought it was. Assemble the facts, digest the information, consider the implications. Then go spare. But with precision.

‘What kind of creature defines itself by hatred?’

- Wintersmith. Tiffany series.

The things that make a Man, Responsibility, etc.

'...I choose. This I choose to do.’ It wasn’t a spell, except in her own head, but if you couldn’t make spells work in your own head you couldn’t make them work at all.

And she always came. Always. But popular? No. Need is not the same as like.

Like a lot of people with big muscles, he got edgy about people who were strong in other ways.

‘We mus’ lay doon our lives for her if it comes to it.’ ‘How can ye do that when ye’re deid already?’ said Miss Treason sharply. ‘That’s a bit o’ a puzzler, right enough,’ said Rob, ‘so probably we’ll lay down the lives o’ any scunners who do wrong by her.’

It says something about witches that an old friend and an old enemy could quite often be the same person.

That was the big problem with being a witch. It was up to you. It was always up to you.

And, as always happens, and happens far too soon, the strange and wonderful becomes a memory and a memory becomes a dream. Tomorrow it’s gone.

- Making Money. Moist series.

Economics, but with golems.

… people lower their voices in the presence of large sums of money.

… his presence was like a lead weight on a rubber sheet. It distorted the space around it. People didn’t immediately see him, but they sensed his presence.

‘My late husband always said that the only way to make money out of poor people is by keeping them poor.’

Funny, that: a brigand for a father was something to keep quiet about, but a slave-taking pirate for a great-great-great-grandfather was something to boast of over the port.

… if you could sell the dream to enough people, no one dared wake up.

‘There are, some like to suggest, an infinite number of universes in order to allow everything that may happen a place to happen in. This is of course nonsense, which we entertain only because we believe words are the same as reality. Now, however, I can prove my point, since in such an infinity of worlds there would have to be one where I would applaud your recent action and, let me assure you, sir, infinity is not that big!’

‘… people don’t like change. But make the change happen fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.’

What the Iron Maiden was to stupid tyrants, the committee was to Lord Vetinari; it was only slightly more expensive, far less messy, considerably more efficient and, best of all, you had to force people to climb inside the Iron Maiden

‘You get a wonderful view from the point of no return.’

- Unseen Academicals. Wizards series.

Mostly about all the work necessary to keep something like Unseen University running. Also, Romeo and Juliet and football.

Nothing cleans stubborn stains like suppressed anger.

Learning had to be digested. You didn't just have to know, you have to comprehend.

'All her clothes might fall off. I am sorry about this, but it appears to be a by-product of the whole business of poetry.'

Sometimes if you wanted to go to the ball you had to be your own fairy godmother.

'And you are telling me I'm wrong. Are you?' 'I would rather you thought of me as suggesting a way in which you could be even more right.'

'And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built in to the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.'

'… the more best you're capable of the more you should do.'

- I Shall Wear Midnight. Tiffany series.

Deals with Responsibility, Identity, Self-determination, etc.

Probably the darkest book of the whole series. You know, for kids!

'I have seen horrible things, and some of them all the more horrible because they were, well, normal.

… only blonde and blue-eyed girls could get the prince and wear the glittering crown. It was built into the world. Even worse, it was built into your hair colouring. Redheads and brunettes sometimes got more than a walk-on part in the land of the story, but if all you had was a rather mousy shade of brown hair you were marked down to be a serving girl.

'Poison goes where poison's welcome.'

'Sometimes what is legal isn't what is right, and sometimes it needs a witch to tell the difference.

…you didn't need to grind the faces of the poor if you taught them to do their own grinding.

…one day all of us will die but – a this is the important thing – we are not dead yet.

It is important that we know where we come from, because if you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you are going.  And if you don't know where you are going, you're probably going wrong.

- Snuff. Watch series.

A copper goes on holiday. Three guesses what happens there.

Because I haven’t read this one yet, nor the remaining two, there won’t be any quotes for them. (And really, like, if you haven’t decided if the writing’s up to your tastes by now, I don’t know what to tell you).

Well, okay just one:

What should we do when the highborn and wealthy take to crime? Indeed, if a poor man will spend a year in prison for stealing out of hunger, how high would the gallows need to be to hang the rich man who breaks the law out of greed?

- Raising Steam. Moist series.

Knock, knock! ‘Who is it?’ ‘The industrial Revolution!’

- Shepherd's Crown. Tiffany series. Last book. Published posthumously. The Elves are back. I think.

Reading order

Right.

Because every book is self-contained, you could, technically, pick up any which one and go from there. This works best if you’re especially passionate about something and you want a book about that. Like, if you love theatre start with Wyrd Sisters, if you love opera and musicals go with Maskerade, if you have a special place in your heart for film and/or eldritch horror, Moving Pictures is the way to go.

But, I think that unless you are determined to read One And Only One Discworld book ever, this approach isn’t worth it for anything published after The Fifth Elephant. Except the Rincewind books, you can read those whenever.

Like, yes, The Truth is a book about journalism written by a journalist-turned-fantasy-writer but without any previous knowledge of the Disc, you loose a lot, and I mean a lot of context as to why the things that happen in it are happening when and where they are happening. For example, Pin and Tulip’s utter horror at the state of things in Ankh-Morpork does not have the same weight if you haven’t read how they got like that.

The thing is, like, a while back I was looking at the Amazon page for The Compleat Ankh-Morpork (bc Pratchett had just died and my knee-jerk reaction was to get everything he was involved in ever), a sort of tour-guide like thing that comes with a map and details pretty much every nook and cranny of Ankh-Morpork, and someone left a one-star review saying how “Discworld was “”“ruined””“ now” and “you’re not supposed to be able to make a map of it and it’s supposed to be “”“magical”““ and vague and it loses it charm on a map~” or something like that, and I remember thinking ‘boy oh boy how can you so utterly and completely miss the point?’

Of course there’s gonna be a map at some point! You can’t write over forty (hell, over fifty if we count the supplementary ones) books about something without getting to know it very, very, very well.

The whole charm of Discworld is that with every subsequent book it gets more palpable, more “real”, so to speak.

It starts as a parody of the Standard Fantasy SettingTM and then word by word, book by book becomes one of the richest most well developed fictional worlds ever put to print.

This is why, I personally, believe it to be best to start from the beginning.

Pratchett was never a bad writer. The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic actually are not bad books. A bit aimless, maybe, but not bad. It’s just that the books get so much better sometime around Guards! Guards! (or maybe as early as Mort, or maybe only after Small Gods, depending on who you ask) that a lot of people feel that having The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic as your first impression of Discworld is like eating raw dough and calling it bread: The ingredients are there, but it’s not ready.

Having said that, we are still talking about 40+ books, a large and time consuming commitment (even if you’re like me and can and do go through 400~ pages in about 14-16 hours), so here are the books people usually recommend for you to get a feel on Pratchett’s writing and decide if it’s something you wanna get into at all:

Guards! Guards! because it sets the stage for pretty much every book set in Ankh-Morpork (which is more than half of them), most of the city’s key players as well as that specific balance of fantasy and social commentary that is characteristic of Discworld. Probably best put here:

It's a metaphor of human bloody existence, a dragon. And if that wasn't bad enough, it's also a bloody great hot flying thing.

Small Gods because it’s a stand alone novel, both temporally and geographically removed from the rest of the series, but it still has all the wit and heart and core ideas and philosophies that the other books have.

And, I’ll say it again: If you only read one Discworld book ever, make it Small Gods.

Another recommended approach (by people who are not me) is to pick a series and read it all the way through. This is the official infographic by the publisher:

The series are colour-coded.

If you decide to go with that, a few things to keep in mind:

This approach works better for The Witches and Tiffany series since they are set away from Ankh-Morpork (or the influence of Ankh-Morpork) and their stories have far less to nothing to do with the themes of international law, globalisation and industrialisation than the other books are connected by.

This approach also works for The Rincewind series since most of his books are set in “”“Foreign Parts“”“ and don’t have a lot to do with the themes of international law, globalisation, industrialisation etc.

You can pretty freely get into Tiffany without having read the Witches, but it’s less fun.

You cannot freely get into Moist Von Lipwig without having read The Truth and at least some of the Watch, you miss out on far too much character depth.

To fully understand Carpe Jugulum you need to have read Small Gods (also from Feet of Clay onwards in the Watch series, Constable Visit is way more fun if you’ve read Small Gods).

To fully appreciate Unseen Academicals you need to have read Carpe Jugulum.

The events of Night Watch are only possible because Thief of Time happened, and you need to read the latter to fully understand the former.

Everything that happens from The Fifth Elephant onwards is connected and follows a timeline and while the books are self-contained it just makes a lot more sense to read them in order.

But really and honestly: just pick one you think seems interesting. All this reading order stuff, it does help people figure some stuff out but ultimately, it’s about what you think you’d most enjoy. After all, the books are already written, and they’re not going anywhere.

Another thing to consider: Discworld has been adapted into audio books, radio plays, theatre plays, comics, and for the screen:

There are three live action adaptations (Hogfather, (with Michelle Dockery as Susan), The Colour of Magic, and Going Postal, (with Charles Dance as the Patrician)) and two animated adaptations (Wyrd Sisters and Soul Music (in both Death is voiced by Christopher Lee)).

There is also, supposedly, a City Watch TV series in the works but it’s all very hush-hush for now.

As far as the Fandom goes, I’ve yet to have a bad experience? Like, most people who I would consider part of the Discworld fandom are pretty laid-back types* -I could be horribly wrong of course, maybe I just haven’t noticed the bad parts- but in general the one thing that brings Discworld fans together in this is the ongoing crusade to make more Discworld fans - hence this... list? essay? I don’t even know.

The one thing that I feel people new to the series should know regarding the fans is that no-one really pays much attention to make spoiler warnings.

Which, okay, some of the books are 30+ years old, and they are part of the opening premise for subsequent books... But still, things that make really satisfying twists and developments are taken completely for granted. (this mostly pertains to the Watch series).

So, just keep that in mind when engaging the fandom side of things.

*I firmly believe that the main contributing factor to the lack of DramaTM is the fact that most of the cast is 40+ years old** and either asexual or married - to well developed and rounded love interests.

**Did I mention the sheer number of Middle-aged and Old People Who Do Stuff in these books? No? There are so many Middle-aged and Old People Who Do Stuff in these books. And they’re mostly women.

Well, that’s about it folks.

Thanks for joining me for this ride. Any suggestions, questions etc. feel free to hit me up.

Finally, as a sort of closing remark:

“And yet, I still feel like a fraud. It’s all been done in fun, folks. I had no big plans. I wrote the first few books for fun. I wrote the next books for fun. I did it because I really wanted to do it. I did it because I got something out of it. “

- From a speech given by Terry Pratchett at Noreascon 4 (2004), collected in A Slip of the Keyboard as “Straight from the Heart, via the Groin”

[zinniapetals]

um not sure how specific should i be but? oikage meeting in their 20s and getting together? :'D it's my favourite thing T_T kageyama is in national team //cough// and not sure what oikawa's doing, could be in another team or he's studying/working in another field but they aren't angsty about things either way (bc we have that enough lmao). just cute healthy oikage T_T

lmao i have done so many fics on them getting together because this ship has so many possibilities on reuniting and loving each other !! I just love oikage!!! and yessss, healthy oikage 💯💯 thanks so much for the prompt!! 💖 (fic is under keep reading)

Despite common misconceptions, Oikawa was afan of going into supermarkets in the dead of night. He loved the overly brightfluorescent lighting of the store, the empty aisles of brightly coloredpackaging, the tired mother with her sleeping baby wrapped close to her chest,the sleep-deprived college student that was the cashier who often gave him freecoupons, everything about late night shopping was Oikawa’s aesthetic.

No one would try to make small talk about thebags accumulating under his eyes from too many all-nighters, people wouldn’tbother him as he picked up another bag of Epson salt and a couple of milkbreads for the days when volleyball kicked his ass hard, he was allowed to readsports magazines leisurely without being glared at by the strict manager, itwas perfect.

He hummed as he made his way to aisle twelve, left side,about five steps in, the last shelf. He bent down and reached for his go tobrand of medicinal cream for muscle fatigue when another hand grabbed his leastfavorite brand of Epson salt.

“Just for reference,” he started, not wanting to sound tooimposing, but the other person just hadto know. “That brand is terrible for people with sensitive skin, not to mentionthe smell is less than pleasant.” 

“Oh…”

Oikawa glanced at the person’s shoes, worn out Nikes, trailingupwards, he saw a pair of form fitting sweats that emphasized strong calves andeven better thighs. He grabbed his ointment and stood up, offering the strangera pleasant smile that was ruined by his loud ‘geh.’

“Ah, Oikawa-san,” Kageyama blanched, his wide eyesdisplaying the shock that wasn’t present in his voice. “How are you?” 

“I’m good,” he replied, eyeing Kageyama’s tiny basket thatwas filled to the brim with water, sport drinks, granola bars, and a singlemilk carton. “You?”

“Tired.”

The brunet raised his brows at the honest admission, pursinghis lips at the now visible slouched stance that Kageyama was in, as well andthe white sports tape that were wrapped around each individual finger 

“How was camp?” Oikawa asked nonchalantly, grabbing a coupleof ace bandages and an extra ankle brace from the other side of the aisle. “Ah,I wouldn’t recommend that either.”

Kageyama paused at grabbing a different bag that labeledlavender infused bath salts and pointedly stared at him, eyebrows scrunched asif to determine if it really was Oikawa in front of him. “Camp was fine.” Hereached for another brand only to stop at Oikawa’s loud sigh. “Okay, which one should I get?”

“Let’s see,” Oikawa drawled out, scanning the shelves andnot finding the one he uses the most. “Oh, I guess they ran out.”

“Then it doesn’t matter right?”

“It does,” Oikawa muttered reaching out to grab medicinalbath oil that was almost as good as his favorite brand of Epson salt. “This ispretty good. I would advise you to use twice the recommend amount though.”

“Thanks?” Kageyama said, his voice lifting at the end as heread the bottle that was given to him.

“Don’t mention it,” Oikawa offhandedly replied, turning aroundand headed for the cash register, not even caring as to why Kageyama appearedbefore him. “See ya Tobio-chan.”

That’s probably the only con about walkinginto supermarkets that are open all day every day, Oikawa thought to himself asa cashier rang up his purchase, you’ll never know who you’ll meet. 

-

Oikawa jogged inside the store, shaking off the suddendownpour from his clothes and hair, glancing around the empty store as hewandered in trying to find the things he was searching for.

Although chain stores usually had the same policies, thesame building structure, and the same items, the placement of these items wereusually different in each store and varied by city.

He sighed loudly as he went through the aisles once more,looking closer this time to find what he wanted. Finally finding the aisle heneeded to go into, he went towards the over the counter pain medicine area,trying to find the cheapest meds that would work just as well as doctorprescribed ones. 

“Those are pretty weak, I suggest you pick these onesinstead.”

Oikawa looked to his right and there was Kageyama, drippingwet, offering advice on medication at three in the morning.

“Congratulations on your first match,” Oikawa offered inreturn, grabbing the brand that was recommended to him. “But I have to say,your serves were pretty weak.” 

“I know.” 

Oikawa tilted his head and frown at the sullen Kageyama,patting his shoulder when he passed by. “It was a joke Tobio-chan. You did verywell.” 

He didn’t look back, because if he did he might have haveseen the dumbstruck face of his old teammate.

-

The sun was shining bright, the day was hot, the streetswere crowded, and Oikawa was not pleased. Of all days for his parents’ AC tostop working, it had to be the day when he popped in for a surprise visit intotown. He hurriedly went into the nearest shop, praying that they had the rightsize of screwdriver; they did, and waited in line. 

“Oikawa-san?”

To say that Oikawa was pleased at hearing that voice wouldbe an overstatement. He could feel sweat forming between his fingers as he kepthis hand closed around the handle of the screwdriver. Licking his lips andrunning his free hand through his hair, he turned to face Kageyama.

“Tobio-chan, what a surprise to see you here.” 

Simple pleasantries. After five times of meeting each other,it’s become a habit to speak first and think later.

“Is that alcohol I see?” Oikawa teased, smirking at Kageyamawho hid the bottles behind him.

“There’s a Karasuno get together later today…” He trailedoff, leaving the rest for Oikawa to imagine. “What are you doing here?” 

“Visiting the family,” Oikawa replied, handing the cashierhis single item and handed him 2000 yen. “The rest will pay for his stuff.”

“You don’t have to-” Kageyama started, only to beinterrupted by Oikawa.

“I know. Bye Tobio-chan. Have enough fun for the both ofus.”

-

Oikawa sort of stop counting their encounters after the twelfthtime. It was similar to the snowball effect. Chance after chance, they keptmeeting, and somewhere in between they exchanged numbers, which led to them totalk more and to stop accidently meeting each other and start planning to meeteach other. 

“Are you listening Oikawa-san?”

“Yeah yeah, something about cheesy pizza right?”

Kageyama huffed loudly and frowned, the screen glitchingslightly as he moved to grab something off camera. “You weren’t listening.” 

“Sorry, busy typing up this report.” Oikawa mumbled, pushinghis glasses up as he glanced back to his word document. “Wow. You are beingincredibly noisy, what are you doing?”

“I was trying to find something I got for you, but I think Ileft it in my bag,” Kageyama explained, sitting back into his chair and made aface that slightly resembled a pout. “Did you get new glasses?”

“Nah, they’re spares. I broke my other ones.” Oikawa brisklyreplied, rereading what he just wrote, changing a word and then added a comma.“Oh, you glitched again.”

“Did I?” Kageyama’s mouth moved, and the audio followed twoseconds later. “This internet isn’t the best.” 

“Clearly,” Oikawa joked, content with where he was at in hiswork and closed off the document after saving it multiple times. “What time isit over there?”

“9,” he answered, scratching his neck slightly. “I’m gonnahead to practice soon. You have a later class right?”

“Unfortunately,” Oikawa groaned, leaning back and rubbed hiseyes beneath his glasses. “I wish you were here to make your famous hot cocoa.” 

“I wish I was there too.”

Oikawa stopped in his tracks, tilting his head at whatKageyama said. It wasn’t like him to respond like that. He would normally scoff or make an offhand remark about howdramatic Oikawa was being, but saying that,now that was weird.

“Crap,” Kageyama blurted, reading something off his phone.“The captain’s making an emergency meeting, I gotta go. I’ll talk to you laterOikawa-san. Bye.” 

Before Oikawa could say his own goodbye, Kageyama ended thecall, leaving a very confused Oikawa behind.

-

“Red looks better on you,” Oikawa commented, leaning forwardto fix Kageyama’s skewered tie. “Has anyone ever told you that you wear toomuch black?” 

“Occasionally.”

Oikawa nodded at that, and took a step back humming as heraked his eyes over Kageyama’s outfit. He slapped Kageyama’s hand away frommessing with his bangs, tsking softly as he reached forward to fix the sideswept bangs.

“You’re like a little kid,” Oikawa commented, flickingKageyama’s forehead as the younger male began to gnaw on his lips. “Nervous?” 

“This is my first interview as being starter of the nationalvolleyball team. Safe to say, I’m a little nervous,” Kageyama admitted, closinghis eyes as Oikawa raked his fingers through his damp black hair. “Will youcome with me?” 

“What?” Oikawa asked, nearly a shriek, but not quite. “Ah,that’s sort of short notice you know? Plus, I would have to take a shower, andI doubt I have anything good to wear. Not to mention I have my midterm tomorrow,which I know I’ll do fine in but I still have to study some stuff and-”

“If you don’t want to, you just have to say no,” Kageyamainterrupted, cheeks tinted pink at the drawn out rejection. “It’s not a life ordeath situation.” 

Oikawa stopped his tirade of useless excuses, blinking twicebefore admitting that yes of fuckingcourse I would love to go and pleasestop smirking at me like that, ok it’s hard to admit that I would kill to meetall the members of the national team.

-

“Did you know that it’s been a year since we first met eachother?” Oikawa asked, busy wasting time on Facebook, scrolling past thememory from April that said guess who Imet at the supermarket…should I have asked for an autograph? lololol andshared another recipe that looked good enough to try out. 

“Really?” Kageyama muttered, eyes focused on the tablet thatwas resting on Oikawa’s sprawled out legs. “So when did we officially gettogether?”

Oikawa huffed loudly, digging his heels into Kageyama’sthigh. The younger male hissed at that, glaring at his boyfriend with no realhostility.

“I’m heartbroken that you can’t remember. We definitely gottogether the day I found you aimlessly walking the streets after yourdevastating loss and invited you back to my place and watched you cry.”

Oikawa looked up from his phone, lips turning upwards atKageyama’s bottom lip jutting out in disappointment. Oikawa leaned forward, onehand on Kageyama’s shoulder and pressed his lips against his boyfriend’s.

“Wait, I’m sure it was when I invited you to one of my gamesbut you could only come to the after party and we ended up sleeping on the samebed in my hotel room.” 

Oikawa could barely contain his laughter, as Kageyama lookedeven more putout at this statement. 

“Oikawa-san, don’t tell me…you don’t know when we actuallygot together?” 

“Oh please, of course I do,” Oikawa scoffed, rolling hiseyes as he kissed the tip of Kageyama’s nose, content with teasing Kageyamaenough for the day. “It was the day you came back from Italy. That was when Irealized our feelings were mutual.”

“Really?” Kageyama asked, his head tilted and mouth slightlyagape. “That was only a couple of months ago though.”

“Well, yeah…why do you look so upset?”

“Don’t laugh okay?” Kageyama mumbled, putting a hand to hisface to hide his embarrassment. “I’ve been telling people we got together afterour phone call when I was in China.” 

“But that was in September..” Oikawa trailed off, groaningwhen he put the pieces together. “You mean the day I was wasted and told youthat you got hot and asked if you were single?”

“…Yes.”

“So the rumors of you dating a girl after you told areporter that you had a special someone were about me?” Oikawa watched asKageyama nodded his head quickly as if that would stop the bright blush spreadingover his neck and face. “And those videos of you staring lovingly into youphone from your teammates twitter and instagram accounts were because you weretexting me?”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Kageyama muttered, finally pullinghis hand away from his face to give Oikawa a playful shove. 

“So that means,” Oikawa said, prolonging the last word.“That means, that you fell for me first!”

“Did I?” Kageyama asked, angling his head towards Oikawa ina confused fashion. “But you confessed to me first?”

“Tobio-chan,” Oikawa cautioned, “just because someone callsyou hot, that doesn’t necessarily mean they have romantic feelings for you.Hey, don’t give me that stare! I’m being serious here! I’ll seriously beworried if you think that someone calling you hot means they like you.”

Kageyama snorted at that, and got up from the couch,stretching from being in that same position for too long.

“If you don’t remember that’s fine.”

With those mysterious words, Kageyama sauntered into their bedroom,taking off his shirt as he counted the seconds until Oikawa would barge in andbeg him to tell him what he meant.

[spacednp]

Rehab

im trying to put some of my fics on tumblr bc why not so i copied and pasted this from wattpad (its old kinda but like yeah)

TW:it's a rehab fic so if that kind of think triggers you then don't read xx also, peej is in here bc I couldn't resist lol

I wrote this bc I couldn't find any phan rehab fics and so I made one myself I guess you could say it filled me with DETERMINATION

Srry I made the Undertale reference

Wc: 3k

Dan didn't even know why he decided to go the rehab. He should of just kept drowning his problems out with alcohol, it'd worked this long. But here he was, getting his bags checked in preparation for the next 90 days of his life. Yay.

"What's this for?" The man checking Dan's bags asked, holding up a string that was at the bottom of Dan's bag. His voice was ruff and he was a bulky build with dark ink tattoos of dragons staining his arms. Dan didn't even know he had that string in there, it probably just fell off a shirt he had stuffed in the his bag at last minute. It wasn't even seven centimeters long.

"To hang myself," Dan wasn't very funny sober. The man obviously didn't take it as a joke or think it was very funny because he rolled her eyes, frowned, and took the sting away, handing it to another man who threw the string in a plastic tub full of confiscated items. The clear bucket held things from water bottles full of whiskey-oh God that looked so so good to Dan in that moment (there was nothing he wouldn't give for a sip of that right then)-to cellphones.

Once Dan's bags were checked he was stuffed into a dull room with two beds, two dressers, and two wooden desks with chairs. Dan rolled his eyes but said nothing. Apparently he had a roommate. Dan threw his bag onto the bed farthest from the door. The sheets were dark blue, which by far wasn't Dan's favorite color. The men who'd thrown him in the room left. Another man, with dull green eyes and brown curly hair entered the room and Dan smiled at him, which resulted in the man rolling his eyes.

"Hmph, moody," Dan muttered to himself. "I'm Dan by the way," he said a little louder. Rehab really wasn't going to be fun.

The man glared at Dan and suddenly Dan was afraid, very afraid. The man started to walk towards him when he was suddenly interrupted by a knock at the door. Both men looked to see a third man with a cart of blankets staring at them. The man had dark hair and bright blue eyes, Dan felt the warmth of safety run through his body all of the sudden. Though he wasn't sure why. He held the blue eyed man's gaze while Dan's new roommate just sulked back over to his bed and plopped down, anger radiated off of him in waves.

"Is there a problem here, Pj?" He asked, taking his gaze off of Dan to look over at Dan's roommate, a certain warning in his tone.

"No," The man he called Pj grumbled.

Dan didn't take his eyes off of the blue eyed man though, he knew he should look away, but he didn't.

"Good," The blue eyed man said. He turned to his cart and grabbed four dark blue blankets, he set two on Pj's bed and two on Dan's. When he got to Dan he whispered in Dan's ear, "Don't worry about Pj here, he's all bark and no bite." When Phil pulled away, Dan kind of wished he would of stayed, but he was also glad because he wasn't sure how much longer he could hold his breath, but he also didn't even know he was holding his breath. "I'm Phil by the way. Phil Lester."

"Uh, okay," Dan said. Phil didn't respond and left the room. Once he left, Dan felt Pj's gaze burning into him like fire. "What?" He snapped.

"You know, I wouldn't of come here if I knew that this was an only guys type deal, but I think your case is a little different," Pj said.

"What do you mean?" Dan asked.

"Don't play dumb," Pj paused, reading Dan's face. "You've obviously got something going on for Lester there."

"What?! No, no, I'm straight," Dan explained.

"So is spaghetti before things get hot and steamy," Dan didn't know why, but this comment made Dan like Pj. It was stupid to like him after such a weird comment was made but Dan was amused by it, so he let out a small laugh.

"So Pj, about that Phil Lester guy..." Dan really should of thought this through before he started talking. Honestly, he pretty much just blurted the first thing on his mind and of course it was Phil. Well it wasn't every day a semi attractive stranger whispered in your ear at a rehab center, of course Dan would think about him. It wasn't weird, not at all. Or maybe Dan was just a lying alcoholic with no morals, either way, he wanted to know more about the blue eyed man called Phil.

"What about him? You got a little crush on him?" Pj teased. Okay, maybe Dan didn't like Pj that much anymore. Dan ran a hand through his hair nervously.

"I just want to know a little about him," Dan insisted. Okay, maybe he wanted to know everything about the very attractive stranger. He was just really pretty... was that weird? No-no. Dan was just curious, right? He set his hand back down by his side and watched Pj closely, ready to absorb any information he could about the stranger, like a dry sponge dunked into a bucket of water.

"Well, as far as I know he's single," Pj paused for a moment to wink at Dan to which Dan replied with an eye roll, "he's also both the maid and the nurse-this is a pretty shitty center by the way, the place is pretty much a dump-and he's probably older than you."

"Wow don't you know a lot," Dan said sarcastically. He couldn't help but cross his arms around his chest.

"What? I don't keep tabs on the guy, and I've only been here a couple of weeks and I'm not exactly the best person here, I've snuck a couple beers in and gotten busted every damn time," Pj told Dan. Then he smirked. "I think I saw him check you out by the way."

"W-What? No way." Dan felt his cheeks went red, he automatically spun around to try and hide the embarrassment. He couldn't deny how his heart fluttered in his chest. Pj was just teasing Dan though, it wasn't real. Phil didn't check Dan out, no way. Dan walked over to his bag, uncrossing his arms as he walked. He unzipped his back and grabbed a stack of clothes and opened the drawer to his dress which sat next to his bed. Wooden, worn, and very very bland. He couldn't help but read the carved things on the bottom of the drawer.

Fuck this place & these people

I want a bloody drink

Everyone in here is a asshole!

Dan mentally cringed at the awful grammar and terrible handwriting. Dan agreed with the second thing though, he wanted a drink really badly. His was beginning to get foggy with a migraine and he hated the withdraw he was suffering from. This was probably the longest he's been been sober in the past five years, which was sad because it had only been two days. Maybe a little less.

"I have a killer headache," Dan hissed out of no where as he was setting his last shirt in the drawer. It wasn't a lie.

"Go to the nurse, maybe he'll give you an aspirin, or maybe he'll give you some kisses," Pj teased. Dan just shook his head, which sent a million hammers banging into skull at once. Dan let out a small moan in pain. "Oh gee Dan, you getting a little too excited over there?"

"Shut the fuck up," Dan spat at Pj. Pj chuckled at this, which sent a wave of frustration through Dan. Why was he laughing?! Dan literally felt like he was dying!

"I'll take you to the nurse, hopefully Phil's in his office," Pj stood up and started walking towards the door. Dan followed slowly because wow his head hurt. Dan followed as fast as he could and kept up with Pj's fast pace as much as he could, but ugh his head hurt so bad. Eventually they reached a door that had the work "nurse" on its navy tag.

"Here we are good sir," Pj said, slapping Dan on the back and beginning to walk away. But before he left completely he managed to call, "Good luck getting him to fuck you!" Over his shoulder. Dan rolled his eyes at Pj's rude comment and knocked on Phil's wooden door.

"Come in!" Phil called from inside. Dan opened the door with his right hand, his left one busy cradling his aching head. Inside was the blue eyed beauty known as Phil sitting behind a wooden desk who was scribbling something on a piece of paper. He was wearing thick black framed glasses which somehow managed to make him look more attractive than earlier. There was a computer on his desk with several papers, along with a few little nerdy trinkets. There was two chairs on the side of Phil's desk that was closest to Dan so he took a seat in one. On the wall behind Phil there was a few tall cabinets and a sink. "What's the matter?" Phil asked, not looking up from the stack of papers on his desk.

"I have a killer migraine," Dan announced. Phil looked up from his papers and smiled once he saw Dan.

"Name?" He requested, his voice sweet and warm. It reminded Dan of a warm winter coat on a chilly December day, warm and laced with fluff, guarding him from the brutal weather.

"Daniel James Howell," Dan told him, removing his hand from he head. Phil nodded and set down his pen. He turned to his computer and typed a few letters into the keyboard. The computer was white and bulky and was probably older than Dan was, weighed more than him, and was really really slow. Dan would call it slower than him, but in reality a rock could probably beat Dan in a race.

"Mhm," Phil hummed, clicking something on his screen Dan couldn't see. "Here you are! Daniel James Howell, number one twenty seven!" Dan loved the way his name rolled off of Phil's tongue. He loved how it sounded when Phil said it. But that was normal, right?

"It's not like I don't appreciate the banter, but can we just get my headache taken care of please? It's killing me," Dan whined. Phil giggled and the sound was so sweet it almost made up for the fact that he was taking so long to just hand Dan an aspirin. Almost.

"Yessiree," Phil sung, standing up and walking over to the cabinet behind him. Dan couldn't help but notice the way Phil's hips swung as he walked-okay maybe that was a little bit of a weird thought. Phil hummed a little song as he picked up a bottle of pills and opened it up. He took out a plastic cup and half filled it with tap water from the sink. He walked over to where Dan sat and handed him the pill. Dan's skin tingled when Phil's fingers brushed against his outstretched palm. That was normal though, right? It just tickled a little bit. Dan put the small pill in his mouth and Phil handed him the water. Dan took a big swig of the water and swallowed. He handed the cup back to Phil who walked back over to the sink and dumped the rest out and then threw the cup in the trash bin that sat next to Phil's desk. Dan wouldn't of wasted a drop of that if it had any alcohol at all in it.

"I have no idea how I'm going to survive three months without any alcohol," Dan thought out loud. Phil laughed, his tongue poking out of his teeth a little as he did so.

"I did it not too many years ago," Phil said. That was the last thing Dan expected to hear from the man. Phil just seemed too... good. He seemed very sweet and innocent, like a little kitten. Soft and frail. Dan couldn't even picture Phil anywhere near a bar, let alone drunk out of his mind and slurring his words. That just didn't seem like Phil. The fact that Dan felt so close to Phil even though he didn't even know the man was kind of odd. Dan noted that how he described Phil was similar to how the family and friends of serial killers described the killer.

"Really?" Dan gasped. Phil nodded, smiling still. Shook ran through Dan instead of blood.

"I was only about a year younger than you. Five years sober this March," Phil commented, a content look on his face. "You'll get used to it. Even after five years it's still hard for me sometimes, but I'm taking it one step at a time,"

"Huh, I can't picture you drunk," Dan blurred. Phil's personality was just too... adorable. Phil laughed again. "What's so funny?" Dan questioned.

"You really don't remember, huh?" Dan shook his head, confused. "Well I guess it makes sense, you were pretty hammered. Anyway, I helped you home once when you pretty much passed out outside of a bar in London a few years back. Seeing you like that was the reason I got sober and eventually got this job. I realized that it wasn't healthy to throw your life away like that and seeing someone as young as you in that state broke my heart and so I decided I wanted to help people get sober. I guess I finally get to help the person who helped me,"

"I didn't do anything," Dan said. He was really shocked, but he guessed that was why he felt so safe around Phil, because Phil had helped him before.

"Yes you did Dan. You opened my eyes and made me finally put my life in focus," Phil said. Dan didn't know how to feel. How was he supposed to feel? Was there a way he was supposed to feel?

No, there wasn't, he realized. Feelings weren't wrong or right, but they were yours. It wasn't wrong to dislike someone and it wasn't wrong to like someone either. Feelings turned into actions though. There was wrong and there was right actions. It was wrong to hurt someone but it was right to comfort someone. But how did you distinguish what was a wrong action and what was a right action? The little voice in your head. At first it always sounded like Dan's mum, telling him not to eat his brother's cookie or telling him not to run the red light. Over time though it started to sound like Dan. It told him to not smoke that cigarette he'd stolen from his dad. It even told him not to drink so much, it was the reason he was in rehab. He had ignored it all those years ago when he ended up drunk out of his mind and passed out outside of some random bar in London. It told him to trust Phil, and he listened to it.

•••

In rehab Dan learned to trust that little voice.

It told him to not take a drink of the vodka Pj managed to smuggle in, even though every other part of his body wanted it so so bad.

It told Dan to fake a headache a couple of times to go and see Phil.

It told Dan to not lose his temper when Phil found the vodka in his and Pj's room and Pj insisted it was Dan's.

It told him to calmly explain to Phil that it was Pj's and that Dan would do any blood tests to prove it.

But now, as Dan was packing up to leave rehab, it told Dan to do something a little different. He opened up the first drawer in his dresser and crossed out all the rude messages in it. Instead he replaced the terrible messages with new ones.

It gets better

You can do it

Never lose hope <3

It was cheesy and kind of-okay, very-stupid, but Dan couldn't help it. It was true, and like sweet little Phil, Dan wanted to help people. He new the truth behind the people who drown themselves in alcohol every night. They were not bad people, no. They were just broken people who ignored the little voice in their head, the one that would help them get better.

People can inspire you to help others or help yourself, but when it come down to it, you're the only one who can save yourself.

The voice will tell him to agree to go on his first date with Phil.

It will tell him that he has a crush on Phil and has since he first saw him.

It will tell him to come out to his family.

It will tell him to look into beautiful bright blue eyes and say 'I do'.

It will tell him to sign those adoption papers. Daniel James Howell-Lester.

It will tell him that it's okay to explain why Daddy and Papa don't drink all the same 'grown up' drinks as all their friends' Daddies drink to his children.

It will tell him to tell his children that no, having two Dads isn't weird.

It will tell him that it's okay to cry as his youngest child leaves for university.

It will tell him that he wants to stay with Phil until the day he dies.

And he will listen to it. Always and forever, because he's learned from his mistakes.

[davidaolson]

Man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage. ~Morris West

One of my most favoritist personality traits of India is encapsulated in the rich heritage preserved in ancient artifices, hallowed monuments, and the venerable temples with roots stretching into a history built on the cradle of civilization in the Indus valley. The first leg of our trip was to the Ancient caves at Ellora and Ajanta in Maharashtra.

To and Fro

Our jumping off point was the city of Pune, a city I have been associated with since 2006, a place I hung my hat for a memorable 18 months. There are friends living there, friends so close to my heart, I count them as mi familia, my family.  I would have preferred to fly to  Aurangabad to see the caves, however, there were no direct flights from Pune making air time equivalent to road time. So, we decided to rent a car with a driver. It was a fortuitous decision as our other internal flights in India were fraught with delays causing us to completely miss out on our planned visit to Body Gaya.

It’s 160 miles by car from Pune to Ellora. In US terms, we are looking at 2 to 2.5 hours. India traffic easily doubles the time for the same distance or longer depending on the time of day traffic conditions. Ajanta is a further 65 miles, clocking up a return trip close to 9 hours, 9 brutal, traffic-y hours of stop and go, horn blaring, kidney shaking travel.

Ellora Caves

We left on Monday at 5 am for Ellora Caves arriving around 10:30…just in time for the peak sun hours.

Ellora consists of 100 caves 34 which are open to the public. They are Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu in nature dating between 600 to 1000 AD. All the caves were amazing with the pièce de résistance being #16, the Kailasa Temple, a megalith excavated from a single, solid rock. When we arrived, there was a VVIP (very, very, important person, one step up from the common VIP) at Kailasa so it was temporarily closed. We decided to start with the furthermost caves, the Jain caves. A low fee, 20 rupees, shuttle service is provided for the round trip. It was accessible by foot but that would have been a rather long walk on what was already a warm day.

Jain Caves

Jain Cave Entrances

Elephant @ Jain Caves

Jain Cave Interior

Jain Cave Interior

Jain Cave Interior

Jain Cave Elephants

Jain Cave Interior

Jain Cave Interior

Jain Cave Interior

Jain Cave Interior

Irene Shooting Pics

Cave 16: Kailasa Temple

What was once solid rock was carved out by hand revealing the Kailasa Temple. How did the ancients know this marvelous temple was hidden inside solid rock?

It is a cave the boggles the imagination. It is a work of art I would love to have wandered for a couple of lifetimes. I could have spent the entire day at this temple, this one temple were not 33 others demanding our presence. I would have like to have been able to sit silently and grown into the rock, feel the vibrations, the meditations of long deceased monks, if not for the noisy people colliding with the exhaled meditations sending them into disarray. But for my monkey brain, my thoughts would have danced with the ancient craftsmen (craftswomen?) in their quest to unite with the universal consciousness through exquisite design.

Internally, there were many large elephant carvings, sentinels guarding the main section of the temple. Quite a few still had trunks intact. With carvings, trunks, human arms, human necks are the first to be broken off. They are the thinnest point and the most vulnerable. Subcaves were carved into the rock surrounding the temple, facing the temple. The ancients included an overhang to protect from the intense sun and blowing monsoon rains.

Cave 16 Entrance

Elephants

Elephants

Interior View

Elephants

Elephants

Elephants

Elephants

View From Beneath Overhang

Pillared Passageway

Interior View

Temple Detail

Interior View

Local Color

View Going Up Outside

View from Top Side

Kalisha (Cave 16) From On High

Other Ellora Caves

The number for each cave was clearly marked on the well-maintained, ocassionally flower lined, walkway allowing us to reference them in the guidebook we purchased. Each was magnificent in its own right. None, however, exuded the aura of #16.

Relief from the Heat

Nandi

Internal Carvings

Internal Buddha

7 Seated Buddhas

Seated Buddha & Pillars

Three Level Cave

Cave Entrance

Cave Façade

Cave Façade

Tiny Waterfall

Traditional Garb

Couple

Stupa & Buddha & Monk

Cave Façade

Cave Façade

Cave Façade

Three Level Cave

Pretty Flowers

Sun Raining On Flowers

Macaque

Butt End of Dominant Male Macaque

Gray Langur

Ajanta Caves

Telling stories with visuals is an ancient art. We’ve been drawing pictures on cave walls for centuries. It’s like what they say about the perfect picture book. The art and the text stand alone, but together, they create something even better. ~Deborah Wiles

Following an overnight in Aurangabad at a Vivanta Taj hotel, we headed out at 7am to arrive by 9 am opening. We knew there would be a long ride home and we wanted to get out around noon. Our driver dropped us off at the park entrance, the only parking lot. We made our way through the gauntlet of vendors and hopped on the first bus to the caves. We did not escape the gauntlet unscathed. A seller latched on to us, took us to the busses, and made sure we were on the first bus. In exchange, he extracted from us a promise to visit his store on the return trip. He was waiting at the bus stop upon our return. The shop visit was less than pleasant with him trying to extort high prices from us. As we left, one of his workers followed us all the way to the car carrying an item I found interesting finally dropping the price to reasonable. I was annoyed at the hard sell tactics to refused to purchase his products. Had he been reasonable at first visit, I definitely would have purchased the item.

Anyway, the 10-minute ride, again for around 40 rupees, a very inexpensive rate, took us over rough roads. The bus had poor suspension and we felt every bang and shudder in our bones.

Ajanta is a set of 29 rock cut, Buddhist caves that were inhabited by monks Aum-ing the world into a unified mind energy. I wonder if the ancients wore saffron robes like the modern monks? These caves are much older than Ellora dating as far back as the 2nd century BC through 650 AD. In addition to rock sculptures, there are significant frescoes (paintings on the rocks.) They are all accessible via a contiguous walkway.

Hint: Almost every cave required shoe removal prior to entry. Wear sandals or easy slip-on shoes to ease the transitions. I wore tie shoes…mistake #1.

Many of the carvings were similar to those in Ellora. Which is not surprising since there is Buddhist influence at both sites. There were more stupas in the Ajanta caves which makes sense since stupas are a common component in Buddhist symbology. I was reminded of the Karla caves nearer to Pune. One of the last caves in the set contained a magnificent reclining Buddha. Whether the Buddha was resting or deceased, I was not sure. The differences between the two are small and I am not attuned to the subtlety of the differences. I did encounter a deceased Buddha at Polonnaruwa in Sri Lanka. It’s a place I highly recommend visiting. Go in Winter to avoid the high Sri Lankan humidity.

The primary attraction of Ajanta is the promise of frescoes. They were piecemeal, faded by hundreds of years of outside light, and smoke from thousands of fires. Unfortunately, the frescoes are very, very difficult to photograph with a DLSR camera. Flash is prohibited since repeated exposure degrades the paint. And, there are low awnings in front of the cave with the most spectacular frescoes preventing much outside light from entering. Surprisingly, the iPhone was much better at capturing pictures in low light than my DSLR. All the frescoes photos are taken with my iPhone.

Frescoes

Carvings

Buddhas

Cave Carving

Cave Entryway

Cave Carving

Cave Carving

Porters for the Physically Challenged

Irene & Stupa

Stupa

Elephant #1

Elephant #2

Elephant #1

Cave Carving

Stupa in Cave

Stupa with Buddha Carving

Irene with Guide Book

Cave Carving

Reclining Buddha Head

Reclining Buddha Body

Stupa

Stupa Buddha Carving

Chilling @ Stupa

Playing @ Stupa

View from Further Out

Cave Entrance

Exterior Carving

A Cave Entrance

Goats on the Path

Panorama of Ajanta Caves

  Conclusion

I am a pasty complected, white-haired Westerner. In photographic terms, I would be a negative image of the Indians visiting these sites. Because I am an anomaly, I was stopped countless times, my wife a few less than countless, by locals wanting pictures taken with me and them, her and them, us and them. You can see the request coming. People slyly point, whisper together, then inch their way over with the request balanced on their lips. I said yes all but once (for which I soon felt guilty) because I was getting tired of posing. I understand a little how a celebrity must feel when hounded by the paparazzi.

I wasn’t sure about the clothing requirements so I wore long pants. Mistake #2. At points, the heat overwhelmed me and I had to roll up my pants knicker style. Shorts would have been a much better and culturally acceptable choice.

If we had the opportunity to do this part of the trip all over again, we would choose to visit Ellora only. We found it to be more spectacular than Ajanta. The additional driving time required for Ajanta, we felt, was not the best use of our time.

Next Up: The Golden Temple of Amritsar

India 2017 Part 1 – Ancient Caves of Ellora and Ajanta Man is a creature who walks in two worlds and traces upon the walls of his cave the wonders and the nightmare experiences of his spiritual pilgrimage.