#hwel

[witchwithoutsteading]

[aeshnacyanea2000]

The road, Hwel felt, had to go somewhere. This geographical fiction has been the death of many people. Roads don’t necessarily have to go anywhere, they just have to have somewhere to start.

-- Terry Pratchett - Wyrd Sisters

[pratchettquotes]

There was the kind of big, empty silence made by an environment that not only doesn't have any people in it, but doesn't need them either.

Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

[cuppadoppio]

Kiss your friend's calloused finger tips so tenderly

[joemerl]

The Pratchettian explanation for all my plot bunnies.

[puckpocketed]

im uh. im getting word Igor Chernyshov dropped real far in the draft partially because he didn't skate at the Gold Star camp . and um. if im hearing this right he didn't skate because he was sunburned real bad?? hwel;lo.. Cherny . CHERNY. did you fall into the Sharks' hands because u didn't slip slop slap that sunscreen on. our sunburnt little guy?? aloe vera + spf stonks soaring as he joins us in california????? HELP

[unseenwizzard]

Ok, so maybe I'm reading into this... but.

I think the witch books really prove granny's (and I guess a few other magic users) rule about not using magic to medle in politics and how any time you use magic to alter something you keep having to use stronger and stronger magic to keep it that way.

Stick with me here pls. Spoilers for all the witches books ahead!

In wyrd sisters, they win and get Verence crowned because granny breaks her own rule and uses magic to interfere. She uses it on the entire kingdom. And it was the right choice to interfere, and the entire kingdom literally begged her to do it (and all the townspeople begged nanny)

buuut...

In lords and ladies, Verence is the one who planned the wedding for midsummer and sent to Hwel and tomjon for the play the elves used to help break through the dancers. Granny told him not to give magrat a chance to worry her way out of marrying him and kept magrat in the dark and pushed her away.

After that, well, the gentry. happen. The entire kingdom is affected, a witch was the one who powered the circle in the first place, and only stronger magic than granny used in wyrd sisters can fix it

Then.

Verence invited the vampyres. They want to take over the entire kingdom and turn them into blood bags... cattle? Only more witches, a magic ax, and an even stronger and smarter granny can beat them.

And sure. A lot of this was necessary to create an interesting narrative five books in with all those characters but it still seems like every threat to Verences crown is because of a magical being and the witches have to step in and stop it every time.

The disc and its magic is so unpredictable and seems to work through things and use them so I could see it using magical creatures to try rebalancing what granny changed. (and the beings trying to take over are at least as terrible as the duke and duchess)

And it's s so interesting that even though granny thinks she's always right but also always exempt from her own rules she was right about the rules and wrong about being exempt.

Maybe this is nothing but it feels like something to me...... 🧙‍♀️🧙

[ao3cassandraic]

Do you think the Librarian's ever wandered in The Bookshop via L-Space?

I think it a bit more likely that he and Aziraphale met up at the British Library. Aziraphale's bookshop is not actually a library -- per Word of Neil, I believe, Aziraphale doesn't want to lend his books or deal with people! -- so L-Space won't get the Librarian there.

I can totally see them bonding over the British Library Treasures Gallery (sorry, I can't link you to the BL's own website, it's still down after garbage humans hit the BL with ransomware), however. Aziraphale can do a small miracle to disguise the Librarian suitably, I'm sure.

If we take Berwick Street as the approximate location of the bookshop, it's about a half-hour's constitutional to the British Library. Certainly doable. It's not far from Regent's Park, either, so they might take in a Hwel Shakespeare production together.

[jenreadsstuff]

Guards! Guards! thoughts...

It's not hard to see why this is many people's favourite book of the series, or why it's often recommended as a good starting point for Discworld newbies. It's both a classic story about a hardened detective tackling a crime, and a subversion of police stories, with some genuinely funny comedy and fantasy elements that don't require much suspension of disbelief.

* Some of the Roundworld parody in the series sometimes feel clunky (see my thoughts on Hwel's comedy inspirations in Wyrd Sisters) but I adore the Dirty Harry references in G!G! Pterry's mock-Latin (Latatian?) jokes are wonderful, and FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC is a gem.

* One thing I like very much about the series is Pterry's approach to writing romance. He manages to capture both the grand sweeping cinematic moments and the small awkward moments, and sometimes moments that are both at the same time! There's a moment near the end where Vimes realises that "someone who thought you were worth smiling at" is about the best one can hope for, and I genuinely teared up at that.

* Also Sybil Ramkin is truly magnificent. While I'm still sometimes uncomfortable at early-Pterry's tendency towards fatphobia, I do love that here is a large woman who is magnificent partly because she is large - she has presence and takes up space and knows she deserves to do so.

* Fantasy casting thought: Vimes is always played by Sean Bean in my head.

* I enjoy the philosophical aspects of the Watch books, Vimes' pessimistic optimism contrasted with Vetinari's optimistic pessimism, and the misguided ambitions of the Brotherhood.

* All in all, this is a terrific book which still makes me laugh more than 25 years after the first time I read it.

[airlock]

it’s another beautiful year for valentines hell! unfortunately, due to various complications, I couldn’t finish my usual batch of eight cards -- but I’ve managed to get six of them out anyway, so, it wasn’t so bad, I’d say! the same cannot be said of the cards themselves, but that’s the whole idea. anyway, maybe I’ll end up making ten of ‘em next year instead, since that sort of thing normally ends up happenning

regardless, though, here’s the roundup of the ones that went out this year! ... half of them have a significant nickname, funny enough. also this is the first year in a long time where I didn’t draw any fire emblem blorbos at all. quirky bunch all around

Maki Nishikino (Love Live! series) for @asexualglimmer​

Rika Furude (Higurashi: When They Cry, etc.) for @cutetalitarian​

Ron DeLite & Desirée DeLite (Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials & Tribulations) for @nastypass​

(ron’s text in the lighter two shades reads: “spicen thingues up. but not lik a thrid hwel i mean a thresssum i wold jus watchen bt i don think dess wuod be col w tht” ; “fine wht this rieght. its not liek i mind beign remindened of whene i almos went to jaeil”)

Julianne “Jill” Natalie Stingray (VA-11 HALL-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action) for @psyb0t​

Qiu “Autumn” Lin (Our Life: Now & Forever) for @purplespacefairy​

Daisukenojo “Beat” Bito (The World Ends With You, etc.) for @thechavanator​

[iconuk01]

Hwel the Dwarf from the Discworld's "Wyrd Sisters" shares your pain.

He's a playright in the cod-medavil world who has a problem...

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.

Such a one was Hwel. Enough inspirations to equip a complete history of the performing arts poured continuously into a small heavy skull designed by evolution to do nothing more spectacular than be remarkably resistant to axe blows. [...]

Hwel pinched the bridge of his nose and squinted wearily at the wax-spattered paper.

The play wasn't going at all well.

He'd sorted out the falling chandelier, and found a place for a villain who wore a mask to conceal his disfigurement, and he'd rewritten one of the funny bits to allow for the fact that the hero had been born in a handbag. It was the clowns who were giving him trouble again. They kept changing every time he thought about them. He preferred them in twos, that was traditional, but now there seemed to be a third one, and he was blowed if he could think of any funny lines for him.

His quill moved scratchily over the latest sheet of paper, trying to catch the voices that had streamed through his dreaming mind and had seemed so funny at the time.

His tongue began to stick out of the corner of his mouth. He was sweating. This iss My Little Study, he wrote. Hey, with a Little Study youe could goe a Long Way. And I wishe youed start now. Iffe You can't leave yn a Cab then leave yn a Huff. Iffthates too soone, thenn leave yn a minute and a Huff. Say, have you Gott a Pensil? A crayon?

Hwel stared at this in horror. On the page it looked nonsensical, ridiculous. And yet, and yet, in the thronged auditorium of his mind... He dipped the quill in the inkpot, and chased the echoes further.

Seconde Clown: Atsa right, Boss.

Third Clowne: [businesse with bladder on stick] Honk. Honk.

Hwel gave up. Yes, it was funny, he knew it was funny, he'd heard the laughter in his dreams. But it wasn't right. Not yet. Maybe never. It was like the other idea about the two clowns, one fat, one thin... Thys ys amain Dainty Messe youe have got me into, Stanleigh... He had laughed until his chest ached, and the rest of the company had looked at him in astonishment. But in his dreams it was hilarious

Sir Terry Pratchett - Wyrd Sisters

i want to coin a phrase that's the opposite of writer's block. call it the muse's fire hydrant. thirty thousand story ideas are being beamed directly into your brain and if you don't write them all at once you will die.

[aeshnacyanea2000]

She had pulled out of her pocket a pair of tickets, placed there by Dr Hix in his attempt to spread darkness and despondency throughout the world by the means of amateur dramatics, to the Dolly Sisters Players’ production of Starcrossed by Hwel the Playwright.

-- Terry Pratchett - Unseen Academicals

[pratchettquotes]

The road, Hwel felt, had to go somewhere.

This geographical fiction has been the death of many people. Roads don't necessarily have to go anywhere, they just have to have somewhere to start.

Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters

[vinescreens]

Discworld - Wyrd Sisters

[moiracolleenodell]

“A voice from behind the nearest pillar wailed, ‘I went and bent the thunder, Hwel! It just goes clonk-clonk!’“

i'm sorry i wiggled your skinny boyfriend like a sheet of metal. weeop womp weeoop womp weeeoop womp

[sator-the-wanderer]

Discworld sketchdump - Wyrd Sisters

“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.”