#or carpe jugulum

[nym-wibbly]

My Bonds in Thee by Nym on AO3 Fandom: Good Omens (TV) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley Additional Tags: Second Kiss, First Time, Character Study, Flashbacks, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Post-Series 2, Hell is Terrible, Heaven is Terrible, Ineffable Idiots, Ducks, Lack of Communication, different exactlys Chapters: 19/? Summary: Aziraphale comes back. Their love was never in doubt but they still have different exactlys.

1839. London. The Hesperus Club. A demon, broken and bleeding, hunches naked on the tiled floor. His knees beneath his chin, arms wrapped around his legs, he'd succeed at making himself appear small if not for his wings. They're magnificent, as wings go—black, broad—but they're not currently obeying the demon's will and they've seen better days. They droop weakly behind him, spreading across the wet floor like spilt ink, pulling against his visceral need to curl into a ball and vanish into stillness. An angel kneels behind him, slowly scooping water from the bathing pool with the cup of his hand; patiently pouring it over the demon's wounds. Blood and water mingle, pooling over the moss-green tiles and trickling towards the brass-lattice drains. Towards the pool, where the water slowly darkens to rusty brown. "Crowley," the angel prompts when the demon begins to crumple, ready to join his useless wings in a boneless sprawl across the floor—something fit for a gothic painter or the pen of a tortured poet. At the angel's voice, Crowley stops himself falling (but he's always falling; a raging star plunging in cold fire across the heavens towards bottomless destruction). With such effort, he holds himself still. Allows the angel to wash the neglect from his wounds and then, when the wounds are raw enough to begin healing, to gather up one raven wing at a time in careful, angelic hands, folding Crowley like the limp bellows of a broken accordion. Hissing with pain—and it is a hiss, fork-tongued, instinctive, and warning—Crowley tugs his right wing from the angel's grasp and sits up a little straighter. With more of an effort, he folds both wings against his back. Brittle feathers break quietly against the ground. "Oh, but they're filthy, my dear. Let me—" "Someone'll come in here. They'll see." Crowley glances towards the doors. He's suddenly alert enough, present enough, to know that time has passed since he came to this place, and that it's a human place. His wings shrug themselves unthinkingly into some other sliver of reality, safely out of sight, exposing more bloody sores on his flanks for the angel's fussing hands to tend. Water and prayers, wasted on him. "No one will come," soothes the angel (but his voice shakes, too angry and hurt to soothe anyone). "No one will see. You're safe now. I promise." Crowley nods automatically. Safe. Yes. Safe from the humans, anyway. The angel's made sure of that. "Thank you." He grits his teeth when the angel tips water over a crusted gash beneath his ribs, refusing to make another sound. "Don't mention it, my dear." The saddest part is, the angel really, really means that.

[brontesauruses]

"People as things, that's where it starts."

Carpe Jugulum (Discworld #23) - Terry Pratchett

Going Postal (Discworld #32) - Terry Pratchett

[the-grey-hunt]

[cessreads]

I want to be granny weatherwax when I grow up!

[cosmicrhetoric]

carpe jugulum / small gods / lords and ladies / night watch

HERE AND NOW! HAPPY GLORIOUS 25TH!

[ross-hollander]

Something about Pratchett villains.

There's a lot of Pratchett villains who share one common thread: they're unromantic. They rip the charm and soul out of things.

Reach's service sends messages 'as warm and human as a thrown knife'. He himself 'kills people by numbers'.

Teatime is literally trying to kill Santa.

The Magpyrs turn the Gothic-vampire-novel style of the Old Count into industrial blood-harvesting.

Similarly, Wolfgang exchanges the traditional Game for just straight up killing people, and seeks to implement a werefascist regime to boot.

The Auditors are, by definition, made of unromantic. They are objectively unromantic.

And I think the idea of ripping apart the whimsy of things ties back to the idea of believing the little lies to believe the big ones. If you can't see charm and warmth, the dreams and imagination, you'll fall into what STP says is the biggest sin of all: treating people like objects.

[krowbby]

Vlad looked imploringly at Agnes, and reached out to her.

'You wouldn't let them kill me, would you? You wouldn't let them do this to me? We could have... we might... you wouldn't, would you?'

The crowd hesitated. This sounded like an important plea. A hundred pairs of eyes stared at Agnes.

She took his hand. I suppose we could work on him, said Perdita. But Agnes thought about Escrow, and the queues, and the children playing while they waited, and how evil might come animal sharp in the night, or greyly by day on a list...

'Vlad,' she said gently, looking deep into his eyes, 'I'd even hold their coats.'

granny weatherwax was such a buzzkill for not letting her tear him apart <\3

[cdyssey]

love how so much of the first half of carpe jugulum is about how much granny weatherwax is so fucking loved, even if she doesn't think that it's so.

her absence in lancre is unthinkable—an aching presence in the story. magrat has named her child after her and wants her to be the baby's godmother. she, nanny, and agnes drop everything to go and find her. they're constantly asking themselves, "what would granny do in this situation?" and then answering the question just as seamlessly because they know granny. they know her iron will and her unbending resilience, the way she fights against the darkness every single day.

she haunts the narrative because she is so deeply interwoven into the DNA of lancre and its people.

she is lancre, really, the unshakeable rock that the community organizes itself around.

and even when she's not there, her legacy is still deeply felt, living and thriving in all the people she has ever touched.

[fourdiagnosesinatrenchcoat]

She would hate this phrasing but my faith in the Church of Granny Weatherwax is being revived by this latest reread of the witches books. Her exchanges with Mightily Oats are so vital.

[libraryspectre]

[notbecauseofvictories]

it takes years for terry pratchett's books to get consistently good. I would argue that the series doesn't really hit its stride until Feet of Clay, which means that pratchett was writing and being published for 12 years before he found his groove.

and I genuinely can't imagine that. in part because I do think that pratchett's publication calendar looks different than what's expected of writers today---he had about 2 books published per year for his entire career. he must have been writing furiously, and the publisher must have relatively quickly gotten these to press.

but also....I just can't imagine any modern-day publisher keeping an author on their list for twelve years, unless that author is a prestige get or a constant presence on the bestseller list. And what does it say about the state of publishing that you can't go on publishing someone's good-but-not-revelatory books until they figure out what story they're trying to tell?

[pratchettquotes]

"Why don't you just crawl back into your coffin and die, you slimy little maggot," Agnes said. It wasn't that good, but impromptu insults are seldom well crafted.

Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum

[mywingsareonwheels]

“And sin, young man, is when you treat people like 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…”

(Granny Weatherwax, to Pastor Mightily Oats, Carpe Jugulum, Terry Pratchett.)

[asparklethatisblue]

I love how much Nanny Ogg bullies Agnes about being a boring virgin, while also being glad she’s The Maiden to round up the little group.

[clonerightsagenda]

Since I am approaching 24 hours of witches posting, was thinking about the bit in Wyrd Sisters where Granny breaks down all the duchess's justifications and compartmentalizing to force her to "see her true self" and is flummoxed when the duchess shrugs it off and goes "yes I know I've done wrong and I don't care". Granny is so fixated on all the ways she can go astray, so convinced that her true self is bad and she needs to monitor that at all times, that she can't conceive of anyone not feeling that way. Actually Granny you're not as wicked as you think you are.

[p4nishers]

thinking about the relationship between mightily oats' "the worthwhile [words] don't burn" and constable dorfl's "the words in the heart cannot be taken"