#the truth terry pratchett

[p4nishers]

i haven't seen ANYONE talk about this scene yet its genuinely so fucking important to the vetvimes agenda you dont get it every time i read it my eye starts twitching like what do u MEAN vimes smiled. what do u mean he never simply SMILES its always he smirked he grimaced he smiled bitterly he smiled meanly etc etc whatever but here he just SMILES at WILLIAM who he doesn't even fucking LIKE but they're talking about VETINARI who supposedly KILLED SOMEONE and vimes fucking smiles at a mention of one of vetinari's little habits which vimes usually likes to pretend he a) doesn't notice anything about vetinari ever and b) what he might inadvertently notice he never likes. but HERE he's smiling and he's very very much implying he knows vetinari far better than fucking anyone like is it just me or does this sound like him talking fondly about a romantic partner am i crazy im not crazy hes crazy for this

[noirandchocolate]

He knew about concerned citizens.  Whoever they were, they all spoke the same private language where ‘traditional values’ mean 'hang someone.’

Terry Pratchett, “The Truth”

[tak-angina-jasne]

because i ve seen a lot of people talking about starting discworld

REMEMBER THERE ARE FREE AUDIOBOOKS OF ALL OF THOSE BOOKS

here they are

[elliottjpg]

"Boo."

Happy Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May to all who observe.

Like last year, I opted to do a redraw of an old drawing from 2020; a companion piece to my previous drawing, a redraw from 2019. Night Watch is a good context to revisit the past and look at how I've evolved.

Rise up!

[stupidphototricks]

Nobody's doing it like Otto Chriek. He's a vampire who has sworn off drinking b-word. He likes hanging out in cellars and hanging from chandeliers. Photography is his passion, and his passion is painful and comes with a high risk of discorporation. He experiments with dark light and philosophizes about the nature of time. He figures out how to create photo plates with hardly any effort. He invents the three-color printing process. He designs a method to auto-reanimate himself. He lays down his life for the team (but then picks it up again*).

*(yes this is a joke from the book, all credit to Sir Terry)

William caught Sacharissa's gaze. Her look said it all: We've hired him. Have we got the heart to fire him now? And don't make fun of his accent unless your Uberwaldean is really good, okay? -- Terry Pratchett, The Truth

"Vell?" he said sternly. "Vot you all looking at? It is just a normal reaction, zat is all. I am vorking on it. Light in all itz forms is mine passion. Light is my canvas, shadows are my brush." "But strong light hurts you!" said Sacharissa. "It hurts vampires!" "Yes. It iss a bit of a bugger, but zere you go." -- Terry Pratchett, The Truth

William vaguely remembered something someone had once said: the only thing more dangerous than a vampire crazed with blood lust was a vampire crazed with anything else. All the meticulous single-mindedness that went into finding young women who slept with their bedroom door open got channeled into some other interest, with merciless and painstaking efficiency. -- Terry Pratchett, The Truth

"Good mornink," said Otto. "Do not movink, please, you are making a good pattern of light and shade." -- Terry Pratchett, The Truth

"I cannot promise an absolutely vunderful job first cat out of zer bag, off course." -- Terry Pratchett, The Truth

"Bodrozvachski zhaltziet! …oh, sorry, Miss Sacharissa! Zere has been a minor pothole on zer road to progress…" -- Terry Pratchett, The Truth

"Zer philosopher Heidehollen tells us zat the universe is just a cold soup of time, all time mixed up together, and vot we call zer passage of time is merely qvantum fluctuations in zer fabric of space-time." -- Terry Pratchett, The Truth

(Sounds kind of like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff...)

"It [dark light] is a light without time. Vot it illuminates, you see . . . is not necessarily now." -- Terry Pratchett, The Truth

"You vanted color, I gif you color," said Otto sulkily. "You never said qvick." -- Terry Pratchett, The Truth

A couple of bits that are more spoilerish under the cut:

That thing where Otto screams and (sometimes) turns to ash when he takes a picture is particularly funny if you imagine it from the point of view of the unwitting photographic subject, in this case Cheery Littlebottom:

"Ah, a vonderful framing effect!" said Otto, who'd been on the other side of the door. Click! William shut his eyes. WHOOMPH. "Ohhbuggerrrrr . . ." This time William caught the little piece of paper before it hit the ground. The dwarf stood open-mouthed. Then she closed her mouth. Then she opened it again to say: "What the hell just happened?" "I suppose you could call it a sort of industrial injury," said William. -- Terry Pratchett, The Truth

And the scene where Otto goes up against William's father is just a thing of beauty.

"Ve have people like you back home," he said. "Zey are the ones that tell the mob vot to do. I come here to Ankh-Morpork, zey tell me things are different, but really it is alvays the same. Always zere are damn people like you! And now, vot shall I do with you?" [...] "You think I bite him? Shall I bite you, Mister Lordship? Vell, maybe not, because Villiam here thinks I am a good person." He pulled Lord de Worde close, so their faces were a few inches apart. "Now, maybe I have to ask myself, how good am I? Or maybe I just have to ask myself… am I better zan you?" He hesitated for a second or two, and then in a sudden movement jerked the man towards him. With great delicacy, he planted a kiss on Lord de Worde's forehead. Then he put the trembling man back down on the floor and patted him on the head. -- Terry Pratchett, The Truth

[pandaimitator]

Listening to a history podcast on the history of printing in England and they mention this guy as being 1, one of the first printers in England, and 2, having the best name for a printer

And I'm like...that sounds familiar...only as William de Worde, which is of course this guy

I see what you did there Pratchett

[leona-florianova]

The Times gang..but mainly more sketches of Otto

[chameleonsallinvermillion]

I always forget just how good The Truth is until I reread it. Not just the central mystery but the themes of it! The way it marks such a sharp change from the old Ankh-Morpork to the new one we'd see in the later books, far more than any of the Watch books ever do.

And William! A character of all time. This awkward little man who believes passionately in truth because "don't tell lies" was quite literally beaten into him as a child, who then tells a lie to protect the one who did the beating. This man with very few social skills who earns the loyalty of his coworkers with his sheer passion. William who was raised to be a bigot and is fighting those instincts every step of the way.

When the dark light reveals the spectre of his father looming over his shoulder all the time! When his father threatens to kill him and he is relieved! When Otto compares William's internal struggle to overcome the lessons he was taught as a child, the racist, classist, cruel beliefs of his family, with his own struggle to not drink blood.

I adore this man. I adore how electrified he is when he's trying to solve a conspiracy, how brave, how dedicated - and it never shows up again. In all other books, from the perspective of other characters, he's a stuffy straitlaced stick-in-the-mud. Nobody else ever sees what his coworkers see of him, what his father finally sees of him.

William De Worde is important to me because the only other person who ever truly Gets It, the only character in the whole of Discworld canon who seems to understand him, is Otto. Sacharissa does a little but it's Otto who really knows him. Otto fighting not to be a bloodsucking monster, with the help of cocoa and a singsong, and William fighting not to be a metaphorical bloodsucking monster, with the help of his colleagues and their faith in him.

[deboracabral]

'Oh, yes?' said Otto, still advancing. 'You think I am a it? Vell, let me act like an it?'

[mortispoxi]

The only time we ever got an age range for Drumknott is when he's described by William de Worde as being a young man in The Truth, which by its definition means he was anywhere between 18 and 25 years old during the events of the story, but it's never specified how old he actually is.

Drumknott canonically being a young man is wild to think about since we also know The Truth takes place approximately 4 years after the events of Men at Arms, which is when he makes his first introduction to the series as just a regular palace clerk. So, with all that in mind, it is not entirely out of the realm of possibility to think that Drumknott started working under Vetinari when he was an older teen and then became his secretary when he turned 18.

Granted, Drumknott is excellent at what he does so he was always a shoe in for the position, but even so, Vetinari really hired this kid and then later went "Yes, I trust this teenager with my life. I’m going to promote him to be in charge of all the files."

[emmalily]

Here I am when I'm meant to be asleep, silently yelling TERRY!! because I just realized that the dwarf Goodmountain in The Truth is the literal definition of Gutenberg. 🤦🏻

[p4nishers]

god dude but like the truth is the MOST we get of wuffles and hes always ALWAYS been the terrier vimes was being compared to vetinari's little attack lap dog and we learn wuffles calls vetinari GOD in his head and digs his teeth in and bites and bites ppl to the bone for hurting vetinari. vetinari's terrier. vimes spends the entire book digging and digging and not letting go bc he knows he KNOWS vetinari didn't do shit and is prepared to bite to the bone the moment he finds who did this to vetinari like i just

[pratchettquotes]

"The horse was saddled. The saddlebags contained...seventy thousand dollars...Captain, this is damned stupid."

"I know, sir," said Carrot. "They are the facts, sir."

"But they're not the right facts! They're stupid facts!"

"I know, sir. I can't imagine His Lordship trying to kill anyone."

"Are you mad?" said Vimes. "I can't imagine him saying sorry!"

Terry Pratchett, The Truth

[theygotlost]

LIES / TRUTH

[dearlittlebuttercup]

[stupidphototricks]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But man. That g'daraka thing sounds wonderful.