calling the book unintentionally queer was my greatest mistake. The book IS QUEER. It’s UNAPOLOGETICALLY gay. Pratchett really put his whole p. put his. his whole-
if I had a nickel for every piece of media I consumed about the military that was unintentionally queer, anti military, and had vampires in it I’d have two nickels
I love the dynamic in the Discworld fandom on this site, I think it’s mainly because there are a lot of dormant fans, if you will, who’ve read and loved the books for years but haven’t engaged much recently, who sort of reappear whenever a fun post is doing the rounds. It’s fantastic. We get the cozy small fandom vibe without the screaming matches, but also get the popular posts from time to time, y'know?
YEP. In fact for some people it’s Emotions Day right now.
To everyone tagging and commenting with some variation of “Oh, I almost forgot that it’s tomorrow!”
“Damn! Damn! Damn! 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. And today, of all days…”
blessings blessings, indira varma is such a great narrator; oddly enough she does sound a lot like celia imrie at times, even enounces in a curiously similar manner, BUT thank god! steers clear of pronouncing “gyta” as bleeding “g-ai-tah”
serafinowicz has a VOICE for sure but he ain’t no nigel planer; i don’t think those parts are working
Today is the 25th of May. An important day for all Terry Pratchett’s enthusiasts. An important day in the life of Samuel Vimes, a man from whom you might learn a couple of interesting things.
“That’s the way it was. Privilege, which just means ‘private law.’ Two types of people laugh at the law; those that break it and those that make it.”
“You took an oath to uphold the law and defend the citizens without fear or favor,” said Vimes. “And to protect the innocent. That’s all they put in. Maybe they thought those were the important things. Nothing in there about orders, even from me. You’re an officer of the law, not a soldier of the government.”
“You realized that people like Carcer were not mad. They were incredibily sane. They were simply men without a shield. They’d looked at the world and realized that all the rules didn’t have to apply to them, not if they didn’t want them to. They weren’t fooled by all the little stories. They shook hands with the beast.”
“Vimes had spent his life on the streets, and had met decent men and fools and people who’d steal a penny from a blind beggar and people who performed silent miracles or desperate crimes every day behind the grubby windows of little houses, but he’d never met The People. 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.”
“Fred Colon hadn’t reached Vimes’ level of sophisticated despair. Vimes took the view that life was so full of things happening erratically in all directions that the chances of any of them making some kind of relevant sense were remote in the extreme.”
Describing Terry Pratchett’s books is difficult. Someone asked me what the book I was reading was about, and I had to tell them it was about banking and the gold standard, but like in a cool way with golems and action.
I don’t think they believed me.
welcome to the club
It is so, so difficult to explain to people that your favorite book is about transgender feminist dwarves, Nazi werewolves, and the mystery of a missing piece of really old ritual bread. And Opera saves the day.
yes, give us those sweet, sweet, terrible descriptions
A tortoise who’s really a god, finds an allegory for Jesus and they go on adventures in an ancient greece like place and then a desert
The chief of police averts a rerun of an ancient war, partially despite and partially because of being possessed by a dying dwarf’s graffiti
It’s like Les Miserables but Javert is the good guy and also there’s time travel.
Macbeth but it’s about the witches
Chapter one, the protagonist is hanged. Then he’s put in charge of the post office. Yes, in that order.
it’s like mulan if there were way more mulans in mulan and also pratchett is extra irritated that too many people missed the point of jingo
The bureaucrats of the universe get annoyed at the paperwork humanity causes so they decide to steal Christmas. Replacement Christmas is done by Death and replacement Death is done by goth Mary Poppins, who is also in charge of the investigation.
these are all nice and accurate reasons to read discworld if you haven’t yet
Romeo and Juliet football AU but the other team is wizards
Hollywood????
An entire clan of tattooed, hairy, kleptomaniac, alcoholic Scotsmen decide a little girl is their new best friend whether she wants to be or not and she rescues her absolutely worthless brother by discovering the power of selfishness.
Someone is dying, journalism is being invented, and part of Pulp Fiction is going on in the background.
The universes burocrats want to measure everything so they pay a man to imprison time so everything will stop and they can measure things in peace. Goth mary Poppins saves the day, the fifth horseman of the apocalypse is the best Milkman in the world, and chocolate saves the day. Also someone was born twice.
Classic dynastic machinations are happening in fantasy China, to be completely overturned by a gang of elderly barbarian heroes and the world’s worst wizard and best sprinter
A sad, pathetic male of his species re-plumbs the depths of his soul and saves the city by wooing a powerful female. The same thing happens to a dragon.
…And all the above are true. :)
Someone invents a) affirmative action and b) black powder firearms. This makes a lot of people very angry and is widely regarded as a bad move.
A convicted (and executed) conman is given the job of looking after the moribund municipal government service and ends up fighting the corrupt businessmen who took over the internet and put it behind a giant paywall.
Cinderella but it’s about the fairy godmothers (and their opposite numbers), with bonus Frog Princess reversed, Puss-in-Boots reversed, vodoun/ Santería reversed, Casanova sort of reversed, and Wizard of Oz reversed, with musings along the way about identity, justice vs. mercy, and inedible bread,
Midsummer Night’s Dream meets Fake Boudicca, with bonus teen identity, how to spot and avoid grooming, the purpose of royalty, the purpose of witches, and bees.
Dracula, but with religion, resisting manipulation, the nature of sin, and Dissociative Identity Disorder.
Assassins Creed meets Egyptian Mythology; there are time loops, reanimated mummies, and camels are mathematical geniuses. Also technically incest but it’s okay?
Proto-Socialist policeman and reluctant noble solves a murder, avenges genocide, and learns kung-fu. There’s high-speed chase shenanigans and a lethal butler. Also harp music and jokes about novelists.
It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going around to atheists’ houses and smashing their windows.
