monstrous regiment is imo one of the scarier discworld books like the waves of gothic anger that roll off of it. the terror feels REAL practically the whole book takes place in shitty buildings during a wild storm and jackrum aside every single recruit is absolutely insane in their own way and the whole book is just going you bastards, look at them they’re teenagers and theyre eating rats and being shoved out to the front lines with no training and theyre either going to die in a pointless war or theyll survive and die very shortly after from poverty and yes the sock jokes are funny and yes there’s lesbians and a vampire with a caffeine addiction and yes the domino effect of finding out exactly how many women are in this story will never get old but. this book takes place in a nightmare! he wrote the gay mulan folk song story in a nightmare!
[ID: Purple text on a white background saying “The I-read-too-much-as-a-kid-and-now-I’m-genderfluid starterpack” with four book covers featured: the first book in the “Bloody Jack” series by L.A. Meyer, D'Aulaire’s “Norse Gods and Giants,” William Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” and “Monstrous Regiment” by Terry Pratchett. End ID.]
One time a nonbinary person told me to read “Monstrous Regiment,” and now I’m genderfluid.
693. A woman by herself is missing a man, while a man by himself is his own master. Trousers. That is the secret. Trousers and a pair of socks. || ‘Monstrous Regiment’
702. You only thought the world would be better if it was run by women if you didn’t actually know many women. Whenever there was an execution, and especially when there was a whipping, you always got grannies in the front row, sucking on peppermints. (suggested by an anon) || Monstrous Regiment
there are so many more than i suspected some of which are harder to explain / describe than others but here have a list of a bunch of em that i never suspected till i started a reread of all 40 DW books:
the potted plant on the porch behind them in the alley during the Tokyo battle scene – this one is very verynaughty indeed!!
the “Mark 1” device as the means by which the euhemerized hero is scarred & surviving proves himself worthy as leader of the people
the fact that the personnel carrier & observation helicopters are black Pelican-class(x) ie Coast Guard versions of the Sikorsky Sea King aircraft (x) – this is very deeply encrypted & comes thru yet another series of books that pratchett himself is referencing
helicopters in general
all the chess references
all the Shakespeare references
all the mythology references including Troy, the Riddle of the Sphinx, Frost Giants, Fountain of Youth, Sword IntoStone, Amaterasu as Wolf-Warrior guardian figure & Star Trek (what do you mean it isnt a Myth yet??)
SPOILERS BELOW THE FOLD
“analog” vs “digital” – MOVING PICTURES
Watch…
This is space. It’s sometimes called the final frontier.
(Except that of course you can’t have a final frontier, because there’d be nothing for it to be a frontier to, but as frontiers go, it’s pretty penultimate…)
And against the wash of stars a nebula hangs, vast and black, one red giant gleaming like the madness of gods…
And then the gleam is seen as the glint in a giant eye and it is eclipsed by the blink of an eyelid and the darkness moves a flipper and Great A’Tuin, star turtle, swims onward through the void.
On its back, four giant elephants. On their shoulders, rimmed with water, glittering under its tiny orbiting sunlet, spinning majestically around the mountains at its frozen Hub, lies the Discworld, world and mirror of worlds.
Nearly unreal.
Reality is not digital, an on-off state, but analog. Something gradual. In other words, reality is a quality that things possess in the same way that they possess, say, weight.
Some people are more real than others, for example. It has been estimated that there are only about five hundred real people on any given planet, which is why they keep unexpectedly running into one another all the time.
The Discworld is as unreal as it is possible to be while still being just real enough to exist.
And just real enough to be in real trouble.
now – what does this mean for the movie & the metanarrative?? a very good question ( tho i have my suspicions re Jaeger sentience implications) but one thing it absolutely does is confirm all our vague suspicions that PR is the proper & rightful sequel to THOR 1 ….& mine that branagh has been part of it for a long time too bc
“…and in that hill, it is said, a Door out of the World was found, and people of the city watched What was Seen therein, knowing not that Dread waited between the universes…”
The Librarian’s fingertip dragged from right to left across the pictures, and skipped to the next paragraph.
“…forOthers found the Gate of Holy Wood and fell upon the World, and in one nighte All Manner of Madnesse befell, and Chaos prevailed, and the City sank beneath the Sea, and all became one withe the fishes and the lobsters save for the few who fled…”
He curled a lip, and looked further down the page.
"…a Golden Warrior, who drove the Fiends back and saved the World, and said, Where the Gate is, There Am I Also; I Am He that was Born of Holy Wood, to guard the Wild Idea. And they said, What must we do to Destroy the Gate Forever, and he said unto them, This you Cannot Do, for it is Not a Thing, but I will Guard the Gate for you. And they, not having been Born yesterday, and fearing the Cure more than the Malady, said to him, What will you Take from Us, that you will Guard the Door. And he grew until he was the height of a tree and said, Only your Remembrance, that I do Not Sleep. Three times a day will you remember Holy Wood. Else The Cities of the World Will Tremble and Fall, and you will See the Greatest of them All in Flames. And with that the Golden Man took up his golden sword and went into the Hill and stood at the Gate, forever.
"And the People said to one another, Funny, he lookes just like my Uncle Osbert…”
the rosary – aka a “paternoster” (x) – from which name comes one of the oldest type of elevator (x) which is a major component of Hex the benevolent if eccentric AI introduced in INTERESTING TIMES–
He’d explained at length to the Faculty that Hex didn’t think. It was obvious that it couldn’t think. Part of it was clockwork. A lot of it was a giant ant farm (the interface, where the ants rode up and down on a little paternoster that turned a significant cogwheel was a little masterpiece, he thought) and the intricately controlled rushing of the ants through their maze of glass tubing was the most important part of the whole thing.
so they were quietly telegraphing not just Trek fixfic (x) but Trek fixfic by way of the Dysk (NOTE SPELLING) by this–
in conjunction w this imagery
bc of this
A large hourglass came down on the spring.
“What’s that for?” said Ridcully.
“Er…it shows Hex is working things out.”
“Oh. And that buzzing noise? Seems to be coming from the other side of the wall.”
Ponder coughed.
“Thatis the long-term storage, Archchancellor.”
“And how does that work?”
“Er…well, if you think of memory as a series of little shelves or, or, or holes, Archchancellor, in which you can put things, well, we found a way of making a sort of memory which, er, interfaces neatly with the ants, in fact, but more importantly can expand its size depending on how much we give it to remember and, er, is possibly a bit slow but—”
“It’s a very loud buzzing,” said the Dean. “Is it going wrong?”
“No, that shows it’s working,” said Ponder. “It’s, er, beehives.” He coughed. “Different types of pollen, different thicknesses of honey, placement of the eggs…It’s actually amazing how much information you can store on one honeycomb.”
and
But a lot of it had just…accumulated, like the aquarium and wind chimes which now seemed to be essential. A mouse had built a nest in the middle of it all and had been allowed to become a fixture, since the thing stopped working when they took it out. Nothing in that assemblage could possibly think, except in fairly limited ways about cheese or sugar.
Nevertheless…in the middle of the night, when Hex was working hard, and the tubes rustled with the toiling ants, and things suddenly went “clonk” for no obvious reason, and the aquarium had been lowered on its davits so that the operator would have something to watch during the long hours…nevertheless, then a man might begin to speculate about what a brain was and what thought was and whether things that weren’t alive could think and whether a brain was just a more complicated version of Hex (or, around 4 A.M., when bits of the clockwork reversed direction suddenly and the mice squeaked, a less complicated version of Hex) and wonder if the whole produced something not apparently inherent in the parts.
which is why i kept seeing both spider andant imagery in this bc HELLO JULIE TAYMOR COSTUMING INFLUENCES EVEN OUT OF THE DEFINING CONFINES OF THE THEATRICAL STAGE bc thats how symbolism works
incl the rejection of the notion that humanity is essentially different from the aliens bc theyare a hive mind where we are not – our gestalt might be a different setup bc we dont have telepathy but we have workarounds for that aka communication technology & i cant begin to say what a radical statement this is from a sfnal pov since most sf still operates under the premise that what sets humans apart from any presumed alien species is our Rugged Indivuality ™ that wld make us stronger than anyone else–
& what del toro & pratchett are sayin is that NOPE ITS OUR ABILITY TO FORM COOPERATIVE SOCIETIES THAT GIVES US STRENGTH TO STAND AGAINST THE DESTRUCTIVE ELEMENTS OF NATURE incl our own ( along w a ton of thoughts abt the nature of individual consciousness & AI & so forth) shorter HIVE MIND DOES NOT AUTOMATICALLY = EVIL OR OTHER
Raleigh’s photo collection – MEN AT ARMS
“I have expended three dollars on an iconograph box which, is a thing with a brownei inside that paints pictures of thing’s, this is all the Rage these days. Please find enclosed pictures of my room and my freinds in the Watch, Nobby is the one making the Humerous Gesture but he is a Rough Diamond and a good soul deep down.”
He stopped again. Carrot wrote home at least once a week. Dwarfs generally did. Carrot was two meters tall but he’d been brought up as a dwarf, and then further up as a human. Literary endeavor did not come easily to him, but he persevered.
“The weather, he wrote, very slowly and carefully, "continues Very Hot…”
YEAHTHAT LAST BIT ISNT IMPORTANT OR RELATED TO A STORY W DIRE ALLUSIONS TO MASSIVE STORM SYSTEMS NOPE NO WAY
& talent for languages – JINGO
“What’d he say? What did you say?” said Vimes. “You speak Klatchian?”
“Not very well,” said Carrot modestly. “I just can’t get the back-of-the-throat sound to—”
“But…you can understand what he said?”
which he may not share w Captain Vimes but does w someone else
“I didn’t know you spoke Klatchian, my lord.”
“Not a word,” said Lord Vetinari.
“But you—”
“I did not,” said Vetinari calmly.
"Ah…right…”
( there is a further meta joke in this scn – well one of many & not even the biggest @ that – bc of the name-magic game theyre all playing…. bc one meaning of one of the names of one of the actors here is – interpreter)
Mako as exceptionally good at staff fighting – SOUL MUSIC
Susan surprised people by being good at Sport. Some sport, anyway. Hockey, lacrosse, and rounders, certainly. Any game that involved putting a stick of some sort in her hands and asking her to swing it, definitely. The sight of Susan advancing toward goal with a calculating look made any goalie lose all faith in her protective padding and throw herself flat as the ball flashed past at waist height, making a humming noise.
so these = scythes along w the morris dance sword-stick analogs
& yes function as a Setanta | Cu Chulainn (x) story connector thereby linking ball games & guardian beasts & epics across time & space
the potted plant on the porch behind them in the alley during the Tokyo battle scene – THUD! – & the naughty / humorous aspects of the BUT IS IT ART?? q are ttly overshadowed by the confirmation of both the myffic & nonbinary nature of PR
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.
“No urns,” he said at last.
“What urns?” said Nobby.
“Nude women are only Art if there’s an urn in it,” said Fred Colon. This sounded a bit weak even to him, so he added: “Or a plinth. Both is best, o’course. It’s a secret sign, see, that they put in to say that it’s Art and okay to look at.”
“What about a potted plant?”
“That’s okay if it’s in an urn.”
“What about if it’s not got an urn or a plinth or a potted plant?” said Nobby.
“Have you one in mind, Nobby?” said Colon suspiciously.
“Yes,The Goddess Anoia Arising from the Cutlery,” said Nobby. “They’ve got it here. It was painted by a bloke with three i’s in his name, which sounds pretty artistic to me.”
“The number of i’s is important, Nobby,” said Sergeant Colon gravely, “but in these situations you have to ask yourself: ‘Where’s the cherub?’ If there’s a little fat pink kid holding a mirror or a fan or similar, then it’s still okay. Even if he’s grinning. Obviously you can’t get urns everywhere.”
Potted plant -check
Urn -check
Plinth -check
Cherub -check– which is another Sign to the knowing – “For the Cherub Cat is a term of the Angel Tiger”(x) – not only tennyson for the eng poetry refs here !! – leadin to the guardians of the points of the compass (x) WHICH IS ANOTHER REASON FOR THIS JUXTAPOSITION OF MAKO & CUTE STRETCHING CAT PIC:
ALONG W AUTUMN - check! & METAL - check! & JUSTICE & FORESIGHT & DEMON-FIGHTING ASSOC yes to all of these if we needed any further proof of her status as co-avatar of the Four here embodying the WHITE TIGER OF THE WEST – & which is also anotherunicorn aka kirin symbol….learning something new every day!! bc that assoc wasnt one i ever knew abt before
( & we all know why cats are important in Discworld …)
& oc now we see exactly how Amaterasu-as-solar-wolf – COYOTE TANGO which is also a THIEF OF TIME ref – gets helicopters as an attribute via syncretization since her identification w Guanyin (along w her folkloric role as one of the Three Oracles w her thunderstaff & wishing gem ) gives the Goddess of Lost Causes aspect bc dual meaning of “eggbeaters” & mirrors were already hers from of old so ascending = descending via mirroring along the horizontal & voila yet another classics ref & one linking w Aphrodite on several levels via the pratchett allusion to the famous Venus rising from the Waves(x)
incl the bit in the Orphic Hymns that hails Aphrodite as the great She-Wolf & motive force of all nature & a teensybit more of a badass than in the famous painting ( but even in old Italia there was an association of volcanoes & oracles )
( oh & the smiling kid is the mirror & modern fans look an awful lot like propellers ….)
the “Mark 1” as the trying-by-fire of the mythic ancient god-king who was just an ordinary soldier who saw a greater duty …which happens to require abandoning the idea of revengeon their ancient foe – THE AMAZING MAURICE & HIS EDUCATED RODENTS (yes this one blew my mind too)
The crowd opened slightly, and a man walked to the edge of the pit holding a terrier. There was some more shouting, then a ripple of laughter, and the dog was dropped in with the rats.
The Changelings stared down at the circle of death and the cheering humans.
After a minute or two Nourishing tore her gaze away. When she looked around, she caught the expression on Darktan’s face.
Maybe it wasn’t just the lamplight that made his eyes look full of fire. She saw him look along the stable to the big doors at the far end. They had been barred shut.
Then his head turned to the hay and straw piled up in the loft, and in the cribs and mangers below.
Darktan pulled a length of wood out of one of his belts.
Nourishing smelled the sulfur in the red blob on the end.
It was a match.
Darktan turned and saw her looking at him. He nodded toward the piles of hay in the loft.
“My plan might not work,” he said. “If it doesn’t, you’ll be in charge of the other plan.”
“Me?” said Nourishing.
“You. Because I won’t be…around,” said Darktan. He held out the match. “You know what to do,” he said, nodding to the nearest rack of hay.
Nourishing swallowed.
“Yes. Yes, I think so. Er…when?”
“When the time comes. You’ll know when,” said Darktan, and looked back down at the massacre.
“One way or the other I want them to remember tonight,” he said quietly. “They’ll remember what they did. And they’ll remember what we did. For as long as they…live.”
from there to here
“You’re caught in a trap!”
That was too much for Darktan, even if every word was agony.
“Oh…really?” he said.
“I’ll go and fetch S-sardines, shall I?” stammered Nourishing.
Darktan could smell the rat’s panic begin. And there wasn’t time for panic.
“No! Tell…me…” he panted, “…what… kind… of… trap?”
“Er…er…er…” said Nourishing.
Darktan took a deep, fiery breath.
“Think, you…miserable widdler!”
“Er, er…it’s all rusty…. Er…Rust everywhere! Looks like…er…could be a…Breakback.” There was a scratching noise behind Darktan. “Yes! I gnawed the rust off! It says Nugent Brothers Breakback Mk.1, sir!”
Darktan tried to think as the constant, dreadful pressure squeezed him further. Mk.1? Ancient! Something out of the dawn of time! The oldest he’d ever seen was an Improved Breakback Mk.7! And all he had to help him was Nourishing, a complete drrtlt with four left feet.
“Can you…see how…” he began, but there were purple lights in front of his eyes now, a great tunnel of purple lights. He tried again as he felt himself drift toward the lights.
“Can…you…see…how…the…spring…”
“It’s all rusted, sir!” came the panicking voice. “It looks like it’s a nonreturn action like on the Jenkins and Jenkins Big Snapper, sir, but it hasn’t got the hook on the end! What does this bit do, sir? Sir? Sir?”
Darktan felt the pain go away. So this is how it happens, he thought dreamily. Too late now. She’ll panic, and she’ll run. That’s what we do. When we’re in trouble, we bolt for the first hole. Even me. But it doesn’t matter…
only she doesnt - the squire rookie figures out how to defuse the bomb dismantle the trap on her own
There was noise. It filled the world. And the terrible, terrible pain was back. And the Big Rat shouted, in the voice of Nourishing:
“I gnawed through the spring, sir! I gnawed through the spring! It was old and weak, sir! Prob’ly why you weren’t cut in half, sir! Can you hear me, sir? Darktan? Sir? I gnawed all the way through the spring, sir! Are you still dead, sir? Sir?”
and so to
“You know I used to hang around in the theater an’ that,” said Sardines quietly. “And you pick up stuff in the theater. And the thing is…Look, what I’m saying is, you’re the leader, right? So you got to act like you know what you’re doing, okay? If the leader doesn’t know what he’s doing, no one else does, either.”
“I only know what I’m doing when I’m dismantling traps,” said Darktan.
“All right, think of the future as a great big trap,” said Sardines. “With no cheese.”
“That is notalotofhelp!”
“And you should let them think what they like about you and…that scar you’ve got,” said Sardines. “That’s my advice, guv.
"But I didn’t die, Sardines!”
“Are you sure?”
“Huh?”
“Something happened, didn’t it? You were going to set fire to the place with all the humans in it. And you decided not to. I watched you. Something happened to you in the trap…”
& so a myth starts - & thus it all makes sense bc of pratchetts retellin of the Pied Piper story as a multilayered historical allegory & parable –all the subtly implicit Rat|Mouse imagery in PR –only it shld have made sense further as part of all the Bilingual Heraldry hich extends from color to animal symbolism bc the West may have no trad of Celestial Rats but benevolent rodents are part of the great cycle in the Chinese zodiac (x) (& associated w the Goddess of Mercy as well as the God of Luck in Eastern mythology) so not only thru WIND IN THE WILLOWS (x)….
( not to mention that NONE of that was in TBs original story - no heroic leader w unhealing wound - no careful teacher talking the younger gen thru dangers as yet inexperienced - no conscious rejection of vengeance as a moral value–however it goes & i have no idea how it willbut i do know for certain that PR2 is not going to be cast in the mold of STARSHIP TROOPERS or even ENDERS GAME–)
the fact that the personnel carrier & observation helicopters are black Pelican-class (x) ie Coast Guard versions of the Sikorsky Sea King aircraft (x)– FIFTH ELEPHANT but this is very deeply encrypted & comes thru yet another series of books that pratchett is himself referencing in that story ( along w it bein a sort of fixfic / happier AU of his own WYRD SISTERS)
(x) btw i find it surreal that nobody else over the past 15 yrs – even the L-Space wiki (x) – seems to have noticed the multiple similarities btwn FIFTH ELEPHANT & KING OTTOKAR’S SCEPTRE (x) – not just the overarching plot of assistance to a foreign king in a land that is a direct analog for eastern europe avoid being forced to abdicate due to loss of historic artifact required for the coronation ceremony YAH THIS SYNOPSIS IS IDENTICAL INORITE?? but also the refs to the spring-gun & the opera singer whose quick thinking will later save the day in CALCULUS AFFAIR & that brings us to the former-captain who struggles w alcoholism & is also an investigator – & the concept of Tintin & Haddock as two aspects of the same persona thusly tied into the existing DW concept of everyone having / being multiple doppelgangers / incarnations across time & space…oh & there is the whole averting a lethal conspiracy by fascists to take over an oilrich region which is ALSO a Tintin storyline…
helicopters in general – MONSTROUS REGIMENT
“Aerial cavalry,” said Maladict.
“Pardon, Corporal?”
“Flying machines, sir!” said Maladict. “They won’t know where to expect us! We touch down in a handy LZ, take them out, and then dust off!”
Blouse’s clear brow wrinkled a little.
“Flying machine?” he said.
“I saw a picture of one by someone called Leonard of Quirm. A sort of…flying windmill!It’s just like a big screw up in the sky—”
“I don’t think we need one of those, although the advice is welcome,” said Blouse.
“Not when we’ve got a big screw-up down here, sir!” Jackrum managed.
( so also a multiple / multilayered ref to JINGO via the Discworld version of da Vinci - & thus the us civil war via 20K LEAGUES bc submarine & LAST HERO thus ARMAGEDDON & CONAN & CAPTAIN AMERICA bc that book makes the Carrot = Steve parallel explicit–
“I’ve taken the liberty of asking Rincewind to take a picture of me planting the flag of Ankh-Morpork and claiming the moon on behalf of all the nations of the Disc, your lordship,” Carrot went on.
“Very… patriotic,” said Lord Vetinari. “I may even tell them.”
“However, I can’t show you this on the omniscope because, shortly afterwards, something ate the flag. Things here… aren’t entirely what you’d expect, sir.”
plus the presumptive DON QUIXOTE allusion (WINDMILLS OF COURSE THEY ARE ALSO GIANTS!!) finally locked down & contextualized @ last on top of the PLATOON & APOCALYPSE NOW refs…which oc tie back into the myffic on multiple counts & function as re-refs to LAST HERO plus HOGFATHER plus INTERESTING TIMES bc valkyries)
all the chess references – the Jaegers equation w steeds = knights – startin w COLOUR OF MAGIC spinning off the then-recent CLASH OF THE TITANS movie (!!!) & agn in INTERESTING TIMES
This is where the gods play games with the lives of men, on a board which is at one and the same time a simple playing area and the whole world.
And Fate always wins.
Fate always wins. Most of the gods throw dice but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out until too late that he’s been using two queens all along.
& carries into LAST HERO (where also an ALICE ref)
The city’s domestic appearance was because, while people are influenced by gods, so gods are influenced by people.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.
Above the wheel of the world, the gods played on. They sometimes forgot what happened if you let a pawn get all the way up the board.
which is also where all the references to the story of the Fire-Stealer connect up – only for pratchett & del toro stealin fire from a monopolizing PTB is the right thing to do whether its Fingers-Mazda or Raven or yes Prometheus the rebel Elder God as the heroic Thief & it sure looks like ridley scott thinks it was unpardonable lese majeste on the part of us mere ants…
…& under certain circumstances returnin it w interest is the right thing to do too…bc there must always be heroes to challenge the impossible odds
“What’s the plan?” said Evil Harry, who had been watching the shimmering light over the city of the gods.
“Plan?” said Cohen. “I thought you knew. We’re going to sneak in, smash the igniter, and run like hell.”
“Yes, but how do you plan to do this?” said Evil Harry. He sighed when he saw their faces. “You haven’t got one, have you?” he said wearily. “You were just going to rush in, weren’t you? Heroes never have a plan. It’s always left up to us Dark Lords to have the plans. This is the home of the gods, lads! You think they won’t notice a bunch of humans wandering around?”
“Weare intendin’ to have a magnificent death,” said Cohen.
“Right, right. Afterwards. Oh, deary me. Look, I’d be thrown out of the secret society of evil madmen if I let you go at it mob-handed.” Evil Harry shook his head. “There’s hundreds of gods, right? Everyone knows that. And new gods turning up all the time, right? Well? Doesn’t a plan suggest itself? Anyone?”
–altho this sequence owes at least as much to this (x) & poss this (x) as to DOCTOR STRANGELOVE in execution
all the Shakespeare references bc as noted INTERESTING TIMES has a massive summing-up of plot overlap but they all coincide – incl yet again the helicopters bc WYRD SISTERS
Hwel and Vitoller had watched the first few beams of the wooden framework go up.
“It’s against nature,” Vitoller had complained, leaning on his stick. “Capturing the spirit of the theater, putting it in a cage. It’ll kill it.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Hwel diffidently. Tomjon had laid his plans well, he’d devoted an entire evening to Hwel before even broaching the subject to his father, and now the dwarf’s mind was on fire with the possibilities of backdrops and scenery changes and wings and flies and magnificent engines that could lower gods from the heavensandtrapdoors that could raise demons from hell.
OH YEAH THIS TOO
as much as this
cockpit to hold the vasty fields of france forsooth!!
all the mythology references including Troy – ERIC along w the Faust vs Mephistopheles dynamic – the Riddle of the Sphinx – debated by the prince in PYRAMIDS – Frost Giants – terraforming the Disc in SOURCERY – Ponce de Leon & the Fountain of Youth – ERIC again along w the Dante & Virgil dynamic – Sword Into Stone – MEN AT ARMS showin that&how the Arthurian mythos can be updated to a modern urban setting – & Amaterasu as Wolf-Warrior protector of mortals – FIFTH ELEPHANT yet agn
& bonus tracks from JINGO & THUD! & MONSTROUS REGIMENT
Waifs and bloody strays, because normal people wouldn’t be coppers.
Technically they were all in uniform too, except that mostly they weren’t wearing the same uniform as anyone else. Everyone had just been sent down to the armory to collect whatever fitted, and the result was a walking historical exhibit: Funny-Shaped Helmets Through the Ages.
Vimes found himself meeting the gaze of Angua, who was leaning against the wall. She rolled her eyes helplessly.
“I got my badge carved on my arm,” Detritus rumbled. “Someone c’n try an’ take it off if dey likes.”
She turned. A young man of godlike proportions* was standing in the doorway.
*The better class of gods, anyway. Not the ones with the tentacles, obviously.
And then there was the young-male walk to master. At least women swung only their hips. Young men swung everything, from the shoulders down. You have to try to occupy a lot of space, she thought. It makes you look bigger, like a tomcat fluffing his tail. She’d seen it a lot in the inn. The boys tried to walk big in self-defense against all those other big boys out there. I’m bad, I’m fierce, I’m cool, I’d like a pint of shandy and me mam wants me home by nine…
(& THIS IS ONLY THE SURFACE LEVEL OF CONNECTIONS!)
ok one more clue – this isnt a mistake but a Sign–
or why wld they be seeing something that hasnt happened yet??
“First vill come mild delusions, I think. A psychic susceptibility to all kinds of influences from who knows vhere, and vampires can hallucinate so stronkly zat zey can be contagious. I zink zat is happening already. He vill become … erratic.”
*distorted soundtrack from Apocalypse Now, playing from another dimension*
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
since i have only listened to the monstrous regiment book and not actually read it, discovering wazzer was called ‘wazzer’ and not ‘wozzer’ kind of blew my mind. very excited to find out what other characters/places etc i don’t actually know the name of♀️. i’m telling this story since i don’t have the actual words to describe how immensely this book affected me but who does really. i’m almost too scared to attempt the characters properly because i revere them so much (that might not be the right word but i’m too tired to look it up). all i know is maladict with 90s boyband curtains is definitely not staying but it was fun for just now
