The Terry Pratchett Thread: For the sake of prisoners and the flight of birds

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thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Alhazred posted:

I have begun to read the last two Tiffany Aching books and realized that that will be the last time I will ever read a Discworld book I haven't read before

I keep laughing at the jokes then getting sad about it for just this reason. It's the last time I'll laugh at them for the first time. This is really hard going.

# ? Oct 18, 2015 09:15

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# ? Apr 18, 2024 06:40

Trin Tragula: Apr 22, 2005

Right, if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well. In painful detail, here's why I actively dislike Unseen Academicals (or at least, the bits of it that are about football), without needing to mention in any way the issues with his post-Embuggerance prose and plotting that we've all discussed to death.

Xander77 posted:

Do tell?

Now, first time round, I only read it once, and finished it without bothering to put my finger on exactly why I didn't like it and why it rang so false; I've now skimmed the book again for its football sections to work out what's gone wrong. Important information: I do quite like football. I've been to see a lot of football. Football has its problems, but no more so than, say, Hollywood, or the music business. And boy, could it ever use an expertly-crafted satire from a master. That's not what's there, though.

Ankh-Morpork street football is very clearly based on English football in about 1986, just after Heysel. It's a horrible, nasty, grubby thing that's clearly seen better days (the Guilds used to play, but not any more). Nobody of any standing in society admits to liking it (the bledlows with an eye on being upwardly mobile only go because the wizards need a chaperone); it happens in back streets, trying constantly to evade the eyes of the authorities, ruled over by violent hard men who care more about a punch-up than the game, bananas being thrown at black players (you could write an entire essay about the moment when someone throws a banana at the Librarian). It starkly divides communities with a razor blade, sets neighbour against neighbour for no good reason. Its sole saving grace is a brief, fleeting moment of community in the middle of the madness that's gone almost before anyone notices it. This is, clear as day, the view of someone whose only contact with football is through the screaming newspaper headlines of the 80s. And yet, I'm pretty sure Pratchett never worked in Hollywood, or played in a successful band, or ran a post office, or served in the Army. He still wrote excellent satires about those things. How did this satire end up horrifically botched? I have two major issues with it.

First, as a satire of football in general it's no good because football just isn't like that any more. In the early 90s in England there began a programme of change and renewal that's unquestionably made the game better in hundreds of different ways. There's a definite period of time in which Pratchett was firing on all cylinders, and he could have written a book about football, presented it in this way, and had it be timely and cromulent and potentially made some very useful points; that would have been at some point between Pyramids (1989) and Soul Music (1994). But to write a satire of football in the 80s in 2008 is twenty years too late to be relevant to anything, and unlike the Golden Age of Hollywood, is English football in the 80s really important or interesting enough to warrant a book being based around satirising it?

The galling thing here is that there's plenty of completely different things in 21st-century football that are absolutely crying out for satire and which would have fit very nicely with the themes he explored in other 21st-century books! The sea change in football's place in culture from a grubby working-class pastime back into a genuine national sport; the growing commercialisation and amounts of money flooding into the game; the pricing out from the elite level of the traditional (and not at all violent, and quite annoyed that they were routinely stigmatised as dangerous subhuman thugs) supporter base; the influx of moneymen with exceptionally dodgy backgrounds like Roman Abramovich and Thaksin Shinawatra; the rampant corruption among the sport's administrators.

But Pratchett quite obviously didn't care much about football or pay it much attention. Beaconsfield is hardly a footballing hotbed. The local team was historically spectacularly shite, even by the standards of the many, many shite football teams in England (they've now improved to being only averagely shite). I've never seen an interview of any kind with him, and believe me I've looked for one, where he might have hinted even slightly that he ever gave a second thought to football. Not even a passing reference to football in conversation on the alt.fan.pratchett newsgroup that he used to frequent. So it's understandable why those stark 80s images that pushed their way off the back pages were still what he thought of when he thought of football and came to write about it. (There almost certainly was a PE teacher like Evans the Striped in Beaconsfield, although Barry Hines and Kes beat him to that one by 40 years.)

So here's problem number 2. We'll park the out-of-date issue for a moment, assume that this is still something worth doing, and consider the satire of 80s football on its own terms. It still isn't very good. Again, fundamentally it's the view of someone reading the headlines. (It's telling that one of the best bits is when he gets to poke fun at football journalism via William de Worde.) This is painfully obvious when he writes about the street football match. The stuff about getting down there with a few pints and a dodgy pie inside you, and being in the Shove. That's the story of standing on an End, the crowd surging up and down the terrace with the ebb and flow of a match, but it's written by someone who's vaguely heard a few times from an acquaintance that when you go to the football you get pushed around a bit and you can't see very well but it's okay because you're supporting The Lads, and the acquaintance can't explain what it is they feel on the terraces that keeps them coming back.

This whole concept of the Shove is supposed to be critically important to the main characters, right? The feeling you get when you're in the Shove is what keeps you in the Shove; and looked at another way, your whole life is the Shove. (I'm not opposed to this characterisation at all, just the entirely cack-handed way he went about it.) But in order for that to work as a narrative device, you need a really good explanation of what's there in the heart of the Shove that keeps people in there, going back again and again. It's got to be attractive to these people on some level, right? Except the most we ever get told about it is:

quote:

They were being pushed! And shoved! But it was not as unpleasant as the words suggested. There were moderate pressures on all sides as people poured in behind, as though the wizards were standing chest deep in the sea, and were swaying and shifting to the slow rhythm of the tide.
...
Push, sway, shove�and something in this spoke to Nutt. It came up through the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands, and slid into his brain with a beguiling subtlety, warming him, stripping him away from himself and leaving him no more than a beating part of the living, moving thing around him.
A chant came past. It had started somewhere at the other end of the game and, whatever it had been once, it was now just four syllables of roar, from hundreds of people and many gallons of beer. As it faded, it took the warm, belonging feeling away with it, leaving a hole.
Nutt looked into the eyes of Trev.
�Happened to you, did it?� Trev said. �That was quick.�
�It was�� Nutt began.
�I know. We don�t talk about it,� said Trev flatly.

That's the deepest we ever get. Glenda then has a go at putting it into words when she confronts the Archchancellor:

quote:

When you�re in the Shove, and it�s mucky weather, and the water�s coming through your coat, and your shoes are leaking, and then you bite into your pie, and you know that everyone else is biting into their pie, and the grease slides down your sleeve, well, sir, I don�t have the words for it, sir, I really don�t, sir. There�s a feeling I can�t describe, but it�s a bit like being a kid at Hogswatch, and you can�t just buy it, sir, you can�t write it down or organize it or make it shiny or make it tame.

But she can't manage it either. For me that completely undermines the whole spine of the story, which is built around the twin concepts of the Shove and the crab bucket, and working-class people's positions in them. The attractiveness of the Shove should go a long way to explaining why people get stuck in the crab bucket and why they pull the other crabs back down; but it's so clumsily described that it entirely fails to function that way. There's no insight here at all, which is utterly bizarre for Discworld.

The truly galling thing is that it's not beyond the wit of man to come up with a description of the Shove that would have worked. There's an excellent book called Among the Thugs by an American journalist, Bill Buford. He started going to football right in the middle of the 80s dog days because he was academically interested in the hooligan subculture; and the book has many excellent observations about things like the psychology of mob violence, the functioning of far-right politics (with an extended guest cameo from Nick Griffin, then a National Front regional organiser), exactly what it feels like to have your head smashed against a lamp-post, or to be on the receiving end of a drat good kicking from the police. But something else interesting happened to Buford during that time; he found that he was actually enjoying going to the football. He wrote a whole chapter on exactly why he enjoyed it. Apparently he's now released it separately as a short ebook. Read the whole thing, it's well worth your time. The most salient points, though:

quote:

I want to describe the experience of waiting for a goal.
...
I was not a supporter of the Cambridge team; I was there [because the away team, Millwall, has a notorious hooligan following], but I surprised myself with how engaged I became by the match. In a matter of minutes, I was cheering, even singing, along with everyone else -- my voice, slightly high-pitched, as foreign-sounding to me as the voices around me. Having just walked in from the street, I had stepped into a situation of unusual intimacy, and while I hadn't said more than a few words to the people near me, something was communicated between us. Something, I felt, was communicated between everyone there: just about every member of that crowd of nine thousand people was held tightly together, waiting for a goal.

In the opening minutes, it seemed that we might see one. [Cambridge are the heavy underdogs but nearly score several times; he starts wondering why they haven't.] After a while I felt there was more to it: that there was some mysterious force at work around his goal -- something greater than [the goalkeeper's] talent -- that was preventing the ball from entering it. I felt that the ball would never enter the net and that it would be unnatural if it did. There was no score in the first half, and during half time everyone on the terraces relaxed visibly. There was more room; without the excitement, the supporters seemed to diminish in size. A conversation would have been possible, but a conversation did not seem right either. I had nothing more than the most perfunctory exchanges with the people near me.
...
"As the match progressed, I found that I was developing a craving for a goal. As its promises and failures continued to be expressed through the bodies of the people pressed against me, I had a feeling akin to an appetite, increasingly more intense, of anticipation, waiting for, hoping for, wanting one of these shots to get past the Millwall goalkeeper. The business of watching the match had started to exclude other thoughts. It was involving so many aspects of my person -- what I saw, smelled, said, sang, moaned, what I was feeling up and down my body -- that I was becoming a different person from the one who had entered the ground: I was ceasing to be me. There wasn't one moment when I stopped noticing myself; there was only a realization that for a period of time I hadn't been. The match had succeeding in dominating my senses and had raised me, who had never given a serious thought to the fate of Cambridge United, to a state of very heightened feeling.
...
[Buford muses at some length that football is a very low-scoring game and that draws are common, even 0-0 draws; the supposed object of the game is almost the rarest thing that can happen, and there's a very real chance that nobody will score and nobody will win.] But then, such is the game and its merciless punishment of its spectators that even when the unnatural occurs and a goal is scored, they can never be sure that they have seen it. It is one of the fallacies of the game that there is no thrill greater than watching the scoring of a goal; it is one of the facts that most people miss it. The goal itself is a see-through box of threads, and unless you are looking upon it from up high or into it from straight on or viewing it with the benefit of television cameras, you cannot tell when the ball has actually gone through and scored -- until it has hit the back of the net. In every goal except the penalty kick, there is a small period of perception when there is neither goal nor no goal: dead time. Dead time is not a long time in clock time -- there is the moment when the ball appears to be about to cross the line, and later, there is the moment when it definitively hits or fails to hit the back of the net -- but in any kind of emotional chronology it can seem endless.

That's right at the root of why people went to football in the 80s despite everything that was wrong with the game, and why they still go now despite all the different things that are wrong. The craving for a goal, the outward expression of that craving by shouting and cheering and singing, the fuelling of that craving by the inward process of becoming convinced that the referee and the other team and the other manager and the people on Match of the Day and the newspaper journalists and the Football Association and everything else in the whole entire universe is actively and maliciously conspiring against The Lads. That moment of dead time that comes with every decent shot at goal, whether it goes in or not; and the release when it does. It's pure and it's primal and it's great. And an American could put it into words.

That's what the Shove needs to be for Unseen Academicals to work properly. But Pratchett doesn't know it himself, and apparently never found anyone to explain it to him. So we get Glenda unable to describe it except in terms of the most hackneyed cliches possible, and Trev shying away from thinking about it, and the analytical Nutt never trying to analyse it. The effect I'm left with is as though Sam Vimes had been written unironically as Dixon of Dock Green, or if Monstrous Regiment had been written unquestioningly in the style of The Guns of Navarone. It's as useful a representation of football as Barbie is of the human body. I could go on at length about a number of other points (how an awful lot of the satire and humour is punching down, a seriously difficult thing to pull off; or the role of the Patrician, who comes across like some awful love child of Margaret Thatcher and Rupert Murdoch, except we're supposed to be on his side; or the complete misunderstanding of how football rivalries work), but it all comes back to the two core problems.

These are issues entirely unrelated to the Embuggerance. It's a satire of an extremely marginal subject that's twenty years out of date; and even if it were more timely (which would also remove the marginality), Pratchett never had any understanding of what he needed to understand about his subject to make the story work properly.

Trin Tragula fucked around with this message at 16:19 on Sep 29, 2017

# ? Oct 18, 2015 20:28

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

The book isn't actually about football, though?

# ? Oct 18, 2015 20:40

Rand Brittain: Mar 25, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

Okay, your long post deserves a bit more effort on my part, so:

Ultimately, Unseen Academicals is about crowd psychology, not about football. The football references are a device that lets Pratchett talk about different facets of crowd psychology; satirizing football isn't the top priority. Therefore, I don't think there's any particular reason why Pratchett should restrict himself to modern football culture since what he's ultimately doing is mining for cultural touchstones that lots of people will find resonant.

(This still frequently falls flat, of course, since there are some pretty major beats, like "You think it's all over?", that make absolutely no sense to soccer-playing Americans like myself.)

# ? Oct 18, 2015 23:08

Jedit: Dec 10, 2011; Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Trin Tragula posted:

Ankh-Morpork street football is very clearly based on English football in about 1986

I'll stop you there. Ankh-Morpork street football is based on the mediaeval game of Camp-ball and Unseen Academicals is about the transformation of Camp-ball into football in the mid-1800s.

# ? Oct 18, 2015 23:35

Trin Tragula: Apr 22, 2005

Sure, it's 80s football culture woven around an older mob football game, but I doubt anyone ever played in a mob football game in a pink and green scarf or a pink and yellow bobble hat. Did you notice, by the way, how the Shove is an important part of the game but also the people in the Shove are clearly spectators and distinct from the players?

quote:

�Well, er, gents, what we will have here is your actual football, what is basically about the Shove, which is
what you gentlemen will be doing soon��
�I thought we watched two groups of players vie with one another to get the ball in the opponents� goal?�
�Could be, sir, could very much be,� the bledlow conceded, �but in the streets, see, your actual supporters
on both sides try and endeavour to shorten the length of the field, as it were, depending on the flow of play,
so to speak.�
�Like living walls, d�y�mean?� said Ridcully.
�That style of thing, sir, yes, sir,� said Ottomy loyally.
�What about the goals?�
�Oh, they�re allowed to move the goals, too.�

Which as far as I know was never a feature of mob football games (in which the goal is either a vague geographical area or a heavy object or structure that can't be physically moved); but it is very close to the 20th century concept of having a terrace like the Kop at Anfield, so loud and intimidating that playing in front of it is as good as a goal start to the home team.

If he'd really wanted to write something about the transformation on football from mob football to Association Football, then it would have been far better placed around a story about Guild politics and intrigue, because all that was mostly driven by public schoolboys who wanted to play other schools without having to play half-and-half with each other's rules; it had almost nothing to do with what the working classes were getting up to at the time.

# ? Oct 19, 2015 12:46

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

I finished The Shepherd's Crown.

Yeah, so, that happened. I've read Terry Pratchett's last book.

I'm not quite sure what to say, so I'll write from the heart. I... feel lighter because of it. Somehow. Pratchett has been part of my life since more or less as soon as I could read, and I've read more of his words than any other person's. By quite some margin. I've had my ups and my downs with him, I've been entertained and educated in equal measure. And I think I'd echo Brandon Sanderson's eulogy to him shortly after his death - I don't think there's a current author as important as him. His work will go down in history as a shining example of modern satire. I'll be disappointed if children in 100 years aren't reading Pratchett at school.

And you could feel the ending there; Granny's story really felt like Pratchett's own, and looking back you can see Granny as the closest thing to a self-insert he had, I think, though he was a good enough writer not to need that crutch.

I'll miss him. It feels like a friend has gone, and reading the last of his work has been a chance to finish the journey I've been on with him. I miss the books he'll never write, I miss the autobiography I would have dearly loved to read. I already miss seeing a new hardcover on the shelves.

The Shepherd's Crown was a fitting sendoff, in all respects, I think. You can see a new age of stories unfolding in front of Tiffany as the goblins ride the rails, the clacks keeps men's names alive after they're gone, men become witches, women become wizards, golems solve crimes, and goats become ambassadors. It's just a tremendous shame no-one will write them.

:smith:

# ? Oct 19, 2015 21:43

Gravitas Shortfall: Jul 17, 2007; Utility is seven-eighths Proximity.

thespaceinvader posted:

It's just a tremendous shame no-one will write them.

At least they exist somewhere.

Small Gods posted:

“No other library anywhere, for example, has a whole gallery of unwritten books - books that would have been written if the author hadn't been eaten by an alligator around chapter 1, and so on. Atlases of imaginary places. Dictionaries of illusory words. Spotter's guides to invisible things. Wild thesauri in the Lost Reading Room. A library so big that it distorts reality and has opened gateways to all other libraries, everywhere and everywhen...”

# ? Oct 20, 2015 12:42

Hedrigall: Mar 27, 2008; by vyelkin

Is anyone getting the Discworld Atlas that comes out tomorrow?

http://www.discworldemporium.com/Compleat-Discworld-Atlas

# ? Oct 21, 2015 04:38

Sanford: Jun 30, 2007; ...and rarely post!

Had it on order since the very day it showed up on Amazon. Fingers crossed it will arrive tomorrow.

# ? Oct 21, 2015 10:14

VagueRant: May 24, 2012

I've been listening to Night Watch again, it's so nice to just immerse in peak Discworld. And I saw that they totally set up the horse ginger thing!

I'm still sure there's a lot of series-based injokes and references with the time travel in both this AND Thief of Time that I'm missing though.

# ? Oct 21, 2015 10:24

Ika: Dec 30, 2004; Pure insanity

Hedrigall posted:

Is anyone getting the Discworld Atlas that comes out tomorrow?

http://www.discworldemporium.com/Compleat-Discworld-Atlas

Hadn't seen that before, might have to get it.

I just love "... travel guide brought to you by The Ankh-Morpork Guild of Trespassers ...". I'm pretty sure that one of the stories mentioned vetinari forcing the explorers guild to rename to that, perhaps it was fifth elephant.

# ? Oct 21, 2015 18:57

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

VagueRant posted:

I've been listening to Night Watch again, it's so nice to just immerse in peak Discworld. And I saw that they totally set up the horse ginger thing!

I'm still sure there's a lot of series-based injokes and references with the time travel in both this AND Thief of Time that I'm missing though.

The horse ginger thing works on so many levels because of the interesting parallels/opposites with the ginger beer trick.

(also, the ginger beer trick isn't what most first-time readers think, it goes up their nose)

# ? Oct 21, 2015 20:00

Raygereio: Nov 12, 2012

thespaceinvader posted:

(also, the ginger beer trick isn't what most first-time readers think, it goes up their nose)

Wait, that wasn't obvious for some? I have a feeling I'm going to regret asking this, but what do some first-time readers think the ginger beer trick is?

# ? Oct 22, 2015 16:52

Tunicate: May 15, 2012

Raygereio posted:

Wait, that wasn't obvious for some? I have a feeling I'm going to regret asking this, but what do some first-time readers think the ginger beer trick is?

Pick a different orifice.

# ? Oct 22, 2015 18:03

-Fish-: Oct 10, 2005; Glub glub.
Glub glub.

Raygereio posted:

Wait, that wasn't obvious for some? I have a feeling I'm going to regret asking this, but what do some first-time readers think the ginger beer trick is?

Real ginger is hot like curry. Ginger beer has a lot more ginger in it than ginger ale. You don't want to get it anywhere sensitive, like the nose or... Elsewhere.

# ? Oct 22, 2015 18:22

BizarroAzrael: Apr 6, 2006; "That must weigh heavily on your soul. Let me purge it for you."

I think I figured out the Ginger Beer Trick quite early, but I had seen it done with regular beer on a TV show, I want to say 24.

# ? Oct 23, 2015 14:17

Alhazred: Feb 16, 2011

Re-read the Fifth Elephant. Still good and the end is still heartbreaking:
"Why should they be allowed to do this? I can't!"
I had forgotten how dark it was though. Vimes does some terrible things and he is fully aware that the only thing that keeps him from being a murderer is his reluctance to utter a cool punchline.

# ? Oct 23, 2015 20:29

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Raygereio posted:

Wait, that wasn't obvious for some? I have a feeling I'm going to regret asking this, but what do some first-time readers think the ginger beer trick is?

Same place it goes on the gingering the nag trick.

# ? Oct 23, 2015 21:43

divabot: Jun 17, 2015; A polite little mouse!

Just got Dragons at Crumbling Castle: And Other Stories for the 8yo. She read the whole thing at a sitting. It's a collection of Pratchett's children's stories from the children's column of whatever that newspaper was he worked for. Pratchett cautions in the intro that this is his juvenilia, but it passes the "kid actually loves this" test.

# ? Oct 24, 2015 07:57

precision: May 7, 2006; by VideoGames

The discussion of football in Unseen Academicals prompted me to read Among the Thugs and all I can say is, holy poo poo. Irvine Welsh did not even scratch the surface of how insane football fans in the 80s were. It's almost unbelievable that so many people can consume so much alcohol and create so much violence on that scale with shockingly few repercussions.

Definitely recommend it.

# ? Nov 13, 2015 17:40

Hedrigall: Mar 27, 2008; by vyelkin

Reading Lords & Ladies now. This is the bestest :3:

Why hasn't there been a Lancre Coven live-action miniseries yet? I'd like to see short seasons of long-format episodes, like Sherlock (each season is 3x90 minutes), doing a book per season. Casting would be hard... Miriam Margolyes (or at a stretch, Dawn French) as Nanny is the only obvious one; how about Phyllida Law for Granny? But she's over 80 now. Wishful thinking for Helen Mirren?

In December I'll be reading Thud, for one last hurrah with the full Ankh-Morpork city watch :unsmith:

edit: Oh, Patricia Routledge (Keeping Up Appearances) would be great as Nanny!

# ? Nov 19, 2015 11:03

Syncopated: Oct 21, 2010

Maggie Smith as Granny Weatherwax.

# ? Nov 19, 2015 14:53

rejutka: May 28, 2004; by zen death robot

Hedrigall posted:

Reading Lords & Ladies now. This is the bestest Why hasn't there been a Lancre Coven live-action miniseries yet? I'd like to see short seasons of long-format episodes, like Sherlock (each season is 3x90 minutes), doing a book per season. Casting would be hard... Miriam Margolyes (or at a stretch, Dawn French) as Nanny is the only obvious one; how about Phyllida Law for Granny? But she's over 80 now. Wishful thinking for Helen Mirren?

In December I'll be reading Thud, for one last hurrah with the full Ankh-Morpork city watch

edit: Oh, Patricia Routledge (Keeping Up Appearances) would be great as Nanny!

Pam Ferris would also make a spectacular Nanny.

# ? Nov 19, 2015 15:37

Ben Soosneb: Jun 18, 2009

Pete Postlethwaite as granny.

# ? Nov 19, 2015 15:53

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Syncopated posted:

Maggie Smith as Granny Weatherwax.

Judy Dench. Or Susan Hampshire.

# ? Nov 19, 2015 19:16

Justin_Brett: Oct 23, 2012; GAMERDOME put down LOSER

Who's the actress who played Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter movies? I always thought she could pull off Granny Weatherwax.

# ? Nov 19, 2015 19:21

rejutka: May 28, 2004; by zen death robot

Maggie Smith.

# ? Nov 19, 2015 22:16

learnincurve: May 15, 2014; Smoosh

Just finished the shepherds crown and it's just so incredibly sad. If feels like like a goodbye.

and no regrets, I left the world a slightly better place than I found it and my name will live on with those who's lives I have touched, just like she did

# ? Nov 22, 2015 17:45

Fried Chicken: Jan 9, 2011; Don't fry me, I'm no chicken!

Syncopated posted:

Maggie Smith as Granny Weatherwax.

The only possible casting, yes

# ? Nov 26, 2015 23:09

Illuyankas: Oct 22, 2010

-Fish- posted:

How come none of you assholes ever told me how great Science of Discworld is? Learning cool poo poo about neutron stars and the atmosphere AND reading about the wizards loving around with stuff. This book is GOLD.

Just don't read the fourth one. It's the ball that falls off the cliff, except it's replaced by intense disappointment.

MikeJF posted:

the mine symbol of the Dwarves being the symbol for the London Underground

SON OF A BITCH

# ? Dec 16, 2015 17:24

VagueRant: May 24, 2012

This just in: Monstrous Regiment is still amazing and kinda underrated and I really need to grab a paper copy of it at some point.

Ended up looking up and re-reading the part where Jackrum solves the little hostage situation, and Polly talking to him afterwards and it's SO good. The strong characterisation, the smooth prose, the moral ambiguity, the social commentary, the obscure little historical details with saloop and clasp knives, the jokes, the badassery....Man, I forgot how much I liked Jackrum. And how much I maybe shouldn't.

VagueRant fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jan 3, 2016

# ? Jan 3, 2016 22:45

SeanBeansShako: Nov 20, 2009; Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.

Well great, now I am feeling awkward replacing Jackrum going back to my retro avatar.

Also, I got the Art Of The Discworld as a christmas present. Not going to lie, teared up at the goodbye at the end :smith:

# ? Jan 4, 2016 00:44

Mr Owl: Dec 28, 2008

Great Tribute or Greatest Tribute?

https://www.change.org/p/iupac-join...ett-s-discworld

Petition has been started to name one of the newly discovered elements Octarine in tribute to our main man!

# ? Jan 10, 2016 01:42

thespaceinvader: Mar 30, 2011; The slightest touch from a Gol-Shogeg will result in Instant Death!

Mr Owl posted:

Great Tribute or Greatest Tribute?

https://www.change.org/p/iupac-join...ett-s-discworld

Petition has been started to name one of the newly discovered elements Octarine in tribute to our main man!

That would be amazing and it has to happen.

# ? Jan 10, 2016 18:30

Tulul: Oct 23, 2013; THAT SOUND WILL FOLLOW ME TO HELL.

It won't, because elements have to end in -ium and be named after a pretty specific list of things (scientists, places, etc.).

Also why the gently caress aren't they petitioning for 118? :colbert:

# ? Jan 11, 2016 06:18

Wistful Thinking: Mar 27, 2010

I'm trying to figure out why they didn't go for Narritivium or Octiron instead.

Still, it'd be neat either way.

# ? Jan 11, 2016 07:15

Jedit: Dec 10, 2011; Proudly supporting vanilla legends 1994-2014

Tulul posted:

It won't, because elements have to end in -ium and be named after a pretty specific list of things (scientists, places, etc.).

The petition states that it would be an acceptable name by IUPAC rules because that list of things includes mythology, also that the group into which it falls all have names ending with "-ine". You would know this if you'd paused long enough to read said petition before being a dildo.

Jedit fucked around with this message at 16:13 on Jan 11, 2016

# ? Jan 11, 2016 16:10

wallaka: Jun 8, 2010; Least it wasn't a fucking red shell

Daaaang.

# ? Jan 12, 2016 08:51

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# ? Apr 18, 2024 06:40

Hedrigall: Mar 27, 2008; by vyelkin

Just finished Thud!, it was good. A drat good mystery with surprising twists and turns throughout, and padded out with good subplots too (Angua vs Sally, A.E. Pessimal, etc). Kind of sad I've read my last proper Watch book, though, as I've heard Snuff is more of a Vimes solo book.

I hope if they ever make that Watch TV series, that they start out of the gate with the later, more complex stories (Feet of Clay onwards) and the full regiment of Watch characters already there. I'd die waiting a whole season or two before the best characters show up (Angua, Detritus, Cheery).

# ? Jan 12, 2016 10:31

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Book Barn > The Terry Pratchett Thread: For the sake of prisoners and the flight of birds

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