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From the identify that book/story thread:Whybird posted:There's a quote from a particular book that is rattling round in my head and I'm trying to find. A radicalised character who killed his mentor is told something along the lines of: "He believed in you to the end. Right up until the moment your sword entered his heart, he was confident you would do the right thing." It rings a bell, but I can’t think what.
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Jun 16, 2022 11:12
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It reads a little like the death of Cruces in Men at Arms, but not exactly on the nose. Does Teatime do something in Hogfather?
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Jun 16, 2022 15:36
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The_Doctor posted:From the identify that book/story thread: First thing that comes to mind is Men At Arms, when Carrot skewers the Assassin. It's been a few years, though. EDIT: Just checked, it's not that. Devorum fucked around with this message at 21:32 on Jun 17, 2022 |
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Jun 17, 2022 21:24
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I almost want to say it sounds like Gormenghast but I know that's not right. The doctor character would say something like that.
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Jun 18, 2022 01:52
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angerbeet posted:I almost want to say it sounds like Gormenghast but I know that's not right. The doctor character would say something like that.
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Jun 18, 2022 09:17
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So on our read through me and the kiddo finished Moving Pictures. that book was a SLOG to read. It had some hilarious visuals near the end with the giant woman hauling around The Librarian like King Kong but to a 7 year old it just was not as engrossing as Eric or Guards Guards! Reaper Man so far has been a fun read. Last year my wife's grandma died and its taken the kiddo a bit to really come around to what that means but last night after reading a bit with Miss Flitworth and Bill Door, Nova asks "Did Death, the one from the book come to Grandma?" and I wasnt really sure what to say so I took a note from the books and replied with "Do <i>you</i>think He did?" she kinda waits and thinks about it and she goes "I hope so, that way he can take me to see her when i die" and gently caress man, im not made of stone but aint that the sweetest thing? shes already made a lil place for her grandma in her own lil heaven Im super thankful that i have a kiddo that enjoys being read to, it makes me happy too
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Jun 18, 2022 23:09
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Beer_Suitcase posted:So on our read through me and the kiddo finished Moving Pictures. that book was a SLOG to read. It had some hilarious visuals near the end with the giant woman hauling around The Librarian like King Kong but to a 7 year old it just was not as engrossing as Eric or Guards Guards! Moving Pictures is one of Pratchett's few...it feels sacrilegious to say the man had misses, but it's definitely not better than a foul. He does weirdly pluck Gaspode from it a number of books down the line though. But yeah, they should only get better from there if you're going in order. And it's super awesome that your kid is growing up with Discworld, that's a top five parenting decision right there imo.
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Jun 18, 2022 23:43
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Terry said before that having folks towards the end of their lives sending him letters saying they hope Death was like he had written him were the ones that made him have to stop and think.
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Jun 19, 2022 00:03
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CaptainRat posted:Moving Pictures is one of Pratchett's few...it feels sacrilegious to say the man had misses, but it's definitely not better than a foul. He does weirdly pluck Gaspode from it a number of books down the line though. But yeah, they should only get better from there if you're going in order. And it's super awesome that your kid is growing up with Discworld, that's a top five parenting decision right there imo. Isn't Moving Pictures also the first appearances of Detritus and Ruby?
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Jun 19, 2022 00:44
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Detritus is in Guards! Guards! briefly, but he is also in Moving Pictures, yes.
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Jun 19, 2022 00:45
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CaptainRat posted:Moving Pictures is one of Pratchett's few...it feels sacrilegious to say the man had misses, but it's definitely not better than a foul. Moving Pictures is painfully dependent on knowing all the old movie references, most of which date back to the 1950s or earlier. Soul Music feels very much like an attempt to rectify its flaws - the jokes are less obscure and more clearly explained, and being based on the development of rock and roll they start where Moving Pictures stopped. If you do know your old movies, though, MP has a lot of the cleverest jokes in the series. Fighting Trousers posted:Isn't Moving Pictures also the first appearances of Detritus and Ruby? See above, but Moving Pictures is more importantly the first appearance of Ponder Stibbons.
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Jun 19, 2022 01:01
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Doesn't Ridcully debut in Moving Pictures, actually?
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Jun 19, 2022 01:04
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Arist posted:Doesn't Ridcully debut in Moving Pictures, actually?
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Jun 19, 2022 01:06
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I have a soft spot for Moving Pictures as it was the first Terry book I read. Weirdly I picked it up at a yard sale in the US with a cover I’d never seen before, and it can only have been a year old at that point:
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Jun 19, 2022 01:15
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I like Moving Pictures quite a bit. The premise is super fun, it has tons of great individual gags, and although the main characters Victor and Ginger aren't terribly compelling, there's lots of fun side characters with their own fun plots - Detritus, Gaspode, the Librarian, Dibbler and his nephew, etc., and it all comes together satisfyingly at the climax. The huge frequency of references to classic films and film history makes it a bit of a hard one to read to a 7-year-old, though, and probably makes it a bit of hit or miss for a lot of adult readers too.
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Jun 19, 2022 06:18
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Moving Pictures and Soul Music are both pretty high on my list of "this would be hilarious if I got any of these jokes" books. So was Maskerade for a while but I've finally seen some musicals so that one makes sense now.
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Jun 19, 2022 06:43
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YggiDee posted:Moving Pictures and Soul Music are both pretty high on my list of "this would be hilarious if I got any of these jokes" books. Soul Music goes out of its way to explain a lot of its jokes (e.g. "Imp y Celyn" is Welsh for "bud of the holly"). I think the deepest cut it doesn't explain directly is that Imp's bardic graduation piece, Sioni Bod Da, translates as "Johnny, be good". Beyond that you can get most of the references just by knowing a few major band names and song titles, having listened to American Pie at some point, and knowing what The Day The Music Died is.
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Jun 19, 2022 10:37
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YggiDee posted:Moving Pictures and Soul Music are both pretty high on my list of "this would be hilarious if I got any of these jokes" books. So was Maskerade for a while but I've finally seen some musicals so that one makes sense now. ...
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Jun 19, 2022 10:52
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I adore the cartoon’s version of Sioni bod da. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVRmWKL4b7k
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Jun 19, 2022 11:06
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sebmojo posted:... Nah, it's a fair shout. Maskerade is explicitly based on The Phantom of the Opera, which is best known as a musical, and is about the transition of the form from opera to operetta (which is technically what musicals are). It helps to know a bit about opera, particularly how divas are frequently enormous women in their 40s playing teenage girls because to an opera fan only the voice matters, but you don't really need to know it because the impenetrability of opera to a layman is the joke.
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Jun 19, 2022 11:22
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Jedit posted:but you don't really need to know it because the impenetrability of opera to a layman is the joke. One of my favourite bits of Maskerade is the bloke reading the program (I think?) and having to keep referring to a dictionary.
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Jun 19, 2022 13:34
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I finished Moving Pictures the other day. I certainly enjoyed it, but I think I have an above average understanding and knowledge of filmmaking so that might’ve helped. I don’t remember where I heard it but I heard somewhere that the best time to tie back to a recurring joke is when your audience has *almost* forgotten about it. That’s what I was thinking of at the very end of the book, when the big finale is over, and someone make a passing comment about needing a thousand elephants to pull of something like that again, and I went all  knowing that there was one final loose end to finish off. You reap what you sow, C.M.O.T Dibbler!
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Jun 19, 2022 15:52
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we're on a mission from glod
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Jun 19, 2022 16:23
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GLOD GLOD GLOD GLOD- No, that's the second verse!
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Jun 19, 2022 17:15
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The_Doctor posted:I adore the cartoon’s version of Sioni bod da. It's great. Back in 2000 I was involved in a stage show of Wyrd Sisters, and it was used as the love theme for Magrat and Verence. YggiDee posted:"this would be hilarious if I got any of these jokes" The Last Continent for me, who at the time had never seen Mad Max, Priscilla Queen of the Desert or Crocodile Dundee, nor knew anything about the Todd River Race, Australian Aboriginal dreamtime mythology or... well, pretty much anything Australian really.
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Jun 20, 2022 05:51
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Dave Syndrome posted:
Terry Pratchett posted:She wanted a HOLIDAY in Australia, she said, and if I turned it into work she'd hit me -- so I gave in, because I did not want to be beaten about the Bush.
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Jun 20, 2022 06:07
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Jedit posted:Nah, it's a fair shout. Maskerade is explicitly based on The Phantom of the Opera, which is best known as a musical, and is about the transition of the form from opera to operetta (which is technically what musicals are). It helps to know a bit about opera, particularly how divas are frequently enormous women in their 40s playing teenage girls because to an opera fan only the voice matters, but you don't really need to know it because the impenetrability of opera to a layman is the joke. Oh, OK fair point. I remember it as being more specifically opera but it's been a long time since I read it
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Jun 20, 2022 06:11
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It also ends with lots of veiled references to modern musicals iirc
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Jun 20, 2022 09:23
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HIJK posted:It also ends with lots of veiled references to modern musicals iirc They're not veiled, but yes.
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Jun 20, 2022 09:33
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ok, this is the first I'd actually seen a picture of this no conveniently tiny elephants, but otherwise, https://twitter.com/Dr_TheHistories/status/1528213251653132288
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Jun 20, 2022 11:09
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I think Moving Pictures and Soul Music's biggest weaknesses, other than the domain knowledge pointed out, is that their primary protagonists are simply not that interesting. Like their internal lives and motivation seem lacking as compared to others. That may be because they were one and done characters, but Maskerade et al have similar lore issues (Phantom, Vampires, the fae) but they're anchored by one Agnes Nitt.
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Jun 20, 2022 20:12
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I love Agnes Nitt.
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Jun 20, 2022 20:21
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Scaramouche posted:I think Moving Pictures and Soul Music's biggest weaknesses, other than the domain knowledge pointed out, is that their primary protagonists are simply not that interesting. Like their internal lives and motivation seem lacking as compared to others. That may be because they were one and done characters, but Maskerade et al have similar lore issues (Phantom, Vampires, the fae) but they're anchored by one Agnes Nitt. Yeah, in Maskerade the references not landing becomes the joke because you have other characters outside the Opera trying to make sense of it. I loved Soul Music and Moving Pictures but I can really understand why they don't click for some folks. They're reference-driven rather than character-driven in their main humor.
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Jun 20, 2022 21:28
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Scaramouche posted:I think Moving Pictures and Soul Music's biggest weaknesses, other than the domain knowledge pointed out, is that their primary protagonists are simply not that interesting. Like their internal lives and motivation seem lacking as compared to others. That may be because they were one and done characters, but Maskerade et al have similar lore issues (Phantom, Vampires, the fae) but they're anchored by one Agnes Nitt. pratchett thought the same about rincewind, and started to add more main characters. i quite like rincewind stories, but i agree that he's not an interesting character, he meets and flees from interesting character
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Jun 20, 2022 21:34
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Yeah, Agnes feels like a real person in a way that, say, Victor Tugelbend really doesn't. Victor is a funny gag, but "he's so lazy that he spends hours in the gym working out so that he'll have huge muscles so that lifting heavy things won't be hard work" doesn't really work out to an actual person. (I'm also the one who thinks Witches Abroad is pretty forgettable because Lilith's motivation doesn't make any sense at all.)
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Jun 21, 2022 01:39
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ChubbyChecker posted:pratchett thought the same about rincewind, and started to add more main characters. Where Rincewind goes The Luggage follows, and that’s more than enough. The rest of the world trying to wrap their heads around The Luggage and its mood swings is top tier comedy.
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Jun 21, 2022 02:40
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Rand Brittain posted:Yeah, Agnes feels like a real person in a way that, say, Victor Tugelbend really doesn't. Victor is a funny gag, but "he's so lazy that he spends hours in the gym working out so that he'll have huge muscles so that lifting heavy things won't be hard work" doesn't really work out to an actual person. The annoying thing about Agnes is that she has one great book and then immediately disappears.
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Jun 21, 2022 08:25
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Rand Brittain posted:Yeah, Agnes feels like a real person in a way that, say, Victor Tugelbend really doesn't. Victor is a funny gag, but "he's so lazy that he spends hours in the gym working out so that he'll have huge muscles so that lifting heavy things won't be hard work" doesn't really work out to an actual person. Victor Tugelbend is essentially Ferris Bueller trying to take his whole life off instead of one school day. I'm also not sure what you're not getting about Lilith's motivation, because like all motivations in fairy tales it's very simple: she was disowned by her parents and she thinks she deserves a happy ending.
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Jun 21, 2022 08:48
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Lilith wants power, plain and simple. Power over other people, magical power, power over her sister. Everything she does is about self-aggrandizement. But she doesn't fully realize why she's doing it, or the moral consequences; because of the way she gets power (through creating fairy tales), she's fooled herself into thinking she's doing good along the way.
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Jun 21, 2022 08:55
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I've listened to a handful of the old Discworld audiobooks and they were great but I've wanted to get the actual books for ages. So I decided to order them in bulk through the Emporium. I'm starting with the Death series and although I had to pay a bit extra in taxes (thanks Brexit) it was all worth it because the whole package was so delightful.   
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Jun 21, 2022 10:56
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