Tag: discworld

Sneak Peek – I Comma Square Bracket Ch2

to celebrate the fact that I am writing again and I am so not sure if it sucks because I feel as rusty as an abandoned car in a bogan’s front yard

HAVE A SNIPPET, FOR LOVE AND FUNSIES. HAPPY FRIDAY. 

It is I Comma Square Bracket, Chapter Two: Dorks On Patrol 🙂

image

“Oi, Merry.”

“Yeah?”

“Just had an odd thought.”

“Careful Pip, you never know what thinking might do to an unsullied mind like yours.”

“Har har har. No, I was wondering…”

“Yeah?”

“How much is a
shitload?”

There was a small silence, punctuated by the striking of
bare heels upon cobblestones. Not even the droning pace of a police-beat could persuade Hobbits to
give boots a try. (1)

“Dunno. A lot?”

“Well, obviously, but
how much exactly? I mean, everyone knows what a shitload is, but nobody seems
to know what it is.”

“Huh. There’s an odd thing.”

“I know!”

Another silence as they rounded the corner, and Merry
squinted up at the Post Office with some resignation. “Got the poster?”

“Yeah. S’a good picture of Bilbo. The Imps did well.”

“They had a good description: I didn’t think Frodo’s uncle’d
ever shut up about his hair and his hands and blah, blah, blah. Now, just let me do the talking, all right?” Merry whispered from the
corner of his mouth as a golem came up to greet them.

“Greetings,” he said. “I am Mister Screw.”

Pippin choked on thin air. Loudly.

“Shh, shut up, it’s a description of what he had to do for a
hundred and eleventy years, prob’ly down some godsawful hole. Show some
respeck!” Merry hissed at him. Pippin stared at the golem’s… lower quarters for a long moment, his
eyes wide.

“Well, he mustn’t have done a very good job! How on earth
did he manage to screw for a hundred and whatever years when he’s got no-”

“Pippin!” Merry snapped,
before he spun on his heel towards the golem, a smile that was bright and shiny
with sweat and embarrassment plastered all over his face. “Hello! Nice to meet
you, Mister Screw! We’re from the Potch and we’ve got a Woaster. I mean a
poster. And we’re from the Watch. It’s nice to meet you!”

“…doubt his owners
made much of a profit…” came the resentful mutter from beside Merry.

“What Kind of Poster?” asked the Golem in a grave, weary
sort of voice.

“…an’ godsawful holes,
of course godsawful holes, where else?”

“A missing persons poster,” Merry said, meekly. And he ever
so deliberately leaned his whole bodyweight upon Pippin’s foot. “Could you please
put it up on the back of the carriages and on the doors of the Post Office?”

“Yes. I Will Do This Thing, Because I Have Decided It To Be
Right. Not Because I Am Ordered. That Would Be Wrong. I Have Free Will, and May
Decide.” The golem took the poster in one gigantic lumpy hand, and lumbered off.

“Merry, my foot, you’re on my-!”

Mister Screw paused at the door, looking awkward and
uncomfortable – insofar as several tonnes of animated pottery could look awkward
and uncomfortable. “Your Friend Is Not Wrong About My Previous Employment,” he
said, very carefully.

Merry stared at the golem. “Oh. Right.”

“Many Of The Holes Were Indeed Godsawful.”

“Oh.” Merry’s entire brain tried to crawl away from his
ears, to escape what had just been said. “I’m sorry about that.”

“I Enjoy Being a Post-Man,” said Mister Screw with utmost
solemnity. “I Enjoy Walking The Streets These Days. In Rain or Snow Or Glom Of Nit.”

“Bloody hell,”
Merry replied, with equal solemnity.

The golem nodded. “I Hope Your Friend is Found Soon. I Shall
Put Up The Poster. We Have, As Mister Lipwig Says, A Shitload of Good Currency
In This Town(2), and Our Exposure Is Indeed Very High, Particularly In The Golden Hat. No Doubt
The Missing Person Shall Be Located Soon.”

“Thanks,” Merry said, faintly, and watched the golem
disappear into the post office in a hulking cloud of apologetic confusion and
terracotta dust.

“You brute,” Pippin moaned as Merry lifted his foot, hopping
about and clutching his toes in his hands. “I had them permed only yesterday, Rhododendron
said I needed to let ‘em be for a while to maintain the natural curl, and-”

“Natural curl! You utter gullible idiot, you wasted your money,” scoffed Merry. “You’re a Hobbit! You need a perm like a swamp-dragon needs the hiccups.” His brain was still trying to rinse itself of the last five minutes.

“Shitload again, did you hear?” Pippin said, ignoring Merry’s
scorn with breezy disdain. “Everyone
knows what it means, everyone except us it looks like. Should have asked him
how much it was.”

“I’m not sure I could have survived his answer. Look, we ought
to ask Harry King. He’s King of the Golden River, he’d know, eh?” Merry began
leading them away from the Post Office, along Upper Broadway. They had the rest
of the beat to take care of. At least it was a nice beat, in a nice part of
town. “Probably measures a shitload down to the last bucket, knowing Harry King!”

“Spose,” Pippin said, a trifle sulkily. “And it wasn’t a
waste. Nobby said my feet looked lovely.”

“Nobby said?! Nobby said?!”
said Merry, and was it possible to become unhinged when you hadn’t ever been
hinged in the first place? “Pippin, my lad, perhaps we ought to get back out to
the Sto Plains again. City life is turning you strange.”

(TBC)

(1)  Thanks to the recent migration of Hobbits into Ank-Morpork, Sam
Vimes had been forced to add another sub-category to his ‘Boots’ theory of
Economic Unfairness. 
(2)

Moist’s
puns were still as witty, snappy, and groaningly Newsworthy as ever, much to Adora Belle’s eternal annoyance. In retaliation, her heels were now sharp enough to double as a hole-punch. Her husband, naturally, took full advantage.

nestofstraightlines:

How To Tell If You Are In A Terry Pratchett Novel on the-toast.net

No matter what country you find yourself in, someone always offers you a cutthroat deal on very dubious-looking sausages in buns.

Sometimes people die. Then they campaign for the rights of the undead.

It is a dark and stormy night. “Bugger this for a lark,” you grumble. “I don’t see why we have to meet at night, and even less why we should meet in a storm. It’d be much more sensible to just lunch at the Ritz.”

You’ve sung every verse of “All the Little Angels,” which at first seems silly, but then gains significance until the very question “How do they rise up?” makes you unexpectedly weepy. Soldiers’ songs are alike that way: sentimental with naughty bits in, and sung by voices you hear only in your memory.

You are a member of the Seamstress’s Guild. You don’t know how to sew, but you’re being considered for a leadership role if you know what I mean.

Someone you know has taken an aphorism or a metaphor to its illogical conclusion.

You drink to forget. You’re so successful at it, you no longer remember what it is you wanted to forget in the first place.

You have a matter-of-fact way of explaining complex systems of institutionalized social inequality using household objects; i.e., socks and boots.

You are a witch, and can turn anything into anything, particularly weaknesses into strengths, and selfishness into selflessness.

You can save the world because it is yours.

You ATEN’T DED.

You see little blue men. You haven’t been drinking. They are happy to change that for you

You are a recovering vampire who’s bandaged over your addiction to blood with another powerful, but less dangerous craving. You would literally kill for a cup of coffee.

You are an angel whose main goal in life is to never sell a single book.

You know the difference between stories that want you to believe what you are told, and the ones that want to help you learn. There is nothing so powerful as a story — and nothing so human.

You may live in a ridiculous world full of lies, but you hold fast to the important lies of fairness, mercy, and human dignity. Even if you never find a single molecule of fairness, the fantasy of it is what unites the falling angel to the rising ape. It’s what makes us human.

Read more at http://the-toast.net/2015/03/16/how-to-tell-terry-pratchett-novel/#ViJwyFUV2FQe8JFp.99

gyzym:

stardust-rain:

Every year May 25th comes around and every year I have the need to put into words just why this book stayed with me for so long. But mostly it comes down to this: despite Night Watch’s sudden shift to a darker, heavier dark tone, it avoids being unnecessarily cruel to its characters just for the sake of plot. And of course, this is true of all the Discworld books, people striving to be better, to do better, but I think it’s significant in context of how dark this book is – especially since going by chronological reading order, this is the bleakest book we encounter up until this point.

This Ankh-Morpork that we’re submerged in is so alien at that point in her timeline, it’s gruesome and cruel and oppressive because it’s under a gruesome, cruel and oppressive tyrant. Yet despite that, there is still kindness in the heart of the book – it values old Vimes’ mercy and young Sam’s innocence, it values the fact that Vimes wants to avoid undue violence, to save as many as he can,

and shield people from the tyranny for as long as he can.

It’s such an emotionally charged book and there is a lot of darkness in the story itself- a blood-thirsty serial killer, power-hungry men,

ruthless paranoia, and the awful, inhumane underbelly of a regime – but

where most other books would have so, it avoids traumatizing its characters just to establish that. Darker shifts in tone so often entails that the narrative doles out meaningless suffering and trauma just establish itself Night Watch ultimately avoids that, because it uses other means to make the text feel heavy and oppressive. Part of it is from the plot itself, in that Vimes knows what happens behind closed doors, he know what Swing is capable of and the knowledge of that threat is high-risk enough to let readers know of the stakes.

The main emotional conflict instead comes from Vimes battling with himself, reconciling with wanting to go home versus, well, Sam Vimes being Sam Vimes, which means doing his best at saving everyone, history, timeline and causality be damned. We know that young Sam will become cynical and bitter and drunk somewhere down the line, we know that half the Night Watchmen will die, we know that the city will remain cruel despite this Hail Mary attempt at revolution. Which is why the narrative is so intent on telling us that Vimes’ kindness matters – in mentoring young Sam, in getting the prisoners off the Hurry-Up Wagon, in preventing undue riots and undue brutality, in keeping the fighting away from Barricade as long as possible. The city’s going to hell in a hand basket, might as well make people’s lives easier.

Vimes can’t save Ankh-Morpork from history taking its due course, but the powerful emotional catharsis is seeing him coming to the decision to try and save everyone anyway – simply because he can’t envision himself not doing it. So he digs his heels in and makes whatever difference he can in the moment.

Because Night Watch in an inevitable tragedy – only one of the two stories can have a happy ending and in order for Sam Vimes to go back to the present, to his wife and his son and his Watch and his city, the revolution has to fail or else that timeline ceases to exist. There is no way for him to save both his men and his future but he’ll be damned if it doesn’t try – he wouldn’t be Sam Vimes otherwise. Every time it I re-read it still feels like he’s that close to succeeding.

It could have so easily been grimdark and ~gritty~ but ultimately it avoids because it centres on a few basic themes that forms the core in the story. The heart of it is about camaraderie of a handful of men too weird and incompetent and ugly, the tentative hope in the uprising, and the sheer bloody determination of Sam Vimes’ refusal to give up on the people around him.

I just also want to throw in – since there’s no better time to do it than the 25th of May – that one of my favorite thing about Night Watch is that it’s a book about consequences. The consequences of the past on the present, sure, but also the consequences of corruption, of revolution, of our behavior towards and about one another. And while that would be enough on its own, this beautiful brutal kindhearted story, my favorite thing about Night Watch is that the ENTIRE book is actually a consequence of the book before it – Thief of Time. If you haven’t ever done yourself the favor of reading these two books back to back, I HIGHLY recommend it; for one thing, Lu-Tze and Susan and Lobsang are three of my favorite characters ever, and for another, Thief of Time’s conceptualization of time itself is really beautiful and fascinating and, in its way, haunting. Like Night Watch, it’s a beautiful book on its own, but like Night Watch, it is best read with its partner.

The point being, this is a great post and it should feel great BUT ALSO pls read Thief of Time, because all the good things about Night Watch are only amplified when you’ve read them both. (I mean, for one thing, it will leave you with the happy knowledge that history shattered, and despite having no part in causing that or even knowing it had happened, Sam Vimes still ended up cleaning up a big chunk of the mess, because OF COURSE HE DID. Ugh, Sir Terry, you beautiful genius, I hope you are resting in peace. Thank you for helping ensure I live in interesting times.)

ofpaintedflowers:

the idea of a Hamilton Night Watch au has been sitting like a barb in my head for like two weeks now so here are some eclectic stress relief doodles

greatly inspired by this post!!

copperbadge:

drgaellon:

jumpingjacktrash:

roachpatrol:

autrelivre:

carry-on-my-wayward-artblog:

alda-rana:

out-there-on-the-maroon:

muffinworry:

roachpatrol:

out-there-on-the-maroon:

babtest:

so. they made a new german discowrld essentials edition, with a new covers (which is good because the old ones are real bad)

and they are these manga-like ‘build a picture’ style, which i like

but. oh my god. look at that vimes

this isn’t samuel ‘worked the night-shift for 30 years, runs on coffee and spit, has probably not slept more than 3hours any given day’ vimes

this is the guy who played vimes in murder-mystery play, ‘inspired by real events’. hammy acting, horrible script, ‘Clues’ everywhere, heroic fightscenes, big speaches. Vimes threadened to shut the whole thing down for slander.  Sybil probably got an autograph

I’ve been staring at this post for 15 minutes and I can’t stop laughing omg omg I’m seeing stars oh no.

Sybil invited the damn company to the house for their afterparty and you know it.

the actor earnestly explains at one point the fitness routine he undertook to ‘get in character’ for the part of the ‘heroic commander’ while pointing at various melon-sized muscle groups. vimes himself is sitting there shoveling something that’s 98% grease by volume into his face and also staring balefully. he’s never done a pushup in his life. he wouldn’t know a fucking pushup if it spat on him in the street. sybil is doing her absolute best not to laugh and her best is nowhere good enough. the actor, encouraged by the (presumably) admiring male stares and flirtatious female giggles, goes on to describe his hair-care regimen.

Nooooooo oooooonnnnne stops coups like Sam Vimes

Distrusts clues like Sam Vimes

No one lives off of Klatchian brews like Sam Vimes

He’s especially good at in-VEST-igating

My what a guy, that Sam Vimes

This post got better since I saw it last night oh my gods. 

Thank you @roachpatrol I don’t think I’ll ever stop laughing now.

Sorry @roachpatrol for hijacking your post but that was just hilarious and i had to draw it….

(It’s hard to draw Vimes out of uniform! But I guess even he doesn’t wear armour 24/7…)

(Young Sam is like ‘daddy, I want an armour like that!’)

I’m sure Angua loved it too

And then she run

OH WOW I love your Vimes! And Angua messin’ with him is beautiful. 😀

why didn’t i see any of these illustrations earlier THEY’RE GREAT

i’m so happy

@copperbadge This one too…

The shit from his senior officers (and wife) is endless.

The Patrician pointedly Never Mentions It but you can tell sometimes he smiles a certain way when he’s thinking of it. 😀