Posts tagged Discworld
TheyMightBeGallifreyan
‘Yes, your grace. Nevetheless, I must represent the public interest here. I shall try not to be obtrusive. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? your grace.’
‘I know that one,’ said Vimes. ‘Who watches the watchman? Me, Mr. Pessimal.’
‘Ah, but who watches you, your grace?’ said the inspector, with a brief smile.
‘I do that, too. All the time,’ said Vimes. ‘Believe me.’
(Source: fuckyeahterrypratchett, via fabledquill)
Rob Anybody makes me crack up. I could read Wee Free Men stories all day. I also like that Grebo was drawn in human form.
(via piglii)
Why Gandalf Never Married by Terry Pratchett
a BRILLIANT read, and even more incentive for me to make my own wizards trope-defying and excellent.
God it’s fascinating to look at the timestamp on this one and then realize that Pratchett went on to write his Witches Series and Granny Weatherwax, who’s strong and fierce and brilliant and austere and so achingly, bitterly, intensely good. I think Granny Weatherwax would give Gandalf a hard look and Gandalf would remember he had a very urgent appointment three shires away and stroll off really fast.
Holy fuck, everybody go read this right now.
Pratchett is one of the people whose work is not only hilarious, but legitimately brilliant. I learned so much from reading his books. Even this talk is peppered with the kind of thing that makes you snort out loud and get stared at by coworkers:
No wonder witches were always portrayed as toothless — it was living in a 90,000 calorie house that did it. You’d hear a noise in the night and it’d be the local kids, eating the doorknob.
And he fucking nails the witch/wizard dichotomy. Wizards = wise, powerful, organized, educated; witches = crones who give you warts. The Tiffany Aching series addresses this directly, as do the regular Discworld books focusing on the Lancre witches. Like Roach says, Granny Weatherwax is achingly, bitterly, intensely good, and that’s partly because she’s constantly aware of how easy it would be to be bad. How someone has to do the mucky jobs and help the obnoxious and stupid and never, ever take credit for anything you didn’t do; how the hardest thing is to stay balanced just on the edge between extremes, maintain that equilibrium, do what needs to be done no matter how awful or difficult it may be. Wizards never have to think about this. They just forge straight ahead, eating big dinners and squabbling amongst themselves and taking their power for granted.
Come to think of it, that’s one of the most significant divisions of power in Discworld: the men all gang up into this big elitist mob and loll around indolently, specifically not doing magic. Their magic is so powerful and dangerous that it’s a better use of their time to all keep each other down, all the wizard books basically revolve around ‘Oh no, someone’s doing magic, we’d better stomp them flat and then go home for second breakfast’. They keep the world from turning inside out but not much more than that, and they’re kind of a bunch of assholes about it too. Meanwhile the witches are just grimly slogging along, delivering babies and rousting out vampires and changing compresses, like, they stake out territories and then take care of everyone in it… while everyone still thinks that wizards are respectable and witches are shady.
(Source: stormagedondarklordofall)
Granny Weatherwax’s beehives were tucked away down one side of the cottage. Some were the old straw kind, most were patched-up wooden ones. They thundered with activity, even this late in the year.
Tiffany turned aside to look at them, and the bees poured out in a dark stream. They swarmed toward Tiffany, formed a column, and—
She laughed. They’d made a witch of bees in front of her, thousands of them all holding station in the air. She raised her right hand. With a rise in the level of buzzing, the bee-witch raised its right hand. She turned around. It turned around, the bees carefully copying down every swirl and flutter of her dress, the ones on the very edge buzzing desperately because they had farthest to fly.
She carefully put down the big sack and reached out toward the figure. With another roar of wings it went shapeless for a moment, then re-formed a little way away, but with a hand out-stretched toward her. The bee that was the tip of its forefinger hovered just in front of Tiffany’s fingernail.
“Shall we dance?” said Tiffany.
In the clearing full of spinning seeds, she circled the swarm. It kept up pretty well, moving fingertip to buzzing tip, turning when she turned, although there were always a few bees racing to keep up.
Then it raised both its arms and twirled in the opposite direction, the bees in the “skirt” spreading out again as it spun. It was learning.
Tiffany laughed and did the same thing. Swarm and girl whirled across the clearing.
She felt happy and wondered if she’d ever felt this happy before. The gold light, the falling seeds, the dancing bees…it was all one thing. This was the opposite of the dark desert. Here, light was everywhere and filled her up inside. She could feel herself here but see herself from above, twirling with a buzzing shadow that sparkled golden as the light struck the bees, moments like this paid for it all.
— A Hat Full of Sky
(via firebirdy)
Cosmogony
Fuck yeah, Discworld
(via magiifox)
When banks fail, it is seldom bankers who starve.
—Going Postal, Terry Pratchett
i believe with absolute sincerity that pterry is the greatest working class intellectual social historian of his age, slow clap it out
(via doshijust)
Animated Paul Kidby
Original illustration by Paul Kidby
“Death isn’t cruel – merely terribly, terribly good at his job.”
(via flareblade2000)
An alternative, favoured by those of religious persuasion, was that A’Tuin was crawling from the Birthplace to the Time of Mating, as were all the stars in the sky which were, obviously, also carried by giant turtles. When they arrived they would briefly and passionately mate, for the first and only time, and from that fiery union new turtles would be born to carry a new pattern of worlds. This was known as the Big Bang hypothesis.
Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic (Prologue)
This made me laugh so much. I think I’m going to enjoy Discworld!
(via aliceonline)
(Source: aliceisonline, via piglii)
i made it i made a powerpoint about why you should read Discworld.
i ran out of space for stuff like the stand-alone novels (crossdressing! social commentary!)
and leonard
and cohen
and actually quite a lot tbh this is in no way a comprehensive guide.
also i used some fanart it is by sannam, septendecim-fool, nechayano, and katzille (the rest is official art by Paul Kidby but i don’t like all of that).
I need to reread discworld.
(via fatalcookies)
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms (via idrabear)
This is one of the best breakdowns I’ve ever seen of how expensive it is to be poor.
(via vulgarweed)
My professor told me he’s writing a paper on the economics of Discworld, and I didn’t get the chance to ask but I hope it includes this.
(via mumblingsage)
(via fatalcookies)
To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.
(Source: duedlyinfatuation, via piglii)
football practice at UU
i don’t really remember what this dude looked like
tbh i just wanted to tag his list of academic titles
/hideous cackling at the shirt
#there’s oooonly one Professor Macarona D. Thau (Bug) D. Maus (Chubb) Magistaludorum (QIS) Octavium (Hons) PHGK (Blit) #DMSK Mack D. Thau (Bra) Visiting Professor in Chickens (Jahn the Conqueror University (Floor 2 Shrimp Packers Building Genua)) #Primo Octo (Deux) Visiting Professor of Blit/Slood Exchanges (Al Khali) KCbfJ Reciprocating Professor of Blit Theory (Unki) #D. Thau (Unki) Didimus Supremius (Unki) Emeritus Professor in Blit Substrate Determinations (Chubb) #Chair of Blit and Music Studies (Quirm College for Young Ladies)
it-sounds-uncommon-nonsense:
amicusursorum:
it-sounds-uncommon-nonsense:
Vetinari Coat of Arms.
Reads; “Si non confectus, non reficiat” which translates to;”If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”
Which of course should be Si non fractus, noli infingere.
Nope, it is the fictional language Latatian, originating in Sto Lat on the Discworld. In Going Postal, it does say “Si non confectus, non reficiat”. It is obviously based on Latin, but it isn’t ment to be perfect. Pratchett himself described it as “very bad doggy Latin”. Other examples are; the motto of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch: Fabricati Diem, Pvnc; which makes no sense in Latin but looks like it means “Make My Day, Punk”, the Legal Principle: Acquiris Quodcumque Rapis: “You get what you grab”, and the Discworld Professions: Sodomy non Sapiens as if to say “buggered if I know”.
I was going to add to the list, but then I found THIS and it seems a shame not to include them all.
Though I personally find it hard to top “Stercus, Stercus, Stercus, Morituri Sum” (Oh Shit, Oh Shit, Oh Shit, I’m Gonna Die) and “Morituri Nolumus Mori” (We Who Are About To Die Don’t Want To).
(Source: twin-city-ankh-and-morpork, via azirasnail)
News from Discworld 2012
Okay, folks: the word is out.
The new Discworld series “The Watch” (AKA CSI:Ankh-Morpork) has been approved by Terry Pratchett and will go into production with BBC Worldwide.
The GOOD OMENS film is a go: the trailer was shown here (at the Discworld Convention in Birmingham). No release date was specified. “The trailer said “COMING SOON”, so your guess is as good as anybody’s.)
Meanwhile, let joy be unrestrained!
(PS: Terry is in excellent fettle. Had a long chat with him last night and the Master is still very, very much in the building, in case anyone was wondering.)
(via mugglibus)
