Discworld

[BiblioRook]

I've bee rereading a lot of Discworld lately (mostly Watch stuff at the moment admittedly) and I know that it has a fair amount of fans here and just generally felt like talking about it.

Talk about what exactly? Well anything really. To start things off though let me ask this: if you had to pick just one Discworld book as your favorite, what would it be?

[wombat31]

My favorite is the first one I read. Small gods

[Silfir]

Mine's The Truth.

[BWR]

Small Gods or Pyramids.
I have a soft spot for The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic too.

[Fri]

The Truth is one of my favourite novel of all time.

Other than that, my favourite are Going Postal and What I consider a trilogy, Guards Guards, Men at Arms, and Feet of Clay.

[An Enemy Spy]

Small Gods for me was where Discworld crossed over from being a good series to a great one.

[Rockphed]

My favorite is the first one I read. Small gods

I think I read Small Gods 3rd or 4th. I am almost certain the first 4 I read were The Color of Magic, The Light Fantastic, Pyramids, and Small Gods. I still think Small Gods is the best discworld novel. It has a message, but it doesn't come out an bludgeon about the face with it. It isn't even sure that its message is right. But it does have a very, very tight story. Some of the later books loosen up a bit (for instance Making Money, which meanders about for a while and doesn't go anywhere).

[Sholos]

Night Watch. No question in my mind. But after that, I'd probably have to go with Hogfather or Small Gods. I really enjoy the books that give almost a backseat look at humans and what we're made of.

[Bohandas]

Hogfather's probably the one I reread most frequently as it gets dug out every december with the christmas books

[smuchmuch]

Aww,, I feel even the bad ones make for a good or at least passable read (well almost of all of them), hard to choose a favorite.

The contrary, though, is much easier for me
("Carpe Jugulum" felt like "Lords and Ladies", except with vampires instead of elves, "Monstruous Regiment" was allright but seriously lacked excitement or humour as it started to alredy show the signs of being overy all about the message at the expense of anthing else ever more so than usual. Pretty much everything "he" wrotte after "Going Postal" is almost unreadable (Unseesn aademicals at least had a smidge of humour left, so I think I'll give the ttle of worse to "Snuff". Admitedly, I haven't read the Steam one or most of the Tiphany Aching, so there might be some contenders)

Still if I had to choose a few favorites per period:

Of his early stuff: Wyrd sisters and Witches Abroad have got to be my favorites because fairy ales and theater lampoon are things I quite enjoy.
If we can pick fraction, I'll say half of reaper Man (he one with Bill Door in it), it has a certan ôetry to it.
Also in retrospet and rereding i've develloped a certain fondness for "color of Magic" and "Sourcery" beause of that old goofiness and just the fact it felt more ike classic fantaisy parody then.

In his middle ones: Men at arms, ain't bad. Lord and ladies. Small Gods. Interesting Times has some brilliant bits.
I like the Fifth elephant quite a bit although I'd be hard pressed to say why exactly

Of his late ones, I'll say the Truth (reachy but tight and with jut enough wacky characers to still work), Night Watch (some very good moments, even if the resolution feel somewhat rrushed) and Going Posal

[Eldan]

("Carpe Jugulum" felt like "Lords and Ladies", except with vampires instead of elves, "Monstruous Regiment" was allright but seriously lacked excitement or humour as it started to alredy show the signs of being overy all about the message at the expense of anthing else ever more so than usual. Pretty much everything "he" wrotte after "Going Postal" is almost unreadable (Unseesn aademicals at least had a smidge of humour left, so I think I'll give the ttle of worse to "Snuff". Admitedly, I haven't read the Steam one or most of the Tiphany Aching, so there might be some contenders)

Raising Steam is like Snuff, but without a plot, a more anvilicious morale and an ending that retro-actively makes me dislike discworld dwarves from a worldbuilding standpoint.

[Gray Mage]

This is a tough question to answer. To me my top 3 would be Small Gods, Feet of Clay and Thief of Time, but ranking those 3 in order is very hard to do.

[Mister Tom]

Night Watch. No question in my mind. But after that, I'd probably have to go with Hogfather or Small Gods. I really enjoy the books that give almost a backseat look at humans and what we're made of.

Probably these three, also feet of clay and Witches abroad.
Also, although not really a novel, The Science of discworld.

[Artemis97]

I think my favorite book has to be Going Postal. I really like Moist von Lipwig as a character, and seeing him trying to weasel out of different situations is just too fun. I've read it three or four times more than the other books, except for maybe Hogfather, which I try to read every Christmastime.

[Spacewolf]

My top three would probably be Reaper Man, Thud then Feet of Clay. Thud is also the last book I would recommend reading the the series.

[thatSeniorGuy]

It's tough to pick a favourite, but Going Postal is up there; it was a gift from a friend who wanted to introduce me to Discworld, and she knew what she was doing :smallbiggrin:

[BiblioRook]

As it happens Going Postal probably would be my favorite too, also largely just due to being my first Discworld book (It being the only Discworld book in the very tiny fiction section of my old university's library). Aside from that though? I'm not sure I could really say. Other then the stand-alone books I'm so used to thinking of the books as one part of a large whole and find it weird and difficult to try to think of them subjectively individually.

I don't really get the hate for the post-Thud books though. Sure I wouldn't claim that they are on par with the rest of the series but considering what Pratchett was going though during those books it was rather remarkable that he was still churning them out like he was. More then anything though probably I would say that even at his worst Pratchett is just fine. I actually just recently reread Snuff and still liked it just fine (though it also very much made me want to reread the other Watch books, which I'm just now finishing up) and I remember enjoying Making Money too. Raising Steam I wasn't trilled about but not for the reasons people usually go with, I'm just not that into trains. I have to admit though I've kinda been putting off Unseen Academicals (one of the only Discworld books I have yet to read) as I'm really not a sport fan and I just really haven't heard anything good about it.

[Silfir]

Unseen Academicals is good fun. The only Pratchett novel I had trouble enjoying was The Shepherd's Crown. Too many cracks showing.

After Thud! is too early to stop outright. He's past his prime at that point, but even past-his-prime Pratchett is better than most. The post-Thud era also includes Nation, which really would be a crying shame to leave out.

[Kato]

Unseen Academicals is good fun. The only Pratchett novel I had trouble enjoying was The Shepherd's Crown. Too many cracks showing.


Having read SC and being thoroughly disappointed I'm rather confident that book was nowhere near ready to be published. Yes, what was written was probably by Pterry, but there was SO MUCH that still needed to be properly worked out I almost regret buying it. But I want to give them the shadow of the doubt that it wasn't done to squeeze money from the fans but to give them the last novel they could from him.

Also, I'll agree with people who say the later books, or some of them, aren't as strong as the middle ones. Especially Snuff and Raising Steam are... well, when I remember them all I can think of is "goblin rights!" which is a decent point to make but not only could the point have been made better, the whole book seems to suffer somewhat from it. Even Unseen Academicals was kind of... eh.


On a more positive note: I like too many books to pick out a favorite. I adore Hogfather, especially, but not only, for the "the sun would not have risen" speech. Still gives me chills. Also, while I guess somewhat preachy, I like Monstrous Regiment quite a bit. I like Small Gods, I like Men at Arms, I like the Aching series, I like... I like too many of his books. (If I didn't I wouldn't have the tattoo I have).


On another note: How did you get into it? I can rather clearly remember me being in a book store at the train station and looking for something to take with me. (It was when I was doing military service and travelling a lot by train, so I read a lot in the day) There was a double issue of Pyramids and I think... Wyrd Sisters(? one of the witches, anyway) with a sticker saying "The Douglas Adams of fantasy" or something similar and as a fan of Adams it caught my attention. So I bought it and read it and WANTED MORE :smallbiggrin: I basically bought a new book every week for a while until the German bookstores ran out of material. Luckily. Because then I started reading the originals and they were even better. (In retrospect I realized I actually had read one of his books earlier, because our German teacher had us read "Only you can save mankind" (in German) but it took a while until I was aware this was also by Sir Terry. And while good at the time it wasn't Discworld.)
So, yeah, that's my story.

[The New Bruceski]

I got into it as a kid. My dad has a large sci fi/fantasy collection, and got a catalog of new ones that were coming out. I'm not sure if he started with Colour of Magic, but he picked up an early one and the whole family was hooked. My brother and I were just learning to read, but in the early more strict-parody books there were plenty of jokes we could spot, and it led to them being great for re-reading, because every time we'd find a new joke or reference somewhere we just hadn't noticed. Sometimes dad would get back from a business trip with two or three of them written down that he'd spotted on the plane and wanted to share.

[Cozzer]

My first Discworld book was Small Gods, which is still one of my favorites.

But my favorite favorite... man, this is hard. In the Watch series, I love Man At Arms (the birth of Carrot as my favorite character ever), Feet of Clay (just solid from beginning to end) and The Fifth Elephant (again, I love ambiguous Carrot). But lately I reread "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents" and found it super extremely good as a standalone book. Then there's "The Wee Free Men" which I adored (the climax is really great), even if the following books in that series have been sort of underwhelming for me...

[TeChameleon]

Mort was my first Discworld novel, and I found it at my semi-local public library while I was in High School, which would have been... 1994-ish? Wow, I feel old now >.O I still remember the cover blurb that caught my eye- "Death comes to us all. When Death came to Mort, he offered him a job."

As for favourite? Oi. My top three are Interesting Times, Hogfather, and Witches Abroad. Interesting Times is because I love Rincewind as a character, and Cohen and the Silver Horde are amazing, and Lord Hong has to be one of the most fearsome Disc antagonists ever. Hogfather because Death creeping around being very, very bad at being Santa Claus will never not be hilarious (with Albert as his amazingly disreputable elf), and Susan is a lot of fun to watch, especially when she's dealing with the general lunacy of living in the Discworld... she's like a pissed-off Mary Poppins :smalltongue: And Witches Abroad is... hrm. Just generally amazing, from the sudden swerve from Hans Christian Andersen territory into a Voudoun-infused Mardi Gras to the bit with the mirrors to the narration drily noting that vampires have risen from the crypt, from the grave, but have yet to manage rising from the cat.

There is one honourable mention, as well- The Last Hero. Stunning illustrations by Paul Kidby, Cohen at his most amazingly badass, some nice focus on Leonard of Quirm, interplay between Carrot and Rincewind (and Rincewind showing up at the start of the mission and announcing that he did not wish to volunteer, to the utter confusion of the ArchChancellor and the Patricion. Rincewind went on to clarify that he didn't want to go, but he knew that he'd inadvertently end up tangled up in it somehow whether he liked it or not, so he decided to save everyone some time and trouble), and the motto of the mission- Morituri nolumus Mori- "We who are about to die don't want to". :smallamused:

[2D8HP]

Despite being the first book in the series, I don't suggest Colour of Magic as the introduction to the series (Rincewind and Twoflowers just aren't that interesting of characters. Sorry).
Among the early books, I would hand an adult Equal Rites or Mort first.
The book I've re-read the most? Lord's and Ladies. I was re-reading L&L, when my son picked it up and starting to read it, I gave him The Illustrated Wee Free Men to read instead, and he was hooked on something besides the Naruto comic-books he favored.

[Cozzer]

Ooh, Lords and Ladies and The Last Hero are great too! As a Magrat fan, I loved the climax of LaL, and I agree that the part where Rincewind un-volunteers for the Last Hero mission because "he knows how his life works" is fantastic.

[tensai_oni]

My personal favorites are Small Gods and the Reaperman. I have trouble deciding which one I like more.

Lords and Ladies, Men at Arms, the Truth, the Hogfather are all excellent too.

[DoctorFaust]

It'd probably be Hogfather for me. Death's always been my favorite character, and I think that Hogfather is probably the best Death book, with Reaper Man a very close second.

[The_Snark]

I think my three favorites would have to be (in no particular order):

1: Small Gods, for reasons others have mentioned already: it's a very tightly-written book that blends Pratchett's usual humor with some of his best serious writing. Probably stands on its own better than any other.

2: Hogfather. The premise is wonderfully absurd and the book does justice to it. It has some of the best Death and Susan moments, the Unseen University faculty get to do their thing, and I like the philosophy and themes it explores.

3: The Last Continent. Yes, yes, this one is pure silliness, but I love it anyway. The UU faculty are featured prominently, Rincewind has silly light-hearted adventures, and there's something very charming about how enthusiastic the Ecksians get about Rincewind's criminal career, including (especially!) the local law.

[Tengu_temp]

My opinion on Unseen Academicals is that it's two books of vastly different qualities mashed together. The one about wizards trying to revolutionize football and play a match is great fun; the one about several new characters trying to find themselves in the world of football fans is heavy-handed, unfunny, and boring.

[kjelfalconer]

Hmm, I'm going to put my hat in for the oft mentioned Witches Abroad, and the much less mentioned Thief of Time.

Susan is always excellent, and that one had a very strong ensemble.

[Eldan]

On another note: How did you get into it? I can rather clearly remember me being in a book store at the train station and looking for something to take with me. (It was when I was doing military service and travelling a lot by train, so I read a lot in the day) There was a double issue of Pyramids and I think... Wyrd Sisters(? one of the witches, anyway) with a sticker saying "The Douglas Adams of fantasy" or something similar and as a fan of Adams it caught my attention. So I bought it and read it and WANTED MORE :smallbiggrin: I basically bought a new book every week for a while until the German bookstores ran out of material. Luckily. Because then I started reading the originals and they were even better. (In retrospect I realized I actually had read one of his books earlier, because our German teacher had us read "Only you can save mankind" (in German) but it took a while until I was aware this was also by Sir Terry. And while good at the time it wasn't Discworld.)
So, yeah, that's my story.


Similar, but "The Douglas Adams of Fantasy" actually turned me off from buying them for a long time. It sounded worse than "The New Tolkien!" which was on every second book in the Fantasy shelf at that time. Add to that the German titles, which were really bad ("Hey, can we make puns that aren't actually puns, by just writing down two words that are vaguely related to the content of the book and form a standard phrase?"), the weird-goofy cover art and I always assumed they were just part of those really bad parody fantasy books that were around at the outside of teh fantasy section. You know. "This book is the Lord of the Rings, if everyone was stoned all the time and there was a lot of toilet humour. We renamed "Elrond" to "Eldong", isn't that hilarious?".

Then I got Witches Abroad as a gift and pretty much bought everything that was out in German at the time over the next year.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I had... a hard time getting into Pratchett. I love the Bromeliad trilogy, and therefore decided to give Discworld a try. Since I hate reading out of order, I tried the translated version of The Colour of Magic. Turns out that while Bromeliad translates beautifully into my language, the jokes of Discworld do not, and since I had not read the stories parodied in tCoM, I found the whole thing dull and nonsensical. This was also before Internet, and before my command of the English language allowed me to read untranslated (and get the jokes).

Years later, my best friend insisted that I should read Men at Arms & Reaper Man. He sold me on it on the blurbs alone:

Death is missing – presumed ... er ... gone. Which leads to the kind of chaos to always expect when an important public service is withdrawn.

"Be a MAN in the City Watch! The City watch needs MEN!"

But what it's got includes Corporal Carrot (technically a dwarf), Lance-constable Cuddy (really a dwarf), Lance-constable Detritus (a troll), Lance-constable Angua (a woman ... most of the time) and Corporal Nobbs (disqualified from the human race for shoving).

By then, the Internet was more available, (pre-Google, though) so I finally understood how Discworld continuity works. So I borrowed Reaper Man, and absolutely adored it.

As to my favourites, Reaper Man is my favourite of the early novels (and my recommended starting point to really get what DW novels are like), and Going Postal for the latter novels, with special mentions for Men at Arms and Thief of time.

Grey Wolf

[spectralballoon]

The Tiffany Aching stuff is wonderful. Some of his night watch related novels are too depressing for my tastes (emphasis on some).

[Rodin]

Hogfather is easily my favorite, simply due to the circumstances that lead me to read it.

For my 18th birthday, my parents got me a super special present - a plane ticket to England so I could be at a huge family gathering for Christmas for the first time ever, and my first trip back to England in almost 10 years. Christmas itself was amazing, and is what I will always associate with Christmas - 20 of us all gathered in the living room next to the fire, while it snowed outside. My first (and only) White Christmas, and the first time I'd even seen snow in over 5 years.

One of the presents I got was Hogfather. I had never even heard of Terry Pratchett before, so I started in with some trepidation on a bus ride across the country to visit my grandfather from the other side of the family. It snowed the whole way, so I was reading it in between looking out the window at snow-covered English countryside. The bus arrived early, so I had a bit of a wait in the bus station. I sat there reading it in the darkness with the snow coming down until my grandfather arrived. We didn't even recognize each other at first because it had been so long, and he wasn't expecting me to have arrived yet. One pair of double-takes later, and it was all hugs.

My favorite memories of Christmas, all wrapped up in one of the best Discworld books Pratchett ever wrote. It's very special to me.

[Fri]

my first discworld read was tiffany aching books, since it's the first one translated into my language, and I didn't even realize it was discworld at first.

I always wanted to read discworld for years, since I often heard about it, but back then I was still a student and have no mean to order book from abroad yet, so it delight me so much when finally I randomly found a discworld book in an import bookstore. It was, surprisingly, guards guards, which is inciedentally one of my favourite book now.

I learned that the import bookstore allow you to order book via them, so from then on I regularly order discworld books.

Anyway, on a weird thing, lots of people like nightwatch. It's a technically good book I guess, but that book has a specific "pet peeve" of mine as plot point that I can't like it that much.

Pet peeve isn't the right word. Basically it has the specific kind of plot or premise that I irrationally dislike.

if you're interested.



I personally dislike stories where characters got their identity forgotten. It's hard to explain, and rather weird, but I consider someone's identity, someone's memory in the wide world, is a person's most precious thing.

Here's a simple example. There's a slice of life comedy webcomic called Cheers, about a bunch of cheerleader squad. It's actually cute, silly fun. But if you know the background, it's really dark. Basically it's actually a spinoff of another webcomic, an urban fantasy one. The cheerleaders are actually a group of bullies, who got transformed and got their memory wiped. Sure, they now have a better life. But, their old identities? that got people who know them, hate them, like them, their parents memories of raising them, playing with them as toddler? they're all gone and replaced.

Another example, there's a short story I once read. About the rock (Dwayne Johnson) who's actually an immortal highlander. But he's not the actual dwayne johnson. The actual Dwayne Johnson died in his youth, and the highlander replaced his position. So the famous wrestler and actor we know, is not the actual person that his family thought he is.

How does this ties to Night Watch?

Vimes' mentor is a real person. And apparently he's a nice guy. He taught everything Vimes know, and is apparently respected by everyone.

But he died, and Vimes replaced his position. So in the future, nobody actually remember the real old guy. They only remember vimes pretending to be him. Eventhough he's apparently a genuinely nice guy. Does this matter in the universe, plot, or anyone's life? No, because vimes had done what the mentor did. But, once again, nobody remember the old mentor, they actually remember vimes and I find that really, really sad.


Whew. Sorry for the long rant.

[Rockphed]

Hogfather is easily my favorite, simply due to the circumstances that lead me to read it.

For my 18th birthday, my parents got me a super special present - a plane ticket to England so I could be at a huge family gathering for Christmas for the first time ever, and my first trip back to England in almost 10 years. Christmas itself was amazing, and is what I will always associate with Christmas - 20 of us all gathered in the living room next to the fire, while it snowed outside. My first (and only) White Christmas, and the first time I'd even seen snow in over 5 years.

One of the presents I got was Hogfather. I had never even heard of Terry Pratchett before, so I started in with some trepidation on a bus ride across the country to visit my grandfather from the other side of the family. It snowed the whole way, so I was reading it in between looking out the window at snow-covered English countryside. The bus arrived early, so I had a bit of a wait in the bus station. I sat there reading it in the darkness with the snow coming down until my grandfather arrived. We didn't even recognize each other at first because it had been so long, and he wasn't expecting me to have arrived yet. One pair of double-takes later, and it was all hugs.

My favorite memories of Christmas, all wrapped up in one of the best Discworld books Pratchett ever wrote. It's very special to me.

Between Hogfather and Reaper Man, I have a hard time deciding, but normally I come down on the side of Reaper Man being my favorite. Something about Death tripping everyone's "g-man" senses tickles my giblets.

[Bohandas]

Similar, but "The Douglas Adams of Fantasy" actually turned me off from buying them for a long time. It sounded worse than "The New Tolkien!" which was on every second book in the Fantasy shelf at that time. Add to that the German titles, which were really bad ("Hey, can we make puns that aren't actually puns, by just writing down two words that are vaguely related to the content of the book and form a standard phrase?"), the weird-goofy cover art and I always assumed they were just part of those really bad parody fantasy books that were around at the outside of teh fantasy section. You know. "This book is the Lord of the Rings, if everyone was stoned all the time and there was a lot of toilet humour. We renamed "Elrond" to "Eldong", isn't that hilarious?".

Then I got Witches Abroad as a gift and pretty much bought everything that was out in German at the time over the next year.

I think "The Douglas Adams of fantasy" actually undersells him a little bit. I love HHGTTG but Pratchett was so far above Adams that it wasn't until he lost half his brain that the two started to match each other in quality

[Kato]

Similar, but "The Douglas Adams of Fantasy" actually turned me off from buying them for a long time. It sounded worse than "The New Tolkien!" which was on every second book in the Fantasy shelf at that time. Add to that the German titles, which were really bad ("Hey, can we make puns that aren't actually puns, by just writing down two words that are vaguely related to the content of the book and form a standard phrase?"), the weird-goofy cover art and I always assumed they were just part of those really bad parody fantasy books that were around at the outside of teh fantasy section. You know. "This book is the Lord of the Rings, if everyone was stoned all the time and there was a lot of toilet humour. We renamed "Elrond" to "Eldong", isn't that hilarious?".
.

Yeah, those books were... eh. Okay, when I was a teenager I was young enough to consider them funny but... that's been a while.
The German titles are indeed not that good. Either they are literal translations or they are worse. I've heard the translations have gotten better, but I didn't read a German book in years.
The covers are i guess hit and miss. I won't claim I'm a big fan of the art style but I guess they kind of fit with the books, in a way at least. I still do prefer the English ones, yes.


I also consider Pratchett a better writer than Adams, though I obviously like both. Adams is just a bit too... abstract (?) for me. I guess there is some social satire in his works and you likely can read more into it but Pratchett just is more direct and in my opinion thus better at picking apart human nature.

[norival1992]

I'm a big fan of Reaper Man, which stands pretty well on its own, but I think Night Watch is my favorite. The guards series leading up to it is essential for it to have the impact that it doe

[BiblioRook]

Considering how many people have been talking about Hogfanter (and Going Postal too for that matter), I wonder how many people have seen or even know about the Discworld movies? No, not the weird animated ones but the live-action ones. There's Hogfather, Going Postal, and The Color of Magic (which included The Light Fantastic). I always considered them actually pretty nicely done (especially for made-for-TV) but admittedly I might have a bit of a bias. THe Color of Magic is probably the... weirdest one, despite having the most star-stuffed cast of the three (Tim Curry! Sean Astin! Jeremy Irons! Christopher Lee as Death!!) the movie also has these weird inconsistencies that kind of don't feel right to me, like Rincewind being old and feeble or Twoflower being white. I mean, of all things to mess up!

That being said Hogfather and Going Postal are pretty spot on I think. I mean in Going Postal they even had Stanley's lean right (though they neglected to add Reacher's cockatoo)...

And of course, Terry Pratchett cameos in all three Stan Lee style.

[Gray Mage]

I've only seen Going Postal of those three. Speaking of that, weren't there talks about a Guards! Guards! adaptation?

[BiblioRook]

Not so much a Guards! Guards! adaptation as much as a general Ankh-Morpork City Watch TV show.
...I have absolutely no idea what they had planned for it.

Now that I'm thinking about it though, for all the live-action Discword stuff I don't think any of them have shown Trolls at all. I mean they had Golems and they had the Librarian and both couldn't really be generously described as anything other then men in rubber suits so I can't imagine them handling Trolls much differently, but still I'm curious. I don't remember Dwarves really ether for that matter but it also has been a while since I've seen any of the three and it's possible that I might have just overlooked them (no pun intended).

[Kato]

Considering how many people have been talking about Hogfanter (and Going Postal too for that matter), I wonder how many people have seen or even know about the Discworld movies? No, not the weird animated ones but the live-action ones. There's Hogfather, Going Postal, and The Color of Magic (which included The Light Fantastic). I always considered them actually pretty nicely done (especially for made-for-TV) but admittedly I might have a bit of a bias. THe Color of Magic is probably the... weirdest one, despite having the most star-stuffed cast of the three (Tim Curry! Sean Astin! Jeremy Irons! Christopher Lee as Death!!) the movie also has these weird inconsistencies that kind of don't feel right to me, like Rincewind being old and feeble or Twoflower being white. I mean, of all things to mess up!

That being said Hogfather and Going Postal are pretty spot on I think. I mean in Going Postal they even had Stanley's lean right (though they neglected to add Reacher's cockatoo)...

And of course, Terry Pratchett cameos in all three Stan Lee style.
But... wizards are ALL old bearded men, of course Rincewind had to be, too. And... lee was Death? I thought only in the animated one? *checks* Ah, he was. But iirc he didn't play a large role in it.
Obviously getting Lee in hogfather would have been good, but Richardson also does a good job. (btw, when does anyone ever talk of Twoflower's race? Though I guess you could extrapolate from his homeplace' culture but...)

While I think Going Postal is a decent movie and the actors are good I just have some issues with the changes to the plot... It seems to run less smoothly than the book and possibly my biggest problem, aside from the weird in general "letter visions", was... "oh my god she started smoking! the worst thing you did was getting her to smoke, Moist!!!" Seriously? :smallsigh:

[lord_khaine]

But... wizards are ALL old bearded men, of course Rincewind had to be, too. And... lee was Death? I thought only in the animated one? *checks* Ah, he was. But iirc he didn't play a large role in it.
Obviously getting Lee in hogfather would have been good, but Richardson also does a good job. (btw, when does anyone ever talk of Twoflower's race? Though I guess you could extrapolate from his homeplace' culture but...)

Well.. Rincewind is only a wizard student though.. and seemingly one thats really, really fit, with all the running he manages to do. But for Twoflowers race, then yeah, im pretty sure as well we did not get any comments about his skin color. As Terry Pratchett personally comments on, at the Disc black and white lives in peace and gangs up on green.


While I think Going Postal is a decent movie and the actors are good I just have some issues with the changes to the plot... It seems to run less smoothly than the book and possibly my biggest problem, aside from the weird in general "letter visions", was... "oh my god she started smoking! the worst thing you did was getting her to smoke, Moist!!!" Seriously?

As for Going Postal, then i kinda disliked it myself, mainly because i think they mangled Moists character. They gave him to much of a concience.

And as for favorite book, then its a hard choice.. but i am leaning between Small Gods and Night Watch, as the best of the old and newer writhing styles.

[DoctorFaust]

As dumb as it is to cast him as an old guy if you've actually read the books, they may have been going off the early Josh Kirby covers. Assuming the guy in wizard robes is actually Rincewind, this is how he looks on a couple of them.
http://www.lspace.org/ftp/images/bookcovers/uk/the-light-fantastic-1.jpg
http://www.lspace.org/ftp/images/bookcovers/uk/interesting-times-2.jpg
http://www.lspace.org/ftp/images/bookcovers/uk/the-colour-of-magic-1.jpg
http://www.lspace.org/ftp/images/bookcovers/uk/sourcery-1.jpg

And I sorta enjoyed the Hogfather and Going Postal movies, but they really weren't anywhere near as good as the books.

[Sapphire Guard]

Night Watch was my favourite, even though I found Vimes doing mercy killing to be out of character.

Was put off this series for a long time by the horrible cover art, then I started reading it and was hooked.

I believe Rincewind is meant to be about 40? He is a wizard, he has all the trappings like seeing Octarine, etc, just without, you know, actual magic.

[Silfir]

Wizards are depicted as being thoroughly entrenched in tradition, and I seem to remember the beard is part of that. Rincewind gets one on all the covers that show him, as well as in The Last Hero. I don't remember him ever being described as young, and he occasionally reminisces about his student days. Considering he never actually acquired any notable wizarding skill and I think never quite made it to graduation (didn't he make his "wizzard" hat himself?), it's likely he spent a lot of time as a student - and *still* those days are behind him. I'd place him at late thirties, early forties early on, and maybe fifty in later appearances.

Between Terry and Douglas Adams - I love them both, but there's no denying that there is a lot *more* of good Pratchett, owing to the fickleness of fate in part. Of the Hitchhiker novels, I adore the first two, consider the third decent enough, the fourth okay and I forget everything about the fifth, which is never a good sign. (Adams himself admitted it was far too depressing.) Part of what makes Discworld so impressive is just how many of them are really damn good. On that note, I have to give Pratchett the nod... as a novelist. Adams did radio and TV as well, so he was perhaps more versatile.

For what it's worth, the "Fantasy's Douglas Adams" line worked on me, because I was a big Hitchhiker fan (at eleven years old or so) before I read Pratchett.

[Eldan]

For what it's worth, the "Fantasy's Douglas Adams" line worked on me, because I was a big Hitchhiker fan (at eleven years old or so) before I read Pratchett.

So was I. Thing was, I never believed it. I was thoroughly turned off by that. My experience with "The New Tolkien" had told me that it was a label mostly put on trash and I thought the same of this new Douglas Adams.

[Sholos]

About Rincewind, he's definitely not young, but defies the normal wizard tradition of being spherical and out of shape by virtue of always having to run away from things. Ponder Stibbons is the youngish wizard of the series. Also, the only reason Rincewind can't vast spells is that one of The Big 8 spells is in his brain and all of his (admittedly meager) magical talent is taken up with NOT casting it.

[Silfir]

My favourite Adams work is actually non-fiction, Last Chance to See. Definitely worth checking out. And of course there are the two Dirk Gently novels which IMO are equal to the best of the Hitchhiker books.

Last Chance to See is excellent - and a definite example of Adams being more versatile than Pratchett. At least I'm not aware of Pratchett doing that kind of non-fiction writing.

I enjoyed both Dirk Gently novels, but not quite as much as the first two Hitchhikers. But I have to admit that I haven't read them in English yet. Same goes for many Discworld novels; I only bought about half since my brother owned the rest (and eventually gave them to me), and I only started buying them in English when I was fourteen.

It's actually been reassuring to re-read The Last Continent now that I'm twice that age and realize I now understand most of it.

[The_Snark]

Also, the only reason Rincewind can't cast spells is that one of The Big 8 spells is in his brain and all of his (admittedly meager) magical talent is taken up with NOT casting it.

That's true for the first couple of books; as I recall, he eventually gets the spell out of his head, only to discover that no, he's actually just terrible at magic.

Fortunately for him, doing magic is not really the point of Discworld wizards.

[BiblioRook]

As dumb as it is to cast him as an old guy if you've actually read the books, they may have been going off the early Josh Kirby covers. Assuming the guy in wizard robes is actually Rincewind, this is how he looks on a couple of them.

Didn't Kirby also once draw Twoflowers with four literal eyes? He might not be the best judge on how the characters look...
Anyways, regardless if you think Twoflower should be Asian or not (though that would probably be difficult to argue considering Interesting Times) I think most would agree that he should at least look foreign. Eh, but really it's kind of a minor point overall, just seems like a weird mistake to make.
Rincewind while I probably wouldn't try to claim he would be young also certainly would I think be considered white-in-the-beard old ether. I mean as mentioned as much as he probably wouldn't like to acknowledge it Rincewind is rather amazingly physically fit due to his trademark running, not to mention being able to keep up with all the adventurers he gets entangled with. Though now that I think about it (though it's been a very long time since I read it) I am pretty sure he was still considered a student by the time of The Color of Magic (or at the very least student aged but recently expelled). Really who knows just how far apart some of the Discworld books take place, just look at how fast Vimes' son was growing up. It's just rather hard for me to imagine Rincewind as being older then someone like Vetinari.

As for Pratchett being 'The Douglas Adams of Fantasy', I use that description myself a lot when introducing Discworld to people as for better or worst Douglas Adams is far more recognizable and generally gets the point across. Only I usually make sure to add "...only with ten times as many books." to it as well.

[The New Bruceski]

You know. "This book is the Lord of the Rings, if everyone was stoned all the time and there was a lot of toilet humour. We renamed "Elrond" to "Eldong", isn't that hilarious?"..

Oh, you've read National Lampoon's Bored of the Rings too?

[Sholos]

That's true for the first couple of books; as I recall, he eventually gets the spell out of his head, only to discover that no, he's actually just terrible at magic.

Fortunately for him, doing magic is not really the point of Discworld wizards.

Or, rather, NOT doing magic is entirely the point of Discworld wizards.

[Morph Bark]

I've been wanting to read Pratchett for a while and started on Monstrous Regiment a few weeks ago. This first thirty pages or so were a bit of a slog to get through, but after that the humor got going and it became a real good and easy read. I've been enjoying it a lot so far, and am currently 2/3rds of the way in.

[BWR]

Monstrous Regiment is not one of his best. I think it was about then I noticed that the preach started overtaking the humor and piss-taking to the point of annoyance. Not that he didn't write good stuff after that, but I think it was about then that the cracks were beginning to show.

[TeChameleon]

About Rincewind, he's definitely not young, but defies the normal wizard tradition of being spherical and out of shape by virtue of always having to run away from things. Ponder Stibbons is the youngish wizard of the series. Also, the only reason Rincewind can't vast spells is that one of The Big 8 spells is in his brain and all of his (admittedly meager) magical talent is taken up with NOT casting it.

According to Pratchett's commentary in The Art of Discworld, Paul Kidby's version (https://beautifullybony.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/rincewind.png) of Rincewind is, if not definitive, at least close enough to the version in his head to not look wrong. Looks kind of like Shaggy from Scooby Doo after fifteen-twenty years of hard living.

Oddly, if I were to want to introduce someone to the Discworld, I tend to recommend Pyramids as a good jumping-off point. It's stand-alone and self-contained enough not to require any real explanation, a good example (at least in my opinion) of 'Pratchett funny' (Teppic's 'arming up' montage near the beginning is great), and still has enough hooks to the broader world to draw people in.

[Morph Bark]

Monstrous Regiment is not one of his best. I think it was about then I noticed that the preach started overtaking the humor and piss-taking to the point of annoyance. Not that he didn't write good stuff after that, but I think it was about then that the cracks were beginning to show.

If this counts as "not one of his best", I certainly would like to read the better ones. But do you mean the ones after that got steadily worse? I was planning to read Going Postal next, which came only one year later.

[Eldan]

If this counts as "not one of his best", I certainly would like to read the better ones. But do you mean the ones after that got steadily worse? I was planning to read Going Postal next, which came only one year later.

Going Postal is very, very good. I'd actually say Going Postal and Thud are two of his all time best. Now, where the actual decline happens varies a bit depending on who you ask. I thought Wintersmith was still decent. Unseen Academicals and Makign Money weren't terrible, but also not very good. Kinda forgetable. Both Raising Steam and Snuff, though, were really bad. Not just bad for PRatchett, just bad.

One thing I think definitely happens with DIscworld is that over time, they get less and less weird, on average. They move from very clear Sword and Sorcery parody to societal satire. Monstrous Regiment as at the far end of that scale, and features, for Pratchett, very little magical weirdness. Colour of Magic, his first, is on the other end of that scale, it features expies of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser, the Dragonriders of Pern and Conan the Barbarian, amongst others, and is organized like a sword and sorcery compilations in a series of loosely connected short stories.

[lord_khaine]

I second the comment about Going Postal, it got a lot of sharp points, and one of his better books. Meanwhile, where the actual decline started can be argued as well. It is really noticeable in Both Unseen Academical and Making Money. And i think Snuff is at least readable once, even if it suffers on a second readthough. Raising Steam i will certainly avoid, that is horrible all the way though. But for those who have read all the other books, then i would also recomend reading the Sheephards Crown at least once. If nothing else for the closure it brings, as it is the very last discworld book.

[Cozzer]

I agree that, more or less from Making Money, the stories stop being about "righteous heroes vs difficult or impossible odds" and start being about "righteous heroes vs pathetic loser villains". They become more preachy and the themes more repetitive, too. It's hard to say when it begins, exactly... I noticed it even in Thud!, but that book was still enjoyable for me, though not as the previous Guard ones.

Personally, I think the parts of Raising Steam about simply building the train are very good. PTerry's enthusiasm towards that kind of thing really shines. But whenever the usual oppressed goblins and the usual regressive deep dwarves come up, the writing stops being fun and doesn't start becoming engaging. I also agree with the person who said Unseen Academical is a very good book when it's about wizards and football, and a very mediocre book when it's about good shiny misunderstood protagonist vs badwrong evil thugs.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I agree that, more or less from Making Money, the stories stop being about "righteous heroes vs difficult or impossible odds" and start being about "righteous heroes vs pathetic loser villains". They become more preachy and the themes more repetitive, too. It's hard to say when it begins, exactly... I noticed it even in Thud!, but that book was still enjoyable for me, though not as the previous Guard ones.

This, precisely. In Going Postal, Reacher Gilt is magnificently written, and you can believe he would be a match for Vetinari. In Making Money, the bad guy is so forgettable and pathetic and powerless it is ludicrous. You never for a moment believe there is any danger, and the plot cannot even start to build up tension - they tell you in the first page how the plot will be solved (actually, they tell you how it will be solved in the last few pages of Going Postal), and then it is just a slog to get to said solution. About the only thing that Making Money is good for is for the realisation that Pratchett describes exactly what caused the Great Depression of 2008... and then you remember he published it in 2007.

Thud, on the other hand... no, I can't agree. The bad "guy", such as it is, is the Dark Spirit, and he is definitely a menacing presence throughout the book. I really like the build up of that. The whole business with the Dwarves and the Trolls is just the backdrop.

Grey Wolf

[Kato]

Oh, you've read National Lampoon's Bored of the Rings too?

Somewhat off topic but... we had other things here. Like "Herr der Augenringe" (Lord of the eye circles), "Der kleine Hobbnix" (hard to translate, basically The little Hasnothing), "Star Warped", multiple "Barry Trotter" books... I'm too lazy how many were translations and how many were German originals. Let's just say if you passed puberty they serve only as toilet paper. Ahem. Sadly I don't do these things to books, but I'm not sure what else to do with them... can't expose them to intelligent beings, after all.



Anyway, Pratchett. As I said, I like Monstrous Regiment. I can clearly see why people would be bothered, also since it is... well, not exactly a moot point, but the kind of small state waring is more in the past for Western countries. Still, it is a book about war, especially about young people in war, and as such it's not a topic easy to joke about. Heck, my main concern is Death appearing far too seldom in it. There are many arguments that can be made against it but for what it's worth, I think it's a fine book. Not his best, most likely, but good.


re: Going Postal vs Making Money. I just reread the former and started rereading the latter. Especially my memory of Making Money are rather vague so I can't really comment on it right now but while I liked GP, I never felt Gilt was a "great" antagonist. He was okay, but he could have been way better if he had been... hm.. hard to put down. He just seemed to do unnecessary things. Yes, he was just a greedy bastard but it just too often seemed he was a stupid, greedy bastard, not a smart one. Or at least more greedy than smart?

[lord_khaine]

re: Going Postal vs Making Money. I just reread the former and started rereading the latter. Especially my memory of Making Money are rather vague so I can't really comment on it right now but while I liked GP, I never felt Gilt was a "great" antagonist. He was okay, but he could have been way better if he had been... hm.. hard to put down. He just seemed to do unnecessary things. Yes, he was just a greedy bastard but it just too often seemed he was a stupid, greedy bastard, not a smart one. Or at least more greedy than smart?

He were still a noteworthy opponent though, one that could deliver some tension as the story progressed. Because i do agree on that sadly as the books progress there is also a rather noteticeable drop in the quality of antagonists. Calling them pathetic loser villains is sadly far to accurate.

[CWater]

I'm also one of those people who like Monstrous Regiment. Sure, it's not as funny as some of the others, but that's ok, I quite like the story and the sarcasm in it. There are some details I'd have hoped were different in it, but well, they don't make it bad.

It's not my favourite Discworld book though, that honour goes to Thud! I think that one is the best example of Pratchett's societal satire, a genre that I enjoy quite a lot. Also Vimes. Other books I really like are The Truth, Hogfather, Reaper Man (all Death books really) and the Witch books, in no particular order. Masquarade is the first not-Tiffany Pratchett book I read, so it gets some extra nostalgia points.

I can see why Night Watch is popular, but didn't quite enjoy it as much myself, much due to the same reasons as Fri. Time Travel and rewrite are just not my favourite cup of tea. (Though when prepared by Pratchett I do drink it without too much complaint.:smallwink:)

Also, I would like to ask those who like and recommend Pyramids, what is it that you like about it most? I'm honestly curious. I've read it in the past, but I remember just pieces of the plot. I believe I thought it was an ok book, but not too great. I should maybe reread it though, as well as others of the early and middle era, as I've only read those in Finnish and I've realised so much is lost in translation. Not all books suffer from it, but Pratchett is definitely best read in the original language.

[Gray Mage]

I feel that the Moist books the conflict (or at least the interesting conflict for me) is less the antagonists, but the people of AM. As Moist is first and foremost a con artist, the way he cons the general population into buying into the postal office or paper money is the main source of conflict/interest (or if he can ressurect the postal service or the city's banking). In short, his challenge is "duping" the gebral population. And I think the steps he takes to accomplish these objectives are entretaining.

[arrowed]

My first Discworld was a Hat Full Of Sky, which is the second Tiffany Aching. I loved it even though a lot of it went over my head because I hadn't read the Wee Free Men, and I have since read most of the others, thanks to my Mum being a senior Pratchett fan. I love the Tiffany Achings, though I haven't read Shepherd's Crown yet, but I think my favourite is Thief of Time. I can't even articulate why, it just feels like a perfectly mixed book.

[ellindsey]

My first Discworld was Small Gods, and that's still one of my favorites. I read Guards, Guards! right after that, and was hooked. Love all the guards books, up to and including Night Watch. Thief of Time was also great. I also enjoyed Monstrous Regiment, although I agree that it's a very different type of book than the rest of the series.

I loved Going Postal, enjoyed Making Money, and now I'm reading Raising Steam and I have to admit it's a bit of a slog. The worldbuilding is still holding my interest, and Moist is a great character, but the actual plot feels very rote and predictable at this point. Think I may go back and re-read some of the earlier books after I finish this one.

[The_Snark]

I'm also one of those people who like Monstrous Regiment. Sure, it's not as funny as some of the others, but that's ok, I quite like the story and the sarcasm in it. There are some details I'd have hoped were different in it, but well, they don't make it bad.

Same. It vaguely reminds me of Small Gods, actually - not quite as good, but I feel like there are definite echoes in structure and theme.


I feel that the Moist books the conflict (or at least the interesting conflict for me) is less the antagonists, but the people of AM. As Moist is first and foremost a con artist, the way he cons the general population into buying into the postal office or paper money is the main source of conflict/interest (or if he can ressurect the postal service or the city's banking).

The moment where Moist realizes that stamps can be used as currency, and therefore that he has literally been given a license to print money, is pretty great.

[Tvtyrant]

I think the biggest problem was that Vetinari transformed from a villain, to a half-villain, to a good guy. The backdrop of good people striving against indomitable evil gave way over time to a few bad eggs in a good world.

'I believe you find life such a problem because you think there are the good people and the bad people,' said the man. 'You're wrong, of course. There are, always and only, the bad people, but some of them are on opposite sides.'
He waved his thin hand towards the city and walked over to the window.
'A great rolling sea of evil,' he said, almost proprietorially. 'Shallower in some places, of course, but deeper, oh, so much deeper in others. But people like you put together little rafts of rules and vaguely good intentions and say, this is the opposite, this will triumph in the end. Amazing!' He slapped Vimes good-naturedly on the back.
'Down there,' he said, 'are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no. I'm sorry if this offends you,' he added, patting the captain's shoulder, 'but you fellows really need us.'
'Yes, sir?' said Vimes quietly.
'Oh, yes. We're the only ones who know how to make things work. You see, the only thing the good people are good at is overthrowing the bad people. And you're good at that, I'll grant you. But the trouble is that it's the only thing you're good at. One day it's the ringing of the bells and the casting down of the evil tyrant, and the next it's everyone sitting around complaining that ever since the tyrant was overthrown no-one's been taking out the trash. Because the bad people know how to plan. It's part of the specification, you might say. Every evil tyrant has a plan to rule the world. The good people don't seem to have the knack.'
'Maybe. But you're wrong about the rest!' said Vimes. 'It's just because people are afraid, and alone—' He paused. It sounded pretty hollow, even to him.
He shrugged. 'They're just people,' he said. 'They're just doing what people do. Sir.'
Lord Vetinari gave him a friendly smile.
'Of course, of course,' he said. 'You have to believe that, I appreciate. Otherwise you'd go quite mad. Otherwise you'd think you're standing on a feather-thin bridge over the vaults of Hell. Otherwise existence would be a dark agony and the only hope would be that there is no life after death. I quite understand.' He looked at his desk, and sighed. 'And now,' he said, 'there is such a lot to do. I'm afraid poor Wonse was a good servant but an inefficient master. So you may go. Have a good night's sleep. Oh, and do bring your men in tomorrow. The city must show its gratitude.'
'It must what?' said Vimes.
The Patrician looked at a scroll. Already his voice was back to the distant tones of one who organizes and plans and controls.
'Its gratitude,' he said. 'After every triumphant victory there must be heroes. It is essential. Then everyone will know that everything has been done properly.'
He glanced at Vimes over the top of the scroll.
'It's all part of the natural order of things,' he said.
After a while he made a few pencil annotations to the paper in front of him and looked up.
'I said,' he said, 'that you may go.'
Vimes paused at the door.
'Do you believe all that, sir?' he said. 'About the endless evil and the sheer blackness?'
'Indeed, indeed,' said the Patrician, turning over the page. 'It is the only logical conclusion.'
'But you get out of bed every morning, sir?'
'Hmm? Yes? What is your point?'
'I'd just like to know why, sir.'
'Oh, do go away, Vimes. There's a good fellow.'

[Gray Mage]

When did Vetinari become good? Because while he does have the occasional pet the dog moment, I'd still say he's (affably) evil. :smallconfused:

[Tvtyrant]

When did Vetinari become good? Because while he does have the occasional pet the dog moment, I'd still say he's (affably) evil. :smallconfused:

He moves from deliberately breaking Vimes and backing the unions, to balancing them, to accepting a massive and expensive refurbishing of the watch and leaning towards them, to becoming the foremost world champion of minority rights. He also goes from being against technological innovation to being one of its largest supporters, goes from threatening to kill good people to essentially winking at everyone except Moist (who deserves it to be honest).

[Kato]

Wait, what? "When did Vetinari become good?" More like, when was he not good.
Vetinari has always - well, the "true Vetinari, not whoever ruled the city in CoM - been a good person, for a given value of good. People may think he is bad, he might deny it himself, he might be snugg and aloof and beyond any normal person, but what he does is first and foremost for the good of the city. Is he willing to kill people if really necessary? Yeah, but that doesn't make him "evil", that is when he would kill for fun or selfish reasons. He could easily solve many problems by being more tyranical, yet he never does.
Heck, he might even be an antagonist once in a while, but you don't need to be a villain to be an antagonist.

[Cozzer]

Yeah, it's extremely noticeable if you read the whole Guard series and the Moist books in order. At the beginning, Vetinari is... neither evil nor an antagonist, but he's convinced the best thing that can be done is to keep the (pretty bad) status quo as it is, and whoever tries to accomplish more is doomed to fail and should be stopped before he even tries (thus the Night Watch being what it is at the beginning of the series). During the last part of Man At Arms, Carrot's influence creates a better balance, with Vetinari as the ruthless and conservative pragmatist, Carrot as the forward-looking innovator idealist, and Vimes as somehow both at the same time.

Then, during the last ten books or so, with most of the major problems of the city having already been solved in previous books, Vetinari has gradually become such a light shade of grey that there's never any serious conflict between him and the actual heroes. I mean, the Vetinari in Snuff is more idealistic and sentimental than the Vimes in Guards! Guards!. It sort of makes sense, since Vetinari's ruthlessness was a product of the situation the city was in at the start of the series, but it makes him a way less interesting character.

[Silfir]

Think of an evil wizard. He lives in his dark and stormy castle, surrounded by magical tomes and artifacts. Sometimes, he goes out and gets new tomes and artifacts, because he is driven by the thirst for knowledge. Anyone daring to stand in his way gets turned into a frog. He'll come back in the evening, drops off his magical load of new things to study. Maybe he's doing research on how to conquer Death itself and live on forever as a lich. But for now, he has human needs, and he ought to go to sleep.

But before that, he goes outside his castle, into the castle garden, until he reaches the flower bed... and he starts pulling weeds, watering plants and so on. He'll snip off some herbs for personal use. Maybe he's growing tea leaves, maybe tomatoes. He hums a tune.

Suddenly he hears a yell. Some guy in shining, glittery silver armor, with a humongous sword, standing somewhere in the yard right on the lawn, yelling something about something or other. The wizard sighs, lifts his hand, casts Disintegrate. He considers for the second the merits of using the powdery remains for fertilizer, but decides against it. Afterwards, he has supper and a good night's sleep.



Vetinari keeps Ankh-Morporkh orderly, thriving and peaceful because doing so pleases him.

Maybe there's a touch of sentimentality involved somewhere - I assume the wizard is quite fond of his garden as well, after all. Vimes is basically a gardening tool - what craftsman wouldn't get attached to a tool that does its job well, and is remarkably resistant to corrosion?

None of it makes him good. At best, it makes him neutral; but I'd argue that he's never really stopped being evil if the only reason he hasn't done much of it lately is that he simply didn't have any need to. If, at some point, the people of the kingdom the wizard terrorizes on a regular basis were to start bringing him tributes of magical tomes and artifacts, it's perfectly possible he'd just sit in the castle all day for a decade and do nothing evil at all. He'd not be any less evil, though; he'd simply be enjoying the benefits of the reputation he built with his past evil deeds. I'd say a big reason why Vetinari doesn't really have to do anything much any more is that people are already afraid he might.

[Gray Mage]

Silfir pretty much said what I wanted to, but I'll just add a couple of things. Vetinary starts Going Postal threatening Moist, that if he didn't take the job as postmaster Moist would be executed and the only reason was that he got that chance was because Vetinary thought Moist was usefull. In Making Money as well he was involved in putting Moist on the Assassin's Guild hit list if that dog dies (the name escapes me). In Snuff, he does end up caring for goblins (after he sees their utility), but the book ends with him planning the assassination of the antagonist. He is also ok with putting dirt under the rug with De Worde's father if I'm not mistaken and he was ok with resolving the conflict on Monstrous Regiment by invasion.

Being pro technology/innovation and not an antagonist doesn't make him a good guy. And he knows that sometimes being mora tyranical would create more problems in the long run, but he isn't afraid of being so if it is necessary. And someone that is quite allright with using murder as a problem solving tool when needed is squarely in the evil box.
.

[Friv]

If we're using D&D alignments, Vetinari is one of the solidest Lawful Neutrals out there. The success of society is everything - even his position as ruler is almost incidental to the goal, which is the sheer pleasure he gets out of a functioning Ankh-Morpork. Murder and torture are tools to preserve society, rather than something to take enjoyment out of, and he doesn't really do much in the way of corruption or using the rules to his personal advantage.

As the series goes on, he definitely gets more idealistic, because he sees a way for that idealism to work. And as someone who always believed in the minimum influence needed to keep things running smoothly, having people increasingly self-police appeals to him. He still uses the threat of torture and murder to get his way, but he's increasingly designing a city that will survive his departure.

(Personally, my favorite books are Reaper Man, Monstrous Regiment, and Men at Arms. Of the three, I'd say Men at Arms is the best.)

[Silfir]

Murder and torture are tools to preserve society, rather than something to take enjoyment out of, and he doesn't really do much in the way of corruption or using the rules to his personal advantage.

[...]He still uses the threat of torture and murder to get his way, but he's increasingly designing a city that will survive his departure.

To be honest, to me that doesn't describe a Neutral person. That's an Evil person.

You don't have to derive enjoyment from Evil to be Evil.

[Bohandas]

Unseen Academicals is good fun.

One thing that has puzzled me about that book is that Morporkian football does not seem to map exactly either to soccer or to gridiron (or to rugby) and I would have very muck liked to know the rules . Certainly it's mostly soccer, but the references to games occasionally lasting excessively long sounds a hell of a lot more like gridiron where the excessive time outs, breaks, and other clock stoppages drag out an average game to almost as long as the longest professional soccer matches ever played

[The New Bruceski]

One thing that has puzzled me about that book is that Morporkian football does not seem to map exactly either to soccer or to gridiron (or to rugby) and I would have very muck liked to know the rules . Certainly it's mostly soccer, but the references to games occasionally lasting excessively long sounds a hell of a lot more like gridiron where the excessive time outs, breaks, and other clock stoppages drag out an average game to almost as long as the longest professional soccer matches ever played

I thought that was more a reference to cricket.

[Silfir]

I thought that was more a reference to cricket.

Oh no, it's very much about football. Or rugby. Or more precisely, a common ancestor to rugby, soccer, gridiron and other variants of the sport that consisted simply of getting the ball into the goal by whatever means (usually violence). The game takes extremely long because the ball gets lost in the brawl somewhere and everyone involved in the brawl kind of forgets about it. The changes to the sport suggested by the Unseen Academicals turn it into soccer.

That's how I understood it. Might have to reread this one.

[Eldan]

Coming back to Vetinari, yes, I'd put him as LE over anything else, especially in the earlier books. But then there is that speech he gives in one of the last books, I don't know which one. (It's Unseen Academicals, after looking it up.)


The Patrician took a sip of his beer. “I have told this to few people, gentlemen, and I suspect I never will again, but one day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I’m sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged on to a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”

The two wizards exchanged a glance. Vetinari was staring into the depths of his beer mug and they were glad that they did not know what he saw in there.

I really disliked that speech. Not only is it anvilicious, it doesn't work with the character, for me.

[Cozzer]

Honestly, I disagree with Evil Vetinari (except for the very first books, before Guards! Guards!, where he's basically not a real character yet). He uses extremely ruthless means, sure, but that's because of the situation he finds himself in. If he wasn't as ruthless as he is, somebody else would take his place and do way worse things than the ones he does. It's a matter of personal judgement, of course, but a person who consistently chooses the lesser evil because he has no good choices in front of him (by refusing to be the Patrician and letting someone less competent become the Patrician, he'd indirectly enable an even greater evil) is not evil in my opinion.

That said, I really agree with that UA speech being really off-putting and too anvilicious for the character.

[kjelfalconer]

In defence to the aforementioned speech, Vetinari was drunk.

[TeChameleon]

Also, I would like to ask those who like and recommend Pyramids, what is it that you like about it most? I'm honestly curious. I've read it in the past, but I remember just pieces of the plot. I believe I thought it was an ok book, but not too great. I should maybe reread it though, as well as others of the early and middle era, as I've only read those in Finnish and I've realised so much is lost in translation. Not all books suffer from it, but Pratchett is definitely best read in the original language.

I'd have to agree with that last statement- Pratchett, like a handful of other British authors (G.K. Chesterton coming to mind immediately) simply have so much of what makes their stories enjoyable resting on their command of the language that translating them must be utterly nightmarish.

As for Pyramids? (P)Teppic is an oddly endearing character- it's a rather good coming-of-age story under all the insanity. And the whirlwind of classical references... how many other writers could get away with the phrase 'sad tortoise-lollies' while presenting a rather insane take on Zeno's Paradox, or end up with a re-fight of the Trojan War that involves rather more wooden horses than the original, or the sun-as-rugby-ball sequence caused by the sheer number of not-Egypt's sun deities? Add in Assassin's School politics, camels being the greatest mathematicians on the Disc, pyramids mucking with time, and Teppic's rather bemused commentary on all this, and you've got a book that's an entertaining ride from start to finish.

Also, I've got to say that I think the best part about the discussion as to Vetinari's alignment is how amused the character himself would be if he could read it.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

As for Pyramids? (P)Teppic is an oddly endearing character- it's a rather good coming-of-age story under all the insanity. And the whirlwind of classical references... how many other writers could get away with the phrase 'sad tortoise-lollies' while presenting a rather insane take on Zeno's Paradox, or end up with a re-fight of the Trojan War that involves rather more wooden horses than the original, or the sun-as-rugby-ball sequence caused by the sheer number of not-Egypt's sun deities? Add in Assassin's School politics, camels being the greatest mathematicians on the Disc, pyramids mucking with time, and Teppic's rather bemused commentary on all this, and you've got a book that's an entertaining ride from start to finish.

Also, I've got to say that I think the best part about the discussion as to Vetinari's alignment is how amused the character himself would be if he could read it.

Hypothesis: I suspect there is a strong correlation between liking HHGTTG & enjoying Pyramids. In my case, I don't much enjoy either for the same reasons: the plot is subservient to the jokes to an excessive degree. I like my books with characters driving the plot, not just being carried by it from joke to joke. But if you do enjoy that kind of story, the HHGTTG and Pyramids (and tCoM, and a few of the other early DW novels) will be right down your alley. It also it is likely that these novels are where the idea that Pratchett is the Adam's of fantasy come from.

Grey Wolf

[Kato]

I'll refrain from quoting everyone who mentioned his opinion on Vetinari and just give a few more notes from me:

First off, obviously "evil" is in large a relative term. And we should probably tread lightly because forum rules. (e.g. some vegans might consider meat eaters evil, to mention just one example)

So... Vetinari threatened Moist with murder if he wouldn't comply to his demands... Well, to be more precise he saved him from being (under Ankh Morporkian law) rightfully hanged for his crimes. Of course to this pardon were tied certain conditions, but is pardoning a man while demanding he betters himself an evil act?

Invasion of Borogravia... Clearly a much more disputable thing, as invasion always is... and making the case that "look at this country! It's ruled by idiots and the people suffer for it" opens the doors for all kinds of excuses but... look at the country! It's run by idiots and if nobody intervened, it would have likely soon killed of the last of its population by idiotic laws or by throwing them at some "enemies". Yes, saying "sometimes invasion is a good thing" is a very dangerous thing to say but... sometimes it is.

Yes, he does have people killed, without due process. And this is certainly not good. But then, how many "heroes" go around, killing orcs, trolls, bandits, etc without process, not only in self defense but even if they clearly don't need to for the sake of "good" or "justice". Obviously, if your law allows you to kill people living outside the law, then you should also consider Morpork's freedom for assassinations as a "good" act, especially considering his targets are usually people who deserve it.


So, I'm not going to say Vetinari never does anything one could not consider evil, to a degree. But what was the thing about "throwing the first stone", along with certain degrees of morality...
Frankly, I need more evidence to consider a person evil. And just because you don't do good, for the sake of it, you're not evil. (Even then, I still think, even if he won't admit to it, Vetinari does good, not just for the sake of some kind of "my city needs to work properly OCD")


And regarding that story about the otter... frankly, kind of relating to the example at the beginning of my post, evil lies in the eye of the beholder. Any act of killing is evil? Hunting to feed yourself, as the otter does is evil? (Putting aside the morality of animals themselves) If anything it seems to me Vetinari just has a way higher moral standard than most people, which also puts his famous "there are no good people" speech, in a different light. It's not about people being rotten to the core, all of them, it's about even the better people being evil to a degree, because to get ahead in the world, you do so at least somewhat hurting others. Which is like complaining to the dentist that he needs to drill your teeth to fix it...
And the complaint about pain is way duller, because causing pain is not inherently evil. Giving a person a shot might hurt him but it will help him. Giving birth hurts but is not evil. Pain is part of life, and if you want to, so is evil, but that doesn't mean every person needs to fall under the umbrella of "evil person", as Vetinari claims. He might be evil by his own standards, but then, so would be all of us. But by our own (or I guess most of our) standards, we are not evil. (Well, obviously, I am, but not you, dear Forumgoers)

[lord_khaine]

Regarding if Vetinari is evil or not.. then i will just remind people of his threatment of Mimes.. :smallamused:

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Regarding if Vetinari is evil or not.. then i will just remind people of his threatment of Mimes.. :smallamused:

Obligatory: yes, but that's just one good act of Pure Good. He does do his fair share of evil ones, as well.

GW

[BiblioRook]

When judging Vetinari I think people should think of the context. Anhk-Morpork is kind of... not really a nice place. It's dirty and poverty stricken and violent to a point that doing certain things that would result in you getting killed (like going down the wrong street or saying the wrong thing) isn't even considered a crime but rather 'suicide'. It's easy for people to take a moral stance on how someone like Vetinari does things when not having to deal with the environment he does it it, I mean if he wasn't that way there probably would have been very little chance that he would have survived to do what good he did (or much less even want the responsibility in the first place. Anyways, as far as alignments go I generally like to think of it as a sliding scale rather then an absolute and that actions balance out other actions, one can do 'evil' things and still not be evil. Again, considering all the good he actually does as well as his intentions for doing so I think would put Vetinari pretty solidly as Neutral (The Lawful is implied).


Edit: Just because we were talking about it so I figured I would look one up
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/71/47/1c/71471c4a84496bb6ae3cb129d35b036c.jpg
Most I can see, but Nobby and Ridcully evil? I can't really get that. Just being a coward or being sticky fingered makes you evil? And Ridcully might not exactly be moral but he hardly does anything to people (I mean, he's a Wizard, not doing things is what they do). Mr. Slate I think fits but really probably most any of the big guild leaders could work there, particularly the obvious mentions of the Assassins Guild and Thieves Guild. Not really sure who I would put in the Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil spots really aside from a few one-shot villains (like Carcer), thing about bad guys in a generally up-beat humorous series is that they don't tend to stick around long.

[hamishspence]

That pic's not Ridcully, that's the Dean.

Personally I think Mister Pin, who does have an illustration in the same book the Dean pic came from, would be a better candidate for NE than Nobby.

[The New Bruceski]

Oh no, it's very much about football. Or rugby. Or more precisely, a common ancestor to rugby, soccer, gridiron and other variants of the sport that consisted simply of getting the ball into the goal by whatever means (usually violence). The game takes extremely long because the ball gets lost in the brawl somewhere and everyone involved in the brawl kind of forgets about it. The changes to the sport suggested by the Unseen Academicals turn it into soccer.

That's how I understood it. Might have to reread this one.

I thought it was cricket because there have been some long matches, but upon further research cricket is supposed to take a week to play. Good lord, did someone invent that game on a dare?

[BiblioRook]

That pic's not Ridcully, that's the Dean.

Personally I think Mister Pin, who does have an illustration in the same book the Dean pic came from, would be a better candidate for NE than Nobby.
My mistake, but I would find it hard to argue the Dean being evil all the same.

I certainly don't disagree on Mr. Pin, but he goes into what I was saying about one-shot villains. I can't really think of any noteworthy reoccurring Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil elements...

[hamishspence]

Chrysoprase might fit - if Evil Lawyer is LE, then Evil Crime Boss fits better into NE.

CE - Elven Queen Nightshade maybe? Elves seemed to me to be closer to CE in Discworld.

Both have appeared in multiple books.

[Calemyr]

Unseen Academicals wasn't the strongest book, but it did have one reveal that always brings a tear to my eye: what became of Mightily Oates.

When it comes to favorite books, I always end up going to "Anything with Vimes in it. Or Granny. Or Death. Or Susan." Carpe Jugulum is probably my favorite, though. The entire coven at their best and at their worst, along side tongue-in-cheek mockeries of every vampire cliche in storytelling, plus goth vampire teens (who call themselves names like "Albert" and pretend to be accountants and stay up way past sunrise). What's not to love?

In all honesty, though, the more interesting question is favorite scenes, because there are some awesome moments even in some generally lackluster books.

A couple examples:

Thud! - "Given, then, a contest between an ageless, other-dimensional, quasi-demonic 'thing' of pure vengeance on one side, and our esteemed commander on the other, where would you wager, say, a dollar?"

Witches Abroad - While on a boat going down a river, the witches come across a scrawny fellow paddling a log while muttering about its "precious". Nanny sensibly smacks it with an oar.

Lords and Ladies - During a witching match between Granny and an upstart, which entailed a joint staring match with the sun, Granny dropped the contest to help a crying child. To the upstart's surprise, the entire town declared Granny the winner.

Hogfather - When saving a dying little girl, despite Albert's objections, Death reasons: "This is Hogswatch. It is a time for giving presents. And what greater present is there than a future?" And some people wonder why others might root for a seven foot tall skeleton.

Hogfather (again) - Both encounters between Susan and Teatime. I must admit I'm prone to reading Teatime's lines aloud, just for the fun of trying to capture the character. Possibly my favorite villain in the Discworld outside of Vetinari.

Small Gods - Upon meeting Vorbis in the afterlife, Death recounts the dead man's sins.
Brutha - "Yes. I know. He is Vorbis." *And he and Vorbis walk off into eternity.*

Interesting Times - Upon learning Rincewind's "Philophy of From".
Butterfly - "How can you live like that?"
Rincewind - "Constantly!"

Soul Music - The moment you realize Death is trying to drink himself to Oblivion to forget his daughter's demise.

Carpe Jugulum - The final confrontation between Granny and the Count. All of it.
Piotr - "Death's too good for them!"
Agnes - "Yeah. That's probably why she didn't let them have it."

And of course...
Carpe Jugulum
Count - "You stupid little man! An ax isn't even a holy symbol!"
Reverend Oates - *dejectedly* "Oh..." *Smiles brightly* "Let's make it so."

[hamishspence]

Unseen Academicals wasn't the strongest book, but it did have one reveal that always brings a tear to my eye: what became of Mightily Oates.


He also gets a moment "onscreen" in The Science of Discworld IV.

[DoctorFaust]

In all honesty, though, the more interesting question is favorite scenes, because there are some awesome moments even in some generally lackluster books.

You missed the best one from Thud. :smalltongue:

Thud: "THAT! IS!! NOT!!! MY!!!! COW!!!!!"

The scene that cemented Death as my favorite character from Reaper Man (that is sadly lacking in small caps): "WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?"

[Cozzer]

As a Carrot fan, I love the exchange beween him and Vetinari at the end of Men At Arms. Especially how everything either of them said could be taken both as a light conversation between allies considering option for the future, and a tense negotiation full of implied threats to decide who would actually govern the city in the future. And it was both at the same time. And both of them knew it. It doesn't happen every day that the Patrician tells someone "Since I think we do understand one another..." and is sincere.

Second place, the "battle" between Tiffany and the Queen of Elves. It just has so many awesome moments and character development packed into a chapter. And I have a pretty big soft spot for main characters like Tiffany is in that book.

Then... it's really not possible for me to do rank all my favorite scenes, but I agree that "Yes, I know him. He is Vorbis. But I am me." deserves very high marks.

[Marillion]

Most favoritest scene:


Water cascaded off a metal helmet and an oiled leather cloak as the figure stopped and, entirely unconcerned, cupped its had in front of its face and lit a cigar.
Then the match was dropped on the cobbles, where it hissed out, and the figure said: “What are you?”
The entity stirred, like an old fish in a deep pool. It was too tired to flee.
“I am the Summoning Dark.” It was not, in fact, a sound, but had it been, it would have been a hiss. “Who are you?”
“I am the Watchman.”
“They would have killed his family!” The darkness lunged, and met resistance. “Think of the deaths they have caused! Who are you to stop me?”
“He created me. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who watches the watchmen? Me. I watch him. Always. You will not force him to murder for you.”
“What kind of human creates his own policeman?”
“One who fears the dark.”
“And so he should,” said the entity, with satisfaction.
“Indeed. But I think you misunderstand. I am not here to keep the darkness out. I am here to keep it in.” There was a clink of metal as the shadowy watchman lifted a dark lantern and opened its little door. Orange light cut through the blackness. “Call me… the Guarding Dark. Imagine how strong I must be.”
The Summoning Dark backed desperately into the alley, but the light followed it, burning it.
“And now,” said the watchman, “get out of town.”

[Bohandas]

Edit: Just because we were talking about it so I figured I would look one up
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/71/47/1c/71471c4a84496bb6ae3cb129d35b036c.jpg
Most I can see, but Nobby and Ridcully evil? I can't really get that. Just being a coward or being sticky fingered makes you evil? And Ridcully might not exactly be moral but he hardly does anything to people (I mean, he's a Wizard, not doing things is what they do). Mr. Slate I think fits but really probably most any of the big guild leaders could work there, particularly the obvious mentions of the Assassins Guild and Thieves Guild. Not really sure who I would put in the Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil spots really aside from a few one-shot villains (like Carcer), thing about bad guys in a generally up-beat humorous series is that they don't tend to stick around long.

I think the best fit for a recurring chaotic evil character would probably be Lord Snapcase, although most of he time he's just alluded to

[GloatingSwine]

That pic's not Ridcully, that's the Dean.


Also the Dean is more Chaotic Pies.

If you want the arch CE Discworld character, it's Mr. Teatime.

[lord_khaine]

I think i have to support the ending of Small Gods as most avesome diskworld scene/ending.

[BiblioRook]

If you want the arch CE Discworld character, it's Mr. Teatime.

I don;t know about that. The Assassins in general live and breath by contracts and even Teatime was doing what he was doing because he was hired to do so, it just worked out that he was insane enough to make good on what would otherwise have been an obscurely nonsense job request. Carcer is my definitive example of Discworld CE as he's CE right down to it's core.


Also the Dean is more Chaotic Pies.

Something in the way you said this made me realize it probably would fit better of were plotted the old alignment chart by organization rather then by individual. Most of the chart probably wouldn't even change all that much, like the City Watch for Lawful Good, the Witches for Neural Good, the University for Chaotic Neutral, and the Guilds (just pick one) for Lawful Evil. Nothing can be more True Neutral then Death though (for obvious reasons) and I would still probably argue that you won't find a better Lawful Neutral then Vetinari.

[2D8HP]

From 2007!

This is a little alignment table I cooked up for some discworld fans I know (myself included). What do you think?

Chaotic Evil, "Destroyer"


http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h87/osiris32/elf.png

But this other roving intelligence... it’d go in and out of another mind like a chainsaw, taking, taking, taking. She could sense the shape of it, the predatory shape, all cruelty and cool unkindness; a mind full of intelligence, that’d use other living things and hurt them because it was fun.
She could put a name to a mind like that.
Elf
----
Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvelous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that hav changed their meanings.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.

A chaotic evil character does whatever his greed, hatred, and lust for destruction drive him to do. He is hot-tempered, vicious, arbitrarily violent, and unpredictable. If he is simply out for whatever he can get, he is ruthless and brutal. If he is committed to the spread of evil and chaos, he is even worse. Thankfully, his plans are haphazard, and any groups he joins or forms are poorly organized. Typically, chaotic evil people can be made to work together only by force, and their leader lasts only as long as he can thwart attempts to topple or assassinate him.
Chaotic evil is sometimes called "demonic" because demons are the epitome of chaotic evil.
Chaotic evil is the most dangerous alignment because it represents the destruction not only of beauty and life but also of the order on which beauty and life depend.

Neutral Evil, "Malefactor"


http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h87/osiris32/ddthing.png

The face in front of her opened its eyes. There was nothing there but blackness- not a colour, just holes into some other space.
“We could say that if you gave it to us we would be merciful. We could say we would let you go from here in your own shape. But there wouldn’t really be much point in us saying that, would there?”
“I wouldn’t believe you,” said Esk.
“Well, then.”
The Simon-thing grinned.
"You’re only putting off the inevitable."
----
“That doesn’t matter,” she said. “I’m only dreaming this, and you can’t get hurt in dreams.”
The Thing paused, and looked at her with its empty eyes.
“Have you got a word in your world, I think it’s called ‘psychosomatic’?”
“Never heard of it,” snapped Esk.
“It means if you can get hurt in your dreams. And what is so interesting is that if you die in your dreams you stay here. That would be niiiiice.”

A neutral evil villain does whatever she can get away with. She is out for herself, pure and simple. She sheds no tears for those she kills, whether for profit, sport, or convenience. She has no love of order and holds no illusion that following laws, traditions, or codes would make her any better or more noble. On the other hand, she doesn’t have the restless nature or love of conflict that a chaotic evil villain has.
Some neutral evil villains hold up evil as an ideal, committing evil for its own sake. Most often, such villains are devoted to evil deities or secret societies.
Neutral evil is the most dangerous alignment because it represents pure evil without honor and without variation.

Lawful Evil, "Dominator"


http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h87/osiris32/auditor.png

He recognized them. They were not life forms. They were... non-life forms. They were the observers of the universe, its clerks, its auditors. They saw to it that things spun and rocks fell.
And they believed that for a thing to exist it had to have a position in time and space. Humanity had arrived as a nasty shock. Humanity practically was things that didn’t have a position in time and space, such as imagination, pity, hope, history, and belief. Take those away and all you had was an ape that fell out of trees a lot.
Intelligent life was, therefore, an anomaly. It made the filing untidy. The Auditors hated things like that. Periodically, they tried to tidy things up a little.

A lawful evil villain methodically takes what he wants within the limits of his code of conduct without regard for whom it hurts. He cares about tradition, loyalty, and order but not about freedom, dignity, or life. He plays by the rules but without mercy or compassion. He is comfortable in a hierarchy and would like to rule, but is willing to serve. He condemns others not according to their actions but according to race, religion, homeland, or social rank. He is loath to break laws or promises.
This reluctance comes partly from his nature and partly because he depends on order to protect himself from those who oppose him on moral grounds. Some lawful evil villains have particular taboos, such as not killing in cold blood (but having underlings do it) or not letting children come to harm (if it can be helped). They imagine that these compunctions put them above unprincipled villains.
Some lawful evil people and creatures commit themselves to evil with a zeal like that of a crusader committed to good. Beyond being willing to hurt others for their own ends, they take pleasure in spreading evil as an end unto itself. They may also see doing evil as part of a duty to an evil deity or master.
Lawful evil is sometimes called "diabolical," because devils are the epitome of lawful evil.
Lawful evil is the most dangerous alignment because it represents methodical, intentional, and frequently successful evil.

Chaotic Neutral, "Free Spirit"


http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h87/osiris32/cohen.png

Lord Vetinari sighed again. He did not like to live in a world of heroes. You had civilization, such as it was, and you had heroes.
“What exactly has Cohen the Barbarian done that is heroic?” he said. “I seek only to understand.”
:”Well…you know…heroic deeds…”
“And they are…?”
“Fighting monsters, defeating tyrants, stealing rare treasures, rescuing maidens…that sort of thing,” said Mr. Betteridge vaguely. “You know…heroic things.”
“And who, precisely, defines the monstrousness of the monsters and the tyranny of the tyrants?” said Lord Vetinari, his voice suddenly like a scalpel- not viscous like a sword, but probing its edge into vulnerable places.
Mr. Betteridge shifter uneasily, “Well…the hero, I suppose.”
“Ah. And the theft of these rare items…I think the word that interests me here is the term ‘theft’, an activity frowned on by most of the world’s major religions, is it not? The feeling stealing over me is that all these terms are defined by the hero. You could say: I am a hero, so when I kill you that makes you de facto, the kind of person suitable to be killed by a hero. You could say that a hero, in short, is someone who indulges in every whim that, within the rule of law, would have him behind bars or swiftly dancing what I believed is known as the hemp fandango. The words we might use are: murder, pillage, theft and rape. Have I understood the situation?”
“Not rape, I believed,” said Mr. Betteridge, find a rock on which he could stand. “Not in the case of Cohen the Barbarian. Ravishing, possibly.”
“There is a difference?”
“It’s more a manner of approach, I understand,” said the historian. “I don’t believe that there were ever any actual complaints.”


A chaotic neutral character follows his whims. He is an individualist first and last. He values his own liberty but doesn’t strive to protect others’ freedom. He avoids authority, resents restrictions, and challenges traditions. A chaotic neutral character does not intentionally disrupt organizations as part of a campaign of anarchy. To do so, he would have to be motivated either by good (and a desire to liberate others) or evil (and a desire to make those different from himself suffer). A chaotic neutral character may be unpredictable, but his behavior is not totally random. He is not as likely to jump off a bridge as to cross it.
Chaotic neutral is the best alignment you can be because it represents true freedom from both society’s restrictions and a do-gooder’s zeal.


So that's the evil section done. Any Pratchett fans out there have any recommendations for the other alignments? I've already got Death slotted for TN and Granny Weatherwax planned for LG, but I'm slightly stumped for the rest of them.

[Cozzer]

I'd say the witches are more Neutral Good than Lawful Good. Their job is guarding the edges, after all, the cases where following the rules would take you nowhere. I think you could make a case for them being Chaotic Good, even.

If I had to choose a quote for the Lawful Good alignment, I think Carrot's "Personal is not the same as important" would be my choice. For Neutral Good, I'd go with Granny and some quote about how reluctant she is to be "the good one" while still being it. Chaotic Good... huh, I guess I'd go with the mages, represented by Rincewind? He does make the good choice when it really counts, after all.

Cohen and company as Chaotic Neutral and Vetinari as Lawful Neutral is perfect, IMO. Lawful Evil would be most villains of the Guard series, or the Guild of Assassins. I agree with either Carcer or the Elves as Chaotic Evil. Neutral Evil... hmm, the Guild of Thieves? Maybe the dragon from Guards, Guards?

[Kato]

Also the Dean is more Chaotic Pies.

... I guess it IS weird this made me think of Supernatural much more than Discworld...



As for alignments, Carrot is clearly LG, it would be hard to be more true to that. Vimes, of course, also, but not as... pure?
The witches I agree with others are not exactly LG, certainly Good, but Lawful only to a degree. That is, as much as needed.

While there are some clearly evil characters, or species, like Elves, Pratchett tends to do a decent job at giving his antagonists a motivation that goes beyond just evil... though, many can not be called anything but on the evil spectrum.

[GloatingSwine]

I don;t know about that. The Assassins in general live and breath by contracts and even Teatime was doing what he was doing because he was hired to do so, it just worked out that he was insane enough to make good on what would otherwise have been an obscurely nonsense job request. Carcer is my definitive example of Discworld CE as he's CE right down to it's core.


The assassins as an organisation are LE.

Teatime nails dogs to ceilings because it seemed like a good idea at a time.

Likewise the Unseen University is a Lawful Neutral organisation intended to contain a set of mostly chaotic* individuals.



* Except the Bursar, at whom Chaos took one look and realised it was outclassed.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

So, I've seen at least a few mentions of Dᴇᴀᴛʜ being True Neutral, and I'd have to disagree: he cares too much. This is a guy that voluntarily became the Hogfather to prevent the extinction of the human race, that asked for more time from the Death of the Universe so he could repay a kindness. Dᴇᴀᴛʜ might have started as True Neutral, but he has long since sauntered into Neutral Good.

True Neutral would be the History Monks, whose job it is to ensure tomorrow happenss (and thus why the Sweeper rubs them the wrong way: he insists on fixing history).

Grey Wolf

[Gray Mage]

So, I've seen at least a few mentions of Dᴇᴀᴛʜ being True Neutral, and I'd have to disagree: he cares too much. This is a guy that voluntarily became the Hogfather to prevent the extinction of the human race, that asked for more time from the Death of the Universe so he could repay a kindness. Dᴇᴀᴛʜ might have started as True Neutral, but he has long since sauntered into Neutral Good.

True Neutral would be the History Monks, whose job it is to ensure tomorrow happenss (and thus why the Sweeper rubs them the wrong way: he insists on fixing history).

Grey Wolf

I agree with that. Ever since Mort I think Death was moving towards good. I mean, the parts from Reaper Man ("what can the harvest hope but the care of the reaper man") and Hogfather (the little match girl scene) put a lot of morallity and care from him.

[Rodin]

The assassins as an organisation are LE.

Teatime nails dogs to ceilings because it seemed like a good idea at a time.


I'd say he's even what proves the point that they're Lawful Evil. The other Assassins hate Teatime and he betrays their principles all over the place...but as he never breaks the actual rules they can't throw him out, and Downey is fully prepared to make use of his twisted skillset when a paying customer comes to the door.

Hmmm. Thinking about Hogfather does get me wondering - are the Auditors Neutral Evil? Or True Neutral? Based on how they're supposed to be pure logical beings with no emotion, I would immediately peg them as True Neutral. Given their actual actions in the books though, they're always trying to destroy humanity in some way.

[hamishspence]

"Vicious, unbending malice" is an emotion. They might pretend to be "pure logical" or "emotionless" but they're really deceiving themselves:



DEATH: Down in the deepest kingdoms of the sea, where there is no light, there lives a type of creature with no brain and no eyes and no mouth. It does nothing but live and put forth petals of perfect crimson where none are there to see. It is nothing but a tiny yes in the night. And yet... And yet... It has enemies who bear it a vicious, unbending malice, who wish not only for its tiny life to be over but also that it had never existed. Are you with me so far?
Susan: Well, yes, but -
DEATH: Good. Now, imagine what they think of humanity.

[Bohandas]

I think my favorite Discworld book may be "The Thief of Time", mostly because I'm pretty sure that it was influenced by the church of the subgenius

[GloatingSwine]

I'd say he's even what proves the point that they're Lawful Evil. The other Assassins hate Teatime and he betrays their principles all over the place...but as he never breaks the actual rules they can't throw him out, and Downey is fully prepared to make use of his twisted skillset when a paying customer comes to the door.


Also the assassins have form for keeping dangerous implements where they can keep an eye on them (see also: Men at Arms).

[Aedilred]

I don;t know about that. The Assassins in general live and breath by contracts and even Teatime was doing what he was doing because he was hired to do so, it just worked out that he was insane enough to make good on what would otherwise have been an obscurely nonsense job request. Carcer is my definitive example of Discworld CE as he's CE right down to it's core.


Teatime wasn't a typical assassin, though. The assassins as a rule take pride in their work and don't kill for fun; it's strictly a job. I may be wrong, but I seem to recall Dr. Cruces actually being referred to as a good man before he went mad. It's clear that Downey (who, while a bit of a jerk, is nevertheless a traditional assassin) regards Teatime as a dangerous loose cannon who just happens to be the right kind of unhinged for the job. But Teatime goes seriously off-piste in the later part of the book, abandoning the original target in favour of personal vendettas against those who interfered. And ends up trying to kill Death, which is hardly the sort of thing assassins should be doing).

But even so, Carcer is a much clearer example. Wolfgang from The Fifth Elephant could also qualify, I think.

I'd peg the Auditors as Lawful, probably Neutral hedging into Evil. They're a pretty classic example of something being so Lawful it veers into what could be viewed as evil by default: their goal is to instate complete order in the universe, but that requires the extinguishing of all life, even all individuality.

As far as overall quality of the novels goes, I think the most consistently qualitative period was what could loosely be considered the two middle quarters of the output - roughly from Moving Pictures through to Night Watch. This is the period when Pratchett settled on what in my opinion are the most entertaining groups of core characters - the wizards, the witches, the watchmen, and Death (I never got on with Rincewind) - and largely stuck with them unless he had a really good concept novel independent of them. The world had settled down to the point where it was familiar and identifiably a reasonably consistent setting, without the abstruse wackiness of the first few novels, but still retained enough of that fundamental weirdness before Night Watch pretty much closed the door on it for good.

After Night Watch, though, it feels like he's reaching where the earlier books had felt effortless; the humour becomes broader; the satire becomes more obvious, and more preachy; characters start to become Flanderised, and individuals who benefit from a lighter touch (most notably Vetinari) spend too much time under the spotlight which demystifies them somewhat.

There are great books outside that period (most notably Mort) and the odd one I consider a dud within it (most notably The Last Continent). While I don't think any of the novels after Night Watch are, strictly speaking, bad, Going Postal is also the only one I really think has substantial merit, and even it suffers from a few of the problems which only become more acute thereafter.

I have to wonder whether what I consider to be that decline is linked to his Alzheimer's. It did seem to some extent that he had forgotten how to be naturally funny and how to convey a point subtly. Certainly the last few books were written under that influence and it might have gone undiagnosed for some period previously. Then again, it's not that uncommon for authors to go off the boil towards the end of their careers anyway, and that might just be the case for him.

Being strictly fair, it might also be down to me. When I first started trying to read Discworld I (ill-advisedly) started from near the beginning, and was probably too young to really "get" it. When I came back to them, and read the back catalogue - the vast bulk of them - I was in my late teens when I was probably ideally mentally equipped to get the most from them. After Going Postal, though, I was reading them as they were released, with longer waits (and hence greater anticipation) between the books, getting older all the while, and it might be that by the time I got to them I had changed so that I no longer appreciated them as much as I would have done had I read them a few years earlier.

Maybe it's a bit of both.

[GloatingSwine]

I'd peg the Auditors as Lawful, probably Neutral hedging into Evil. They're a pretty classic example of something being so Lawful it veers into what could be viewed as evil by default: their goal is to instate complete order in the universe, but that requires the extinguishing of all life, even all individuality.


I rather prefer the idea that at the extremes of law and chaos, good and evil no longer exist. At the extreme of law there is no free will, nothing is non-mechanistic or nondeterministic. Without volition neither good nor evil apply. That's the state the Auditors want to achieve.

At the extreme of chaos there is no causality and so all good or evil founders, I intend to torture you because I'm evil but artichoke background fish trousers.

They should be regarded as states of cosmic horror.

[Bohandas]

Considering how many people have been talking about Hogfanter (and Going Postal too for that matter), I wonder how many people have seen or even know about the Discworld movies? No, not the weird animated ones but the live-action ones. There's Hogfather, Going Postal, and The Color of Magic (which included The Light Fantastic). I always considered them actually pretty nicely done (especially for made-for-TV) but admittedly I might have a bit of a bias. THe Color of Magic is probably the... weirdest one, despite having the most star-stuffed cast of the three (Tim Curry! Sean Astin! Jeremy Irons! Christopher Lee as Death!!) the movie also has these weird inconsistencies that kind of don't feel right to me, like Rincewind being old and feeble or Twoflower being white. I mean, of all things to mess up!

I've got Hogfather on DVD and get it out every december.

I saw Color of Magic on tv. It was ok but had issues with, among other things, major omissions.

Regarding Twoflower being white though, didn't one of the main ruling clans of the Agatean Empire have a really european sounding name?


So, I've seen at least a few mentions of Dᴇᴀᴛʜ being True Neutral, and I'd have to disagree: he cares too much. This is a guy that voluntarily became the Hogfather to prevent the extinction of the human race, that asked for more time from the Death of the Universe so he could repay a kindness. Dᴇᴀᴛʜ might have started as True Neutral, but he has long since sauntered into Neutral Good.

The Death of the Universe's clock with the universe hand that only goes around once always reminded me of the song "Particle Man", which features a character called Universe Man who "has a watch with a minute hand, a millenium hand, and an eon hand". Now that I think about it though, the song that it really ought to remind me of is the Metalocalypse theme ("...dethklok dethklok dethklok dethklok...")

[The_Snark]

Regarding Twoflower being white though, didn't one of the main ruling clans of the Agatean Empire have a really european sounding name?

The McSweeneys, yes. Very old and established family.

[lord_khaine]

I rather prefer the idea that at the extremes of law and chaos, good and evil no longer exist. At the extreme of law there is no free will, nothing is non-mechanistic or nondeterministic. Without volition neither good nor evil apply. That's the state the Auditors want to achieve.

At the extreme of chaos there is no causality and so all good or evil founders, I intend to torture you because I'm evil but artichoke background fish trousers.

They should be regarded as states of cosmic horror.

I see this point, and can certainly follow the argument for why the Auditors should not be considdered evil. I guess they might be seen as the counterpoint to the things from the dungeon dimensions.


Regarding Twoflower being white though, didn't one of the main ruling clans of the Agatean Empire have a really european sounding name?


And i dont think there has ever been any mentioning of Twoflowers actual color? Besides the first couple books then i kinda recall it being a subject that Terry Pratchett is completely silent on, with i guess a few exeptions for when he lampshade the stupidity of it in Jingo.

[GloatingSwine]

And i dont think there has ever been any mentioning of Twoflowers actual color? Besides the first couple books then i kinda recall it being a subject that Terry Pratchett is completely silent on, with i guess a few exeptions for when he lampshade the stupidity of it in Jingo.

No, but even in the early books there was enough context to understand that the Agatean Empire was generically oriental and back in the '80s the general stereotype of the Japanese and Chinese tourist was that they took pictures of everything, and probably had a way better camera than you.

[Zalabim]

No, but even in the early books there was enough context to understand that the Agatean Empire was generically oriental and back in the '80s the general stereotype of the Japanese and Chinese tourist was that they took pictures of everything, and probably had a way better camera than you.

Or fantastically auriental, since it was filled with gold (Au).

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I see this point, and can certainly follow the argument for why the Auditors should not be considdered evil. I guess they might be seen as the counterpoint to the things from the dungeon dimensions.

In Thief of Time, we learn that the History Monks lump them together with the dungeon dimension creatures, but do consider them the worst of the lot.

GW

[hamishspence]

In Thief of Time, we learn that the History Monks lump them together with the dungeon dimension creatures, but do consider them the worst of the lot.

GW

If extreme "wipe out all reality" goals are consistently portrayed as Evil (Shar, Tharizdun) then maybe "wipe out all life" should be regarded in a similar fashion.

[lord_khaine]

No, but even in the early books there was enough context to understand that the Agatean Empire was generically oriental and back in the '80s the general stereotype of the Japanese and Chinese tourist was that they took pictures of everything, and probably had a way better camera than you.

Well yes, there were certainly hints toward the culture being oriental, to start from them being an empire and having an emperor. But the actual skin color of people there were newer mentioned. Thats something people have filled in unofficially on their own.


If extreme "wipe out all reality" goals are consistently portrayed as Evil (Shar, Tharizdun) then maybe "wipe out all life" should be regarded in a similar fashion.

I think that they were not evil in the same way that a supernove or an earthquake is not evil. They might certainly lead to an untold number of death and destruction, But they are to alien, and different to be though of as evil. Unlike Shar and Tharizdun who seems to be aware of what result their actions bring.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I think that they were not evil in the same way that a supernove or an earthquake is not evil. They might certainly lead to an untold number of death and destruction, But they are to alien, and different to be though of as evil. Unlike Shar and Tharizdun who seems to be aware of what result their actions bring.

But they are aware of the consequences of their actions, and they do very much want those consequences. They lobbed a meteorite at A-tuin that would have destroyed the Disc if it had hit. They bribed humans to kill the Hogfather. They hired a different human to stop time. All with complete understanding of what the consequences would be. They are not comparable to natural disasters. The Auditors have a purpose, and that purpose is the elimination of all creatures with even a hint of will or personality.

Grey Wolf

[lord_khaine]

Yes, the Auditors are as such aware, the question is if they actually have a real choice in the matter, of if they are to alien for such a concept, not being able to process any other way of handling things.

[The_Snark]

Honestly, I think they're less alien than that. As a previous poster said:


"Vicious, unbending malice" is an emotion. They might pretend to be "pure logical" or "emotionless" but they're really deceiving themselves.

I always felt that their hostile reaction to the illogic of living and especially thinking beings is, itself, an example of that illogic. Just by becoming aware of the phenomenon, it's "tainted" them. (Which I'm sure they'd hate if they ever realized/admitted it.) The closer they get to life, the more they become sentient beings rather than impersonal forces - we see this play out a couple of times, ranging from the wolves in Hogfather to Lady LeJean. Taking on physical forms is the extreme end of this, but I think even as faceless disembodied cowls they're affected, just by interacting with and reacting to people.

For that matter, the whole idea of the Auditors is an anthropomorphic personification.

[Kato]

I think with the auditors we need to clearly separate between those who just "do their job", i.e. keep the things running as they are, making physics work, and those who got fed up with humanity and life and clearly have... well, I'd still be hard pressed to say evil intentions, but the wish to destroy it. To them I guess objectively it's no different from digging a mine, since life is just some weird thing that is just... in the way. They don't care about the damage they'd do, they just want to make their work (or "life", hah) easier. Clearly, doing this is already diverging from their purpose, so they are already lost auditors. Those who take this even further, the ones who become aware they have a personality destroy themselves, but those who work against life are just a small step from that and already kind of crazy by auditor standards.

[BiblioRook]

Well yes, there were certainly hints toward the culture being oriental, to start from them being an empire and having an emperor. But the actual skin color of people there were newer mentioned. Thats something people have filled in unofficially on their own.

If you consider Paul Kidby's art to be any sort of official stamp on how certain characters look he did do Twoflower as well.

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/b4/61/21/b46121cb31471475ef9e554ab5119aa4.jpghttps://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/dd/ab/c7/ddabc701632104016207452fc85aee3e.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/eb/c9/11/ebc911fdb4f0e310f0209b470a6753b2.jpg

[lord_khaine]

If you consider Paul Kidby's art to be any sort of official stamp on how certain characters look he did do Twoflower as well.

I dont, what i considder official is the actual description from TP's pen, as well as any artwork that has been given a official stamp of "this is how he looks"

The rest is just personal interpretation. I mean, i have seen cover art where Twoflower litterally had 4 eyes.

[GloatingSwine]

If you consider Paul Kidby's art to be any sort of official stamp on how certain characters look he did do Twoflower as well.


They're not really how Pterry thought of the characters. He hasn't really said how he imagined most of the characters, though he did say he imagined Vimes as looking like Pete Postlethwaite (which is who he looks like in the illustrations in Where's My Cow).

[Kato]

They're not really how Pterry thought of the characters. He hasn't really said how he imagined most of the characters, though he did say he imagined Vimes as looking like Pete Postlethwaite (which is who he looks like in the illustrations in Where's My Cow).

Hm, kind of fits my old idea of him, too. Though, since GP Charles Dance has superseded that quite dinstinctly. (And I am still sad Tywin and Vetinari are so similar yet so different :smallsigh:)

[Friv]

Tywin is a guy who really wants to be Vetinari, but has too much pride and anger.

[Kato]

Tywin is a guy who really wants to be Vetinari, but has too much pride and anger.
Good description. Th win needs more restraint and he could have really fixed Kings Landing.

Having (re)read MM now, I can see the complaint about poor antagonists. Though, I'll say both Cosmo and Cribbins could have been effective.. the problem on the one hand was their respective faults (Cosmos obsession and Cribbins... teeth) but booth are basically threatening in their own way... not sure why Pratchett decided to turn them more into jokes.

[GAZ]

Ohhh! Discworld thread! I love these books and have ever since I first read Hogfather back in middle school. After the fact, I decided that book is actually a really solid entry to the series. It's got Susan, Death, Ridcully and the Unseen University staff, and has bits with Fred Colon and Nobby Nobs, the Assassin's Guild, and pretty much explains how magic and belief and stories work on the Disc as well as being quite funny.

My favorite book of all time is Small Gods, though. I have bought five copies of this book because I will loan it to people who never give it back!

I think the quality started to trend downwards with Monstrous Regiment and hit bottom with Snuff. Going Postal was the last Disc novel that I really liked. Raising Steam wasn't great but it did feel a little bit like closure, so that's okay.

[An Enemy Spy]

I just got the joke that the continent where gold is so common it's almost worthless is called the "Aurient".

[The_Snark]

I just got the joke that the continent where gold is so common it's almost worthless is called the "Aurient".

That happens to me a lot. It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize what the climactic scene of Moving Pictures was parodying.

And I'm sure there are obscure jokes in Soul Music that I'm missing, I don't know that much about rock.

[The New Bruceski]

And I'm sure there are obscure jokes in Soul Music that I'm missing, I don't know that much about rock.

Everything in Soul Music is a reference to something or other. I know some folks miss We're Definitely Dwarfs and Trollz and I'm not sure how.They Might be Giants and Gorillaz

My favorite reference has to be from Night Watch, the feuding families of the Selachiis and the Venturis. Sharks and Jets.

[The_Snark]

Well, I didn't get the Trollz one, so I can answer that: never heard of the band in question. :smalltongue:

(Edit: Gorillaz looks to have started in 1998, while Soul Music was written in 1994, so that probably isn't it. I can see why you'd think that, though, names like Noodle and 2D wouldn't be at all out of place among the amateur Musicians With Rocks In...)

The one that convinced me there were probably obscure references I was missing (in addition to the obvious ones I didn't get on account of not being very musical) was the bit about Brother Charnel, the felonious monk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thelonious_Monk).

[StarvingGamer]

I've been sitting on Raising Steam because once I read it, that's it, no more new Terry Pratchett books for me to read.

Ugh.

Now I'm sad.

[hamishspence]

I've been sitting on Raising Steam because once I read it, that's it, no more new Terry Pratchett books for me to read.

Ugh.

Don't forget The Shepherd's Crown.

[Eldan]

I've been sitting on Raising Steam because once I read it, that's it, no more new Terry Pratchett books for me to read.

Ugh.

Now I'm sad.

What's really sad is that it's the worst discworld book by far and retroactively ruined others.

If I can make a suggestion? Put it on a shelf somewhere and never read it. That way, you will always have some unread Discworld.

If you haven't, look into some of the Discworld shortstories instead. I can strongly recommend Troll Bridge and The Sea and Little Fishes. The first is Cohen the Barbarian at his saddest, the second is Granny Weatherwax at her Weatherwaxiest.

[The_Snark]

Don't forget The Shepherd's Crown.

I thought The Shepherd's Crown made a pretty good last book. It definitely wasn't his strongest book, but
the subject seems almost tailored to be a last book. Granny Weatherwax (one of the most iconic characters in the series) dies, everyone grieves, but life goes on; eventually everyone settles into a Lancre without her, and the people and things that fill the space where she used to be aren't so bad in their own right. It's about closure. Not just letting go of a beloved character, but letting go of the series and author.

(The bit with Elves is a mostly-irrelevant subplot, to me. It might have become something more if Pratchett had more time to refine it, but sadly he didn't. Nightshade's redemption arc doesn't get enough screen time to be compelling, and it cuts off sharply with no sense of closure; Peaseblossom is forgettable as antagonists go, he's just another typical elf.)
Non-spoilery summary: kind of unpolished, but saved for last I think it gives a nice sense of closure.

[Manga Shoggoth]

I thought The Shepherd's Crown made a pretty good last book. It definitely wasn't his strongest book, but
the subject seems almost tailored to be a last book. Granny Weatherwax (one of the most iconic characters in the series) dies, everyone grieves, but life goes on; eventually everyone settles into a Lancre without her, and the people and things that fill the space where she used to be aren't so bad in their own right. It's about closure. Not just letting go of a beloved character, but letting go of the series and author.

(The bit with Elves is a mostly-irrelevant subplot, to me. It might have become something more if Pratchett had more time to refine it, but sadly he didn't. Nightshade's redemption arc doesn't get enough screen time to be compelling, and it cuts off sharply with no sense of closure; Peaseblossom is forgettable as antagonists go, he's just another typical elf.)
Non-spoilery summary: kind of unpolished, but saved for last I think it gives a nice sense of closure.

My problem with The Shepherd's Crown was not that it was a poor book in itself, but that it was poor Pratchett. The thing is that poor Pratchett is still good in terms of the genre.

The Shepherd's Crown is more on the level of Strata and Dark Side of the Sun. These are two early Pratchetts that are not - strictly - Discworld, so don't get quite so much publicity. While Dark Side of the Sun is quite good, Strata is a rather clumsy attempt to mesh sci-fi and fantasy with a discworld-like world. I don't often re-read it.

After the announcement of his illness was made, I picked up each new book with the thought "Is this going to be the one that ruins his work for me?". Raising Steam was heading towards that line, and The Shepherd's Crown was almost touching it.

I understand that there was still some work to do on The Shepherd's Crown (it is described as "it was, still, not quite finished as he would have liked when he died"), but they decided to print it as is rather than making further changes. I am still torn on whether that was the right decision.

[hamishspence]

What's really sad is that it's the worst discworld book by far and retroactively ruined others.


Which books are "retroactively ruined"? All the ones involving dwarf gender politics and how dwarf society has dwarf women and dwarf men do their best to act as alike as possible (to the point that dwarf women never admit their gender, until Cheri Littlebottom started the process of moving away from this?)

I think it's a case of Pratchett having decided as early as The Fifth Elephant that the basic concept was problematic - and choosing to show how they finally come to reject that concept wholesale.

[huttj509]

On the topic of getting jokes years later...

For context, I grew up in the Southwest US. I've recently been watching Midsomer Murders on Netflix, and one of the things that shows up in rural England village celebrations is Morris dancers.

Yeah, I did feel like I got those jokes in the Lancre books, but now I *get* those jokes in the Lancre books. There's something about actually seeing people dancing around with bells on their ankles hitting sticks against each other's sticks that makes the combination of "fine ol' tradition," "WTF," and "you'll put someone's eye out" click.

[Silfir]

How Raising Steam could "retroactively ruin" anything is incomprehensible to me. His choices after the diagnosis were to either stop writing, or keep writing and accept that his illness was going to accept the quality of his work as time went on. I'm glad he kept writing; I enjoyed his post-diagnosis work a lot.

Life is taking the good with the bad.

That said, we all mourn differently. Shepherd's Crown was a kind of bittersweet experience for me; I'm not going to be rereading it. Raising Steam I enjoyed, and appreciated. I didn't, perhaps, admire it, which is how I react to Pratchett at his best.

Read the book when you feel ready to do so. It's not going to grow feet and walk away.

[Bohandas]

Which books are "retroactively ruined"? All the ones involving dwarf gender politics and how dwarf society has dwarf women and dwarf men do their best to act as alike as possible (to the point that dwarf women never admit their gender, until Cheri Littlebottom started the process of moving away from this?)

I think it's a case of Pratchett having decided as early as The Fifth Elephant that the basic concept was problematic - and choosing to show how they finally come to reject that concept wholesale.

Personally I think the direction that Pratchett took the Dwarves in the later books was a negative and reactionary one.

[Kato]

Personally I think the direction that Pratchett took the Dwarves in the later books was a negative and reactionary one.

...why? Because they happen to be? So, some people are reactionary and how you treat such people is a relevant issue. And a trademark of Pratchett's is him writing not only fluff but stories with meaning behind them, mostly.
Yes, dwarves are displayed, in part, negatively, but not all people are nice. There have been many, many humans with massive character faults.

[Bohandas]

No I mean what was a change to the dwarves - the society they end up with at the end of the series - corresponds to what is negative and reactionary in the real world and it starts to look like Pratchett is endorsing that.

Like, I hope this changed dwarven society was intended as something akin to the way H.P.Lovecraft used gods as an ironic metaphor for atheism (EDIT: or the way Pratchett himself used the persecution of Didactylos' concept of the world as flat and sitting on the back of a turtle as a metaphor for real life persecution of models of the real world as round and orbiting the sun) but I can't be sure.

[Kato]

No I mean what was a change to the dwarves - the society they end up with at the end of the series - corresponds to what is negative and reactionary in the real world and it starts to look like Pratchett is endorsing that.

Am I misremembering the last novels? Weren't the dwarves on the way to adopting a more open and free culture? :smallconfused:

[lord_khaine]

The more reasonable ones certainly were. There were just several different fractions of them, some rather fanatical.

[Mith]

So I haven't read Shepherd's Crown entirely yet because I read Chapter 2 and decided "That's enough for me now."

The first part of that Chapter is beautiful, the second part seems a bit off to me. I will get to the rest of the book soon enough.

As for the changes in Dwarf society, in Shepherd's Crown, Rhys (The Low King) is openly referred to as Queen of the Dwarves, and that is a first as far as I am aware of, as I have not read Raising Steam.

[BiblioRook]

There were just several different fractions of them, some rather fanatical.

That's putting it lightly.
In Raising Steam they basically resort to straight out terrorism and no longer were content to merely shunning dwarves that didn't fallow the old ways (which was implied to be worst enough for them) but outright attacking and killing them if they came across them (or sometimes even seeking them out).

[Bohandas]

Am I misremembering the last novels? Weren't the dwarves on the way to adopting a more open and free culture? :smallconfused:

Yes, but by adopting something that in the real world has caused nothing but trouble

[Friv]

Yes, but by adopting something that in the real world has caused nothing but trouble

Now, I like horses as much as the next guy, but I don't think it's quite fair to say that trains caused nothing but trouble. They're very useful!

[The_Snark]

Yes, but by adopting something that in the real world has caused nothing but trouble

Ah... you mean things like gendered clothing and looking feminine? I'm pretty sure the intended message there was that restricting people's freedom of expression is bad, whatever form it takes: telling someone that they can't wear skirts and lipstick is not much different from telling them that they have to. It oppresses a different set of people, but the overall shape is awfully similar.

I don't remember the dwarves wanting to adopt gender roles, that would indeed be a little weird. (Caveat: I have not read Raising Steam yet.)

[hamishspence]

Yup - and indeed - a case could be made that the grags' form of misogyny, while a little different from the form it tends to take in the real world, is no less extreme - even the word "woman" is spoken with distaste by grags like Ardent.

[Kato]

Yes, but by adopting something that in the real world has caused nothing but trouble

Ah, now I see what you are getting at. But as snark said, I'm sure the message was against oppression of personal freedom and not for strict gender roles. And I don't think this was an easy to misunderstand message..
For a comment on gender roles have a look at ER or MR.

[Eldan]

Ah... you mean things like gendered clothing and looking feminine? I'm pretty sure the intended message there was that restricting people's freedom of expression is bad, whatever form it takes: telling someone that they can't wear skirts and lipstick is not much different from telling them that they have to. It oppresses a different set of people, but the overall shape is awfully similar.

I don't remember the dwarves wanting to adopt gender roles, that would indeed be a little weird. (Caveat: I have not read Raising Steam yet.)

That was my problem with Raising Steam. Up until that book, I imagined that dwarves as a society really did not have much of a concept of gender and were really frowning on expressions of gender as undwarfish.

Except in Raising STeam there's several speeches, including one by Rhys, about how actually, dwarves have gender roles, their women were just forced to act like men and opressed for thousands of years. She then goes on a bit about it. I hated it.

[Manga Shoggoth]

Except in Raising STeam there's several speeches, including one by Rhys, about how actually, dwarves have gender roles, their women were just forced to act like men and opressed for thousands of years. She then goes on a bit about it. I hated it.

Only that's far from new in the series. Cheery Littlebottom was making exactly the same point on her first appearance, and had quite a long chat with Angua about it. Their shared opinion is along the lines of you have equality provided you are prepared to act like the men.

On the wider discussion:

As far as I can see the traditionalists vs modernists argument has been made throughout the latter part of the series. The Fifth Elephant has extremist actions (destroying the Scone rather than straight terrorism) to destablize the society. Even then, there is a clear balance shown between having traditional views (Albrecht) and tending towards the extremist (Ardent). Raising Steam simply shows what happens when this boils over.

While Raising Steam is unarguably heavy-handed in places, with the dwarves Pratchett is showing nothing that hasn't at least been hinted at before, and is careful to show the effect on the families and societies involved, and also shows positives: Grag Bashfulson's scene with Detritus (when he asks all the grags present to form a line Bashfulson starts the line to remind him that, despite the current climate, Grag <> Enemy.); Albrecht's position when challenged. Albrecht's scenes are particularly important as he is shown in previous books to be ultra-traditionalist, and yet he is absolutely horrified at what is being done, starting with the breaking of oaths and going on from there.

[jayem]

On the subject of delayed getting jokes (non Pratchett), it was about a month after hearing Bernie when I got the pasteurised joke.

On Pratchett. I think part of it, has to be the little inversion (and to some extent the value of novelty).
So even in Equal Rites, there's aspects that could be preachy, but Weatherwax is both obstacle and solution
Men At Arms, you've got Angua&Cheery coming from both sides [and of course with Angua the issue for Vimes isn't that she's a W..oman]
Jingo, you have racism mocked coming from the heros (particularly Colan&Nobby's conversation)
Small God's, again things are mixed up. Everyone can identify with Brutha (and in a different way to Vorbis). And enough of the automatic simple arguments are reversed (with it really actually being a flat world you have to deal with the second order arguments rather that just knowing they're wrong somehow)

[Bohandas]

That was my problem with Raising Steam. Up until that book, I imagined that dwarves as a society really did not have much of a concept of gender and were really frowning on expressions of gender as undwarfish.

Except in Raising STeam there's several speeches, including one by Rhys, about how actually, dwarves have gender roles, their women were just forced to act like men and opressed for thousands of years. She then goes on a bit about it. I hated it.

This bothered me as well.

[mouadj]

My favorite is the first one I read. Small gods

[Tyndmyr]

That was my problem with Raising Steam. Up until that book, I imagined that dwarves as a society really did not have much of a concept of gender and were really frowning on expressions of gender as undwarfish.

Except in Raising STeam there's several speeches, including one by Rhys, about how actually, dwarves have gender roles, their women were just forced to act like men and opressed for thousands of years. She then goes on a bit about it. I hated it.

I agree. Littlebottom could be interpreted more as a cosmopolitan dwarf coming to the city and learning human ways and such...

Real life can be exhausting and tedious. Reading fantasy is often a way to escape that for other worlds. I don't necessarily want it to feel too much like the real world.

[Rodin]

I agree. Littlebottom could be interpreted more as a cosmopolitan dwarf coming to the city and learning human ways and such...

Real life can be exhausting and tedious. Reading fantasy is often a way to escape that for other worlds. I don't necessarily want it to feel too much like the real world.

The joy of Pratchett for me was how he shows lessons about the real world through fantasy. Small Gods very much changed how I view religion, for example.

The issue with Snuff and Raising Steam is that Pratchett had lost the ability to intermingle the two. As a result, both works come off as preachy sermons about real world issues, rather than as fantasy stories that just so happen to have compelling statements that apply to Roundworld just as well as to Discworld.

[Bohandas]

Terry Pratchett's last few books had their issues but they were still better than Douglas Adams' last couple of books

[Tyndmyr]

The joy of Pratchett for me was how he shows lessons about the real world through fantasy. Small Gods very much changed how I view religion, for example.

The issue with Snuff and Raising Steam is that Pratchett had lost the ability to intermingle the two. As a result, both works come off as preachy sermons about real world issues, rather than as fantasy stories that just so happen to have compelling statements that apply to Roundworld just as well as to Discworld.

Fair, I do want them to connect to the real world on some level, but the how matters quite a bit.

The gender issues in Monstrous Regiment are not particularly hard to see, and I'd argue made a much better read than Raising Steam. It's just...way more fun. Lots of story and humor that is connected, but isn't too on the nose talking about the real world issue.

[FLHerne]

Terry Pratchett's last few books had their issues but they were still better than Douglas Adams' last couple of books
Hey, I actually like Mostly Harmless. Compared to SLaTfAtF it's vastly more coherent, the character interactions are much more believable, and the ending is really an ending. Relentlessly depressing? True, but the earlier books also had that behind the silliness.

Also, I just love the Sandwich Maker's job.


I'd complain about Making Money, Snuff and Raising Steam, but that's been done. Thud is alright except the implausibly-tidy ending, which often bothers me in later Discworld books.

[Calemyr]

Oh, I forgot to mention my favorite scene of all time in the Discworld, though I've heard other interpretations of it.

Multiple times over the course of the story, Granny scoffs at the idea of the "bare handed block" trope, even with witchcraft in play. Then, as usual for Granny, the finale hits a climax with Granny doing exactly what she said was impossible, by catching a swung sword by the blade. That, on its lonesome, is pretty awesome. Rather than magicking the blade, she magicked her hand, making it sturdy enough to resist the blade. But that's not the best scene in the series. It's what happens because of it.

The day is won. The witches return to Lancre. Granny walks into her cottage, collects some basic medical supplies and a sharp knife, and sets herself down at a table. She then sighs and announces to the world that she's got time now. Next scene, Granny is digging a new hole for her privy with a hand that has been badly wounded and well tended to. This kills me every time I think about it. Every freaking time.

Why? Because I believe that Granny intentionally gashed her own hand, with all the severity she believed the sword should have caused. Because she chose to accept the consequences of her actions.

If you read Granny's arguments against catching a sword barehanded, and put it through a proper "Granny" translation, her objection isn't about the possibility of it, beyond the simple fact of witch magic being unable to effect iron. Her real problem with it is that it isn't right. You shouldn't create Cause and then ignore Effect because it's inconvenient. Because that's the start of a train of thought that leads to the bad, to everything she's ever wanted for herself but has denied because fate decreed her the "good one". Granny could do all sorts of things, horrible, amazing things, but they ain't right, so she won't do 'em. End of story.

Then she catches a sword but ain't hurt. Cause without Effect. So she creates the Effect, balancing the ledgers with a sharp knife. And, this is vital, she does this before digging the new privy hole. That hand had to hurt like hell, and she'd have to favor it and protect it from getting worse (or infected) while doing fairly heavy manual labor. She chooses to put herself through that misery because anything less would be less. Oh, sure, it's a cheat, putting off the Effect until it's convenient, but that's okay. Everyone knows witches cheat, that know anything about witches.

In a setting filled to the bursting with moral badasses, this one action sets Esmerelda Weatherwax apart. Many are willing to pay the cost for their heroics, but only Granny would insist on it.

Of course, you can also interpret the scene as Granny using magic to delay the damage until she could properly tend to it. Personally, I find that interpretation cheapens the achievement immensely, but that's just me.


Am I the only one to read it that way?

[Flickerdart]

Oh, I forgot to mention my favorite scene of all time in the Discworld, though I've heard other interpretations of it.


Of course, you can also interpret the scene as Granny using magic to delay the damage until she could properly tend to it. Personally, I find that interpretation cheapens the achievement immensely, but that's just me.



That's the interpretation I had, except

It's not less heroic - Weatherwax still chooses to accept the consequences of her actions at an inconvenient time (before digging the pit). Witches cheat, and her spell was a cheat, but a cheat respects the appearance of the game, just not its rules. She didn't pull a gun on reality and demand its money, she deftly swindled it for a time, and then put the money back.

Blocking the sword, and then choosing to cut yourself, is more of a strongman move - look at me, I decide what the consequences of my actions will be, and this time I decided to take some of the damage I owe. Simply delaying the injury, on the other hand, is more humble, because it does not allow the character to determine the extent, merely the time.

[Rodin]

Oh, I forgot to mention my favorite scene of all time in the Discworld, though I've heard other interpretations of it.

Multiple times over the course of the story, Granny scoffs at the idea of the "bare handed block" trope, even with witchcraft in play. Then, as usual for Granny, the finale hits a climax with Granny doing exactly what she said was impossible, by catching a swung sword by the blade. That, on its lonesome, is pretty awesome. Rather than magicking the blade, she magicked her hand, making it sturdy enough to resist the blade. But that's not the best scene in the series. It's what happens because of it.

The day is won. The witches return to Lancre. Granny walks into her cottage, collects some basic medical supplies and a sharp knife, and sets herself down at a table. She then sighs and announces to the world that she's got time now. Next scene, Granny is digging a new hole for her privy with a hand that has been badly wounded and well tended to. This kills me every time I think about it. Every freaking time.

Why? Because I believe that Granny intentionally gashed her own hand, with all the severity she believed the sword should have caused. Because she chose to accept the consequences of her actions.

If you read Granny's arguments against catching a sword barehanded, and put it through a proper "Granny" translation, her objection isn't about the possibility of it, beyond the simple fact of witch magic being unable to effect iron. Her real problem with it is that it isn't right. You shouldn't create Cause and then ignore Effect because it's inconvenient. Because that's the start of a train of thought that leads to the bad, to everything she's ever wanted for herself but has denied because fate decreed her the "good one". Granny could do all sorts of things, horrible, amazing things, but they ain't right, so she won't do 'em. End of story.

Then she catches a sword but ain't hurt. Cause without Effect. So she creates the Effect, balancing the ledgers with a sharp knife. And, this is vital, she does this before digging the new privy hole. That hand had to hurt like hell, and she'd have to favor it and protect it from getting worse (or infected) while doing fairly heavy manual labor. She chooses to put herself through that misery because anything less would be less. Oh, sure, it's a cheat, putting off the Effect until it's convenient, but that's okay. Everyone knows witches cheat, that know anything about witches.

In a setting filled to the bursting with moral badasses, this one action sets Esmerelda Weatherwax apart. Many are willing to pay the cost for their heroics, but only Granny would insist on it.

Of course, you can also interpret the scene as Granny using magic to delay the damage until she could properly tend to it. Personally, I find that interpretation cheapens the achievement immensely, but that's just me.


Am I the only one to read it that way?


I read it the same way. It's much like how the Wizards still have to obey the law of conservation of momentum when teleporting someone - the natural laws have to be obeyed, or the land rebels. You can bend them into a pretzel, but Things from outside reality start taking an interest if you start outright breaking them.

Granny could ignore the effects her magic produces...but over time that starts to have a negative effect on the world, and horrible stuff starts to happen. Since she knows this, she's prepared to accept the consequences.

The one time we see her get away with it is in Witches Abroad, where she sticks her hand into the flame. In that case, she exploited the voodoo - something was going to catch on fire from her sticking her hand in there, and because Ms. Gogol had established the voodoo link she was able to redirect the flame to the doll. Natural laws bent, not broken.

[lord_khaine]

Regarding the sword scene, then i also always read it as her delaying the damage. She could have toughend her skin like Black Alice were able to. But instead she just postphone the effect, because thats the alternative way that did not ignore cause and effect, and would let her keep her sanity.

As for the fameous torch scene, then the way i read it was that it was pure Headoology. She did not do anything besides mess with Mrs Gogols perception, so that she caused her own doll to combust accidentially.

[BiblioRook]

So finally got around to reading Unseen Academicals. Huh.

So first off it ended up being a lot less about football then I expected. Yes it was there and contently being talked about but it really felt like more of a background thing that just happened to be going on at the same time as the rest of the book but wasn't really that important in the long run. What this book was actually about was Nutt and the fact that he's an orc and that apparently that is a Big Deal. I think that's the point where to book mostly lost me on. Orcs are a big deal because 100 years ago they were part of an evil army? So what? This is taking place in a world where in vampires and werewolves (and worst) walk the streets and where in only recent memory trolls were seen as horrific folk-tale monsters but are now so fully embraced as citizens that it would be weird to think of them as anything else, but for some reasons orcs are where the line is drawn. More then that they even go out of the way to show how people, even normally rational and open-minded people, feared and resented Nutt just for existing. It just seemed so forced.
And then there was Nutt himself. Apparently he's like some sort of perfect being. Superhumanly strong, skilled, and smart and basically infallible who's only really flaws are his self-esteem and the fact that he's kinda weird looking. It... honestly didn't make him very interesting, quite the opposite in fact. Maybe it was supposed to relate back to relate back to him being an orc but this sort of thing also carried over to his friends in a way too. Not nearly as bad, like don't really find much fault in Glenda being the Perfect Cook or Trev's near magical skill with, um, kicking a can, but the extent they would go into Juliet's beauty was almost as ridiculous as all that was going on with Nutt.

I guess by the end of it like a lot of people have been saying with a lot of the later books it wasn't a horrible book. It was fine, but just as a Discworld book it fell below the mark. I can't help feel it's a shame that this is were the story of the wizards is capped.

Seriously though on how little the football plot seems to matter. I mean almost everything about the way the book is described seems to make a big deal about highlighting the fact that it's a Discworld book about football only for it to be nearly irrelevant in favor of the whole Nutt thing. Arguably I guess it's more accurately about football fans as outside of Nutt hi9mself it felt like it focused much more on people like Glenda and Trev and how much football meant to them (despite at the same time Glenda making it clear how much she hated the game I guess) then it did with the wizards and them trying to figure the sport out. I mean there even was that whole setup with the rivalry with the other university and making a big deal about how they had to put the Archchancellor's Hat on the line and made it sound like it was leading up to a big climactic match between the two schools... only for that to be dropped almost immediately and never mentioned again and instead the big climactic match was instead was more about the New version of football vs the ugly violent old ways and Trev facing his fears (which didn't even pay off that well imo).

[Flickerdart]

Orcs are a big deal because 100 years ago they were part of an evil army? So what?
...
And then there was Nutt himself. Apparently he's like some sort of perfect being... Maybe it was supposed to relate back to relate back to him being an orc...

You answered your own question, I think. Orcs are a big deal not just because they were part of an evil army, but because they were extremely dangerous. Trolls are big dumb guys, vampires and werewolves play by well-known rules, orcs are just relentless, murderous, and unstoppable. They also acted in concert - yeah, a troll might have killed a few guys here, and a vampire kidnapped some women there, but we remember big events rather than lots of little events combined and "army of evil supermen murders everyone" is the sort of thing that makes headlines even in a world used to a certain amount of attrition to supernatural threats.

[BiblioRook]

The story made those two facts seem unrelated though. Maybe if it was worked in that people resented and feared orcs because deep down they didn't like that orcs were better then them as well as considering orcs to be inherently evil but it seems the message was more just the fact that orcs aren't inherently evil but also that the fact that he happened to be super strong, smart, and skilled meant that he was worth keeping around besides. Like the scene with lighting candles with alchemy, the concern wasn't that he managed to figure something like that out on his own but rather that he had access to potentially dangerous materials without them knowing, to me the reaction felt more along the lines of a prison guard realizing he left his gun behind unattended with the inmates.

I also had to wonder where the whole super intelligence fit in to what the concept of Orcs in Discworld were meant to be. Super strong and near impossible to kill? Sure, that makes sense. Reasonably smart and resourceful? I can buy that even if just as a characteristic of Nutt himself as an individual. But superhumanly smart and impossibly skilled? What kind of Evil Empire when custom making a slave race with the soul use of being an army of unstoppable killing machines adds super intelligence to the mix? That's like begging for a slave uprising, only I'm pretty sure that never happened because then history would probably have remembered orcs differently then. It didn't really seem to add anything to the story other then a sense of 'Look how awesome the protagonist is! To bad no one likes him despite it. Poor poor genetically perfect superbeing...'. Like I mentioned making him basically infallible made him kind of boring and uninteresting as a character, as he was written he felt more like a golem then anything else but even the golems in Discworld tended to be more quirky and interesting then that.

[Zalabim]

I thought Nutt was a goblin.

[Sholos]

One thing that bothered about the orc/goblin introduction is that they had never even been briefly mentioned in any book before. They just suddenly existed as an accepted part of society as if they had always been a thing; it was very jarring, to say the least. Also Nutt being perfect and all was annoying. I mean, Carrot can get away with it because he's Carrot, but on anyone else it just feels weird.

[hamishspence]

I thought Nutt was a goblin.

Nutt was initially thought to be a goblin by most of the people who met him - but later revealed to be an orc part-way through.


One thing that bothered about the orc/goblin introduction is that they had never even been briefly mentioned in any book before.



The phrase "sharp as goblin's teeth" was used in one of the earlier books.

http://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Goblin


There was that "Racism was less of an issue on the Discworld because speciesism was more usual - black and white lived in harmony and ganged up on green" reference, as well.

[BiblioRook]

One thing that bothered about the orc/goblin introduction is that they had never even been briefly mentioned in any book before. They just suddenly existed as an accepted part of society as if they had always been a thing; it was very jarring, to say the least.

I felt the same way about Goblins. Nothing against them, I'm fine with them in the books actually but I definitely thought they could have used much more leading up to. I mean why not instead of goblins use Gnolls? Gnolls and goblins in Discworld feel practically the same, at least initially. Perseved the same (dirty and thieving) and fill similar niches (collectors of gross things and eventual employees of Henry King). Only later goblins get shoehorned into being a race of diamonds in the rough, but gnolls? They were contented to leave in the literal gutter.


Also Nutt being perfect and all was annoying. I mean, Carrot can get away with it because he's Carrot, but on anyone else it just feels weird.

Carrot being perfect works because Carrot being perfect is part of the joke as he's both a parody of what a perfect person would be as well as an honest example of such. Being perfect is his flaw. Also the people around him are aware of it and respond to it in kind. Nutt being perfect doesn't work as well because it's just simply... there. It doesn't add any thing or say anything about him but also people don't really respond to it appropriately. Sure they are often amazed at what he can do, but it quickly fades and doesn't go anywhere. It actually comes off less about Nutt being amazing and more the people around him seeming jaded (though to be fair, most of them are wizards).
Also with Carrot you got a sense that he was really channeling his perfection into something, like helping those around him and trying to improve the city. Nutt, for all his desire to obtain worth, felt like he was wasting his skills. With all that he was capable of what does he settle on? Making candles and teaching a bunch of non-athletic wizards to competently play football. Really changing the world there. You would think at the very least Ponder Stibbons, himself knowing full well what it's like to be over-competent but under appreciated, would recognize Nutt's use and try to move him along to things where his talents would get more appreciation, especially since Stibbons himself probably could have really used something along the lines of an assistant as of Unseen Academicals.

[lord_khaine]

I actually kinda agree, at the end i were also starting to find Nutts perfection just slightly annoying.
I think that makes him insufferable compared to Carrot who i like, though not as much as Vimes, is that Carrot actually makes a lot of mistakes. He tries to arrest the head of the thieves guild, he briefly mess things up with Angua, he gets his arm broken by Wolfgang, and he proves horrible at stealth in Night Watch.
Unlike Nutt who is humble and flawless.

[Kato]

I feel like Goblins were alluded to once in a while earlier, as "bottom dweelers" and trash eaters. But maybe I'm thinking of gnolls?
I didn't mind the bit about some "new" race being introduced and its rights discussed. Yeah, it was somewhat more preachy than I hoped but my biggest issue was how effing clichee it was. Even with the "but they can do amazing things nobody else can do" stuff. So.... if they couldn't, would that mean they are NOT worth to be seen the ame as other sentient races? Does it take a genius piano player and weird... pottery to make them equal to others?


As for orcs... I feel like there really never was any intention of bringing orcs into Discworld, so sudden was it. If there were orc wars I'm sure they'd been mentioned before. But... I guess it was another idea Terry wanted to do. Discworld's version of a "bred for war" people, some kind of Frankenstein/ military AI... something. The idea was fine the execution... okay. Nutt's perfectness is certainly straining at times and way worse executed than Carrot's but I would still have been curious how his story continued.

[Zalabim]

Still less grating than the other Kind of Terry's protagonist in a book roughly about football though, right?

And I really never got that Nutt was supposed to be an orc. Telling me that now just makes me think it's a reference to LotR orcs/goblins which are the same thing. Or aren't. I'm not sure.

But Nutt is ugly, misshapen, stronger than a man, but also small, clever, and talented when it comes to things that burn. He's an orc and a goblin. He just wasn't a very compelling character to me, and I didn't really understand where some of his traits were supposed to come from.

[Aedilred]

The thing which most bothered me about Nutt's heritage as an orc (the previous absence of both orcs and goblins from the setting, which made the whole situation seem a bit forced, notwithstanding), was the "big reveal" that the key element in making the orcs so nasty was... HUMANS. Because Discworld monsters aren't monstrous enough that you can breed them to create monsters; humans are the real monsters. It was clunky Preachy Pratchett at its worst, and if anything even more annoying than its opposite, the Tenth-Doctor "aren't humans brilliant! :smallbiggrin:" nonsense that irritated me no end during RTD's Doctor Who stint.

[Kato]

The thing which most bothered me about Nutt's heritage as an orc (the previous absence of both orcs and goblins from the setting, which made the whole situation seem a bit forced, notwithstanding), was the "big reveal" that the key element in making the orcs so nasty was... HUMANS. Because Discworld monsters aren't monstrous enough that you can breed them to create monsters; humans are the real monsters. It was clunky Preachy Pratchett at its worst, and if anything even more annoying than its opposite, the Tenth-Doctor "aren't humans brilliant! :smallbiggrin:" nonsense that irritated me no end during RTD's Doctor Who stint.

Well, to be honest, what kind of monsters are really around on Discworld? Elves are from different dimensions, so are the dungeon dimension beings. Vampires can be jerks, so can be werewolves... I mean, yeah the "humans are so terrible" thing is old. But there aren't too many monsters on the Disc (anymore)

[lord_khaine]

I though the humans tidbit were kinda nice. It were not blown up to much, just a little casual detail in the background.

[Eldan]

Well, to be honest, what kind of monsters are really around on Discworld? Elves are from different dimensions, so are the dungeon dimension beings. Vampires can be jerks, so can be werewolves... I mean, yeah the "humans are so terrible" thing is old. But there aren't too many monsters on the Disc (anymore)

Ice giants, mountain-sized trolls, the Eater of Wight, Hivers...

[Thufir]

The thing which most bothered me about Nutt's heritage as an orc (the previous absence of both orcs and goblins from the setting, which made the whole situation seem a bit forced, notwithstanding), was the "big reveal" that the key element in making the orcs so nasty was... HUMANS. Because Discworld monsters aren't monstrous enough that you can breed them to create monsters; humans are the real monsters. It was clunky Preachy Pratchett at its worst, and if anything even more annoying than its opposite, the Tenth-Doctor "aren't humans brilliant! :smallbiggrin:" nonsense that irritated me no end during RTD's Doctor Who stint.

Except this doesn't really hold up since one of the big points being made is that the orcs are not inherently monsters. And Vetinari's comment about it making sense is that Goblins wouldn't have been aggressive enough - aggression is also not inherently evil or monstrous. I thought the point was more about the way the stories about orcs had been corrupted for propaganda purposes, presumably by humans who didn't want to admit that anything that bad could ever be done by them so they blamed it on the goblins instead.
If the Discworld series in general has anything to say about who the 'real' monsters are, it's that they can be anyone - humans, dwarfs, trolls, vampires, werewolves, anything.

[Kato]

Ice giants, mountain-sized trolls, the Eater of Wight, Hivers...

1) Hardly relevant since they have shown up once and then never again. Heck, did they even do much? They're a menace of the past. Like us being scared of dinosaurs.
2) Specist :smalltongue: Why does it matter how large a troll is. They are still people, not monsters.
3) Who? :smallconfused:
4) Hardly known to exist by most people. And even then, it's not as much a monster, as a... well, I guess a ghost counts as a monster. Spirit?

[Manga Shoggoth]

...the Eater of Wight...
3) Who? :smallconfused:


It sounds like a combination of the "Sender of Eight" (Bel-Shamharoth - from the very early stories) and the Eater of Socks (Hogfather) .

That or something terrible is happening to the South Coast and I am going to have a rottern holiday next year.

[BiblioRook]

I feel like mentioning that one thing about Unseen Academicals I did really like had to be Dr. Hix. All the more shame that it was the last of the 'wizard' books because I would have loved to see more of him...

[RyumaruMG]

I've loved Discworld ever since I read my first one, Thud!, but the real clincher for me was when I read Hogfather.

See, I was forced to read the pile of pointless misery that was the little match girl story in one of my English classes in high school. I hated it. So to see the piss taken out of that story in such a deft, precise, vicious, and even heartwarming way was tremendously rewarding for me.

Plus the bit with Albert throwing snowballs at the angels was just a glorious cherry on top of an already great scene. :smallbiggrin:

[Dienekes]

The thing which most bothered me about Nutt's heritage as an orc (the previous absence of both orcs and goblins from the setting, which made the whole situation seem a bit forced, notwithstanding), was the "big reveal" that the key element in making the orcs so nasty was... HUMANS. Because Discworld monsters aren't monstrous enough that you can breed them to create monsters; humans are the real monsters. It was clunky Preachy Pratchett at its worst, and if anything even more annoying than its opposite, the Tenth-Doctor "aren't humans brilliant! :smallbiggrin:" nonsense that irritated me no end during RTD's Doctor Who stint.

Isn't this just really common for Pratchet though? He sets a novel with a very clear subtextual message then in the last few chapters has big wham line that breaks all the subtitly. Usually the line is delivered by Vetinari or Death, but others get in on the line as well.

I usually find these moments kind of eye-roll worthy usually. Even when I agree with the message presented. I don't even think Unseen Academicals is the worst offender really.

I still love Pratchet his writing is genius. But that is one of his more tiresome trends. And some people like it, I know people who quote the one from Hogfather, straightfaced, for instance.

[Aedilred]

Isn't this just really common for Pratchet though? He sets a novel with a very clear subtextual message then in the last few chapters has big wham line that breaks all the subtitly. Usually the line is delivered by Vetinari or Death, but others get in on the line as well.

I usually find these moments kind of eye-roll worthy usually. Even when I agree with the message presented. I don't even think Unseen Academicals is the worst offender really.

I still love Pratchet his writing is genius. But that is one of his more tiresome trends. And some people like it, I know people who quote the one from Hogfather, straightfaced, for instance.

I think you're right that it's not uncommon, but it's a tendency I found became both more common and more annoying in his later (post-Night Watch) books. Some of his earlier messages were perhaps a little on the heavy-handed side, but they were often constructed in a way which blasted through any mawkishness on sheer rule of cool. Death riding in to save the day with an epic guitar solo while dressed like a Meat Loaf album cover is enough that you can forgive any lack of subtlety in his ensuing message. The speech from Hogfather was beautifully rendered, so that I still get caught up in the poetry of it. And certainly I prefer such moments to some of his endings where a lot of stuff goes whizzbangpow and then the good guys are picking themselves up and you're left scratching your head wondering what actually happened.

But I never felt preached at - brief moments in Small Gods and the entirety of Equal Rites aside - until those later books where, for some reason, maybe inadequate buildup, maybe simply a lower quality of prose, I started to feel like I was being bashed over the head. I'm not sure what the worst offender is (maybe Thud!, which I didn't care for all that much) but I recalled it bothering me in Unseen Academicals and given that the book until the conclusion was, I thought, one of his better post-Alzheimers ones, perhaps it stood out more than most.

[hamishspence]

Vetinari's comment about it making sense is that Goblins wouldn't have been aggressive enough - aggression is also not inherently evil or monstrous. I thought the point was more about the way the stories about orcs had been corrupted for propaganda purposes, presumably by humans who didn't want to admit that anything that bad could ever be done by them so they blamed it on the goblins instead.
If the Discworld series in general has anything to say about who the 'real' monsters are, it's that they can be anyone - humans, dwarfs, trolls, vampires, werewolves, anything.

It might even be a nod to the fact that Tolkien's orc origin story evolved, with at least one example being "altered humans".

[smuchmuch]

Well, to be honest, what kind of monsters are really around on Discworld? Elves are from different dimensions, so are the dungeon dimension beings. Vampires can be jerks, so can be werewolves... I mean, yeah the "humans are so terrible" thing is old. But there aren't too many monsters on the Disc (anymore)
Ice giants, mountain-sized trolls, the Eater of Wight, Hivers...

And supermarkets, don't forget supermarkets ! :smalltongue:
(As much as I liked the bits with death, the other bits of Reaper man were oh so weird)

Ghouls and bogeymen used to be a thing.

Also swamp dragons, ...although I'll grant you they have been hard to breed into orcs eew). And if of little interest unless you wanted them to be very explodey (... might have made for a more enterntaining book, mind you...)


sn't this just really common for Pratchet though? He sets a novel with a very clear subtextual message then in the last few chapters has big wham line that breaks all the subtitly. Usually the line is delivered by Vetinari or Death, but others get in on the line as well.

true but at least in his earlier book, the storry and character were just engaging enough and the humour present in large enough dose that the whole book felt balanced. Also the storry didn't feel like rehash yet.

[RossN]

My first Discworld novel was probably Equal Rites, though I read The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic pretty soon after - I always like to start at the start if possible. :smallbiggrin: I know I'm a bit of minority in this but I sort of prefer the early to middle period books, maybe because I got into the series as very much an AD&D style fantasy fan. The 'steampunk' style tech of the later books, like the omnipresent clacks always left me cold.

[DungeonD-Head]

Think I'd have to go with:

1. Small Gods
2. Reaper Man
3. Men at Arms

[BWR]

My first Discworld novel was probably Equal Rites, though I read The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic pretty soon after - I always like to start at the start if possible. :smallbiggrin: I know I'm a bit of minority in this but I sort of prefer the early to middle period books, maybe because I got into the series as very much an AD&D style fantasy fan. The 'steampunk' style tech of the later books, like the omnipresent clacks always left me cold.

We are both part of this minority.

[RossN]

We are both part of this minority.

Good to know I'm not completely alone! :smallbiggrin:

My other minority opinion - which is probably even less popular - is that I never liked the Susan stories. She wasn't a very likeable character to begin with.

[Kato]

Good to know I'm not completely alone! :smallbiggrin:

My other minority opinion - which is probably even less popular - is that I never liked the Susan stories. She wasn't a very likeable character to begin with.

Hm... the thing with Susan, imo, is... she doesn't have that many stories. She's in RM, where she is a little kid, she is in Hogsfather, where she is decent and she is in ToT where she is kind of superfluous. That's not very much to go on, I think. I don't dislike her, but we don't have that much time to get to know her.

[Kato]

Also Soul Music.

Ah, damn, of course, Soul Music, not Reaper Man. What was I thinking :smallredface::smallredface::smallredface:

[2D8HP]

Hm... the thing with Susan, imo, is... she doesn't have that many stories. She's in RM, where she is a little kid, .I don't remember her in Reaper Man at all.

[RossN]

Hm... the thing with Susan, imo, is... she doesn't have that many stories. She's in RM, where she is a little kid, she is in Hogsfather, where she is decent and she is in ToT where she is kind of superfluous. That's not very much to go on, I think. I don't dislike her, but we don't have that much time to get to know her.

I think I just got very tired of her hyper-sensible persona which is good for a one off character (and I liked her in Soul Music) but kind of exhausting and not very sympathetic long term.

[BiblioRook]

Hm... the thing with Susan, imo, is... she doesn't have that many stories. She's in RM, where she is a little kid, she is in Hogsfather, where she is decent and she is in ToT where she is kind of superfluous. That's not very much to go on, I think. I don't dislike her, but we don't have that much time to get to know her.

Playing devil's advocate (as I actually rather like Susan) she has more books then, say, Moist, but Moist is a much stronger character who stands out even after just the one book. Susan doesn't get much characterization beyond 'Death's Granddaughter', but even then weirdly enough in a series where Death himself gets a tremendous amount of characterization I can easily see how people might find her falling a bit flat.

[Kato]

Playing devil's advocate (as I actually rather like Susan) she has more books then, say, Moist, but Moist is a much stronger character who stands out even after just the one book.

Uhm, no she doesn't. Moist has three, as does she. (why do I feel like he'd have even more? ) and he is the focus of almost all of them, Susan at best is one in Hogfather.
That said, I agree. Moist is a stronger character with more personality who grows on you much easier. Or me, anyway. Susan has a character and I mostly like it but it can't keep up with a von Lipwig.

[Aedilred]

I suspect one of the reasons I like Susan so much is that she only features during what I consider Pratchett's peak period and therefore none of her appearances get bungled. She remains a character I'd like to have seen more of, rather than a character I got sick of. In his last books I found Pratchett became very heavy-handed with his characterisation. Even stalwarts like Vimes and Vetinari suffered; Moist - and I must admit, the name alone had me rolling my eyes a little - never really had much of a chance. Going Postal was alright but, I think, no more than that. The two that followed, meh.

[Rockphed]

I suspect one of the reasons I like Susan so much is that she only features during what I consider Pratchett's peak period and therefore none of her appearances get bungled. She remains a character I'd like to have seen more of, rather than a character I got sick of. In his last books I found Pratchett became very heavy-handed with his characterisation. Even stalwarts like Vimes and Vetinari suffered; Moist - and I must admit, the name alone had me rolling my eyes a little - never really had much of a chance. Going Postal was alright but, I think, no more than that. The two that followed, meh.

Moist Von Lipwig is a very strong character in one of, in my opinion, Pratchett's best books: Going Postal. He is also an okay character in Making Money and Raising Steam, but neither of those books was nearly as good. Making Money suffered from the problem faced by many direct sequels: the main character already had everything he wanted in life at the end of the previous book. As a result, the book dragged. Raising Steam, on the other hand, suffered from having too many things thrown in. The parts that involved the engineer and Moist were okay. The sequence where everybody in the whole series discussed if it were time for steam power just seemed like an excuse to drag characters from all the disparate stories together to say goodbye.

Susan, on the other hand, is a moderate to good character across 3 of Pratchett's better books, Soul Music, Hogfather, and Thief of Time. The first and last in the set are less awesome than Hogfather, but it is really hard to beat "Santa Claus has gone missing. In order to save the world, Death has to step in to fill his shoes." as a premise for a book. Frankly, it does Nightmare Before Christmas better than The Nightmare Before Christmas.

[RossN]

I liked Hogfather too, though it isn't one of my favourites.

I recently re-read Guards! Guards! and a lot of it feels very strange after the later Watch books. Carrot's super-charisma is a lot more understated and (ironically for a dwarf) he seems more human than in later stories. What's weirder though is reading a Vimes who has no particular objections to monarchy while Colon does!

[Bohandas]

I just got my new copy of Pyramids in the mail. (I had a copy of it before, but I lost it. In all likelihood it's still in the house somewhere, but I've looked multiple times and been unable to find it, so I sent away for a new one)

[BiblioRook]

Yeah, I'm sort of in the process of building up my third set of Discworld books (the first being the ones I originally read and the second being a set of the ones with Kirby covers). All of my books are in storage and rather then trying to dig them out I usually just opt to rebuy the books used when I come across them. I'm fortunate to have access to multiple used bookstores though and part of me likes to think I'm also supporting them in a small way. That being said I'm known by name in most of them and many of them also are aware that I already own all the books and mock me jokingly over rebuying them so often.
Currently trying to track down some copies of the Witch books, having just reread all of the Watch books and currently halfway through the Death books that's the 'series' I next want to revisit.

[Kato]

Yeah, I'm sort of in the process of building up my third set of Discworld books (the first being the ones I originally read and the second being a set of the ones with Kirby covers). All of my books are in storage and rather then trying to dig them out I usually just opt to rebuy the books used when I come across them. I'm fortunate to have access to multiple used bookstores though and part of me likes to think I'm also supporting them in a small way. That being said I'm known by name in most of them and many of them also are aware that I already own all the books and mock me jokingly over rebuying them so often.
Currently trying to track down some copies of the Witch books, having just reread all of the Watch books and currently halfway through the Death books that's the 'series' I next want to revisit.

Yikes. I mean, congrats on supporting book stores but putting them in storage? Okay, I'm not a vivid book lover but I like to have mine on the shelves still, to pick them up easily. And I wouldn't have money or space to rebuy every book because I can't find it :smallbiggrin:

[2D8HP]

I pay for a storage unit for my books as well.
My wife doesn't like there presence, and since I can't easily see the splines, I do buy the same book more then once.
Family is ever the scourge of the reading classes!

[BiblioRook]

Yikes. I mean, congrats on supporting book stores but putting them in storage? Okay, I'm not a vivid book lover but I like to have mine on the shelves still, to pick them up easily. And I wouldn't have money or space to rebuy every book because I can't find it :smallbiggrin:

As much as I would like to have my books up on shelves again I've been bouncing around temporary living spaces for a while now and even if I wanted to most of the places I've been staying just don't have the space (or the shelves for that matter). What things are in storage are stored elsewhere and I wouldn't really be able to conveniently access them on a whim. In any case there's a reason why I just stick to what books I can find used. Used books are cheap enough and more then often I can always just trade them back when I'm done if I don't want or need them afterwards. I do realize that a library would probably be more efficient (and cheaper), but as much as I like the idea of libraries, actually using them make me rather anxious as I dislike the idea of a deadline lingering over my head.

[Bohandas]

My room's a mess, and shelving what l0ose books I have wpuldn't really help because the shelves deep enough for it are already two layers deep. That's why I keep losing track of books lately.

[Aedilred]

I pay for a storage unit for my books as well.
My wife doesn't like there presence, and since I can't easily see the splines, I do buy the same book more then once.
Family is ever the scourge of the reading classes!

I don't think I could ever marry someone who wasn't prepared to put up with my books and made me ship them off somewhere else.