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Regarde Aduck posted:He's going to go to a good school and do well. Clearly an Aspirational lad who wants to Get On.
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Aug 31, 2015 23:28
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OwlFancier posted:I think he mostly does that because Sybil tells him to, he usually finds an excuse to go do police stuff. But, like with the shoes, society doesn't know his inner turmoil, they see a nobleman and a copper. As a copper he's fine keeping the Patrician in the Palace and the dregs in the Shades. In truth he's a true believer in a pragmatic liberalism, he doesn't want the aristocracy to be above the law but doesn't seek to actually end the system that in practise puts them above it (admittedly that means he ends up shooting them personally with a crossbow), which is a little bit rubbish considering he's twice been a revolutionary. Regarde Aduck posted:He's going to go to a good school and do well. Since he won't go to the Assassins or any of the local schools he's going to be a Hugglestones boy. Think about that.
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Aug 31, 2015 23:29
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namesake posted:But, like with the shoes, society doesn't know his inner turmoil, they see a nobleman and a copper. As a copper he's fine keeping the Patrician in the Palace and the dregs in the Shades. In truth he's a true believer in a pragmatic liberalism, he doesn't want the aristocracy to be above the law but doesn't seek to actually end the system that in practise puts them above it (admittedly that means he ends up shooting them personally with a crossbow), which is a little bit rubbish considering he's twice been a revolutionary. He may simply feel that he doesn't have the ability to do that, he puts it when discussing his regicide ancestor: "the old lies won out in the end" as simply shooting the people involved doesn't shut down the system. If you shot all the aristocracy then you'd get more soon enough. We see that in real life with revolutions, it doesn't stop the problem, but it does put us through anarchy and massacres in the process. I also suspect that he knows most of the people who would end up dead in a revolution are people who aren't the aristocracy. In fact I think he comments more or less exactly to that effect in night watch. Revolution itself isn't productive, it is romantic, and fits nicely with the just world fallacy that if you do something difficult you deserve a reward, but it doesn't, in all the times it's been done, actually solve the problem, and that romantic notion gets lots of people killed who probably didn't have to die right then. But he can, occasionally, right specific injustices, and minimise the harm he does. It's not very much, but it may be better than blowing everything up because you feel personally uncomfortable being party to it. namesake posted:Since he won't go to the Assassins or any of the local schools he's going to be a Hugglestones boy. Think about that. Alternatively: He ends up with Susan as a governess 
OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Aug 31, 2015 |
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Aug 31, 2015 23:44
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I took a copy of Middlemarch with me on holiday over a decade ago. For some reason, it was missing about 30 pages part-way in, which I only realised about 50 pages later when some characters started talking about a funeral for a character I hadn't realised had died. Austen - literature so good I didn't even notice when 30 pages went missing.
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Aug 31, 2015 23:59
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I can't believe this thread listened to Jonathon Jones long enough to do anything other than scoff that he still thinks his opinion is worth anything. He doesn't like <author>, cue people jumping in to defend <author> or say that actually, <author> is bullshit. Can we not just agree that Jonathon Jones is regularly in Private Eye's Pseud's Corner for a reason? Specifically that he's a tosser who thinks his opinion is important because he declared himself an art critic. He's had no formal training in art history so his claims about the history of art are based on his perusal of Wikipedia and a desperate attempt to catch the news-of-the-moment. He is not someone to take seriously. This is not even a defence of Pratchett who is dead and doesn't give a poo poo if someone thinks his words are crap. Which a lot of them are. Please stop paying attention to Jonathon 'wanks about a Bennett/Wood/Sturgeon threesome' Jones. Like c'mon he's only big on art because he was so poo poo at his history degree that he had to find something to make up for his failure and art criticism has such a low bar of entry as long as you know the right people.
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Sep 1, 2015 00:00
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I was having fun wittering about discworld honestly.
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Sep 1, 2015 00:04
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Pork Pie Hat posted:I'll accept that they may be on the weaker end of a 40-part series, but based on those I don't particularly feel the need to read the remaining 38 to find a few that may be better. If there was a general consensus to a best one or two then I will happily see the error of my ways and give those a try. Small Gods for certain, as people have said. It has a lot of humour, but behind that is a serious examination of the difference between faith and belief. Having read Mort and thus been introduced to Death as a main character, you may get some mileage out of either Reaper Man or Hogfather (the only thing you need to know going into Hogfather is that Susan is Mort and Ysabell's daughter).
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Sep 1, 2015 00:04
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Jonathan Jones is just an old curmudgeon who likes feeling superior. His self-contradiction on whether photography counts as "art" based on nothing more than whether it was popular at the time is evidence enough for that.
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Sep 1, 2015 00:11
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I made a thread for September. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3739515 OwlFancier posted:I was having fun wittering about discworld honestly.  ) cool. Pratchett-chat is cool.
Guavanaut fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Sep 1, 2015 |
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Sep 1, 2015 00:11
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For the record I like Pratchett, especially his handling of trans issues RE: the dwarves. But he's not God. That's Douglas Adams.
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Sep 1, 2015 01:19
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forkboy84 posted:In fairness, Nickelback are still absolutely dreadful though. But yes, isn't 50 Shades your more contemporary version of awful fiction that everyone seems to read? 50 Shades is a Twilight fanfic with the serial numbers filed off, it would have been an even more unfair comparison than Brown. Tesseraction posted:For the record I like Pratchett, especially his handling of trans issues RE: the dwarves. But he's not God. I liked the ending of the new hhgtg movie. 
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Sep 1, 2015 07:00
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Recently blazed through the original bbc tv hgttg with my 14 year old daughter, promising her it was a timeless classic, she was totally enthralled  Prime example of why the bbc should be a thing.New thread one of you sensible people with more time please.
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Sep 1, 2015 07:09
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kingturnip posted:I took a copy of Middlemarch lol OvineYeast fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Sep 1, 2015 |
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Sep 1, 2015 07:40
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Terry Pratchett is probably fun when you are 12 years old, but his books are not great when revisited as an adult.
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Sep 1, 2015 07:41
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keep punching joe posted:Terry Pratchett is probably fun when you are 12 years old, but his books are not great when revisited as an adult. Are you sure you got past 12? Pratchett is great when you're an adult because you understand so many more of the jokes, especially the political ones.
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Sep 1, 2015 07:48
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Jedit posted:Are you sure you got past 12? Pratchett is great when you're an adult because you understand so many more of the jokes, especially the political ones. I agree with Jedit. Pratchett is perfect for someone who read fantasy books as a kid and now is into politics. Everything he writes manages to speak to me in a way that not many other authors can do. As the quotes Owl keeps posting shows he's got a really interesting way to talk about society. Plus growing up in a small village then moving to a city means not only is Nanny Ogg a character I relate to hugely (she's basically my Grandma) but Vimes is as well. I would say Night Watch is a book that would appeal to the thread but it might not work as well if you've not read the other Watchmen books. Or perhaps the newspaper one which I can't remember the name of - it's about lies in the press. Yea okay granted people here already know those things but it opens your mind when you aren't a person that considered those issues before.
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Sep 1, 2015 11:24
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http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/01/david-cameron-nick-clegg-snobbish-arrogant-emails-to-hillary-clintonquote:Emails to the US presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton from a close confidant portrayed the British prime minister, David Cameron, as snobbish, William Hague as disingenuous and the first coalition government budget as draconian.
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Sep 1, 2015 11:48
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Didn't Obama characterise Cameron as an intellectual lightweight when he was in opposition?
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Sep 1, 2015 12:02
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Oberleutnant posted:http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/sep/01/david-cameron-nick-clegg-snobbish-arrogant-emails-to-hillary-clinton Holy crap, that guy can write decent political summaries. Well worth reading the pdf's linked in the article.
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Sep 1, 2015 12:05
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Taear posted:I agree with Jedit. Honestly, I think a lot of the difficulty with discussing Pratchett comes about because Pratchett more than 15 MILLION published words in his career (I think by the end, 15 million+ in Discworld alone, let alone the stand-alone stuff, collaborations, and non-fiction) so if people's experiences with him were reading things like The Colour Of Magic or Equal Rites or Carpet People or Johnny when they were a kid and then nothing since, they're inevitably going to think he's a worse author than if they read Night Watch or Monstrous Regiment or Going Postal, or his essays about assisted dying, or Good Omens, or... etc. He's a difficult author to deal with because he wrote SO much, and the sweet spot of his novel writing when he'd got good but not yet got ill was relatively short and late on in Discworld so it has a fairly high barrier to entry.All that being said, I think he was among the premier satirists of my childhood and young adulthood, and will be remembered as such in the future. The Truth is the one about the press. I've not read that in ages.
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Sep 1, 2015 12:09
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Prince John posted:Holy crap, that guy can write decent political summaries. Well worth reading the pdf's linked in the article. quote:The result is that, following the attacks by the financial markets on Greece and then Spain, everybody is now in a mood communism bitch fucked around with this message at 12:27 on Sep 1, 2015 |
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Sep 1, 2015 12:24
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Transplant that to the September thread if you haven't already.
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Sep 1, 2015 12:58
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