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So, um, I just read 'The Shepherd's Crown' last night while I was at the library. And, er, I think I might be that weirdo who was crying in the library. Oh Gods, that book loving destroyed me. I've been reading Discworld books since I was like eleven when someone gave my dad a copy of the Colour of Magic. Now, at the age of 32, I've read and owned pretty much every single one of these. I grew up with Death and Rincewind and the witches and I just can't believe that it's all over. There's never going to be any more, and that breaks my heart. The chapter where Granny looks in the mirror and remarks that she would have had such a nice day tomorrow and then spends the whole day cleaning things was harrowing, because as soon as she started the thorough clean I knew what was going to happen. Granny has been one of my great role models over the years, and oh Gods, I was an absolute wreck.
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Feb 5, 2016 00:40
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Jedit posted:But not that Pterry later borrowed the joke of not just playing chess with Death, as someone once challenged him to a game of Monopoly instead. Death is just bad at games. He can't play bridge, he forgets how the knights move in chess, and I can only imagine that the Disc's version of Monopoly didn't go well either. That was in the Light Fantastic, right? I guess he's probably OK at Cripple Mr. Onion but aside from that, nope.
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Apr 26, 2016 18:39
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Rand Brittain posted:Okay, it's been long enough that I feel like I can say this without disrespecting a great man who just died—I feel like the sequence at the beginning of The Shepherd's Crown was totally wrong. Yeah, I sort of got this feeling too, in all honesty. Some of them made sense - Ridcully, for example - but others, not so much.
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Apr 30, 2016 15:36
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My Lovely Horse posted:I thought it was Carrot's. Vetinari may know who everyone is, but I think Carrot knows who everyone is but also gets to know everyone. Vetinari might be able to find out the things about you that you don't want people to know, but Carrot will be so damned personable that you'll tell him yourself. I think that this probably has to do with Carrot's unassailable Belief in the Law.
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May 2, 2016 16:14
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Rush Limbo posted:I always got the impression that Ridcully was far more shrewd than he lets on and his behaviour towards the other Wizards is largely because a Wizard left to his own devices is a very dangerous thing. Basically using reverse psychology etc to get the Wizards to pursue the ridiculous tangents they do because otherwise they'd have a lot of free time on their hands. This is basically it, and I'm fairly certain that it's explicitly stated at one point in a book that heavily involves the Faculty.
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Dec 5, 2016 16:23
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Well of course. They've been keeping themselves literally cloistered for decades while the rest of the Disc has been dragged kicking and screaming into the Centry of the Fruitbat. Remember when they were running about going 'what ho, what ho' and claiming to be stolid burghers?
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Jan 6, 2017 01:59
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Liquid Communism posted:I think the whole climax of Reaper Man is right up there with that Cable Street bit. This part of Reaper Man and the bit at the end of Hogfather, when Death talks to Susan about the Sun rising, these are my favourite Death moments.
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Aug 23, 2017 17:52
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Hogfather, entirely because of the conversation about the difference between the Sun and a flaming ball of gas. Pratchett loving got it.
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Oct 20, 2017 12:00
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You may be pleased to know that tonight in Hamilton, Ontario, we made sure that the Dark Morris was performed as best we can manage with our Roundworld limitations.
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Nov 1, 2017 03:40
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The_Doctor posted:“Tᴀᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴜɴɪᴠᴇʀsᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ɢʀɪɴᴅ ɪᴛ ᴅᴏᴡɴ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪɴᴇsᴛ ᴘᴏᴡᴅᴇʀ ᴀɴᴅ sɪᴇᴠᴇ ɪᴛ ᴛʜʀᴏᴜɢʜ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪɴᴇsᴛ sɪᴇᴠᴇ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇɴ sʜᴏᴡ ᴍᴇ ᴏɴᴇ ᴀᴛᴏᴍ ᴏғ ᴊᴜsᴛɪᴄᴇ, ᴏɴᴇ ᴍᴏʟᴇᴄᴜʟᴇ ᴏғ ᴍᴇʀᴄʏ...” People always quote that part of the exchange, but what's always been the best part of Hogfather for me is the bit immediately before it: quote:
Because the Sun and the ball of flaming gas aren't the same. Terry got it.
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Dec 23, 2017 15:21
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Trin Tragula posted:I dunno, I think he was winding up to go a lot further in his exploration of personal identity in general and gender in specific. Stuff like how, in dwarf culture, I always sort of assumed that Carrot has the morphic field of a dwarf and exudes dwarfishness. Culturally Carrot is a dwarf and he presumably broadcasts it somehow.
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Mar 18, 2019 14:22
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That fella they picked for Carrot is Carrot if ever I saw him.
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Sep 11, 2019 22:25
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Jerry Cotton posted:David Mitchell as death. Gods, yes. It'd be absurd and delightful. But who'd be Albert?
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Sep 12, 2019 17:31
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Rand Brittain posted:I feel like most voices for Death flop because they try to do intense bass and this doesn't really work when you actually have to hear it. Death's voice is described as the sound of leaden coffin lids slamming closed and that feels like hella bass is called for, though? I don't feel that it has to be super deep - I did earlier say that David Mitchell would be hilarious - but I can understand why they often go for it.
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Sep 13, 2019 11:57
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Thank God, I'm not the only one who thought it.
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Oct 3, 2019 19:38
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Just have nonbinary / androgynous actors, problem solved. Hell, there's incredible things you can do with makeup and prosthetics these days, look at Tilda Swinton's three roles in the remake of Suspiria.
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Jun 19, 2020 21:10
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If it's not written by Terry then it's just flattened roundworld.
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Aug 10, 2020 22:25
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At what point did the Muntab Question switch to "Where's Muntab?" from their calendar counting down and no-one knew why?
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Aug 19, 2020 22:06
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I remember I got The Shepherd's Crown from the library, and I sat there reading it and I got to the point where Granny realizes what was going to happen tomorrow, and while I was fairly sure that was a thing that would happen in this, the last book, I just wasn't ready for it, and there I was, a grown-rear end man sitting in the library crying over something happening to a fictional character.
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Jan 17, 2021 05:46
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Hogfather absolutely is one of the best ones. In my opinion this is because of the part when Death points out to Susan that it was necessary to save the Hogfather to ensure the Sun rose again after the winter solstice, because the Sun rising and a flaming ball of gas coming up over the horizon are not the same.
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Dec 26, 2021 18:23
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citybeatnik posted:That and Death asking what the harvest can hope for save for the care of the reaper man in that book hit me *hard* and as silly as it is to admit informs me to this day. That and "there is no justice, there's just us". That's the other amazing bit from the Death novels. Reaper Man also had a spectacular impact on folk dancers. Many Morris dancing sides do a Dark Morris, although we have trouble getting the octiron bells.
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Dec 26, 2021 18:56
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Phy posted:How'd the stick and bucket dance work out for you though Years before I joined there was a Stick and Bucket Dance that they wouldn't talk about - apparently it led to too many injured knuckles or something. The year before covid hit we did borrow and re-work a dance from a border side in the UK and changed it to involve buckets, but I don't recall precisely how it went at this point aside from being very elaborate.
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Jan 5, 2022 14:45
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I really wish I was good enough at that kind of patter to come up with a bit where Dibbler is trying to sell an NFT to someone.
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Jan 24, 2022 13:18
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At one point in Witches Abroad Granny thinks to herself that the wages of sin are death, but so are the wages of virtue, and at least the wicked get to go home early on Fridays. Witches Abroad is such an utterly wonderful book.
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Jun 21, 2022 23:06
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I think you may have intended to post that in the Wheel of Time thread.
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Aug 18, 2022 22:45
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Canuckistan posted:Or they use the UU for their antenna and the radio waves start doing funky magical stuff. Oh, and the Wizards and the Librarian all become DJs. Well, the Dean certainly would.
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Oct 12, 2022 17:53
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Beachcomber posted:The Dean went to Sto Lat(?) didn't he? The Dean tends to get quickly sucked into whatever Weird New Thing the faculty is dealing with (Soul Music, Hogfather, Moving Pictures etc) so considering how little time it took him to get a leather robe with DEAN BORN TO in studs on the back, I assume he would have rad mirror shades and be flipping records while IDK beatboxing almost immediately. I have an extremely clear mental image of the Dean and the Librarian DJ'ing at some kind of dance party / rave in Ankh-Morpork and it's delightful.
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Oct 21, 2022 16:11
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Beachcomber posted:No, he went to be Archchancellor of a new magic school, I believe. I think Sto Lat, could be one of the other plains cities. Ah, my bad! It's been a while since I read Unseen Academicals and I've only read it once.
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Oct 22, 2022 14:17
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Today is May Day, and as I and other Morris dancers were doing the heavy lifting of dancing the Sun up so you lot can have Summer it crossed my mind that today there are probably other Morris dancers in the southern hemisphere who are doing their Dark Morris. It's a little weird to think that Pratchett accidentally created an entire folk tradition when he wrote Reaper Man. Several Morris dancing sides also have a Stick and Bucket Dance, my own included, but that feels a little less profound to me than the existence of the Dark Morris, presumably because the Dark Morris as a concept is extremely simple. What we see of the Stick and Bucket Dance in Lords and Ladies isn't detailed enough to put an entire dance together, so most of us make something up involving sticks and buckets.
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May 2, 2023 01:36
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Witches > Death > Unseen Faculty > Watch in my opinion, but that's fine, you're all allowed to be wrong and I can't stop you. I couldn't pick an absolute favourite but if hard-pressed I might submit Witches Abroad because of the scene where Granny takes advantage of the Law of Contagion going both ways when having the fight with Mrs. Gogol, or Reaper Man because it started the Dark Morris and also has that whole......everything, with the mechanical harvester being pointless because it doesn't love the grain, and what reason has the grain to be, if not for the care of the reaper-man? I did have trouble getting into Unseen Academicals but tbh I am not a sports guy in any way, shape, or form, which is probably why.
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Aug 14, 2023 03:18
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Alhazred posted:Shepherd's Crown is the only book I've ever burst into tears about. Not because it's his best book, but because I realized that this was the last time I would ever read a new Discworld book. I held off on reading it for this very reason, and had the same response, but also had An Extended Moment at the part when Granny wakes up and sees the future. There I was, a grown-rear end man actually crying while reading at the library, because God dammit Sir Terry was actually doing this, and on top of that, this was the last time I would be reading a Discworld book for the first time. These books are something that I've been reading since I was like 13 and in many ways shaped how I viewed a lot of things, but this was the last one. Heart-wrenching.
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Dec 4, 2023 13:53
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Do you think that perhaps that story arc, as well as what happens in Reaper Man, might be what causes him to be more sympathetic?
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Mar 18, 2024 12:50
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Jedit posted:It's more an evolution of how the character was written. Once you get past the first two books where he's pissed off with Rincewind's constant failure to die on schedule Death was always somewhat sympathetic, not a taker of life but a guide to whatever comes after it. And remember that Reaper Man happens before Soul Music, so any reversal of character development actually happens in the later book. I was referring to Death's decision in Mort to let Ysabelle leave even though he knew it meant he'd lose her forever. Death started doing a lot of things humans do in an attempt to figure out how they worked and why they did the things that they did, but it ended up humanizing him instead.
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Mar 18, 2024 13:31
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It's such a good book. I don't think Sir Terry intended to start a new folk custom when he wrote that book, but I certainly know why my Morris dancing group (amid others!) does the Dark Morris. Admittedly we do it incorrectly, but octiron is hard to come by here on Roundworld. At one point we
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Mar 18, 2024 18:37
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