Phenotype posted:

It's been a while since I've read it, but I think his name was actually Crawly for a while.

Screaming Idiot posted:

There will never be a good adaptation of Pratchett's work and I would be pleased if they stopped trying.

If they really cared, it would be a "thriller with rocks in it." And Cheery Littlebottom is absolutely binary -- she is female, and proud of it!

Screaming Idiot posted:

Or, and hear me out, they could stop trying to adapt works that are completely unadaptable because they either cut everything out or change it to be enjoyed by dumber audiences or both.

Let Discword die with Pterry, please. We have the books. They're enough.

Bilirubin posted:

At what point can I read Night Watch? Last time ITT I was told basically "read all of Discworld first" but nobody got time for that

e X posted:

The Fifth Elephant is easily the best watch book.


I mean, there is Nightwatch of course, but that is a different beast entirely.

Snow Cone Capone posted:

"Vetinari does a fakeout" has happened a million times though. He knew the whole time there was arsenic in the candles, didn't he?

It definitely seems like the later books were grooming Sam as the begrudging-but-necessary leader of the "new" AM, as well as emphasizing more and more that Vetinari was getting old and frail as hell.

Phenotype posted:

His orders from Colon were "if he gives you any trouble, you just leave, okay?" so Carrot was just being very honest, as usual. If Whiteface didn't do what Carrot said, Carrot was going to carry out his orders and leave. And he wouldn't like it and he'd be ashamed of it, but he'd do it.

I love that bit too.

Shoehead posted:

It seems far enough removed from Discworld that I can ignore it angst free tbh.

Although I should add I've hated every Pratchett adaptation asides from the games

Jaguars! posted:

Fair enough, and also Thief of Time which is still my first and favourite.

The_Doctor posted:

Detritus looks good.

Sloth Life posted:

I like Sheen but he's got this raging 'mental about to snap' to 'staggeringly fey' kind of energy. Would have made a good Coin from Sourcery, or Albert maybe.

Greg Davies (sodding big n broad, comic actor) would be my bet for the Archchancellor. Or Clive Mantle, also generously proportioned.

Patricia Routledge as Granny Weatherwax? Yay? Nay?

Pam St Clements as Nanny Ogg, basically EastEnders anyway.

Bruceski posted:

Alex Horne as the Bursar then.

Sarern posted:

I'm not disputing your description of events but I do not see those events the same way.

I do not see a lot of daylight between "cop getting pissy and withdrawing protection from a public figure whom criminals are actively trying to whack" and "setting a public figure up to be whacked". It reminds me too much of the bullshit cops get up to in real life. If you want to stick to fiction, it is similar to what Captain McCluskey does during Vito's hospitalization in the Godfather, except in Pratchett's case, without the conspiracy with a Sollozzo figure. Maybe the lack of that conspiracy means a lot to some readers, but I find it small comfort.

Yes, Vimes didn't hire the murderers, but he knew someone was out there, and said "gently caress it" anyway. There's some daylight between the two, sure, if that's the difference you want to split, but for me the two are close enough that I was never able to buy the pro-cop direction the watch stories seemed to go after that.

After all the watch novels I'm still unsure if Pratchett was ambivalent about the morality of his supercop and if so, to what extent. I'd love to hear other readers' readings of the arc of the Watch novels.

Xander77 posted:

I think we may be thinking about different writers?

I'm talking about Terry Pratchett, the author of the Discworld books. You may know him as the guy who stans for an enlightened dictatorship and whose only explicit mention of democracy in the modern timeline involves "and so they voted for bread and circuses, haha, stupid masses"? The guy for whom every single person pushing for civil rights is either a moron or a fraud (because that's politics, and what kind of decent person would go into that)? The guy who does "minority rights advocates are just elitist SJW's, real (model) minorities don't concern themselves with that nonsense" jokes straight out of Mallard Fillmore? The guy who wrote a book where a person sent to inspect the police force (for the first time ever, apparently, since Vimes is enough of a moral paragon that he can police himself) was an annoying interfering twerp who only came around (to be a real manly man who attacks protesters) once he realized that the police force are the thin blue line that separates society from chaos?

...

I'm not suggesting he's a Garrison level (as an aside, that's another person who takes issue with Jews "bad bankers", because literally every single stripe of political ideology has a problem with "bad bankers", they just don't agree that the term means) mega-chud - denigrating democracy and civilian control of police and military forces is such a long-standing tradition for "non-ideological" liberal writers that it's easier to note the exceptions.

He's just (to use the Disco-Elyisum term) a true-born, dyed in the wool moralist. Who absolutely does believe that "having nice people in the right positions would fix everything wrong" - and of course, nice people believe in common sense consensus-liberal politics, they just aren't... you know, political or loud about it.

Boxturret posted:

Start with whichever one has the most interesting cover then read the rest in a completely random order.

The_Doctor posted:

YggiDee posted:

I'd want either a movie of Lords and Ladies (b/c I love the witch books) Carpe Jugulum (I like it more but without the context of previous books it's harder to get across how unbalanced Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg are acting when Magrat destroys the status quo. On the other hand it's my absolute favourite showing of Agnes and Perdita)

The third option would be Thief of Time because I just think it would be completely apeshit. Ronnie Soak, the fifth horseman? Chocolate based combat in the middle of a time-frozen Ankh-Morpork? A legion of abstract spirits of bureaucracy shove one of their own into a meatsuit and she has an existential crisis so hard she becomes a person? Susan Sto Helit, the goth mirror self of Miss Frizzle? I wanna see the History Monks.

...Okay this might be kind of weird but I don't visualize stuff in my head very well, and one thing that's really stood out over to me everything else in the Discworld series is the giant hall in the temple of the History Monks, where the massive Procrastinators are rolling and unrolling time across the entire world, as monks scurry back and forth cooling the axles so they don't burst into flames from the friction alone, as the planks on the wall flip back and forth to show exactly how much time is winding and unwinding. The scene where Lobsang instinctually takes over and for a brief moment, balances all of time, across the Disc, everything, into a single perfect moment.

That's what I want to see. I want everyone else to see it as well as I can see it in my head.