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I've been reading through this thread over the last few weeks after doing a cross-country drive mostly listening to a podcast about Discworld books. From pun chat a while back, I want to mention one of my absolute favorite self-contained puns, though I don't remember which book it's from in particular (probably Thud or Fifth Elephant?). "Dwarfs are famously argumentative, although many would disagree."
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May 7, 2023 23:42
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 14:10 |
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I don't think Dibbler would be the one running a Thaumcoin scam, but he would absolutely get hosed by one. His style is to overpromise and underdeliver, overcharge and cut corners wherever he can, but at the end of the day he's always selling some actual thing. It may be a band t-shirt that will dissolve in the next heavy rain, or a dragon-killing sword with a lifetime guarantee, or the hope that this time the sausage will taste as good as it smells, but outright theft isn't his deal. Now for some reason I could see Nobby getting into crypto and making a terrifying amount of money off it.
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May 8, 2023 21:38
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Dibbler would absolutely sell NFTs Yeah, NFTs would definitely be his thing. Actually, I'd love to see Dibbler discover the modern EULA and software licensing models. "So instead of owning the thing, it's more that you... don't own the thing. But you still give me money for it."
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May 9, 2023 13:29
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RE: guilds effectively policing their respective activities, do we ever really see that outside of the Thieves' Guild? Like, I don't recall ever seeing the Assassin's Guild prosecuting unlicensed murders, possibly because assassins don't murder people so they wouldn't consider it within their purview. A lot of other guilds like Musicians and Engravers crack down on things that aren't normally crimes, outside of the very technical definition of "doing X without a guild license is illegal because we say it is". Maybe the Fools' Guild maintains a roving street mime patrol to find people to throw in the scorpion pit.
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May 14, 2023 18:34
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anilEhilated posted:Under Vetinari? They'd end right in the scorpion pit next cell door. No, that's what I meant, the Fools' Guild provides the enforcement arm of that policy, patrolling for street mimes.
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May 14, 2023 19:03
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Fat Samurai posted:IIRC, the Musicians Guild threatens The Band With Rocks In because they aren’t in the Guild. Yeah, but that's just the guild enforcing their monopoly, I'm talking more about the idea that the Guilds cover a lot of the "law enforcement" aspects that the watch (at least early on) isn't able to. Like we don't see the Engravers' Guild enforcing copyright law, or a Merchants' Guild combating smuggling or counterfeit goods. It's always just the Thieves' Guild that gets brought up. Like, I could imagine the Seamstresses taking some rather direct action regarding sex offenders, but that feels more like it's implied rather then ever actually depicted.
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May 15, 2023 23:48
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Narsham posted:I am presently reading the sci-fi series Children of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and he's clearly deeply influenced by Pratchett. In addition to one or two pretty direct lifts, he's managed to somehow justify within a mostly hard sci-fi setting having a version of Hex. Oh wow, I got the first one free on Kindle and thought it was pretty neat, I didn't realize there were more books.
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May 24, 2023 19:22
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I just re-read Going Postal and was reminded of one of my all time favorite Ridcully quotes: quote:Oh yes, please sue the University. We've got ponds full of people who tried to sue the University! I'm pretty sure Going Postal was the second Discworld book I read, after Color of Magic, using the "whatever my library has on hand" reading order.
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May 27, 2023 18:17
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I have trouble imagining Granny ever signing something "all my love". She's very much of the "good, not nice" school of thought, even when it comes to kids. From Magrat to Agnes to Esk she seems to mainly motivate her mentees to improve via spite. I do think she would approve of Terry's paraphrasing of GK Chesterton, though: quote:“The objection to fairy stories is that they tell children there are dragons. But children have always known there are dragons. Fairy stories tell children that dragons can be killed.” That's a pretty strong theme that comes up with any kids in his books, and especially the Tiffany Aching series. It's no use telling kids that monsters don't exist; if you really love them, teach them to kill the monsters. Actually, now that I think about it, Susan is basically "Granny but better at dealing with kids", so you might think about using her, especially if you've already done Hogfather.
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Jun 9, 2023 22:06
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The Nobby thing didn't really land for me at first because I didn't know that "shoving" is an Actual Thing that will get you kicked out of a foot race.
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Jul 11, 2023 06:28
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If you don't enjoy the style of HHGTTG, Discworld is probably going to be a bit of a minefield because Pratchett has a lot of the same kind of humor and sensibilities. Watch and Death books are probably the farthest from that style, with Witches and Non-Rincewind Wizards being closer, and Rincewind books basically being Arthur Dent With A Pointy Hat.
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Aug 14, 2023 04:41
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Granny Weatherwax's summation of "evil is when you start thinking of people as things" is a pretty big component of my moral framework.
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Aug 15, 2023 22:31
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Just ordered Guards, Guards! for my (almost 12yo) nephew for Christmas, that seems like a pretty solid one to start off on. I was about to pile on a bunch more but I figured I'll see how he likes that one.
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Dec 19, 2023 03:38
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Also enables a great lore callback with Chapter 7 followed by Chapter 7a.
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Dec 22, 2023 03:49
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Alhazred posted:I honestly believe that Unseen Academicals is beyond salvation. There's nothing there that works. It's the one bad novel by Pratchett. You know the part in Making Money where the stamp forger has his negative emotions transferred to a Turnip by Igor? The drawing he makes is what Raising Steam feels like. It's almost worse than a purely bad novel, because you can see what the intention is, but he's just not able to execute it. I've never managed to get more than a third of the way through that book.
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Dec 23, 2023 14:09
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Beer_Suitcase posted:Verence's Private Notebooks are for official use only and cannot leave the castle. *double checks the small shard of castle brick in his pocket* All good there, no worries.
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Jan 12, 2024 00:19
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Skyl3lazer posted:I only really felt the quality dip in Raising Steam, right at the very end. Snuff was the first one where I really noticed it feeling different. What would have been a witty aside or a pithy back-and-forth in earlier books is now a page-long monologue. I don't know if "heavy handed" is exactly the right term, because it's not like earlier books were exactly subtle with a lot of the message, but it just feels a lot rougher and unrefined from Snuff onwards.
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Feb 8, 2024 05:32
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Monica Bellucci posted:I started on Guards! Guards! That was the one that I got my nephew for Christmas as an intro to the series. According to my brother he devoured it in a few days and then went off to find more, so I'd say mission accomplished. I think Vimes books are generally more straightforward adventure/whodunit plots so they're an easy way to draw people into the setting.
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Mar 26, 2024 03:31
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DontMockMySmock posted:I was looking for a quote that I swear I read from some interview where he says something like "the difference between my adult books and my young adult books is that the YA books are darker". Susan is used to express this sentiment pretty often. Something along the lines of, the difference between a shepherd and a teacher is that sheep will never be anything more than sheep, but children should grow up into adults.
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Mar 28, 2024 11:39
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| # ¿ May 6, 2024 14:10 |
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The Truth feels anti-Watch in the same way the Moist books are, because the Watch are pretty much antagonists in them. While it's not set in Ankh Morpork, I think Monstrous Regiment most strongly ends up being a Watch book, given how many of them show up in the end as Good Guys/secret saviors throughout the entire story.
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Apr 20, 2024 02:21
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