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The Vimes/Carrot dynamic is merely archetypal - raw, do gooder newbie comes to big city and is trained by a grumpy cynical older cop. They both change because of it. This is what Pratchett does, he takes the old stories and changes them.
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Sep 9, 2007 12:54
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LooseChanj posted:Oh, I know who Carrot is. I just didn't know he was the rightful heir to A-M's throne. And neither does anyone else.
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Jul 14, 2008 19:11
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Guards Guards is an excellent spoof of the whole "guards in fantasy" thing. Pick up a later one as they become more of a comedy detective novel.
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Mar 19, 2009 22:07
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precision posted:The only annoying thing I can think of about Terry right at the moment, and he does it a fair bit, is what I would refer to as "pointing out a joke too much". The best example is in The Truth where, fairly early, a character asks Mr. Pin "Why does your partner keep saying 'ing'?" It's like, dude, Terry, the joke was working, it was ---ing brilliant, we didn't need it spelled out for us. Think about a conversation where a person cut off parts of words. Wouldn't you wonder why?
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Aug 23, 2009 01:04
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precision posted:Sure, but real life =/= funny novels with wizards in. Doesn't mean that there can't be a realistic conversation. Otherwise you'd think that Terry was just censoring the naughty words and it wouldn't be so funny.
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Aug 23, 2009 22:40
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My lovely wife just bought me a collector's edition hardback of Unseen Academicals (number 319 of 3000) to go alongside the various signed copies. Definitely a return to form - the footnotes are in there, the wizards are as disorganised and cunning as ever and we also get to see the Archchancellor's thinking in more detail. Vetinari is just as he should be. And with all the big famous residents, we still get to see the story as told through the eyes of significant but less famous people. It was funny, touching and had several morals in there. This one will definitely bear rereading.
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Oct 4, 2009 18:19
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I had the whole fashion model bit down as a joke on the WAG phenomenon (if that's not a misuse of the word). Since there aren't any real models on the Discworld, first they had to be invented...
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Dec 14, 2009 20:34
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Moist von Lipwig posted:This too, but for one: that doesn't translate very well in North America, and two: there was way too much plot time devoted to it for it to be a one-trick joke like that. Is Pratchett that bothered about North Americans getting every joke? Surely any North American who reads Pratchett is both intelligent and a Britophile and therefore can look it up? j/k As with most things Pratchett, I think there are multiple layers to the joke, so we have a Cinderella/WAG/staers doing it for themselves sub-plot. And it wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that once upon a time all fashion models were required to be under 5 foot tall and then the first tall slender proto-supermodel emerged and it was a further gag on that.
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Dec 16, 2009 21:59
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Vetinari posted:As for MR, it does seem a little silly as well, but realistically, the entire book was about how women can do the same jobs as men, especially in times of war. Most of us probably weren't alive during WW2, but back then, there was a shortage of men so women stepped up to shore up the working men's frontlines across the world. Makes sense Pratchett's generation would still remember that era. That and the more obvious link, surely? There are a few histories of women living as men, getting married, having families and only being unmasked on their deathbeds. The final part of the book, and the whole backstory of the Sergeant, references this directly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Blast_of_the_Trumpet_Against_the_Monstrous_Regiment_of_Women - where the title comes from LSpace posted:And finally, 'Sweet Polly Oliver' tells the story of a woman who dresses as a male soldier in order to follow her true love into the army: http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/monstrous-regiment.html explains a lot of the jokes and references.
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Jan 26, 2010 21:50
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Entropic posted:Well next month is the time to do it! Remember the Glorious Revolution of the Twenty-Fifth of May!
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Apr 21, 2010 20:29
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Nilbop posted:It was definitely a big step up from Colour of Magic, particularly in the gorgeous set and prop department and strong casting. Nilbop posted:Richard Coyle played Moist as a bit more of a crazy bastard than I envisioned him and Poirot adored chewing the scenary as Reacher Gilt but they were both better than I excpected and oh my Claire Foy hit the nail on the head with Adora Belle. Charles Dance was typically excellent as Vetinari too. Random thoughts: Nilbop posted:Angua was fit as gently caress but we didn't get any Vimes. C'maaaaaaaaan! Nilbop posted:Terry also got a great line to finish the show on: "Well, that's an embuggerance." I liked that the first part pretty much stuck to the book. There were a few bits missing - Gilt's parrot, etc - but it was very faithful. Towards the end of the second one, I kept getting distracted by how different to the book it was and missed out on what they actually did. On the plus side, Going Postal is coming off my bookshelf and I'm going to try to reread it.
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May 31, 2010 21:27
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Entropic posted:They never seem to be able to get the wizards right. The popular conception of wizards is tall spindly wizened and ancient, and that seems to trump the books' description of them being bloody nearly spherical, and it's why we get Rincewind looking like he's 60. Entropic posted:I always pictured Angua with Farrah Hair for some reason.
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Jun 1, 2010 20:15
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DontMockMySmock posted:Nope! Same here!
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Jul 27, 2010 10:37
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