I’ve been on a Discworld re-read for about a year now, and it just struck me how Pterry gets progressively angrier and less subtle about it throughout the series.
Like, we start out nice and easy with Rincewind who’s on some wacky adventures and ha ha ha oh golly that Twoflower sure is silly and the Luggage is epic, where can I get one. Meanwhile Rincewind just wants to live out his boring days as a boring Librarian but is dragged along against his will by an annoying little tourist guy and honestly? Fuck this.
We get the first view of Sam Vimes, and he’s just a drunken beaten down sod who wants to spend his last days as a copper in some dive but oh fuck now he has to fight a dragon and honestly? Fuck this.
The first time we see Granny Weatherwax, she’s just a cranky old woman who has never set foot outside her village but oh fuck now she has to guide this weird girl who should be a witch but is apparently a wizard all the way down to Ankh Morpork and honestly? Fuck this.
Like, these books deal with grumpy, cranky people. But mostly, the early books are a lot of fun. Sure, they have messages about good and evil and the weirdness of the world, and they’re good messages too, but mostly they are just wacky romps through a world that’s just different enough that we can have a good laugh about it without taking things too much to heart.
But then you get to Small Gods, in which organized religion is eviscerated so thorouhgly that if it was human, even the Quisition would say it’s gone a bit too far while at the same time not condemning people having faith which is kind of an important distinction.
You get to Men at Arms and I encourage everybody with an opinion on the Second Amendment to read that one.
You get to Jingo, Monstrous Regiment, Going Postal (featuring an evil CEO who is squeezing his own company dry to get to every last penny, not caring one lick about his product or his workers or his customers or anything else and who, coincidentally, works out of Tump Tower. I’m not making this up).
And just when you think, whew, this is getting a bit much but hey, look, he wrote YA as well! And it’s about this cute little girl who wants to be a witch and has help from a lot of rowdy blue little men, this will be fun! A bit of a break from all the anger!
Wrong.
The Tiffany Aching books are the angriest of all. But you know what the great thing is?
The great thing is that Pterry’s anger is the kind of fury that makes you want to get up and do something about it. It upsets you, sure. But it also says It’s up to you to change all of this. And you can change all of this, and even if you can’t. Do it anyway. Because magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.
It’s the kind of anger that gives you purpose, and it gives you hope. And that concludes my essay about why the Discworld series is so gloriously cathartic to read when it seems like all the world is going to shit.
So go. Read them, get angry and then get up and fight. Fight for truth. Justice. Freedom. Reasonably priced love and, most importantly, a hard-boiled egg.
GNU Terry Pratchett.
Tag: gnu terry pratchett
Started from the bottom:
“Colon thought about it. ‘There’s always Lady Ramkin,’ he said. ‘Lives in Scoone Avenue. Breeds swamp dragons. You know, the little buggers people keep as pets?’
‘Oh, her,’ said Vimes gloomily. ‘I think I’ve seen her around. The one with the “Whinny If You Love Dragons” sticker on the back of her carriage?’
‘That’s her. She’s mental,’ said Sergeant Colon.“
(Guards! Guards! – Discworld #8)
Now we here:
”…he did this because Samuel Vimes, who had never gone into a place of worship with religious aforethought, worshipped Lady Sybill, and not a day went past without his being amazed that she seemed to do the same to him.“
(Snuff- Discworld #39)
I mean, it’s still the 25th of May somewhere.
Every time I recommend Discworld to someone, I get asked “where should I start?” There are several reading order guides floating around the internet, but they just give the order of each series, they don’t give you any information on which to base a choice of starter novel. For that, use this handy
(and very biased, okay, I admit it)flow chart!Ah yea ive seen this one too. It’s a wee bitty better visual wise for me.
Two years today since we lost the great Terry Pratchett, seems like a good time to share this lovely New Yorker-style cover by the brilliant Boulet
GNU Terry Prachett
GNU Terry Pratchett
GNU Terry Pratchett
GNU Terry Pratchett
GNU Terry Pratchett
GNU Terry Pratchett
GNU Terry Pratchett
If I could just get some context, that would be great
This link explains the concept of GNU. The idea was created Terry Pratchett, who died recently. This is our way of paying tribute.
GNU Terry Pratchett
GNU Terry Pratchett
GNU Terry Pratchett
Guy’s…. Is this going to destroy Tumblr?
If it does, a) it will have been worth it, b) it will be a fitting legacy for a man who hated shoddy workmanship. 😀
GNU Terry Pratchett
GNU Terry Pratchett
GNU Terry Pratchett
GNU Terry Pratchett
GNU Terry Pratchett
ultimately i think kindness is the most radical thing you can do with your pain and your anger. it’s like, you take everything awful that’s ever been done to you, and you throw it back in the world’s teeth, and you say no, fuck you, i’m not going to take this. you say this is unacceptable. you say that shit stops with me.
humans are fucking terrible and this awful world we live in will fucking kill you but if you are kind, if you are brave and clever and try really hard, you can defy it. you can impose on this bleak and monstrous structure something beautiful. even if it’s temporary. even if it doesn’t heal anything inside you that’s been hurt.
i’m gonna sleep and i’m gonna wake up and i swear by everything in this deadly horrible universe i’m gonna make someone happy.
i’ve seen a number of comments and tags where people feel that they must swallow or repress their anger in order to engage in kindness. that is not at all what i am recommending here. radical kindness is an expression of anger. it is not passive. it is not repressive. it does not require you, in any way, to forgive those that have fucked you up. it does not require you to be quiet.
it just requires that you be kind. viciously. vengefully. you fight back. you plant flowers. give to charity. play games. pet someone’s dog. scream into the dark. paint and write and dance, tell jokes, sing songs, bake cookies. you have been hurt and you don’t have to deny that hurt. you just have to recognize it in other people, and take their hand, and say: no more. enough. fuck this. no more.
have a cookie.
i will say this again: we are all going to die. the universe is enormous and almost entirely empty. to be kind to each other is the most incredible act of defiance against the dark that i can imagine.
I know I’m terrible for adding my two cents to posts like this, but I really do think it’s worth adding that one of the really important and cathartic ways in which you can combat pain and anger is being kind to yourself.
And kindness, like Roach says, doesn’t mean simple ‘niceness’. It’s kind to understand that when people are acting badly it’s from a place of their own hurt and fear. It doesn’t make it OK. It doesn’t mean you have to be nice to them because they have issues. It means you’re letting go of a view of the universe where everyone is acting to affect you personally and some people are just not good enough at processing their own shit to know you right now. You don’t owe them support but operating with generous understanding will help you feel much better than stewing.
(And I can’t stress enough, that applies to you too. Be kind to yourself. Forgive, understand, nurture).
Reacting with kindness to hurtful, cruel and disregarding behaviour doesn’t mean passive-aggressively contiuing to be nice and attentive etc to the person that hurt you. It’s refusing to meet bad behaviour with bad behaviour. It’s taking that energy of hurt and anger and rather than using it to devise suitable punishments or retorts, using it to make someone who DOES deserve it happy.
Look at Terry Pratchett. He turned anger into kindness: he worked his fury at an unjust world into works of fiction that is not only literature of the first order, but have comforted and inspired millions.
burn your anger in a bonfire that warms the cold
burn your hatred in a torch to light up the night
burn your pain in a fire that roars out defiance
burn the beacon of your hurts
and grit your teeth
and plant your feet
and hold out your hands
and say to the darkness
I am here, and you will not have me.
This post was originally a lot longer, but I decided to break it down because things got complicated and intensely personal in a way I’m not ready for.
There are four hard lessons to learn in life.
Some of them seem obvious. Some are not.
Sometimes, good things happen for good reasons.
Sometimes, good things happen for bad reasons.
Sometimes, bad things happen for bad reasons.
Sometimes, bad things happen for good reasons.
‘things just happen, what the hell’
-terry pratchett
That particular quote fits all four nicely. *g*
Illustrations for Terry Pratchett’s Carpe Jugulum, that i did in this semester.
What is this
it’s a comic based on a scene from a book called “the hogfather”
it is a novel by terry pratchet in the diskworld series
wherein santa (the hogfather) is being audited,
so to keep people believing in irrational but symbolic constructs
death takes over for him
and isn’t very good at it, but he does his best.@fialleril you’ve probably seen this before, but I can’t take the risk that you haven’t.
What is Hogfather?
The only holiday book that matters, tbh.
@the-last-hair-bender Vin’s kind of education, up to a point. Brian, of course, approves of his daughter’s method, given that it’s kind of his own too.
Steel Phoenix Studios 
