Walking the Disc

An outlet for my enthusiasm as I reread the Discworld series. Honestly mostly a place to store my favorite quotes. Update July 2020: I STILL ATEN'T DEAD

[donloco]

GNU Sir Terry. Thank you so much for sharing everything with us.

[reverse-mermaid]

“He never forgot. He just put the memories away, like old silverware that you didn’t want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart.” ― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

[reverse-mermaid]

“He never forgot. He just put the memories away, like old silverware that you didn’t want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart.” ― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

[ra-artblog]

Happy lilac day, guys.

I drew this lilac for a different reason, but for 25 of May it fits perfectly

All the little angels rise up high!

[jaearts]

Damn! Damn! Damn! Every year he forgot. Well, no. He never forgot. He just put the memories away, like old silverware that you didn’t want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart. And today, of all days…

happy 25th of may everyone

[pratchettquotes]

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. [...] The thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness.

Terry Pratchett, Men At Arms

[jonjos-library]

The UK based food poverty campaigner Jack Monroe recently tweeted a thread highlighting how official inflation figures didn’t account for the astronomical price rises in the cheapest products.

Off the back of that, they had the idea to do an index of their own based on their own experiences of the cheapest products that many people rely on having increases way above inflation or being removed altogether.

This isn’t just a feeling, Jack literally kept the receipts. They have over 10 years of shopping receipts kept for their food blog.

The twitter thread took off and has now had over 22 million views.

The idea of a separate UK index of everyday products people on lower incomes rley on, that reflects the actual affect of price changes on ordinary people’s finances, has completely taken off and is now being covered in all the major news outlets. It is also being supported by a whole range of organisations, camapaigners, retail industry professionals, data analysts and others.

Jack has put out a call for people in the UK to send their old shopping receipts to add to the exissting data for tracking historic price changes.

Today Jack tweeted that they had permission from the Pratchett estate for the use of the preferred name for the new project: 

It will be called the Vimes Boot Index.

[mischif]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/26/terry-pratchett-jack-monroe-vimes-boots-poverty-index

Terry Pratchett estate backs Jack Monroe’s idea for ‘Vimes Boots’ poverty index

Campaigner has used the idea drawn from Discworld novels to register the disproportionate effect price rises have on the lower paid

[everydaylouie]

NEW ALBUM - TALES FROM THE DISC

some discworld-inspired folk/fantasy synth : )

https://louiezong.bandcamp.com/album/tales-from-the-disc

[discworldtour]

just checking in to say Trans Rights

CW: transphobia

First of all obligatory I aten’t dead

Second! Terry Pratchett has been trending the past few days because, apparently, the Gender Critical movement has decided to posthumously “recruit” him by claiming that he would’ve supported their movement. If you’re unfamiliar, that movement is basically to remove social and legal protections for trans people.

This is gross, it’s cowardly, and it’s being thoroughly and viciously debunked by people who knew him personally, including his daughter.

(Rhianna Pratchett has probably been having a rough one the past few days, but her twitter has had a lot of people sharing affirming memories of her dad, which has been lovely to see).

Anyway. I’m not in the UK, and I’m not sure if this just a few people or an earnest effort from GCers to rebrand Sir Terry as Gender Critical and Discworld as some sort of terf zone, but I didn’t want to let this pass without a loud and belligerent TRANS RIGHTS from me. Trans Discworld fans, you are loved. I am but a humble quote poster (and, as the past two years have proved, very bad at it) but I and so, so many others support you, always.

(And if you happen to be here looking for quotes that support gender critical ideology then I wish you a very reading comprehension. scram.)

[thatsbelievable]

[phloxy-foxxy-deactivated2022062]

Impossible decision

[discworldtour]

#rincewind furiously mashing the potato button (x)

[randombrethren-deactivated20231]

Happy International Sir Terry Pratchett Day! Quote from (x) Art by Paul Kidby

[onepiecescience]

Okay so I’ve been doing some thinking and have come to the conclusion that sometimes the Oceans in One Piece kind of operate like the ocean in the Discworld series.

The basic gist of it (Since I can’t find the novel where Terry Pratchett explains it) is that because of the different densities of water, there’s different layers to the ocean. most ships will sail on the top, but if one sinks it’ll go down to a deeper part of the ocean and sail on a different current, buffeted around deep below the waves on a sea that is largely the same but also very different

and I guess since One Piece is One Piece we can apply that same logic to Sky Islands, since there’s essentially a sky ocean as well.

I guess what i’m saying is that sometimes things happen because narratively it fits or is cool and makes the worldbuilding stronger

[discworldtour]

… the theory is easy to understand. It runs: the sea is, after all, in many respects, only a wetter form of air. And it is known that air is heavier the lower you go and lighter the higher you fly. As a storm-tossed ship founders and sinks, therefore, it must reach a depth where the water below it is just viscous enough to stop its fall. In short, it stops sinking and ends up floating on an underwater surface, beyond the reach of the storms bu far above the ocean floor. 

– Terry Pratchett, Going Postal (full quote)

[mithrils-hanger]

in practise water does not compress the same way air does so you don’t normally get layers in the same way (and the thermal differences don’t make enough difference) but look up Brine Pools… underwaterpools, lakes. and rivers of hypersaline water that separates out from the surrounding liquid.

you also can get similar effects from dissolved minerals like hydrogen sulfide, like in this Cenote in Mexico:

[onepiecescience]

Realistically, water doesn’t work this way but thematically its great and oh these are gorgeous examples!

[discworldtour]

The Nine Thousand Year Prologue

The flotillas of the dead sailed around the world on underwater rivers. Very nearly nobody knew about them. But the theory is easy to understand. It runs: the sea is, after all, in many respects, only a wetter form of air. And it is known that air is heavier the lower you go and lighter the higher you fly. As a storm-tossed ship founders and sinks, therefore, it must reach a depth where the water below it is just viscous enough to stop its fall. In short, it stops sinking and ends up floating on an underwater surface, beyond the reach of the storms bu far above the ocean floor. It’s calm there. Dead calm. Some stricken ships have rigging; some even have sails. Many still have crew, tangled in the rigging or lashed to the wheel. But the voyages still continue, aimlessly, with no harbor in sight, because there are currents under the ocean, and so the dead ships with their skeleton crews sail on around the world, over sunken cities and between drowned mountains, until rot and shipworms eat them away and they disintegrate. Sometimes an anchor drops, all the way to the dark, cold calmness of the abyssal plain, and disturbs the stillness of centuries by throwing up a cloud of silt. One nearly hit Anghammarad, where he sat watching the ships drift by, far overhead. He remembered it, because it was the only really interesting thing to happen in the last nine thousand years.

– Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

[onepiecescience]

The full quote from the Discworld post from earlier

[discworldtour]

This seems like a good time to mention that if you are into fantastical worlds filled with outrageous characters and wild locations that host long-form mostly-independent but connected stories (often parodying well-known classic media properties and fantasy tropes) about a bunch of lovable misfits with a running theme of standing up to/ ultimately dismantling the corrupt power structures that serve oppressive regimes

you might enjoy One Piece

(and if you already enjoy One Piece you will enjoy @onepiecescience)

[onepiecescience]

Okay so I’ve been doing some thinking and have come to the conclusion that sometimes the Oceans in One Piece kind of operate like the ocean in the Discworld series.

The basic gist of it (Since I can’t find the novel where Terry Pratchett explains it) is that because of the different densities of water, there’s different layers to the ocean. most ships will sail on the top, but if one sinks it’ll go down to a deeper part of the ocean and sail on a different current, buffeted around deep below the waves on a sea that is largely the same but also very different

and I guess since One Piece is One Piece we can apply that same logic to Sky Islands, since there’s essentially a sky ocean as well.

I guess what i’m saying is that sometimes things happen because narratively it fits or is cool and makes the worldbuilding stronger

[discworldtour]

... the theory is easy to understand. It runs: the sea is, after all, in many respects, only a wetter form of air. And it is known that air is heavier the lower you go and lighter the higher you fly. As a storm-tossed ship founders and sinks, therefore, it must reach a depth where the water below it is just viscous enough to stop its fall. In short, it stops sinking and ends up floating on an underwater surface, beyond the reach of the storms bu far above the ocean floor. 

-- Terry Pratchett, Going Postal (full quote)

[discworldtour]

“You’d like Freedom, Truth and Justice, wouldn’t you, comrade sergeant?” said Reg encouragingly. “I’d like a hard-boiled egg,” said Vimes, shaking the match out. There was some nervous laughter, but Reg looked offended. “In the circumstances, sergeant, I think we should set our sights a little higher–” “Well, yes, we could,” said Vimes, coming down the steps. He glanced at the sheets of paper in front of Reg. The man cared. He really did. And he was serious. He really was. “But… well, Reg, tomorrow the sun will come up again, and I’m pretty sure that whatever happens we won’t have found Freedom, and there won’t be a whole lot of Justice, and I’m damn sure we won’t have found Truth. But it’s just possible that I might get a hard-boiled egg.”

– and a hard-boiled egg | Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

[discworldtour]

Night Watch, from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld Imaginarium

Happy Glorious 25th, everyone!

[discworldtour]

Exclusive Video: Good Omens Author Neil Gaiman on Honoring the Late Terry Pratchett

The quasi-religious series has attracted some silly controversy but Gaiman wouldn’t have it any other way.

My intention was to dump two books’ worth of quotes in here during/immediately after my vacation, once my schedule calmed down. Unfortunately, it was right before said vacation that I found out I’m getting kicked out of my house! Neato!!! (I’m safe and have at least a temporary place to go and it’s no one’s fault really but it’s been WILD around here) So with all that I haven’t gotten to read much, and it’s only very recently that I finally got to watch Good Omens. I really loved it and I encourage everyone who can get their hands on it to do so!

But for all that I enjoyed the show, I think that this five minute video is my favorite part of the whole thing.

Moving is time-consuming and (so, so depressingly) expensive, so I’m just gonna be on an official hiatus until I have a place to live again. But after all this coming back to Discworld is going to be heavenly (or something like it).

[discworldtour]

quick book rec

Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez is one of the most fun middle-grade books I’ve read in a long time. I can’t remember the last time I read a book with so many surprises and that had a character whose head I liked riding around in so very much. AND there are some Pratchett shout-outs! These characters are well read!

I’m refilling my queue in a little bit (and then I’m going on VACATION soon for the first time in FOREVER so I’ll be able to write down so many quotes at once you have no idea!) We’re coming up on Unseen Academicals and I’m so excited.

[discworldtour]

Moist had always been careful about disguises. A mustache that could come off at a tug had no place in his life. But since he had the world’s most forgettable face, a face that was still a face in the crowd even when it was by itself, it helped, sometimes, to give people something to tell the Watch about. Spectacles were an obvious choice, but Moist achieved very good results with his own design of nose and ear wigs. Show a man a pair of ears that small songbirds had apparently nested in, watch the polite horror in his eyes, and you could be certain that would be all he would remember.

-- on disguises | Terry Pratchett, Making Money