#diskworld

[princebuffovt]

[d2071art]

To whom it may concern ^____^

[onegaixumasso]

Some of my favorite drawings I made in 2025. I tend to rewatch my favorite stuff when I’m stressed so there’s some gossip girl s1 redrawing of my old art and pitch perfect fanart. Watched Wednesday s2 when I had just become unemployed so I had a bit more time for fanart 😅 and I listened to the “equal rites” book this summer so I sketched some of the witches.

I didn’t really draw a lot this year and most of it is OC stuff from this comic I’m doing, but fanart is my way of experimenting with different styles and blowing of some creative steam.

I’ve learned so much from drawing these and it’s always a rewarding experience even if I dislike a final drawing. Fanart is fun in a way that it removes me enough from my personal art that is usually work related so that I can feel inspired again to try something new, and it’s a fun way to connect with fandoms, so I hope I have more time to do this.

[love-ardour-anarchism]

Because I was looking for a specific quote and found too many good ones to not post them on here: a selection of quotes from Terry Pratchett's "Guards! Guards!" for the people with enough of a lack of reading comprehension to claim that Terry Pratchett wasn't a social progressive leftist.

“They avoided one another's faces, for fear of what they might see mirrored there. Each man thought: one of the others is bound to say something soon, some protest, and then I'll murmur agreement, not actually say anything, I'm not stupid as that, but definitely murmur very firmly, so that the others will be in no doubt that I thoroughly disapprove, because at a time like this it behooves all decent men to nearly stand up and be almost heard... No one said anything. The cowards, thought each man.” “Never trust any ruler who puts his faith in tunnels and bunkers and escape routes. The chances are that his heart isn’t in the job.” “Down there - he said - are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any inequity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathsomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don't say no.” “Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in yourself. The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that.” “But we were dragons. We were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But this much I can tell you, we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.” “You had to hand it to the Patrician, he admitted grudgingly. If you didn't, he sent men to come and take it away.” “And when the Patrician was unhappy, he became very democratic. He found intricate and painful ways of spreading that unhappiness as far as possible." - All of these are from "Guards! Guards"

[many-larp-characters-in-a-body]

Thinking about wizards in Discworld. In the series, everyone thinks they are important and powerful because they do magic. Often, fans seem to think they are unimportant because they don't get much done, practically. But I think wizards on the Disc, really, have 3 jobs, and do brilliantly at them.

Job one, as I see it, is the task of not letting anyone else do magic. Mainly, this means making a lot of points about regulation, lobbying a lot, and keeping hold of information. They do pretty well at this – witches do a bit, but not much, and the way their job works makes them very good at not breaking anything.

Their second job is to prevent magical accidents. Mostly, this means looking at things, arguing about it, Ponder pointing things out, and then telling people what happened and how not to let it. Occasionally, it means the Dungeon Dimensions just got in and they need to remind everyone not to cast any spells, because that makes everything worse, until a hero of some sort arrives. I wonder if the wizards know that the disk runs on stories, and a hero will always arrive, and that they need to let them before the Things, which are from outside the story, can get strong enough to break it. Probably not. Ponder might.

Finally, there's the job they've finished doing, which is to set up Unseen University, which was excellently done. The factions, and Dead Men's Pointy Shoes, means nobody can work together on any serious magic. Individually, they're often pretty competent, with some really impressive stuff in The Light Fantastic. But they get in each other's way, and so they can't pull any of it off properly, and they wouldn't be able to pull off any impressive magic that they didn't need to do.

I also think that they are often viewed as being worse at magic than witches, or less powerful. I, personally, disagree. They are worse at using magic, at finding the cracks to stick it in and lever open. They are, in general, pretty good at casting spells and enchantments. A fairly minor one opens a portal across both time and space, for personal relaxation. They can cast spells across the Disk, and fire arrows made of nothing. They just can't usually be bothered, and know the damage it can do. The witches can do some impressive stuff too, of course. 15-year time stops are no joke. But ultimately, what they are best at is using less magic to get the same effect. Wizards use a big ritual to summon death, because seeming impressive is at the heart of their role on the disk, and because the way they do it is overpowering him. Granny Weatherwax does it with a candle, because there are more efficient ways if you need it. My best guess is either because she could make a story with it, because Death is, in a sense, everywhere already, or that she used endings — melting wax, and a flame that will go out — as a link.

[fable-and-thread]

Hey discworld fandom! Please can someone help me find that thread where people wrote up a long list of single sentence descriptions of the discworld novels?

The ones that all sound batshit insane but are 100% what the novels about?

[gbaked]

Terry Pratchett - reaper man

[lunar-system]

Reading some older Pratchett books after a long while and I'm reminded how much these books straight up educated me as a kid. In a backwards way, yes, but still.

They are packed full with references to cultural touchstones familiar to any adult who knows anything about British culture and history. The list is endless, but let's say Shakespeare plays and history of English witch hunts, for example.

But when I first read them I was a pre-teen from Finland. I knew OF Shakespeare – I didn't know what his plays were about. I knew OF witch hunts – I didn't know women were accused of dancing naked in a Devil's Sabbath.

How do you read a parody if you don't know what it parodies? Sometimes I could tell there was a hole in the middle of the story, a common knowledge that was not said out loud but still relied on. Sometimes not. Sometimes I read it straight like this was all Terry's fabrication and not reference after reference after reference.

So what ended up happening was either:

1) reverse engineering the reference points. Assuming there must be a common myth of witches dancing naked because they keep mentioning it. Building my own understanding from Terry's reprerentations.

2) realising way later when encountering something of cultural importance that I'm already familiar with it because I had read Terry's version. Queen and King of Elves/Fairies do indeed visit a wedding in a Midsummer's dream. I know this! Terry wrote about it before Shakespeare!

No conclusion here, just looking forward to reading more and realising all the references I didn't get back when I first read the books.