#pterry

[glitter-bomb-disaster]

absolutely delighted by this photo of terry pratchett

[meggettes]

The introductory description of Lady Sybil changed my life. I cannot recall reading a description of a female character anywhere near this ballpark, which is a damn shame, but also doesn’t particularly surprise me. As a not-that-tall but broad-shouldered and barrel-chested woman* I feel deeply affirmed every time I revisit this passage.

Here it is to live on my blog and yours forever:

Even shorn of her layers of protective clothing, Lady Sybil Ramkin was still toweringly big. Vimes knew that the barbarian hublander folk had legends about great chain-mailed, armor-bra’d, carthorse-riding maidens who swooped down on battlefields and carried off dead warriors on their cropper to a glorious roistering afterlife, while singing in a pleasing mezzo-soprano. Lady Ramkin could have been one of them. She could have led them. She could have carried off a battalion. When she spoke, every word was like a hearty slap on the back and clanged with the aristocratic self-assurance of the totally well-bred. The vowel sounds alone would have cut teak.

Vimes’s ragged forebears were used to voices like that, usually from heavily-armored people on the back of a war charger, telling them why it would be a jolly good idea, don’tcherknow, to charge the enemy and hit them for six. His legs wanted to stand to attention.

Prehistoric men would have worshiped her, and in fact had amazingly managed to carve life like statues of her thousands of years ago.

—Guards! Guards! by Sir Terry Pratchett

[fiberartsam]

Every time I give in to despair I read a Pratchett book. Well, when one is available near me.

Because those books are full of anger at the world and the state it's in. Real, actual, barely-concealed beneath clever puns anger. It's a rage, not the pretty "i'm mad" calligraphied in the page in white ink. It's something like "I'm angry and you should be, too" scribbled in red ink over the pages.

But these books are so kind. So hopeful. And it's not mindless kindness, either. It's not "I'm kind until it's not easy or convenient to be anymore". It's actual kindness from people who are angry but turn that into fierce, deliberate, stubborn kindness. And of course you can despair but you can also turn it into anger and then the kind of fierce kindness that you can change the world with.

These books were so important for me growing up, still are. I literally wouldn't be the same person without them. And I reread Night Watch today, as one does, and the terrible fairness of Sam Vimes struck me. The world is a terrible, unfair place, he said, and I'm not participating in that. I'm not adding misery to it. I'm gonna be fair and I'm gonna be good if it kills me. (the same goes, of course, with Granny. It's about choosing to be good. It's about being good if it kills you. It's about desperately hoping and never letting go)

Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably-Priced Love and a Hard-Boiled Egg. And by gods if we aren't going to fight to get it.

[foxblues24]

Happy Birthday Sir Pterry!

You are greatly missed by all your readers and we would love to know what you would have had to say on today's world. GNU!

"No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away, until the clock wound up winds down, until the wine she made has finished its ferment, until the crop they planted is harvested. The span of someone’s life is only the core of their actual existence."

-Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

[timesaflatsrcle]

The Muppets in The Color of Magic

[arretoskore]

I'm rereading Night Watch and every time, every time the tragedy of being John Keel hits me like a ton of bricks. You are a seasoned policeman, coming to a new town in the middle of your career for a better pay. You get to Ankh-Morpork alone, no friends, no family, you have to start again. And the first thing that happens is that you get robbed and killed without no one ever knowing you, just your name. It gets remembered carried on through the decades only because in a different timeline you made such a strong impact on the life of (1) new recruit that years later he will be thrust in your place in a cruel twist of fate and decide to be you, because someone's got to be. And he will be the only one to grieve you, the actual John Keel. And when he is gone people will keep saying your name but not know it belonged to you. You were gone before the story even started.

[taxfrauddotcom]

I think about this every time I miss the charging port on my phone now

[kurkivaimo]

I don't use threads but isn't this more or less the plot of Soul Music