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@the--night--watch
watch series be like
book 1
books 2-12
i am thinking about maurice and moist von lipwig running into each other
i canât decide if it would be better for them to have met before moist got hanged or after but imagine the chaos
The Glorious 25th May, how do they rise up?
I think itâs the 25th on most places now.Â
oh! Also I should take this opportunity to air my crack theory about Night Watch, to wit: Ned Coates is a time-traveling grown-up Young Sam.
My evidence:Â
Ned is the only other Watchman who is new to the squad, and new to Ankh-Morpork.
He is supposedly the only person who knew the real John Keel, but he never calls Sam out for it. If there ever was a real Ned Coates, and he really knew John Keel, we only have Nedâs word for it.
When he and Sam spar, he fights just as dirty as Sam does, and claims John Keel taught him the tricks Sam uses himself.Â
Heâs protective of Vimesy, moreso than other Watchmen though heâs known them all for the same length of time.
He is clearly up to SOMETHING; Sam thinks heâs one of the real revolutionaries plotting to overthrow Winder, but none of the other revolutionaries interact with him or seem to know him that I can recall.
When Sam admits heâs a time traveler, heâs unfazed; his question âFrom how far back?â would make perfect sense as âfrom how far back in my timeline, where you are my dad?â
He supposedly dies in the last fight, but Sam doesnât see it, and Sam supposedly died in that fight too.
Lu-Tze is 100% good enough to have two time-travelers operating at the same time without breaking the timeline; he does, however, worry about the unusual strain heâs creating.
So, letâs say an adult Young Sam has a time-travel accident. Possibly after some sort of major falling-out with his dad, one thatâs got him still pissed off at him. And now heâs stuck in a vastly more shitty version of the city he grew up in, and the versions of his dad he has met so far are a) a dumb kid and b) kind of a dick. He is not having a great time. He really, really wants to go home, but first he has a revolution to see through.
Viewed that way, Ned Coates makes a lot of sense.
Lord Vetinari is one of the many anonymous authors that make up the Timesâs advice column. He goes under the pseudonym Mrs. Venerable and he primarily writes as a hobby but likes the catharsis of being able to help the citizens of Ankh-Morpork with their smaller life problems. The people working for the paper have no idea who the true identity of Mrs. Venerable is. All they know is that in the early mornings, letters regarding questions asked by readers the day before are dropped off in a sealed envelope without name or address. Readers of the Times hold Mrs. Venerable in high regard because her answers are always tactful and even comedic in nature. Questions involving how to deal with a terrible spouse get responses from Mrs. Venerable that usually include the phrase, if you donât divorce them I will start the proceedings for you.Â
#vetinari opens up the paper and starts reading some of the questions that he could answer #the paper: i think i have a crush on an important public figure. how do i get over it? #vetinari: nope not touching that oneâŠ
@scent-ofbooks brought up a really good point in the tags that if someone suspected Vetinari no one would believe them which got me thinking. William de Worde was absolutely invested in finding out the identity of Mrs. Venerable and tried multiple times to track the mysterious delivery person who dropped off her letters. Sacharissa was dead set against the idea since she felt that William might scare her off from writing and they would lose the growing fanbase she brought in to the advice section of the newspaper. Despite her protests, he still tries his best to solve the mystery of who Mrs. Venerable really is.Â
Iâve also just got the image of Nobby and the gang coming up with questions for Mrs Venerable, and Vimes walks in on them one day and theyâre all huddled around the paper reading the response aloud in Pseudopolis Yard.
It starts out as a joke, but eventually it gets to the stage where Lord Havelock Vetinari, Provost of the Guild of Assassins and Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, is giving Nobby Nobbs anonymous advice on his love life.
They even tried to convince Angua to help them out at the beginning of their informal investigation. Nobby comes up to her during her break holding the envelope William gave to them as evidence in his grubby hands and asks if she could sniff this real quick. She stares down at the envelope for a couple seconds before retorting that sheâs not gonna fall for that trick again. Angua could easily figure out who the envelope might belong to but once you fall for Nobbyâs âhere smell this,â prank you donât fall for it again. So they were left to their own devices to figure out who in the world Mrs. Venerable could be.Â
Why does it sound so canonically???
@scent-ofbooks because itâs canonical in our heart.Â
Vimes had a hard time getting Nobby and the others to get back to work since they were all super invested in this case. He arrived at the patricianâs office more frustrated than usual which Vetinari picked up on immediately. Before he dismissed him, Vetinari asks the Commander what was on his mind and Vimes proceeds to tell him the whole business involving the ongoing investigator to discover the true identity of some Times writer. Vetinari had to sit there and try not to smile as he went on and on about how everyone was making a big deal over finding this âMrs. Venerable,â who clearly wasnât making it easy to be found.Â
Moist Von Lipwig has no idea who âMrs Venerableâ is but he likes her style, and entertains himself by pretending to be her when it suits him. Adora Belle has no interest in the newspaper advice column, which almost never contains technical specifications, but she enjoys Shenanigans and thus backs up Moistâs spurious claims.Â
Lady Sybil, whoâs known Vetinari for most of their lives, has a shrewd suspicion but never tries to confirm it. Dear Havelock deserves a nice hobby he can enjoy in private and she wouldnât want to spoil it. Now and then she writes in a question, say, about managing a husband who, while a wonderful man, can sometimes be a bit too involved in his work. Vetinari, who knows her handwriting, nearly laughed himself sick writing the response.
potentially controversial opinion incoming
sam vimesâs natural anti-drunkenness (being knurd) is described as seeing the world the way it actually is, without all the comforting illusions people have for themselves. having a witchâs First Sight means that âyou can see what really is there.â granny weatherwax says that evil starts with treating people as things, and, often but especially vividly in Feet of Clay, sam demonstrates repeatedly that he will not stand for the golems being treated as less than people, for the poor being treated as disposable by the rich and powerful, for anyone thinking that anyone else doesnât matter. the hiver gets inside tiffany aching and reveals the Chalk in her soul. the summoning dark gets inside sam vimes and finds a city in there. and sam vimes knows how to be selfish, to claim his city and his people as his, to protect them. witches watch over people who are frequently small-minded and ungrateful and stubborn and they do it anyway because itâs what you do, because it needs to be done; and sam vimes says pretty much the same thing every time he considers the people of ankh-morpork. and you can call him mister vimes, but only if youâve earned it.
doylist conclusion: terry pratchett knew what his taste in protagonists was
watsonian conclusion: vimes is an urban witch and ankh-morpork is his steading gods damn it
#also important to this theory is that vimes would absolutely fucking hate this
good tag op
was thinking about les mis/discworld crossovers and the potential to be gained from throwing les mis characters into ankh-morpork
mabeuf and carrot!!! mabeuf and carrot!!!!! carrot visits him at home twice a day on his way to and from work to make sure he has everything he needs!! carrot is genuinely fascinated by his collection of rare books and prints and suggests they be put on display in a museum to enrich the cultural knowledge of the city (and mabeuf well compensated for their value)
carrot also earnestly does his best to help and educate gavroche and the little thĂ©nardier boys and teach them cooperation, respect, reading and writing, and other Valuable Life Skills, and makes sure they get a square meal a day. the little ones love carrotâs kindness but he gets about as much respect from gavroche as can be expected
oh my god eponine becoming a clacksman and becoming one of the top engineers on the disc⊠she, azelma and princess working together in a clacks tower, the disc clear and open and beautiful all around them, the worries of the world far below, and all the information in the world flowing through their hands?? oh my god. oh my god. I need a moment
fantine working with lady sybil to care for sick dragons! fantine adores the dragons no matter how âuglyâ or badly behaved they are because theyâre all deserving of care and love
OR: fantine joining the golem trust because nobody cares for them but they clearly have souls just like anyone else and they work so hard with no rights! fantine and adora belle working together? the ultimate unstoppable dream team. tiny cosette growing up with golems as her best friends
jean prouvaire and reg shoe? best friends. idealistic dreamers. two peas in a pod
even the patron minette are unprepared for the lawlessness of the shades but quickly settle in, establishing their place at the top of the criminal ecosystem. they donât join the thievesâ guild but even the guild know better than to try anything
(claquesous is irritated that a certain blonde-haired woman of the watch always instantly knows who he is no matter how good his disguise is)
vetinari recognises montparnasse as a somewhat twisted but equally talented, goth and stabby version of his younger self; once montparnasseâs luck runs out (as predicted by valjean) and it seems all hope is lost, an angel appearsâŠ
thénardier and CMOT dibbler team up to create inedible foods of dubious origins at a scale previously thought impossible
I canât explain my logic here aside from gut feeling but marius successfully becomes one of the ankh-morpork timesâ most successful and irritating journalists with his earnest pursuit of the truth
Happy 25th of May everyoneÂ
From last year~
Reacher Gilt WILL pay!
âi know. heâs vorbis. and iâm me.â
ââbut hereââ brutha gritted his teeth as he staggered under the weight. âand nowââ he threw the bowl. it landed against the altar. fragments of ancient pottery fountained up, and clattered down again. the echoes boomed around the temple. ââwe are alive!â he picked up om, who had withdrawn completely into his shell. âand weâll make it home. all of us,â he said. âi know it.â âitâs written, is it?â said om, his voice muffled. âit is said.ââ
vetinari: this is my awful son and if i donât let him take over another major branch of government every year to keep him busy heâs going to start doing crimes again
vimes, exasperated: couldnât you just give him a fucking rubix cube
ok so, moist is my favorite discworld character. i love the guy, heâs just swell.
thing is, iâm not a native english speaker. even though i know and understand that âmoist von lipwigâ is probably the weirdest name ever conceived, i just donât fully get the full effect.
but today i checked to see what heâs called in the spanish version, and lemme tell you, seeing âhĂșmedo von mustachenâ has taken like 15 years of my life and now i want to die.
hĂșmedo von mustachen
What bugs me about BBC American changing the genders of several Discworld characters for the Watch series is kind of hard to explain, but Iâll try. I promise, itâs NOT a matter of me being âa puristâ about an adaptation, or being âclosed-mindedâ or âa misogynist.â This isnât a case of me being a douche moaning because âa woman canât be in charge of a cityâ or âthis is just SJW bullshitâ or whatever. This isnât the same as neckbeards being pissed when Thor is a lady.
The thing is, one of the integral Things about Discworld is that Terry Pratchett took established tropes and messed with them. He took tropes from fiction and lampshaded and subverted them. And he also created characters that reflect real-life âtropesâ and used his stories to poke fun at, and poke holes in, social norms, traditions, stereotypes, and such.
For example: Lord Havelock Vetinari is presented as a trope character. Heâs a tall, thin, aquiline man with arched, quirking eyebrows who says things like âcommenceâ and âdo not let me detain you.â Part of the point of Vetinari is that he appears to be the quintessential Evil Machiavellian Tyrant. And the rest of the point of him is that heâs not just that, and doesnât conform wholly to the traits the casual reader/viewer will immediately ascribe to him based on those superficial similarities to the trope. Part of the trope is that Vetinari is an aristocratic man. A woman Vetinari simply does not fit even those superficial trope characteristics. And therefore a woman Vetinari cannot subvert OR lampshade the trope. And therefore a woman Vetinari is not Pratchettâs Vetinari.
For example: Dr Cruces, along with many, many others among Pratchettâs Ankh-Morpork-dwelling characters, is the embodiment of the Rich White Man, both in fiction and in real life. Pratchettâs white aristocratic male characters tend to fit a certain mold, and they certainly arenât portrayed kindly. Instead, Pratchett tended to punch upward at that type of character, and therefore that type of real person, by emphasizing their flaws like racism, general closed-mindedness, sexism, classism, etcetera. Part of the trope is, actually, the maleness of it. Thatâs not to say that rich white women canât be awful too, but Pratchett specifically chose to criticize men of that âtype,â when he created certain characters. Having a woman be Dr Cruces, or filling more of the aristocratic Ankh-Morpork roles with women, dilutes that criticism.
For example: Vetinari and Cruces are both Assassins (though only the latter is active presently), and in describing the Assassinsâ Guild Pratchett was pretty clearly at least in part sending up British boarding schools and Old Boysâ Clubs of all kinds. Canonically, the Guild hasnât until more recently admitted women at allâand Pratchett meant it to be that way, not because he as the author was being sexist, but because part of that particular trope and that particular real-life type of organization is No Girls Allowed and he wanted to critique that and make it seem laughable. Having a woman be Cruces, the head of the Guild, and having a woman be Vetinari, a well-known and prominent graduate of the Guild School, makes the Guild look much more progressive than it was intended to be. And thus, it makes the overarching storyline of Ankh-Morpork gradually becoming more progressive and inclusive over time seem more unnecessary. Â
Anyway, in sum, a lot of the point of the Discworld books was that Pratchett was messing with tropes. Some of those tropes include the genders of characters. So, while normally Iâd be like âYes! Yay more women! This is great!â about adaptions of other media, I just donât think this particular case makes a lot of sense, and that in some instances it actually detracts from what Pratchett was trying to say. IDK if it makes sense or if Iâm saying what I am feeling in a coherent way, but anyway thatâs what I think, more or less.
Excellent points, you pinned down what Iâve been struggling to express all day.
And, I would like to point out, that a lot of the empowerment element of Pratchettâs existing female characters was often in how they railed against such stodgy old institutionalized sexism. If this is a world without sexism, then youâre diluting the strength of the likes of Sybil and Angua because they didnât have the same hurtles to overcome.
RIGHT. EXACTLY. Meanwhile so far from what Iâve seen theyâre dumbing Sybil and Angua down into Strong Female Characters Grrl Power Yeah Sexism is Over! instead of staying true to a) Sybilâs brusque but kind, loud but gentle, nuanced brand of Behind Every Great Man is a Greater Woman femininity, or b) Anguaâs struggles as the only woman (later one of a few women) in a male-dominated profession. Sybil especially is a force to be reckoned with in the books, but she isnât a traditionally sexy, sassy, physical fighter type who goes out and does vigilante justice (instead, she does incredibly effective letter-writing campaigns on perfumed stationery and donates entire buildings to the public good, utilizing her privilege, wealth and influence against the forces of racism and poverty), so sheâs just boring I guess. And Iâm worried theyâre going to do that thing to Angua where sheâs strong and capable and put in charge of training the rookie recruit Carrot who will suddenly surpass her and become the hero while she scoffs with ineffectual catty sarcasm and then eventually falls in love with him.
Also they took Cheery, a binary trans woman, and made her non-binary. Like you already have this working narrative right there! Wonse is another character that only really works as a white man, and not just that, the BBCâs Wonse a wizard! While witches stuff isnât relevant to the watch series, having a female wizard who didnât fight tooth and nail to be there feels like a slap in the face to such a big part of the series. And while Carcer isnât genderbent, heâs not white. And thatâs justâŠyikes. They also still cast Vimes as a white man, but cast a poc for a character who is supposed to look exactly like him (Keel).Â
I was already annoyed at the change to Cheery, because while I am very yay about nonbinary representation, I donât feel like it should come at the expense of trans woman representation. I can see what theyâre trying to do there, and I do think thatâs a story that needs to be told, but likeâŠmake a new character then? Let Cheery Littlebottom be a woman and then make a new character who could perhaps befriend her, and they can talk about gender stuff and help each other? That would be fun.
And for Carcer, the same thing applies for race as I talked about as to gender in my OPâCarcer is the trope of the dangerous entitled white boy serial killer. His character is very, very tied to that image, of the white man who sees everyone else as things that donât matter and who can be played with and killed without conscience or consequence. Thatâs not a trope you want to place on a black manâs shoulders, mostly for the âyikesâ loaded racist reasons, but also for the reason that it just doesnât FIT. But then, it seems like they are changing Carcerâs actual character and personality to make him some kind of wounded, wronged victim seeking justice (presumably in wrong, violent ways, but still). If thatâs the character, itâs not actually Carcer, so I guess this âCarcerâ can be black because itâs a somewhat less blatantly offensive role to stick a black actor in (described that way he sounds kind of like Killmonger in Black Panther? although pitting him against heroic white man Vimes is still kindaâŠyeahhh thatâs gonna need to be treated pretty carefully). ButâŠon the other hand why change the character so much, when Entitled White Man Terrorist Kills a Lot of People is fuckingâŠrelevant as hell as an antagonist these days?Â
Casting a black man as Keel while Vimes is a white dude is so amazingly nonsensical that I have nothing else to say about it, except that it raises so many more questions about how the booksâ stories, particularly Night Watch, are even being slapped together for this series.
Meanwhile oh my god I did not read carefully enough to know their Wonse is a female wizard. Save me lord, no one involved in this production has ever read a Discworld book in a way where they truly understood it, did they. Or did they, and theyâve all just consciously decided to throw it all out because lol they can tell better versions of these stories with better versions of these characters than Sir Terry Fucking Pratchett. Iâm. Okay I gotta stop talking and thinking about this for today because every new thing I hear about it makes my jaw drop further and Iâm afraid it might fall off.
Carcer isnât just entitled terrorist white man, part of his point in Night watch is that he shows dictatorial government will always favor peoples like him in their police force because they will not hesitate to kill if told to. Add to that that he is dismissed as a âpoor, innocent child with a bad and unfortunate upbringingâ by Phrenology (A very real pseudoscience that was used as an excuse for Racism and classism), and what you got is a character about how Racism, classism, and totalitarian government will benefit the most sadistic, cruel and evil peoples.
And if they removed this theme to replace it with âoppressed peoples exist, but they shouldnât use violent means or oppose the status quo, because that makes them bad!â (Which, since Carcer is a villain, is likely to happen, unless they really change the plot completly), then that suck.Â
Like, if theyâd really wanted to be brave about it and really *actually* add more diversity, casting Vimes with an actor of color could have been really cool. And itâd play nicely into the whole âdid not come from privilege and WOW are all the rich assholes pissed that he gets promoted and pissed off when Vimes doesnât let them ignore the lawâ thing
I believe the word weâre all looking for here is âhaphazardâ. All of the changes theyâre making arenât done with care, or foresight, or regard for optics. For a counterexample, may I present Exhibit A:
This is Joan Watson, played by Lucy Liu. She is an Asian woman portraying a character traditionally portrayed by a white male actor (John Watson of the Sherlock Holmes franchise). The reason why this works is because a) there is nothing in the original John Watson character that requires him to be a white man and b) there is nothing in the original John Watson character that makes it uncomfortable or incongruous for him to be portrayed by an Asian woman.
The Watch producers are completely forgetting that second point.
Like, technically, thereâs nothing that says a woman canât play Vetinari. Blind casting, best person for the role; thatâs all great. But thereâs extenuating factors that play into that choice that make it unusual at best and wrongheaded at worst.
Itâs been brought up before - Carcer Dun being portrayed by a black man isnât a great look. Being a black man myself, having a psychotic killer be changed into someone that looks like me doesnât make me feel good. It makes me feel like the producers think psychotic killers should look like me. Now, I know intellectually thatâs probably not what theyâre going for, but feeling that way is a completely different thing, especially given how people who look like me have been portrayed in the past. Even if weâre dealing with Discworld characters, thereâs still Roundworld baggage that we have to deal with.
@jabberwockypieâ âs comment about how casting a man of color as Vimes would have been braver and would have actually resulted in some actual diversity kind of sum up the problems.Â
The fact is that they choose to cast the main character of this show as a white man and added unnecessary and nonsensical âdiversityâ to what feels like every other secondary characters, when simply casting an actor of color as Vimes (/Keel, and another for young Vimes too) would have been enough. Adding to that a trans woman to play Cheery and a fat, tall and strong woman to play Sybil - which isnât added diversity so much as what is already in the book - and it would have exceeded expectation and been near perfect (they could have gone farther and cast a woc there for one of the 3 women too).Â
Instead we got this thoughtless mess of a casting and honestly it is reminding me of people who like to comment on a recipe that it was perfect but that they changed like Ÿ of the ingredients and steps. Like ⊠thatâs just creating a completely different recipe/story. And one that I sincerely doubt will hold up to the original.
I agree with all of this!Â
Especially the fact that the characters who could be racebent without dramatically changing the subtext â indeed, in some ways making it more interesting and subversive â are still white dudes: Vimes and Carrot. And, oh look, theyâre the heroes.Â
Iâve been going back and forth re: Sybil â I hate that sheâs yong and thin and a VIGILANTE, but Iâm not sure that casting an older, fatter WoC would necessarily work either.Â
Like, Pratchettâs Sybil has her origins in satirical stereotypes of the upper classes. I think that if you kept everything else the same but cast a woman of colour, youâd be bumping up against racist stereotypes instead â the mammy, or the overbearing older South Asian or Asian woman. It would depend on the writing, but Iâd be wary.
Iâm generally not a purist about changes in adaptations, especially changes that result in more women and people of colour and other genders. I like to take a universe and give it a little twist! But this all feels very ⊠@m-in-a-moonrock hit the nail on the head: itâs thoughtless.Â
Any thoughts on Discworld daemons, if you don't mind me asking?
Vimes has a mutt.
Thereâs really not a nicer way to describe her, a bow-legged cross between a terrier and a feral sewer rat, mostly the color of dishwater. And she doesnât really clean upâit becomes more embarrassing after heâs married Sybil, whose pygmy hippo daemon can go from placid river god to defensive bellowing ferocity in seconds flat, and might as well have stepped from the Morpork coat of arms. But even freshly cleaned and trussed in a gold ducal collar, his daemon looks like it was dragged backwards through a nasty bit of the Ankh.
sheâs a patient tracker, though, and a rat-worrier and a sheep-herder and a snarling, protective beastâthere must be some wolf in that mongrel of yours, Wolfgang tells him on that snowy plain, and Vimes figures itâs pretty likely, heâs got a wolf in him too.
Vetinari has a golden orb-weaver, who only occasional deigns to make an appearanceâusually resting on the back of Vetinariâs hand, as if to make a point. (There are heads of guilds with enormous bull daemons who shiver in fear of that little spider, on that pale hand.)
Carrot has a frankly impressive lioness, whose presence made the whole watch-house fall silent the first time Carrot walked in. Vimes had been a little taken aback at the sight of her, gold and somehow not of their world, standing in their grubby and undistinguished midst.
(No one has ever asked Carrot about her, not even Angua, who has her own lovely wolfdog daemon.)
Moist has a mockingbird who perches on his shoulder, the same color as dust and utterly forgettable. (In his old glory days, he would sometimes bring a turtle or mouse with him, hiding her under his hatâsorry, wrong daemon is not an ironclad alibi, but itâs enough of a distraction to run away.) She gets along well with Spikeâs terrifying peregrine, though sheâs a little too excited by the feeling of being snatched out of the air in Moistâs opinion.
William de Worde has a hedgehog, who immediately curled up in a ball when faced with Sacharissa Cripslockâs ermine. (It took a while to get him to relax.)
Witches tend toward catsâor women with cat daemons turn out to be witches, they never quite decided that one. Granny Weatherwax has pure grey cat, utterly unremarkable in every way but that. (She has always been privately disappointed in him, for it. She would have preferred something a little more imposing, more obviously witchyâwhich, of course, is ridiculous, it is choosing that makes a witch, not her nature. But still.)
Nanny has a fat piebald cat whose amorous adventures with other daemons rival Greeboâsâheâs been known to slip off for days, only returning when Nanny is called out. Magrat has a cream shorthair who looks very handsome beside Verenceâsâslightly excitable, a little gracelessâhare. Even Susan, though technically not a witch, has a cat daemon, a sleek black thing that likes to play with the Death of Rats when heâs bored.
Tiffany is among the few witches who doesnât have a cat daemonâhers doesnât settle until she faces the hiver, until she ushers it through the black door to its death. Afterwards, Tiffany Aching knows herself to be a witch, and walks the downs with her sheepdog daemon at her side, her hat full of sky.
Sgt Colin has a mild, pleasant brown toad, a sit-and-see kind of predator. Something with the patience to outlast storms, and droughts, and long frosts. Something with a set territory and a bottomless stomach, something that can launch itself sudden, startling blur to become the last thing the unwary insect ever sees.Â
Nobby Nobbs, wellâ no one actually knows what his daemon is. Sheâs as matted and filthy and scrofulous as the rest of him, a dark, oil-iridescent clot of furâ or are those bristles? or matted feathers?â nestled in between the collar of his breastplate and the dirt-stiff rim of his shirt. Rat? Pigeon? Spider? No one wants to ask. No one wants an answer. Sometimes she will extend one scaly, brittle claw out into the open air, and he will deposit into it a sugar cube, or a coin, or a bright little shard of glass, and sheâ whatever she is whatever sheâs namedâ will retreat into the comfortable hollow of his armor, purring and pleased.Â
She can scream like hell though, and frequently will.Â
Dorfl, of course, has a phoenixâ when he opened his mouth to speak his first word, there she was, a scrap of flame, on his tongue.Â
I love roachpatrolâs thoughts. The image of Dorflâs daemon being born is beautiful.
I think witches would have birds, like in HDM. I see Granny with a goose; Nanny with a robin-red-breast and Magrat with a corn crake. Agnes has a nightingale and Tiffany a curlew.
Through the piping lines of the Unseen University, there are bees.
No one knows where they come from. No one knows what they eat or where they keep their hive; they buzz softly but in a way that it sounds like many mechanical things clicking together, and when they rise all at once, it sounds like the beginning of a voice.
And always, they cluster near the parts of Hex; the tubing that runs through the University like a hermit crab in a shell just right for it, and a careful eye notes that their buzzing matches perfectly to Hexâs eternal noise; the clicking of the clockwork, the tapping of the keys, the steps of the ants.
The students swear they have never seen the bees more than a short distance away from Hex, and always around the senior wizards or the High Energy facility, and they move around Ponder Stibbons like a particularly noisy halo so he looks like an apiary angel.
Mr Stibbons tells the truth when he says there were never any bees until they turned on Hex. And one day, in the moving of the machinery, there arose but just one single perfect bee.
No one knows when the swarm came. Just like no one knows when Hex became something more than the sum of parts.
But when the bees fly and Hex is working, buzz and machinery a duet, it sounds like the voice of a soul.
The undead still have souls, which is why theyâre allowed in the Watch, and by extension integrated into human-dominated society. Reg Shoeâs parrot is a transparent, repetitive thing with a small tinny voice, like the echo of a kitten at the bottom of a tin bath. But thatâs just Reg Shoe.
Of course dwarves have souls; strange ones, but theologically undeniable. There have always been mutters that dwarves steal the souls, or that the strangely-silent animals are actually trained pets; but they do seem satisfyingly dwarvish, the sombre badgers and mole rats and burrowing owls, and they generally donât cause trouble, and one must trade after all.
But Cheeryâs pink fairy armadillo is instantly recognizable as a daemon, and a nicely dwarvish one to human sensibilities, a very small burrowing animal. Though to the dwarves, the fussy little thing with its delicate pink armor and pristine white fur is a slightly embarrassing thing to have on public display. Not only that, but the daemon speaks in public - allowing his high, breathy, querulous voice to be commonly read as male, implying that Cheery is by extension female.
At her interview for the position at the Watch, she gathers her courage in both hands and introduces the daemon to Vimes as
Rozâquerkluftertz
, her heart hammering at the wrongness and intimacy of it. (Vimes helpfully points out the location of the spittoon) and she says âNo, itâs, er, a kind of pink, er, rock,â and Vimesâs face goes all hollow and he sort of stares off into the distance, and she can practically hear the rusty machinery of his brain trying to process this new information on How Not To Be A Racist Prick To The New Diversity Hire into something he can make sense of.
âIs it,â Vimes says finally, the last mental gear clunking into place, where it appears to stick.
âItâs a very pretty sort of rock,â Cheery says humbly, trying to help. âBut quite rare and Iâm sure it hasnât come up in conversation before.â
âNot like gold,â Vimes says sourly.
âProbably not,â Cheery says carefully, trying to avoid the pitfall trap that is talking about gold among dwarves.
Her daemon himself pipes up suddenly in his high, scholarly little voice, and Vimes looks at him in surprise: âRozâquerkluftertz is not considered valuable to dwarves at all, in the sense that gold is inherently valuable; it is,â - and here Rozâquerkluftertz gives his fussy little academic cough, âconsidered hrâazdkha, which is to say, valuable because of its work or properties; namely, in the case of this mineral, being useful to alchemical research, as well as being beautiful, in the homely comfortable sort of way that is rarely reflected in songs. And, of course, pink.â
âNever heard a dwarfâs daemon talk before,â Vimesâs terrier says. Her voice is beautiful, deep and hoarse and husky, like a smoke-broken bar singer.
âWeâre a bit odd,â Cheery says.
âYouâll do,â the terrier says.
âIâve always liked, er, pink,â says Vimes, pitching himself courageously along the conversation, and Cheeryâs heart sort of goes out to him a bit, because you can see that somewhere behind that casually hurtful sneer, in that dark and ill-kempt machine of his brain, the man is trying to be Good with a capital G, and most people donât care that much.
âMe too,â she says, her hand curling around the little tube of Violently Pink Like The Blood Of Thine Enemies lipstick sheâd bought in the market that morning. âIâve always liked pink.â
Someone just liked this post from a million years ago and it reminded me that âRozâquerkluftertzâ was actually some kind of Pune, or Play On Words, and I FORGOT WHAT IT WAS, so I had to back-google it,
and itâs a mashup of the German word Rosenquarz (rose quartz) and the Saxon term âquerkluftertzâ (cross-vein-ore).
THATâS NOT EVEN FUNNY ELODIE WHY DO YOU MAKE SO MUCH WORK FOR YOURSELF???
It IS funny, and witty, and clever. If the peculiar titles and quotations of Mr Nuttâs Ăberwaldean philosophy texts (in âUnseen Academicalsâ) are anything to go by, that sort of mashup would have been right up Terryâs street (RĂŒhrwörtergasse 7a).
This whole sequence is pleasing in many different ways.
If I may:
Trolls, it is commonly believed, donât have daemons. Itâs one of the salient points in the ongoing dwarves vs. dwarves debate, not to mention one of the reasons why humans generally find trolls to be rather unsettling.
Among the trolls, however, it is well known that your soul is something you make, or something given to you, or something you keep on you. It might be your grandfatherâs club or a favorite boulder but itâs something thatâs intrinsically yours.
Detritusâ soul is a special helmet which cools his brain down so that he can think more quickly in the Ankh-Morpork heat. It was made for him by a dwarf, which many trolls feel isnât really *proper* for a trollâs soul, but no one is going to fight him on it. Cuddyâs daemon had put extra special care into helping creating it before they vanished into a cloud of golden Dust.
Rincewindâs daemon is an opossum - a strange little creature that doesnât mesh well with the rest of the world, and would rather run or play dead than fight, but is mean as hell when backed into a corner.
Archancellor Ridcullyâs daemon is a bull moose. Wizards are the sort of fellows who tend to have same-gender daemons as often as they have different-gender daemons. (Because women and wizard magic just donât naturally mix, of course.) The moose is huge, gets in the way pretty much constantly, and really canât be brought down by anything short of the world ending.
Ponder Stibbons has a crow, one of those dangerously intelligent corvids that know how to use tools and can count. She has a sharp wit and often says what Ponder is thinking but would never actually say aloud. Itâs a rather annoying habit, as far as Ponder is concerned.
No one knows what the Librarianâs daemon was before he became ape-shaped, or if she changed at all between then and now. She is, of course, a female orangutan who only says âOok!â and becomes just as angry as the Librarian when someone uses the m-word.
Young Samâs daemon has a habit of mimicking his fatherâs daemon, except quite less scruffy. Sybil has sometimes walked into the nursery and caught all four of them sound asleep, Young Sam on Vimesâs chest and a big-pawed, fluffy golden retriever puppy curled up with the mud-colored mutt.
Discworld stickers
âSometimes, perhaps, you had to stand and fight, if only because there was nowhere left to run.â
â Terry Pratchett, Interesting Times