Line #0 Fridge/MonstrousRegiment


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12	!!FridgeBrilliance
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14	* Wazzer is ''Discworld's version of Joan of Arc.''
15	* Looking at Brutha from the outside in ''Small Gods'' must have been a lot like observing Wazzer.
16	* Shufti's reunion with her fiance... Johnny, she hardly knew ye. To explain: "Johnny, I Hardly Knew Ye" is a classic folk song about a soldier, once a womanizer, who returns home unrecognizable because of his many horrible injuries. But here, Shufti never really knew him in the first place to begin with, and she refuses to recognize him because [[LovingAShadow she's moved on.]]
17	* The first time Polly lies to Maladict about herself, it's mentioned she feels her heart speeding up "as it always did when the lies came." In ''Literature/{{Thud}}'', we learn that vampires can hear hearts beating and use that to judge how people are feeling. No wonder Maladict was onto her right away.
18	* Blink and you'll miss it, but hallucinating Maladict was beaned in the head with Klatchian coffee, the best tool in Discworld if you want to sober somebody and have them see the world as it is. [[KlatchianCoffee We have a trope for that type of drink and it's even original trope namer!]].
19	* Jackrum:
20	** Jackrum's reason for getting stuck on recruiting party despite his in-universe MemeticBadass status: he got his leg sliced open, then ''bit'' the doctor who tried to treat him, and tended to the injury personally, allowing Froc to slap him with recruiting duty as a "reward" while he was laid up. While it's easy to pass off as a throwaway gag to enhance Jackrum's badass status, it becomes foreshadowing when you realize that to treat his leg, the (presumably male) doctor would have either had to take Jackrum's pants off, or at least get close enough to notice that there were one or two things either missing or sock-enhanced. No wonder Jackrum bit him and did the work himself!
21	** There's a throwaway reference to a soldier talking about the time his dad got in a bar fight with Jackrum, and Jackrum apparently shrugged off getting [[GroinAttack kicked in the nadgers]], which means he's either got BallsOfSteel, or as it turns out, Jackrum doesn't ''have'' that sort of equipment to kick.
22	*** And while getting kicked in that general area would still normally hurt a lot... the socks mean there's a fair bit of extra cushioning right where the kick would've landed.
23	** Why is Jackrum so big? Yeah, the whole 'jolly fat man' thing is handy for ObfuscatingStupidity, but it's also a convenient way to hide his chest. In fact, it's a pretty natural development that Jackrum got so fat: as he confesses to Polly, he was "never really a wall painting", showing her a portrait of himself and his beau before they went off to war. In fact, much like Lancre, Borogravia is ''just'' the sort of place to breed BrawnHilda types; in a tough, harsh climate dependent on farming, a [[StoutStrength big and beefy woman who can easily handle livestock]] is much more useful, and much like in Lancre, Borogravian men undoubtedly [[BigBeautifulWoman regard fat women as beautiful]], since they clearly must be very good at cooking.
24	* If belief can empower entities on the Disc, then why didn't the Duchess have more power? Well, the Borogravians don't believe that she can ''personally'' do things, they pray for her to ask ''Nuggan'' to do things, who actually has the divine power. No wonder she felt stuck.
25	* Lt. Blouse actually making the washerwoman disguise a success despite all the other women trying it and failing, counts considering the Disc runs on narrative causality. If you want to exploit a trope as a strategy on the Disc, you play it straight.
26	** Perception comes into it too: Blouse acts like what a man thinks a woman would act like, not what women actually are like, and the guards he's passing are men!
27	* NoPeriodsPeriod:
28	** Statistically, 1/4 of the cast should be on their period sometime during the course of the book, and it's a big female cast. At first it seems like this is a NoPeriodsPeriod, but then you realize that this is a second usage for the oft-mentioned ''socks''.
29	** Going further with the "1/4 of the cast should be on their period" entry, there's a much more serious justification for no periods. As Vimes points out, the country is on the verge of starvation. Months of malnutrition and starvation will cause menstruation -- and the whole menstrual cycle -- to '''stop'''. Polly even states that there's almost no young men left to recruit. Between famine and the constant warring, Borogravia is killing off its people, both born and unborn. With one small detail, Pratchett is showing us how desperate Borogravia's situation is and the ravages it's inflicting on its citizens.
30	** Aside from the above, the major events of the novel happen over the course of about a week's time. It's entirely possible that menstrual periods never become an issue for any of the squad, because any would-be SweetPollyOliver who ''was'' having hers that week simply postponed her enlistment for a few days, not realizing Jackrum's would be the ''last'' recruiting party.
31	** Trolls probably don't menstruate, vampires might not either, Igorina may have done something medical to suspend her own cycle, and Shufti is pregnant. So it's really only ''half'' the squad for whom it'd definitely be an issue, in the first place.
32	* Carborundum's introduction is extremely over-the-top, complete with knuckle dragging and holding a ''tree'' as a club, to the point that even Jackrum is intimidated. He looks like something out of a racist joke about trolls, not that anybody would tell one while he's within earshot. Since Carborundum is actually Jade, a girl troll, this entrance is clearly her way of acting as stereotypically masculine and tough as possible. It only works because she's using it to fool humans who aren't familiar with trolls in the first place.
33	** It also makes sense that her club is little more than a yanked-up tree with its branches snapped off, as one of the first manifestations of troll chauvinism which Jade complains about, during the mass GenderReveal, is that only ''males'' get to carry them: females are expected to make do with large rocks as weapons. So she had to improvise a club of her own.
34	* One of many, many reasons Borogravia is losing the war is because they have declared Igors Abomination unto Nuggan due to their own prejudices. Igors are best surgeons around, they are nearly religiously dedicated to saving lives and improving the quality of life. We see how valuable one can be because Igor saves multiple lives in one hour when the team meets wounded and dying retreating party. Army knows their value so they are tacitly ignoring that religious rule and are tolerating the presence of Igors (while secretly happy when they meet one). But there is a huge difference between tolerating someone and openly endorsing and employing them, like Zlobenia and Ankh-Morpork are doing. Of course, that makes Zlobenians look even more evil and depraved to Borogravians: they are evil empire, they employ Igors!
35	** Another and connected reason is they have banned images of any living being but the Dutchess. How do you expect your doctors and veterinarians to get trained properly if they can't see pictures in medical and veterinary books?!
36	* There's a reason that there is usually ten people in the background supporting every soldier on the front line. Anything else and the country doesn't produce enough food to feed both soldiers and the population, it doesn't produce enough clothes, weapons and items to equip them and so on. Borogravia has fallen to desperate measure of recruiting almost all of their male population that comes of age (leading, amongst other things, to almost third of their high command being women in disguise). Now, a similar thing happened during World War I, leading to women doing what were previously thought of as man's jobs. After the war ended, it lead to woman's suffrage, because having done the obligations of men, women had wanted equal rights like men had. Unfortunately, it can't happen in Borogravia. Nuggan had declared woman being able to write or woman doing man's work to be an Abomination. And then declared babies, cats and crop rotation also Abominations unto Nuggan. Its a recipe for mass starvation: not enough workforce to produce food, producing even less food because of lack of crop rotation and then even the food that is being produced is eaten by mice and rats because of lack of cats.
37	* Vimes gets the nickname "The Butcher" not because of any atrocity he has committed, but because he often asks for raw animal carcasses from local Zlobenian garrison and Borogravian spies have reported as much. There's a kosher but very secret reason why: he uses them to feed Buggy Swires's buzzard. To reveal that fact would be revealing that Vimes has spy in the sky.
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39	!!FridgeHorror
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41	* Nuggan was nothing more than a side joke in ''Literature/TheLastHero'', a god whose followers Offler pities because he banned '''both''' chocolate ''and'' garlic. (One or the other might be harsh but acceptable, but ''both''?) But in ''Literature/MonstrousRegiment'' we find out he is a dead god, and all the the things he "abominates" are nothing but the echoes of a dead god. It may be that the events of ''The Last Hero'' '''led''' to that state of affairs; Offler pitied his followers then, and it got ''even worse'' afterwards.
42	* Borogravia has been turned into closest thing to a hellhole in Discworld, thanks to Nuggan and there is no future for anyone in the country. Young men and boys can hope to go to army and either get killed or return too wounded to be useful (with exceptions of rare armorers and smiths, which is historically accurate). Old women act like spies for religious zealots and are in the first row to watch the whippings. Old men are usually too wounded to do much but are still in power and worried that old women will turn their inquisitorial eyes on them. But the worst lot get girls and young women. Girls are not allowed to even learn how to read and if they are considered too willful or naughty, they are sent to OrphanageOfFear where they are beaten, starved, worked to the bone and worse. Young women get married and widowed at young age. As widows, they are in double bind: do man's work (like tiling and harvesting a field) so you and your family don't starve and you'll get reported by old women and whipped and beaten. Or don't do man's work and starve to death, because women are not allowed to own property (except sewing kit and laundry and such things needed for "female work"). Polly's plot starts when she realizes that if her father dies and with her brother gone, she'll be kicked out of her inn and home and those given to the closest male relative.
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44	!!FridgeLogic

Context Fridge / MonstrousRegiment