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1New entries on the bottom.
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3[[foldercontrol]]
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5[[folder:Eskarina]]
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7* Whatever happened to Eskarina?
8** Rumour has it she's coming back in the next Tiffany book.
9** That'll give a good sense of the series time frame :)
10** Contributing to the avoidance of Esk's situation might have been because it's clearly one of the 'early books' where the universe is being pinned down properly but still contains a lot of 'relevant' characters we see later. There's a lot of stuff we see there that either doesn't seem to appply to later books or seems to conflict with their mood, but the major worry was people assuming she isn't mentioned later because she and some others wizards were killed in ''Sourcery''.
11** Also please note that the UU's staff is so large and bloated that in Last Continent, several years after he arrives, there are professors who have never even seen Ridcully.
12** Are you kidding? UU's staff is so large and bloated that there are professors who haven't seen their feet in decades.
13** Zing!
14** UU's staff is so large and bloated you can hardly make out the knob on the end.
15** That would be [[{{Jerkass}} the ex-Dean]], then.
16** I understand that the wizard books focus mostly on the main staff with the students being background noise. You can't expect Terry to just throw in a random cameo just for the sake of having Esk in a book.
17** There is a sort of continuity mention in ''Literature/UnseenAcademicals'', when Ponder refers to certain staff being allowed to wear garters...
18** Well, she's now officially around in ''I Shall Wear Midnight''. Her mysterious absence from the stories is lampshaded, but not exactly explained, and her status is a bit odd. She apparently can do both wizard and witch magic, and a fair bit more, but doesn't identify herself at least as a wizard. And for some reason she spends most of her time hiding - from what, it's never explained - or time-travelling.
19** It should be noted that the type of magic practiced by Ponder Stibbons (Hex, splitting the thaum, etc) is very reminiscent of the sort of magic Simon was describing in ''Equal Rites'' which raises the speculation that somewhere down the line Ponder Stibbons may have been taught by Simon, or Esk, or both.
20** Given the age gap between Stibbons and the rest of the faculty (not to mention the later sort-of-retcon that makes Ridcully and Granny Weatherwax roughly the same age), it's far more likely that he and Simon were peers. The epilogue to ''Literature/EqualRites'' says that Simon became a master and teacher of these new magical theories, but it doesn't specify ''when''. He could be out in the field perfecting a different approach to Stibbons' right now.
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22[[/folder]]
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24[[folder:Carrot's beard]]
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26* Why doesn't Carrot - who was found by Dwarfs, raised by Dwarfs and has a huge speech in ''The Fifth Elephant'' about how he has all these Dwarfen cultural things - not have a giant, shaggy, bright red, never-shaved-a-day-in-his-life beard, when it's made clear that even the ''female'' Dwarfs have beards!
27** He's still rather young when he goes to Ankh-Morpork - some people made an official timeline for Discworld; I forgot the details and am too lazy to search, but when he makes his first appearance, he's just 15 or 16 years old. Too young for a beard.
28** Does it ever actually say that carrot ''doesn't'' have a beard?
29** I believe he's described as shaving at points. Every official ''picture'', however, has him clean shaven.
30** Yes, according to the timeline, he was 16. But it's been like five years since then.
31** Not need to refer to a fanmade Timeline, just open the novel ''Literature/GuardsGuards'', it mentions Carrot is 16 when he arrives in Ankh-Morpork. In fact, on page 26 of the Paperback edition, in the scene when Carrot's adoptive father is sending him away, it says, ''"It's a terrible thing to be nearly sixteen and the wrong species."''
32** Maybe he can't grow one. Some men just don't grow facial hair.
33** Maybe he did try once, and the result was pretty darn sad. Not everyone can manage a proper dwarven beard after all, and a scraggy little one would just be embarrassing.
34** That's true, but it's a cultural thing. For a Dwarf, shaving your beard means that you're no longer a Dwarf. It'd be like being excommunicated.
35** This one's pretty easy. He's a watchman first, a dwarf second. (Now, anyway). And I bet in that big old Rules and Regulations of Ankh-Morpork there's something about shaving. Not that anybody pays attention to that anymore. But Carrot does...
36** Not necessarily - Carrot is a Dwarf, by his own explanation and by acceptance of other Dwarfs, and observes all Dwarfen traditions. Why he does not grow a beard when Dwarves are obviously exempt from such a ruling (as all Dwarves in the Watch are portrayed as beard wearing) has not been explained to account for this. Neither, for that matter, has it been explained why he doesn't have his own axe which is also a cultural requirement whether he also has a sword or not.
37** All the Dwarves in the watch have beards? Even Constable Cheery? Admittedly, there's precious little Kidby work of her that I've seen...
38** Yes. All dwarves wear beards, male and female. Even the ''baby'' dwarves have beards. That's part of the reason ''why'' nobody can tell the males from the females, including other dwarves.
39** Assuming there is a Hygiene rule, who says Dwarves are excempt? They probably just ignore/don't know about it. Since Carrot has what is probably the ONLY copy of the Rules and Regulations left, I'm voting for don't know. And to head off the question as to why Carrot wouldn't tell them--he's still a Dwarf, even if he is a Copper.
40** Dwarfs hit puberty at about 50. Letting your child grow a beard before then could be regarded as indecent, like sexualising a child. Not that dwarfs have sexuality as such...
41** That's as good an explanation as any. And while Carrot is ''culturally'' a dwarf, the dwarves (and Carrot himself) also acknowledge that he is a human, and have no problem with him being both. Notice that the dwarves never demand that Carrot marry a dwarf, they're perfectly fine with him being with Angua. His step-father in fact ''insisted'' that Carrot go to the city and meet some human girls, because in his eyes teenage-Carrot's interest in Minty Rocksmacker was considered inappropriate due to the age difference.
42** Carrot is a dwarf where it counts. And as we've seen, not all dwarfs think exactly the same.
43** For the record, even ''baby dwarfs'' have beards though, according to an illustration in Nanny Ogg's Cookbook. The (also bearded) child dwarf had chainmail mittens too. It was very cute.
44** And we trust Nanny Ogg to not have tilted the truth a little bit? If not a whole hell of a lot?
45** Nanny ''wrote'' the cookbook. She didn't ''illustrate'' it.
46** Thank the Gods for that
47** On the brighter side, even though he is not living among dwarves, he can take comfort in the fact that his romantic interest still grows more facial hair than he does.
48** Maybe Angua asked him not to grow one. She wouldn't want to be reminded of her wolf ex-boyfriend, Gavin, when she's kissing Carrot, would she?
49** Are you sure he doesn't? I don't recall any references to his clean-shaven face...
50** Every single Official Illustration shows him cleanshaven.
51** Carrot is the sort of heroically innocent person who should be clean-shaven. His chin probably knows this.
52** Best explanation ''ever''.
53** Hey, the Discworld explicitly follows the Main/TheoryOfNarrativeCausality ...
54** The official Illustrations may not be the best guide. In Josh Kirby's cover art, Rincewind is always old and Twoflower was depicted with four literal eyes rather than glasses.
55** My only visual experience with the books is ''The Last Hero'', and I can vouch that Carrot was the only person on that vessel ''without'' a beard. (Assuming orangutans...)
56** Rincewind ''is'' old. Well, old-ish. Pratchett says he's supposed to be about 40, which is how old he looks in Kirby's paintings.
57** No, Josh Kirby always drew Rincewind as at least 60 with a long white beard. Paul Kidby draws Rincewind as about 40.
58** And in any case, I've never thought him to look old so much as really, really run-down and ragged.
59** Newer cover art, made by Paul Kidby, is the "official" looks, so his pictures of Carrot (and everyone else) are canon.
60** Casanunda famously doesn't have a beard. But then, he doesn't behave very dwarfishly.
61** The Kidby stuff is more accurate than the old covers by far, but not perfect as to how Pratchett imagine the characters. For example, in the ''Art of Discworld'' Rincewind is almost dead on according to Pratchett, but mentions Kidby and himself have differing opinions on Vimes. Though this editor throws his hat in with the Narrative thing. No "prince", even hidden unless a hermit, has facial hair. Facial hair is for kings. Carrot hasn't been crowned yet.
62** Guys, it's ''Kidby'', ''Paul Kidby''. Jack ''Kirby'' illustrated all the ''old'' Discworld cover, and Paul ''Kidby'' replaced him as the official artist after his death.
63** You mean ''Josh'' Kirby. ''Jack'' Kirby is the guy who drew Darkseid et al.
64** Although "Jack Kirby's Art of Discworld" would be [[CrackPairing something to see...]]
65** Pratchett himself mentions in ''The Art of Discworld'' and ''The Pratchett Portfolio'' how spot-on he thinks Kidby captures the characters. Not to mention that the official ''[[TabletopGame/DiscworldRolePlayingGame GURPS Discworld]]'' roleplaying game, which was co-authored by Pratchett, uses the Kidby drawings.
66** His initial description that his hair was clipped short for reasons of Hygiene. Perhaps he was encouraged not to grow a beard for the same reason? Maybe dwarves' beards are naturally clean or they view beards on other species as unhygenic, I dunno.
67** I assumed that his father thought his hair was a hygeine issue because dwarves do not grow hair on the top of their head, whereas Carrot obviously does.
68** Dwarfs ''do'' grow hair on their scalp. Cpl. Littlebottom is quite definitely shown with a full head of hair in the official art, and Hwel the playwright makes reference to his hair. The former or the latter could be taken as a wig or a metaphor, but both together seem a bit of a coincidence.
69** His dwarven name means 'head-banger' and they lived underground, it's easier to clean dirt out of short hair especially if it goes curly when it's long like a lot of redheads.
70** For the record: Josh Kirby: Artist of old, colourful covers, drew the characters nothing like they were described in the books; Paul Kidby: Artist of newer, more realistic covers and other artwork, draws characters the way they're described. And I'm sure I remember something about Carrot shaving, but it's been a while since I read the books so I'm not certain.
71** It's simple. He makes a point of being clean-shaven because Vimes, his superior officer, makes a point of being clean-shaven.
72** This is the most likely reason, since I believe I remember reading somewhere that he used the reflective surface of his breastplate to shave. Plus, in Fifth Elephant, Prachett specifically states that he grew stubble.
73** Vimes... makes a point of being clean-shaven?
74** Hmm, sober!Vimes at least makes a point of shaving, although I forget whether he is clean shaven - hell, his particular brand of shaving/anti-assassination mirror has been described at least a couple of times, as well as his refusal to allow his butler to shave him, as he believed it split the world into those who shave and those who are shaved...
75** Also, even though it's [[BattleButler Wilikins]], Mister Vimes STILL can't trust another man holding a razor to his throat; old habits die hard.
76** His entire personality and appearance models him after the archetypical fantasy hero- being clean shaven is a part of that, whether he likes it or not.
77** His beard is in Chuck Norris's face.
78** There is most likely some old Watch regulation that requires all men to shave. Ignored in these days of a multi-ethnic Watch, and indeed ignored in the days Carrot first arrives, but you ''know'' Carrot would follow it anyway.
79** Carrot's beard is there the same way Tiffany Aching's hat is there. Carrot is a dwarf, ergo he has a beard. The fact that you can't see, touch, or feel his beard is completely irrelevant.
80** Going through the explanations it appears that there is a lot of well-reasoned ... [[DepartmentofRedundancyDepartment reasoning]]. However, this one is best. And should ''definitely'' be canon.
81** It's like having an axe... without the axe
82** Not sure if this proves anything but when he returns from Uberwald in The Fith Elephant Carrot pulls up Colon for being unshaven saying "Am I 'urtin you? I ought to be, I'm standin' on your beard!" More generally if Carrot did grow a beard it still wouldn't be a Dwarfish beard as he is genetically human.
83** Yep. TheoryOfNarrativeCausality is one thing and genetics another, and if Carrot just don't grow facial hair well, a dwarf with scruffy beard would not look well. After all Carrot is dwarf ''and'' six foot six tall. Not to mention that he's also a spit-clean [[TheIdealist idealist]] [[RightfulKingReturns rightful heir to the throne]], so in his case there are several tropes in play simultaneously, not all of which go well with a bearded face.
84
85[[/folder]]
86
87[[folder:Seasons]]
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89* On a more general note, why does the Discworld have seasons at all? It's a flat plane with a small orbiting sunlet so there's nothing to actually cause seasonal change.
90** An early footnote in ''The Colour of Magic'' explains how the seasons work. It's pretty long, probably the longest one in the series. "The shape and cosmology of the Disc system are perhaps worthy of note at this point. There are, of course, two major directions on the Disc: Hubward and Rimward. But since the Disc itself revolves at the ratio of once every hundred days (in order to distribute its weight fairly upon its supportive pachyderms, according to Reforgule of Krull) there are also two lesser directions, Turnwise and Widdershin. Since the Disc's tiny orbiting sunlet maintains a fixed orbit while the majestic Disc turns slowly beneath it, it will be readily deduced that the Disc year consists of not four but eight seasons. The summers are those times when the sun rises or sets at the nearest point on the rim, the winters are those occasions when it rises or sets at a point around ninety degrees along the circumference." It goes on for a while like this. The man sure loves his words.
91** "It's probably the only place in the Multiverse where every once in awhile an elephant has to cock its leg to let the sun go by."
92** Which doesn't explain why, in ''Hogfather'', Ponder reminds Ridcully that Hogswatch (midwinter) is the shortest night of the year. On a flat world, all days should be the same length, regardless of season or what route the sun travels across the sky.
93** Same way the seas stay at the same level even though they're constantly flowing over the edge: "[[Main/MST3KMantra arrangements are made]]."
94** [[FridgeBrilliance The Turtle is much, much more massive than anything on the Disc and the center of gravity is therefore within Great A'Tuin. The water falls off the Disc and becomes part of the atmosphere. Eventually, air currents will circulate it back above the Disc where it will fall as rain.]]
95** Perhaps the sun speeds up at that season for whatever reason?
96** We know the speed of light is slowed down by the Disc's magical field. Perhaps the path by which the sun's light falls on a region in winter vs in summer has a refractive effect, prolonging the period of illumination when the sun passes directly overhead but truncating it when it's crossing the sky at a 90-degree angle?
97** If a year on the Discworld is 400 days (800 days for every rotation, four seasons for every half-rotation, and most inhabitants go by the 400-day agricultural calendar), how does that affect characters' ages relative to our own? The days have been shown as 24 hours long. If each Discworld hour is slightly shorter than an Earth hour (at a ratio of roughly 0.913125 to 1), it might make sense. There was something not quite right with that... LetMeCheckMyNotes... Can't recall it. Anyway, if a Discworld hour is sixty Earth minutes worth of heartbeats (the Monks of Time have it easy!), that means a year for them would be just over 13 months of our time. Which makes it even more of an achievement for the 130(Discworld)year-old Windle Poons, and Vimes getting more... Vimes, even past sixty Earth years (Tiffany Aching's adventures get a slightly less impressive, though not by much, when you remember that she's 1/13 older than the numbers say). That is all assuming the second theory is correct. If the first is correct, then all that need be accounted for is the day being less than 22 Earth hours long. What bugs me is less the discrepancy in the 400-day agricultural year, but rather that Terry Pratchett has not found reason to explain this particular aspect of the Discworld's calendar.
98** So? Their humans probably age slower than our humans. It's an alternate universe, the physiology doesn't have to be exactly the same.
99** In one book, can't recall which, maybe the Guide, Pratchett states that most people think of a year as about half the real year, because that's the year that affects most people.
100** Yep, it's the"agricultural year" that nearly everyone counts off years by. Only astrologers and pedantic show-offs give a damn whether the sun rises from Hubwards or Rimwards.
101** I go with the idea mentioned above that Discworld humans age slower - a Discworld person who has lived for 10 Discworld agricultural years is at the same stage of development as an Earth person who has lived for 10 Earth years. This ties in with the idea that the Discworld runs on narrativium - someone who is 10 years old is still a child, because everyone ''knows'' that's what 10-year-olds are like.
102** Or maybe the History Monk whose pulse they based their timing on was a little bit excited/stressed by the crisis, so his heart rate was slightly faster than expected. Shorter seconds add up to shorter days, meaning 400 days on Discworld could (and probably would, given narrative causality) precisely equal 365 Roundworld days.
103
104[[/folder]]
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106[[folder:Soul Music ret-goned]]
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108* At the end of "Soul Music", Death effectively reversed time so that Imp never went to Ankh-Morpork, and thus never started the whole business that had preceded in that novel. It's quite odd, then, that Lord Vetinari would question William de Worde in ''The Truth'' about 'that music with rocks in business a few years ago', let alone that everyone seemed to understand what he was talking about....
109** Having said that, Terry Pratchett has himself stated that "There are no continuity errors on Discworld. Theres just alternate pasts", and Havelock would be far from the only person to have remembered a past that 'didn't happen'...
110** In actuality, Death did not change the past, history merely reasserted itself, just like it tried to in Mort. Both realities happened. Ankh-Morpork is in a naturally magical field, and so not ALL memory of the event would be expunged. It would also be just like Vetinari, and of course his secretary, to keep track of those types of things.
111** Vetinari isn't the only one who still knows about Music With Rocks In; Otto Chriek referred to it in ''The Truth'', too. Possibly Death didn't entirely erase the events in the novel, he just adjusted things so Imp wasn't involved. He did say that people would remember there'd been some sort of concert in the park.
112** Given that the plot threads for Mr. Clete and Noddy's band both wrap up ''after'' Death snaps his fingers and revises history, it would seem to be canon that he didn't erase ''everything'', just the minimum necessary for Imp to survive.
113** Moreover, the Dean's "Born to Rune" coat was mentioned in the in-character (and canon) portion of the third ''Science of Discworld''. And when Ridcully met Susan again in ''Hogfather'', he recognized her. This strongly suggests that events unfolded pretty much as per ''Soul Music'' in spite of the {{Retcon}}, and Death's intervention altered history only enough to spare Imp's life. It's similar to how, in ''Mort'', he'd reorganized things so that Keli no longer had to be dead, provided Mort carried out the tasks the original Duke of Sto Helit would have.
114** Gentlemen, Ladies, if this is something that ''Vetinari himself'' couldn't quite make sense of, I find it hard to believe we're gonna get it here.
115** Seconded and carried.
116** Before he takes Susan back to school, Death specifically tells her that people ''will'' remember the events of the book, sort of (note that this also seems to foreshadow ''Thief of Time'', meaning we can go to that all-purpose excuse "blame the History Monks"):
117--->'''Death''': HISTORY TENDS TO SWING BACK INTO LINE. THEY ARE ALWAYS PATCHING IT UP. THERE ARE ALWAYS SOME MINOR LOOSE ENDS ... I DARESAY SOME PEOPLE WILL HAVE SOME CONFUSED MEMORIES ABOUT A CONCERT OF SOME SORT IN THE PARK. BUT WHAT OF IT? THEY WILL REMEMBER THINGS THAT DID NOT HAPPEN.\
118'''Susan''': But they ''did'' happen.\
119'''Death''': AS WELL.
120[[/folder]]
121
122[[folder:Gravity]]
123
124* GRAVITY. Seriously. How. The HELL. Is there gravity?
125** '''Magic.'''
126** No, quantum.
127** It's a planet-sized disk on top of a larger-than-planet-sized Turtle (not to mention the elephants). Why wouldn't there be gravity?
128** Because in order to create gravity, an object needs to spin, and spin very fast. That's why the Earth, moon, Sun, everything--in our solar system bound by physics and such anyway--has gravity. (And yes, the Sun rotates on an axis just like everything else.) That's even how Earth's keeping its atmosphere. However, Discworld's not spinning on anything. It's basically a plate. Usually Pratchett pays attention to little details like this. Why does Discworld have gravity?! For that matter, how does its atmosphere stay put?
129** All you need to have gravity is mass. Though to have enough gravity to be noticeable you need a hell of a lot of mass. Pretty sure a 10,000 mile across disc made of rock would suffice.
130** This is just plain untrue by all knowledge of real-world physics.
131** Yeah, seriously...that's not even remotely close to the truth. You must have really failed physics.
132** Also, spinning doesn't suck things ''in'', it flings them ''out''... think about holding a weight on a string, and spinning it around your head. The faster you spin it, the harder it pulls away from your hand. This is because it's trying to continue in the same direction it was going (the direction it is always trying to go is perpendicular to the string... try letting go of it and pay attention to the direction it goes), but the string pulls it back towards your hand. That's how the centrifugal thing works. It has nothing to do with gravity... but you could use it to create the ''illusion'' of gravity by spinning a cylinder very fast. Stuff would be pulled towards the outside of the cylinder, and to people walking along the inside of the cylinder it would presumably feel like gravity, since all it is is forces anyway.
133** Note that gravity does not work like ours anyway. In ''Colour of Magic'', Tethis, Twoflower and Rincewing have all fallen off the world. Presumably Gravity just goes "down", and Great A'Tuin is supported somehow. Presumably [[AWizardDidIt a god did it]].
134** Why the hell are you complaining about this anyway? Next you're going to complain about the giant turtle with the four elephants on its back.
135** What was the title of this category again? Oh, wait.
136** Gravity is caused by mass. Everything has gravity, things with more mass have ''more'' gravity. I don't know why you are talking about spinning... Isn't there a science fiction thing where things in space spin to create artificial gravity...? I don't know if that would actually work. As for Discgravity perhaps A'Tuin weighs more than the Disk so things that fall of it fall onto her... or him.
137** It does indeed work, via centrifugal force (yes this is the actual correct term although both centrifugal and centripetal forces are semi-fictitious...trust me, you didn't want to get my physics teacher started). Plus, not only is the great A'Tuin absolutely huge and capable of creating her own gravity, but the entire disc is MAGIC!!! I mean, why argue about how gravity can exist when the speed of light can sometimes be outpaced by sound?
138*** The speed of light, as in "how fast light actually travels through this material" does not have to be the universal speed limit. The universal speed limit is "how fast light travels ''in a vacuum.''" Fast-moving subatomic particles passing through glass can move faster than light itself travels ''in the glass'' very easily, though when that happens, they emit Cherenkov radiation and lose energy, which acts as a form of drag and slows them down. The effect of Discworld magic on the local speed of actual rays of light doesn't make it impossible for sound to travel faster than light, though you might see some weird interactions involving the sound itself ''creating'' light.
139** The rotating thing works via centripetal... something something force. Essentially, it's like running on a barrel. Well, it's not, but it's [[LiesToChildren a nice lie]].
140** More specifically, the "artificial gravity" idea is that by spinning a large object, things ''inside'' the object end up plastered to its surface... an effect you can easily see exploited in many amusement parks. The idea isn't to create gravity, it's to create an effect which allows people to behave as if there was gravity (what gravity the object is actually producing is mostly working ''against'' this effect). When this idea comes up, it tends to get confused with gravity, leading to people thinking there's a connection between spinning and gravity generation. And yes, centripetal rather than centrifugal force is involved, simply because centrifugal force is only a delusion. In the space station example above, there's no force pushing you against the hull - your inertia is trying to send you through the hull in the direction you were travelling, and the hull is exerting a centripetal force ''keeping you in''. (Of course, from a sufficiently "hard" perspective ''gravitational'' forces are also just delusions caused by our extremely warped perception of spacetime, but that one's taking us well outside the original question, so...)
141** Centrifugal force is not [[http://xkcd.com/123/ just a delusion]].
142** A basic tenet of relativity is that ''all'' forms of acceleration are indistinguishable from each other within its own frame of reference. Whether it is gravitational, centrifugal/centripetal, or just plain from force applied by an engine in one direction, it all feels and acts exactly the same. When fighter pilots talk about G-forces it is because their aircraft are accelerating, not because they are suddenly generating additional gravity. Artificial gravity from spinning a spaceship works because within the reference frame of the interior of the ship, you can't tell the difference between centripetal and gravitational force. But spinning isn't the only way to generate artifical gravity, simply accelerating your spaceship continuously in one direction will also do the same thing.
143** However, the ''strength'' of gravity depends on how far away you are from the massive objects center of mass. For a spherical world all points on the surface are more or less the same distance from center of mass, within generally insignificant variances. But on discworld, the different points along the surface of the disc would be at different distances from the center of mass (presumably somewhere on the top of the turtles shell. . . .) and so should experience different amounts of gravity. This does not appear to actually be the case, but that's what the magic is for.
144** Oh and as for what A'Tuin is standing on. Don't you know it's turtles all the way down?
145** A'Tuin doesn't stand on anything. It swims through space. The magic part is that swimming is impossible in vacuum since there is no medium to push against.
146** To paraphrase Om in ''Small Gods,'' "What do you mean, what's it stand on? It's a ''turtle,'' it ''swims,'' that's ''what turtles are for''!"
147** In ''Pyramids'' Pratchett identifies Great A'Tuin as the only turtle ever to feature on the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram, so it must have the mass of a small star at least. Gravity shouldn't be a huge issue here.
148** The Hertzsprung Russel Diagram is a measure of solar luminosity and spectrum, not mass, thus this statement is either a gross display of ignorance, or it's a throw-away line. I'm leaning towards the latter.
149** That, or it's a really shiny turtle.
150** Or a very hot one. The HR diagram graphs luminosity against temperature (the spectral classes are produced/defined from the diagram, not the other way around). Technically everything, including planets, asteroids, rocks, humans, and real turtles, can be put on it. (They'd just all bunch up in the bottom right corner).
151** Technically, you might, ''might'' be able to fiddle with the physics to make the gravity almost work on the surface of the Discworld. In Real Physics, the gravity field of a very large plate is perpendicular to the surface. No joke. However, a real plate has "edge effects" where the gravity stops pointing perpendicular to the plate, but is pulling you back towards the center. A uniform ring outside and below the disc might be able to counter this (you'd have to work the math), but certainly the random mass distribution caused by the elephants, which are at any rate not implied to be terribly far out from the bottom of the disc, is not going to constitute a "uniform ring". So you just need magic to compensate on the Rim (since gravity was still "down" there). The other problem is the Discworld isn't going to be massive enough to provide one G of gravity, even with octiron in the crust and turtles down below; recall Earth obtains its gravity with a gigantic utterly solid pile of dense iron; the entire volume of the Discworld system may be comparable to the volume of earth but the vast majority of the Discworld system by volume is air in all the drawings I've seen (including the air halo below the disc for the giant animals and the very large air envelope above the disc for some of the other parts of the story). Of course, you need steaming piles of magic to explain gigantic living turtles and elephants, and a sun and a moon that "orbit" through a solid atmosphere without ever losing speed, so on the grand scale of things, the gravity fixups needed are relatively minor....
152** Has it ever said in canon how big around the Great A'Tuin is? If all we have in the way of measurements are drawings, by Paul Kidby and especially Josh Kirby, as well as the assumption that it is theoretically possible to get somewhere close to the edge of the shell in a space capsule launched from Krull, then it ''could'' be that the Great A'Tuin is a great enough distance across with enough of a uniform body thickness that the gravity remains perpendicular to the disc despite the elephants. The movement of its limbs as it swims through space could even be the cause of the sun's irregular orbit. (Then again, [[AWizardDidIt magic]]. The gravity pulling towards the center of the disc could have been moved from the edges of the disc to the sides of Cori Celeste as shown but not explained in The Last Hero, considering how physics works for the Discworld.)
153** Equal Rites mentions it as being "a turtle, ten thousand miles long." That was early days though, it might be different now.
154** Guys, the physics of Discworld's universe don't work like the ones in ours. This isn't Art Major Physics, it's ''how their world works''. The UU wizards were '''surprised''' by the development and effects of gravity in the Roundworld universe, because their world doesn't have any such rule. Combine chelonium, elephantigen, and a whopping dose of narrativium in the Discworld universe, and you get a Discworld where celestial bodies and air behave as they're supposed to, and "down" is simply Great A'Tuin's ventral direction.
155** The ''Auditors'' see to it that "things fall and rocks spin". What, did you think that launching clumsy schemes against life, imagination, and/or Death was their only cosmic function? They've got responsibilities, same as any other personification.
156** Discworld runs on Narritivium. Any story can tell you that things fall down.
157** Just for fun, let's say that A'tuin is the centre of gravity; near the Rim you'd feel like you were being "pulled" in a diagonally downward direction hubwards. It'd make the surface of the disc feel like a big shallow bowl.
158** Wasn't there a reference to the people of ye olden times believing the world was a bowl? Or am I confusing this with something else?
159** [[Franchise/MenInBlack 'A thousand years ago we thought the world was a bowl. Five hundred years ago we knew it was a globe.]] [[Literature/TheTruth Today we know it is flat and round and carried through space on the back of a turtle.' He turned and gave the High Priest another smile. 'Don't you wonder what shape it will turn out to be tomorrow?']]
160** The answer to all of the above questions about physics and ever emptying oceans is this. '''Because that is how it is supposed to go.''' Belief is a very powerful force on the Discworld, physics has no chance at all. Things go down because falling is what things do. There is air because worlds have air. The seas don't run dry because seas are full of water, OK?
161** I agree. Everyone knows that things fall downwards. Therefore, if you fall off the edge of the world, it makes no sense at all that you should actually fall back towards the world. Even though that's what actually makes sense. This is a world where Death, who is essentially ''made'' of people's belief, has several times changed the course of history. Why couldn't belief change the course of a falling object?
162** There isn't any gravity; Great A'Tuin is accelerating "upwards" (perpendicular to the surface of the disc) at 9.81 m/s^2! This creates the appearance of gravity; throw something up, and the world rushes up to meet it so it appears to drop down to the surface again! Great A'Tuin can do this because there is no friction in vacuum so he just has to exert a constant (huge) lift force with a flick of his flippers. How does he do this in a vacuum with nothing to push against? Well, that's by means of magic, obviously...
163** OK! As said before, the Discworld runs on [[TheoryOfNarrativeCausality narrativium]]. But then, the thinking here is kind of the point of Discworld (not to mention the point of these WildMassGuessing and Headscratchers pages.) As Pratchett says, you take something absurd or bizarre and think about it seriously. "If Death rides a pale horse, where does he keep it? What does he call it?"
164** But it has also been pointed that Binky is sole exception to the real life rule that all the "white" horses are actually (very light) gray.
165** But he's not the colour of snow. He's the colour of milk - which is alive.
166** Which is kind of weird, since the original 'pale' was drawn from the Greek khlôros, which meant "pale green", "ashen" or "yellow-green". Although, in fairness, we do get to see at one point that Death has had other rides before Binky. They just didn't work out.
167** Actually, there ''are'' horses who are considered pure white. Check the skin under the hair - if it's pink, the horse is white. If the skin is darker, it is gray. Although my first riding teacher has been wrong before.
168** Horsie genetics time. Grey horses carry a mutation that makes the hair turn white with age (they're born whatever normal colour their genetics carry, and may end up white as young as 3 or 4, or as old as 20); like aging humans, their skin, eyes, hooves etc don't lighten. There are also various dilution mutations that alter the expression of pigments: homozygous cream, and individuals carrying both cream and champagne, can end up very pale indeed. These horses can be called white (although cream, cremello and pearlino are also used) and have blue eyes, white or whitish hair, and pink skin and hooves. Finally, there are the various white-pattern markings, which can occasionally produce an animal with white everywhere. The skin under white markings is pink, and the eyes can be blue or dark depending on which mutation is in effect. The no white horses thing exists because the latter two categories (sport colours and extensive white markings) were very unfashionable in England, to the extent that they were culled from many breeds. So the only white-looking horses were greys that had fully greyed out (ie had no coloured hairs remaining).
169** The gravity thing - in ''The Last Hero'', it works just how you'd expect it to. Or at least Leonard of Quirm thinks so.
170---> It is my view that with sufficient thrust and a lateral component a craft sent off the edge of the world would be swung underneath by the massive attraction and rise on the far side.
171** This needs to be it's own trope: DiscworldAstronomyDebates, representing a comlete ignorance with the MST3KMantra and long debates about largely uninteresting things.
172** What are you talking about? I, for one, find these things very interesting, thankyouverymuch.
173** Okay am I really the only one who remembers the water alien that fell from another planet in The Colour of Magic? The one Rincewind and Two Flower meet at the Circumfence? He Fell Through Space! And landed on an alien world. There is no gravity, there is a universal down. The existence of one character depends entirely on that fact.
174*** Not necessarily. The water alien could have been drifting on a ballistic trajectory without there being a "universal down." 'Falling' through space isn't really distinguishable from 'drifting' through space or moving 'sideways' through space. But it's not really a problem; Great A'Tuin is huge and it's at least superficially plausible that A'Tuin's mass (plus the elephants) generate the Discworld's gravity, assuming gravity DOES have to come from somewhere.
175
176[[/folder]]
177
178[[folder:Rimfall]]
179
180* The Rimfall. Billions of gallons of water pouring literally off the face of the world into space. Why aren't sea levels dropping like crazy? Where does the replacement water come from?
181** For that matter, why don't Great A'Tuin and the elephants catch pneumonia?
182** Assume that the water gets sucked back into underground caves or something.
183** See ''Strata'' for the answer; I read it a loooong while ago last, but believes it to have been something akin to the large caves and a serious pump.
184** [[AWizardDidIt Arrangements are made.]]
185** There are gods. Hundreds of 'em. Can't remember a specific rain god being mentioned, but its part of a standard Pantheon (and do you really think the DW gods went to the trouble of getting a Bespoke mythology, or did they just take the easy option of 'off the peg...). A rain god has a very specific job. Therefore how he gets the water from the Rimfall back top is his problem.
186** I have no idea how it would go about getting back ''onto'' the Disc, but I'm guessing that the water that falls off just gets put back on. No net loss, and thus no external replenishment required.
187** Llamedos is described as having "rain mines" and is a net exporter of rain. As we are often told in the books ''what goes around, comes around'' then are the Rain Mines part of the water cycle on the Disc - falling off the Edge, flowing underneath (there must be gravity on the reverse side of the Disc) and disproportionately returning to the world in places like Llamedos?
188** I remember something written somewhere about how the water of the Rimfall becomes mist somewhere on the way down, drifts back over the Disc as clouds and eventually comes down as rain again.
189** Yup. It says so the ''Discworld Companion''.
190** Alternatively, perhaps water from other Discs on shoulders of turtles fall on this disk eventually. I mean, Color of Magic had that troll (made of water!) who claims he lived into another disc and he fell from the border.
191** Another niggling problem is - what happens to any aquatic wildlife swept over the Edge in a Rimfall? It's no great stretch to postulate the water then flows underneath and recycles on, but living creatures would be more delicate than that; you couldn't have, for instance, a shoal of saltwater fish sucked under in a permanent Niagara, and if they survive that, to be directed to a freshwater river somewhere. Unless local evolution accounts for this, wouldn't the Discworld seas end up being depleted of life over time?
192[[/folder]]
193
194[[folder:Deaths]]
195
196* In ''Hogfather'', a Death of Rats is mentioned. How many other "Deaths" are there? And would anything unusual happen if The Disc's Death bumps into Castlevania's Death?
197** Read ''Reaper Man''. [[spoiler:As a result of Death's retirement, many other Deaths were created for any creature that needed them. Most were reabsorbed at the end, only the Grim Squeaker, Death of Rats, retained an independent existence.]] As for other Deaths, the Discworld one might have a thing or two to say to some of them. Read ''Reaper Man'' again...
198** [[spoiler:Death of Rats wasn't the only one. Reread the last little bit of Reaper Man.]]
199** Actually, that bit is slightly ambiguous, considering that the Death of Fleas hasn't been mentioned since probably means that it isn't around anymore.
200** Considering that the Death of Fleas was a throwaway joke, during the phrase of Pratchett's writing style in which throwaway jokes and footnotes were commonplace, I don't think you're ''supposed'' to think about what happened to, er... him? Besides, unless fleas stop dying or go extinct somehow, I don't see how it could 'die'.
201** Perhaps it decided that being an independent Death was more bother than it was worth, and allowed itself to be reincorporated into Death-Of-Everything-But-Rats. It was too tiny to get up to mischief like the Death Of Rats, so probably didn't enjoy its independence much.
202** WordOfGod is that all the minor Deaths were to be throwaway jokes. But Death of Rats was too cool.
203** As for ''Castlevania'''s Death, read ''Reaper Man'' and consider that Dracula's confidant would have no problem wearing a crown.
204
205[[/folder]]
206
207[[folder:Afterlife you believe in]]
208
209* If everybody gets the afterlife they believe in, what happens to people who believe they get the afterlife they believe in?
210** They get the afterlife they believe in, of course. Perhaps they spend eternity in a logical conundrum...
211** They may get the afterlife they ''subconsciously'' believe in. That's essentially what happened to at least one of the casualties in ''Small Gods'': deep down, he didn't really believe in Omnianism, he just believed that if you do what you can to do what's right, things will work out all right. We don't see where he ends up, but he's hopeful as he crosses the desert, so things probably did so.
212** A better question to ask is what happens to people who don't believe in an afterlife.
213** The Desert, maybe? That's where the Hiver goes, and it didn't even ''understand'' how to die.
214** A similar situation to this is dealt with at the end of ''The Truth''. One character believes in an afterlife, but that is ALL he believes in - no outline, no details, nothing. He just knows that there will be one, and Death is not particularly happy to be the one who has to sort it out. [[spoiler: Ultimately, he sits in the The Desert and thinks about it until he comes to a decision, and what he decides is granted exactly as he expects.]]
215** Or who've honestly never thought about it and don't believe ''anything''. However, there's evidence that reincarnation is the "default" anyway, so it might be that all of the above just get reincarnated. Witness this bit from ''Masquerade'':
216--->'''Mr. Pounder''': "But I don't ''believe'' in reincarnation!" he protested.
217--->'''Death of Rats''': SQUEAK.
218--->And this, Mr Pounder understood with absolute rodent clarity, meant: Reincarnation believes in ''you''.
219** In my interpretation, the thing with Mr. Pounder was that while he didn't consciously believe in reincarnation, he's just meant to be a rat, and given the opportunity, his morphogenic field beat out his conscious thought.
220** I'm reminded of the situation of the Silver Horde's teacher, who died in 'glorious' battle. He wasn't sure what he believed in, but since he was so awesome, he got a choice. He picked Valhalla, so he can teach the barbarians some manners, which was the kind of thing he incredibly enjoyed doing in life.
221** Atheists, agnostics, nonbelievers and those who believe in gods but not afterlives go to the Dungeon Dimensions. These Dimensions are equivalent to Hell and separated from the world by L-Space. One exception: A philosopher believed in Gods "just to be safe." He died and awoke, surrounded by Gods who held baseball bats and asked, "are you safe?"
222** No that aren't - Hell is specifically described as being something entirely different to the Dungeon Dimensions in Eric.
223** It was "we really don't like a smart-ass". And ''no they effing don't''. ''Nobody'' goes to the Dungeon Dimensions when they die. What happens is what you really ''believe'' will occur, and no one really believes that they are going to cease to exist. Intellectually, yes. Emotionally, no.
224** Some people most certainly "effing do" believe, intellectually and emotionally, that they are going to cease to exist. Also, on the Disc, people who believe they will go to the Dungeon Dimensions will go there, that's how it works for the most part.
225** Actually, quite a lot of people believe that. Also, since you get exactly what you believe, anyone who seriously believes in unconscious oblivion will get exactly that (unless, as noted in previous examples, they have made a particular afterlife believe in ''them'').
226** Considering how often wizards have to stop and explain about them in the early novels, it seems like the average Discworlder has never even ''heard'' of the Dungeon Dimensions, never mind believing they'll wind up there after death.
227** Golems don't believe in an afterlife as they don't generally expect to die, and in fact expect to outlast the universe. Anghammarad is surprised he is still around after being shattered; however he still ends up in the desert with Death. It seems most people get the 'gritty black sand' desert for a short time, but possibly atheists then fade away to oblivion while believers go onto an afterlife. Anghammarad, unusually, decided not to do either.
228** The reason Death was afraid to die in ''Reaper Man'' was because he doesn't believe in anything and will cease to exist...or at least that's what he says. But whether it's possible for humans to pop out of existence for the same reason or whether Death is a special case, I don't know.
229** Death's a special case:
230--->'''Death''': [[AC: Because then there will be nothing. Because I won't exist.]]\
231'''Mrs Flitworth''': Is that what happens for humans too?\
232'''Death''': [[AC: I don't think so. It's different for you. You have it all better organised]].
233** Note that Lady [=LeJean=]/Unity didn't expect an afterlife, but she apparently got one. What kind, we don't get to see, but it's one case where an entity that expected nothing but oblivion ''didn't'' simply vanish.
234** What makes sense to me, is that everyone gets the desert. You must walk the desert for the sole reason to find out what is on the other side. Thus, the entire point of dying is to find out what comes after Death. The effect causes the cause. Of course, throwing narrativium into the mix effectively neutralizes cause and effect - they become nothing more than sequentially linked incidents. No one knows what comes after death, not even Death. That's why you have to die - to find out what comes next.
235
236[[/folder]]
237
238[[folder:Sto Helit and the Duchess]]
239
240* What is happening in Sto Helit? Susan is technically still the Duchess but she certainly hasn't taken over her duties or even (at least onscreen) visited her city. Since previous dukes seem to have been pretty hands on (Mort clearly had a job not a courtesy title) so has she just abandoned her responsibilities?
241** She's probably got a regent doing all the hard work. Mort was busy uniting the plains, so he had to be more hands-on. I don't believe duchesses are expected to do as much as reigning dukes.
242** Not if they are duchesses by marriage, no. But Susan ''inherited'' Sto Helit, which makes her the reigning duchess. It is a little like Elizabeth I abandoning her throne to take up a life as a school teacher. Susan is an actual ruler who appears to have deserted her duties, seemingly for good (there is no suggestion she is seeking life experience or education or the like to make her a better ruler). She doesn't even seem remotely connected.
243** It's also possible that by Susan's time, dukes and duchesses are just landed gentry, they don't actually do any ruling.
244** In a single generation? After a period of clearly hands on ruling and very important work by Mort? Susan's lack of duties (if not her lack of interest) might make sense with a Victorian (or Ankhian) noblewoman but it is jarringly at odds with what we see in ''Mort'' and even what we hear about in the later books.
245** Well one of the best ways to unite a large area of feudal lords would be to turn them into landed gentry. After Mort was finished the Dukes had very little power, probably in exchange for privileges and so on.
246** Assuming that Mort managed to finish his work of uniting the people of the plains before he died, there's probably no reason Keli (who as far as we know is still alive; she was last referred to in 'Going Postal') couldn't handle the day-to-day ruling on Susan's behalf. We do know that, in contrast to Ankh-Morpork, the Sto plains are usually an extremely quiet and boring place.
247** Remember that Mort ''knew'' he was going to die when Susan was still a minor. He would've laid the groundwork for Sto Helit to be governed by competent managers while his daughter grew up, and Susan has simply let her father's appointees continue to manage things. Considering how ruling the city herself, as a traditional noblewoman, would almost certainly entail a lot of arranged marriage proposals -- something that might've been okay for her friend Jade, but that she's not temperementally suited to -- it's probably a good thing she's not interested in Duchessing.
248** The "officially unofficial" ''TabletopGame/{{GURPS}}'' book says that Sto Helit is currently run on a day-to-day basis by a council of burghers, but when Susan's in town what she says goes ... eventually.
249
250[[/folder]]
251
252[[folder:Zombies]]
253
254* How do men die and become zombies? Why would anyone have believed that zombification was the afterlife? Were they the ghosts of lunatics who believed that they would become zombies?
255** This whole argument seems to be based on a misconception about how belief works when you die. It's not just what you believe. There's also Narrativium and karma to consider, as well as your own personality. Zombies are just people who have a strong enough will that they don't consider dying and going to the afterlife to be good enough for them.
256** Explicitly not explained in ''Night Watch''. Vimes's internal narration describes that no one knows why some people become zombies.
257** At least, not yet.
258** From my understanding zombies are people who refuse to die, rather a matter of will like the Nobodies in ''Franchise/KingdomHearts''.
259** At one point, Death says to a zombie that he had stopped living, but he hadn't died.
260** This, pretty much. Death, on the Disc, is something entirely different from when your body stops living--in most people the two things occur at the same time. In zombies, one simply happened a while before the other.
261** We see the process from Windle Poons' point of view in ''Reaper Man''. He didn't have any beliefs about the afterlife and wasn't expecting anything. When he died, nothing happened. He waited for a bit, then went back to his body and made it walk and talk again because that was all he could think of to do.
262** Windle Poons explicitly believes in reincarnation, and was going to come back as a woman. However, since Death was retired at the time, no-one came to get him, leaving him wandering alone, and deciding to return to a familiar host body. In most cases however becoming a zombie entails just an incredibly strong will to live, or some serious unfinished business that can't be done by a ghost.
263** I thought you needed some sort of root...?
264** Or a voodoo-lady ''amour'' who shares your grudge against your killer.
265
266[[/folder]]
267
268[[folder:Female dwarfs in Carrot's past]]
269
270* I realize that it's probably something to do with the History Monks, but how is it that there is a female dwarf with a female name mentioned in the eighth book as part of Carrot's past, taking into account what later books reveal about the dwarfs' attitudes to feminity?
271** Just because the dwarfs don't have a feminine nature when seen from outside perspective doesn't mean that there aren't ''some'' kind of gender identification.
272** Not according to the books. If I recall correctly, one of them mentions that dwarven courtship mostly consists of trying to find out, as tactfully as possible, what gender the other dwarf actually is. Of course, this means that Carrot might have just been referring to a dwarf he ''hoped'' was female.
273** Or he's just an exceptionally good judge of these things.
274** He isn't. He couldn't figure out that Cheery is female. Also, the dwarf was called Minty, which is probably intended to be feminine.
275** If I remember correctly he actually says that he '''thinks''' she's female, he isn't 100% sure.
276** Actually, Carrot is referring to his mother. Paraphrased: "I have no problem with female dwarves. I'm fairly certain that my mother is one"
277** "I have a- a sort of ''thing'' going on with Minty Rocksmasher, she's got a beard as soft as a, as a very soft thing, and I'm almost certain she's female!"
278** Actually it's "But you know, me and - you know Minty Rocksmacker? She's really beautiful, dad, got a beard as soft as, a, a, a very soft thing - we've got an understanding, and-", to which the king replies, "Yes (...) Her father's had a word with me", and to himself, "So did her mother with your mother, and then ''she'' had a word with me." No uncertainty as to Minty's gender is mentioned. Also, notice how both Carrot and his father use the female pronoun, immediately after the footnote explaining that dwarfs never do and despite the fact that they are most likely talking in Dwarfish, which doesn't have separate pronouns at all. Although it could be TranslationConvention, I suppose.
279** Minty: Think about it. Humans associate the name with the seemingly delicate, lightly-scented plant. What would dwarfs associate the name with? A metalworking factory. Bam, there goes that "Minty is a female name" assumption..
280** That and it explains perfectly why he never got any replies back from them, and why his adopted father was keen on getting him to Ankh-Morpork. He just doesn't have the built-in dwarf gender-radar they have.
281** Dwarfs don't have "gender-radar" either. It's noted a few times that a large part of dwarf courtship consists of figuring out, very tactfully, what sex the other dwarf actually is, and once they're married, everyone else stops caring and just assumes the two of them know which is which. It wouldn't be beyond the possibility for there to have been a number of entirely-accidental same-sex dwarf marriages.
282** I've seen a couple of British TV shows that have had male characters nicknamed Minty.
283** Getting back to the 2nd ** subpoint, if ever there was a Dwarf name associated with femininity, wouldn't it be one that has so much to do with gold coinage? I submit as evidence this exchange between I think Cuddy & Angua: "Is it true what they say about Dwarfs loving gold?" "Nah, we just say that to get it into bed!" Ok, more like strong hearsay, but the point still stands!
284** Or, mebbe it's just a case of CharacterizationMarchesOn, for an entire race. Or it could just be a case of Scotch (or Sherry; not too sure what Pratchett prefers).
285** When the point about lack of dwarfish feminine pronouns first came up (in ''Feet of Clay,'' I believe) it seemed likely to me that Carrot's original home in the mines of Copperhead had borrowed the customs of the local humans, at least in terms of telling ''humans'' which gender they were. ''The Fifth Elephant'' made it clear that different dwarf colonies did vary in their level of 'traditional' culture.
286*** If I recall correctly, Pratchett himself explained that the dwarfs of Copperhead, where Carrot grew up, were on the whole rather more relaxed about things like gender, to the point where they acknowledged female pronouns.
287** Presumably ''Carrot's'' gender was never in doubt, growing up - ObliviousAdoption or not, it's pretty obvious his chest is all muscles-on-muscles, not breasts-on-muscles - so if Minty was interested in ''him'', then Minty is most likely to be female. Or gay, but whether there are gay dwarfs is a whole other issue from whether there are obviously-female dwarfs.
288[[/folder]]
289
290[[folder:Gloria]]
291
292* On that note, why is there an openly female dwarf - who plaits her beard in ribbons, is named 'Gloria Thargs'''daughter'''' and attends a ''human '''girls''' school'', for Om's sake! - featured in 'Soul Music', several books before dwarven gender pioneer Cheery joins the Watch?
293** History Monks.
294** Possibly there are dwarven areas beyond the Ramtops, where Carrot comes from, and Uberwald, where Cheery comes from, that are slightly more liberal in their thinking. Since Ankh-Morpork is the largest dwarf city outside of Uberwald, it makes sense that these more "humanized" dwarves would stay away and migrate to smaller towns like Quirm. It would also explain dwarves like Casanunda and Hwel, who also buck the trend of dwarfism.
295** It's also heavily implied that the dwarf society in Copperhead (where Carrot is from) is noticeably more liberal than that of Uberwald (where Cheery is from) - perhaps Cheery's initial appearance was even more gender neutral (or even implied masculine) than Carrot had previously been used to.
296** Also, it doesn't explicitly '''say''' that Gloria is a female, only that she appears to ''be'' one. Her father is a king, so it stands to reason that he would want his son to achieve the best education possible. And being dwarfs, they would eschew the Assassin's Guild School, or something like Hugglestones. But that particular girls school seems to be the epitome of what is considered 'sensible'; exactly the type of school that a traditional dwarf would consider sending his son to. Oh but wait, they only let in girls...
297** Gloria was captain of the school basketball team. Presumably she had to change into her sport uniform in the same locker room as her teammates, so unless her plaited beard was ''really long'' this wouldn't work.
298** You think that a top-notch boarding school like this one wouldn't have separate changing rooms for at least the more modest girls?
299** I was willing to put that down to the kind of freedom of movement you're allowed inside a school setting. And it's entirely possible that being outside of the company of other dwarves, with fellow classmates (with "feminine" names like Gloria, and ribbons in their hair) that she's simply adjusted to meet the trend.
300** There's a specific reference to how some dwarf communities do acknowledge they've got daughters, either in T 5 E or ''Thud!''.
301** WordOfGod is that Gloria's parents were ''very'' modern (which probably also explains why they'd send their child away to be educated in the first place): "there's always going to be some people ahead of a trend. Feminism, nudism, free love -- that stuff didn't start in the 50s and 60s..."
302
303
304[[/folder]]
305
306[[folder:Library of Ephebe]]
307
308* Okay, so the Library of Ephebe, before it burned down, was the second largest on Discworld. And the building/room itself seems to be somewhat large, from the descriptions in ''Small Gods''. And there seem to be shelves on top of shelves, since a ladder is required to reach some of the books--it's not just one long row of pigeonholes. So, given all this--it only has ''seven hundred'' books or so (and that's going by Didactylos's statement; in the spot where the book says the library was the Disc's second largest, it says four or five hundred volumes)? Even granted that they're mostly scrolls and might take up more space than paperbacks (though I'm a little reluctant to concede that they could take up that ''much'' more space, given that they can apparently be unrolled quite quickly and seen all at once) and that every one has its own pigeonhole--how could seven hundred of them take up all that space? I personally have about four hundred books, and they all fit on four smallish bookcases.
309** My copy of the Odyssey is a normal-sized paperback, about 400 pages. The original would have been 24 scrolls. That's going to take up a ''lot'' more space than the printed book.
310** Yeah, but if they were that numerous it would have taken much longer for Brutha to look at them all.
311** Brutha explicitly didn't look at them all. He asks how many really important scrolls there are and the younger librarian tries to say "all of them" but is overruled by the more sensible one. And he was literally just looking, not reading at all, so the question is how quickly two people working together can get down important scrolls, open them and toss them aside.
312** Well, assume it takes three seconds to unroll a scroll completely, have Brutha look at it, and get it off the table... assuming they're all short enough that they ''could'' have them completely unrolled and Brutha could see the whole thing. That's still only two hundred ''scrolls'' in ten minutes. If a book is twenty scrolls (which I find entirely credible) it'll take twenty times as long to do that book, a minute or so. He couldn't do many of those without running out of time.
313** The whole series makes it very clear that literacy rates on The Disc are appalling. Ankh-Morporkians have a very relaxed attitude to spelling, and everywhere else people seem to regard reading as a newfangled, untrustworthy invention. Perhaps UU's Library really is the only one on the Disc that we'd consider a decent size. Ephebe's is the second-largest through lack of competition more than anything else.
314** That's probably true, but the library ''also'' seems to be physically large (in terms of space dedicated to scrolls, not just, for example, open area with tables and stuff), from the descriptions.
315** L-Space. It's well-established in Discworld lore that the interiors of libraries are fluid. Very fluid.
316** There were probably a lot of things other than documents in the library's collection, too. What ancient cultures called a "library" was often more like what we'd call a "museum", with artwork and cultural artifacts and minerals and so on.
317** They probably kept multiple copies of many texts, too. There's no printing technology in Ephebe, so if the Library loses its only copy of an important manuscript, they can't exactly drop by the local bookstore for a replacement: having spares would be a vital precaution against torn scrolls, spilled ouzo, etc.
318** Before the printing revolution a "library" was basically either an archive of buissness transactions, which the Library of Ephebe obviously isn't, or a place set aside for more than ONE book. Nobs would be very entitled to brag about having an extensive "library" of 20-something books, each unique volume would represent years of skilled labor by a scribe/illustrator. In a pre-printing world 700 books is, indeed, massive.
319
320[[/folder]]
321
322[[folder:Eskarina's children]]
323
324* What would happen if Eskarina Smith, the eighth daughter of an eighth son, happened to have eight children with an eighth son of an eighth son? Would that be a wizard to the fourth power?
325** Esk's eighth child would be a Sourcerer. They tend not to last long enough to breed.
326** What? No, a sourceror is the eighth son of an eighth son of an eighth son, I know that. They're referred to as "wizard's squared", I'm just wondering if they'd be more potent if ''both sides'' were eighth children of eighth children.
327** Eskarina is a wizard, yet she is the eighth '''daughter''' of an eighth son. of course thinking about it, that really stuffs the whole system up since it raises the issue of whether daughters count at all three levels, or just at the top two or just at the middle one. Also Nanny Ogg doesn't seem to have birthed a Sourcerer/ess (I'm pretty sure it would have been mentioned, and she seems to have had a dozen or more kids), which raises some big questions over the differences between witch and wizard 'magic' genetics.
328** Genetics have nothing to do with it. It's the ''narrative'', and the ''narrative'' says that the eighth son of an eighth son is a wizard. But language is a funny thing, so "son" ends up being more ambiguous.
329** Whatever it was, it would destroy the universe.
330** I believe that the Eighth Child of an Eighth Sourcerer would be a Greater Author, with raw Creation and Narrativium radiating from them.
331** How would an Eighth Sourcerer work, exactly? Would that require Esk to have eight "Eighth Childs". Would that mean that it would have to be the 64th child of Esk or the last one to be delivered in a Octupling birth?
332** Wizards don't reproduce "Mort" : "Being royal is a sort of family tradition. I expect it's the same with magic; no doubt your father was a wizard?" Cutwell gritted his teeth. "Um. No," he said, "not really. Absolutely not, in fact."
333** Wizards can, in fact, reproduce. As shown in Equal Rites and Sourcery. The main reason that they're told not to is so that Sourcerers won't be born (The eighth son of an eighth son of an eighth son is a Sourcerer, the eighth son of an eighth son is always a wizard. As such wizards must have families in order for a sourcerer to be born.)
334** My theory is that the whole magic/sex incompatibility Cutwell demonstrated wasn't because it was some kind of fundemental law, but a combination of two factors: 1) he just wasn't able to concentrate as well, and 2) he ''believed'' wizards don't have sex, and belief is a powerful force on the Disc.
335** It's a law, but it's a law of the university rather than a fundamental law of the universe. WordOfGod says "It was fear of sourcerors that led the insistence on celibacy among wizards. Celibacy has no physical effect on magical ability, otherwise Nanny Ogg would be a washerwoman." Not to mention that Rincewind has had sex, if you count the first few books as canon. (Which I do, except the bits that are directly contradicted by later books.)
336** He's ''Rincewind''. He has no magical ability to lose in the first place.
337** But it's made clear more than once that he still counts as a wizard (for some reason).
338** He qualifies (just barely) because he can see octarine.
339** He doesn't qualify as a wizard because he can see octarine. He can see octarine because he's a wizard. He ''is'' a wizard; it's said in many of the books that competence is not an issue, even to Rincewind. So it's probably not an issue to the narrative causality which allows wizards to see octarine, either. Wizard = octarine, not 'magic user'.Uh
340** Lettice Earwig is married to a wizard who gave up his hat, if I remember my "Sea and Little Fishes" rightly. I think it's also mentioned briefly in ''Hat Full of Sky''.
341** Yes, and Mr. Earwig's retirement is briefly mentioned at the beginning of ''Unseen Academicals'', when Ridcully (enraged that the Dean quit) claims it's the same as if Earwig has died.
342** There's another universe mentioned in ''Lords and Ladies'' that suggests that Granny Weatherwax could have ended up married (quite happily) to Archchancellor Ridcully, if she had been ''slightly'' less proud (or at least humble enough to not play hard-to-get so well). Moreover, while an eighth son of an eighth son will become a wizard, there's nothing that states that every wizard ''has'' to be the eighth son of an eighth son. It apparently just takes the right mindset (as does witching).
343** Note that the first ''competent'' wizard to appear in the series, Greicha of the Wyrmberg, had three children.
344** ''Sourcery'' makes it fairly clear that while fear of sourcerers ''is'' the real reason why wizards are celibate this was largely forgotten outside the most powerful wizards, so standards were probably a bit more relaxed before the appearance of Coin.
345** Didn't ''Literature/NightWatchDiscworld'' mention something that indicates they DO have condoms on the disc?
346** ''Literature/TheFifthElephant'' was the book that made a big deal about them, as one of the more famous manufacturers, Sonky, was related to the plot.
347** My question remains: Why don't wizards just go and use them? Worries about, err, thaumarturgic waste?
348*** Because a "packet of sonkies" is such a recent invention that the man who first marketed them was alive until ''Fifth Elephant''. Before that, witches had the monopoly on prophylactics ... y'know, those ladies whose powers wizards are prone to look down on?
349** As said before, celibacy has just become sort of the tradition with Wizards. Sorta like how in Roundworld, celibacy of priests began as a way to stem corruption, but has been in place so long it's become part of just How Things Are Done.
350** Actually, the whole Priestly Celibacy issue (or rather, the lack thereof, hah. That was a Pune, or play on words, [[DontExplainTheJoke about genealogy charts mentioning "no issue"]]), came about because the Church wanted to stop the losses of Its holdings to the legal inheritance of the closest living relative.
351** What would happen if an eighth son had an eight son who was a total ''dunce'' at magic (see: Rincewind), so nothing noticeably unusual happened due to unexpected flare-ups of magical ability. They lived someplace rural, like Lancre but without Ridcully in its past, and they themselves were able to have an eighth son. Would that son be an incredibly powerful Sourceror, seemingly out of nowhere, or would he be just as magically inept as his father, and possibly looked over completely or mistaken for a normal wizard?
352** It wouldn't. Happen, that is. The eighth son of an eighth son is a wizard, full stop. Even a wizzard like Rincewind knows he is a wizard. That's just Discworld magic and the power of Narrative Causality.
353** The world can only tremble in fear and pray to whatever gods they choose that if Esk ever has children she'll stop at seven.
354** And we now know that she has, indeed, at least one son. Who apparently needs protection from something. It is possible that her having him was frowned upon in certain circles.
355** Would Esk need to have eight children/sons? Thinking logically (and using the word logically very loosely and probably wrongly) and disregarding gender for the moment, if a sourcerer is a "wizard squared", then if two wizards have a child (wizard x wizard) would the child be a sourcerer?
356** Probably not, otherwise Krull (which allows both male and female wizards) would've produced a sourcerer and conquered the world by now.
357** Wizards are celibate because they basically go from clueless, spotty, stuffy, geeky, students straight to stuffy, slighty-deranged, over-bearing, arrogant, fat old men (due to the university diet and multi-lunches). They don't have opportunity to have sex, at least if there is a rule about celibacy they can claim they chose it. Those few wiz(z)ards that get the opportunity just treat the rule as a guideline, in the finest UU tradition.
358** I think that that was subtly pointed out in ''Unseen Academicals'' as well.
359
360[[/folder]]
361
362[[folder:Witches and their importance]]
363
364* Witches in general. They are the doctors and midwives and such not for their villages; but think nothing of packing up and moving off for six months. Can't they teach the more basic 'Here's how not to die in childbirth' skills to some of the more intelligent wives in the village?
365** They do, actually. There are other midwives. They only get called in for the ''really important'' cases, though it varies from witch to witch.
366** Plus, it's mentioned that Magrat, at least, tries to teach her villagers (to their chagrin), and it's unlikely she's the ''only'' one. "Be able to solve your own problems" is at least part of the Witches' motto.
367** Also don;t forget that there are a bunch of Witches within broom-flight distance of the Trio's respective territories. They actually get mentioned in Witches Abroad, and start showing up frequently in the later books. Like Old Mother Dismass and Millie Hopgood. In Maskerade several of them even meet up as a coven to redraw their territories of responsibility after Magrat became Queen and stopped being a Witch, with some of them taking on extra villages and towns. a similar discussion also occured in Witches Abroad after Desiderata Hollow died and they were trying to decide o na replacement. So i have no doubt that Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg would have been able to arrange for someone to cover for themselves and Magrat's villages while there were gone.
368
369[[/folder]]
370
371[[folder:Languages]]
372
373* On the subject of languages. Sometimes I get confused as to when people are speaking Morporkian (Which is, I assume, the Discworld's "English") and when they're not. I get that the whole series probably works on a TranslationConvention anyway, but, in ''Monstrous Regiment'' for example, I assumed the entire time they were all speaking Borogravian (except for the Morporkian-speakers of course), and it blew my mind a bit towards the end when they spoke actual Borogravian within what I had come to assume as a TranslationConvention. Another time it comes up is during stories when Morpork-speakers go to foreign-countries, when after the initial language confusion, everyone starts speaking to each other freely anyway regardless.
374** It seems that Morporkian is more of "the Discworld's 'English'" than one might assume. It's spoken in the Ankh-Morpork section of The Continent, though some places like the Chalk have their own lesser-used but just as important language, less so in areas like Genua and the various countries of Uberwald where they have their own languages but Morporkian is still commonly, if not consistently known, and seems to be the language of trade in Uberwald. In Klatch and/or Hersheba, the language is known by a number of "important" people but not widely spoken, in Fourecks and the American analogues chopped up and scattered across the Continent it's pretty much the only language (aside from whatever native Ecksians speak), it's barely spoken except by translators in the Agatean Empire, and presumably not known at all in early-era "Mediterranean" places like the Omnia, Tsort, and Ephebe of ''Small Gods''' era. Really quite brilliant, in the particularly skewed way that the Discworld works.
375** Borogravia is the kind of place where each village would have its own, probably mutually unintelligible, dialect. The army lumps together men [[spoiler: well, occasionally they are men]] from each village, therefore needs a neutral language for mutual communication. They chose Morporkian because it helps with diplomacy. (Similar to Switzerland, where each canton has a differnent dialect of Swiss German but the ''official'' language is the ''foreign'' version of German, so as not to privilege any one canton.)
376** There does seem to be an "official" Borogravian language; at least, Vimes tries to use one to impress Polly. That said, it's not unusual for countries to have an official language that simply goes unspoken by most people. And, of course, it may just be that so many words were declared to be Abominations Unto Nuggan that they just started using Morporkian to get around having to feel bad whenever they referred to their bum/uncle/sandwich.
377** In ''Literature/{{Snuff}}'', there's a telling point where the Quirmian (French) gendarmes reveal that they all speak Morporkian but elect to use Quirmian among themselves as their first language. This makes Discworld "French" a language rather like Welsh on our world: people use "Morporkian/English" to communicate with the wider world, as the disparity betwen the two is so impossibly huge that nothing else is possible. (English: spoken by billions worldwide; Welsh -- spoken to varying degrees of fluency by half a million in a relatively confined geographical area). Speakers of the minority language may be militant and bloody-minded as to their right to speak it -- think modern Wales. And another good parellel to Quirm is Quebec, the thriving survival of French in North America. Try speaking English there, outside Montreal, and see how far you get. But the Quirmians, like the Welsh, speak their own language among themselves whilst being able to ''listen in Morporkian'', as has been said about Discworld dwarfs. Morporkian must be the English of the discworld, the common tongue. However, it also has its Chinese/Japanese competitor (Agatean) and its Arabic/Persian/Hindu (Klatchian) as serious linguistic rivals. Everything else, including "French", does appear to be a bit of a Welsh -- a minority language spoken only in its own small area.
378** Morporkian is Discworld's Lingua Quirmia?
379
380[[/folder]]
381
382[[folder:Werewolves and undead]]
383
384* Why are werewolves usually lumped in with undead? There's no real "death" to come back from when you're a werewolf, and in fact seems perfectly hereditary, rather than the old "Bitten = curse" song and dance.
385** Bitten seems to work, too, or at least well enough that people take it as a threat according to Angua. Presumably, yennorks can't be changed by biting them, but other people would be affected by a werewolf bite. The canon explanation is that, well, they're big and nasty, from Uberwald, and if you stick a sword in them, they don't die. What more do you want? You don't have to die to become a werewolf (and presumably it's a mark against the matter), but there are a bunch of similarities, and the inhabitants of the Discworld are lumpers if nothing else.
386** Werewolves' traits and abilities vary quite a bit. It's likely that only some are contagious.
387** I've always looked at it as a parody of racial prejudice. Just as racists in Britain will refer to any dark skinned individuals as 'pakis' (whether they are from Pakistan or not), people on the Discworld refer to Werewolves as 'undead' even though they're not, because they are scary creatures.
388** I am British, and lives in an area where racists (culturalists?) specifically make the distinction between Pakistanis and Indians even... never mind other racial appearances. So not a great example!
389** ''VideoGame/DiscworldNoir'', although not canon, does address the issue: while not all werewolves have come back from temporary deaths, like Angua did in ''Men At Arms'', enough have "died" from something other than silver/fire, then returned -- often by digging their way out of a shallow grave -- that they meet the criteria for "undead" for most people.
390** It's not just werewolves. Boogeymen are classified as undead, when they seem more to be like minor Anthropomorphic Personifications of childhood fear. Banshees as well, and they appear to be an actual (if rare) species, who evolved more or less naturally.
391** ''Literature/ReaperMan'' covers it.
392--->"We’re all undead here."
393--->Lupine coughed.
394--->"Except Lupine," said Arthur.
395--->"I'm more what you might call honorary undead," said Lupine.
396** As far as lycanthropy being hereditary goes, well, so is vampirism, as illustrated by the Magpyrs. The fact Countess Magpyr wasn't ''born'' a vampire is actually seen as noteworthy.
397
398[[/folder]]
399
400[[folder:Twoflower and Grand Viziers]]
401
402* If Twoflower ever comes back, would he be evil? [[EvilChancellor Grand Viziers]] are [[AlwaysChaoticEvil always evil]] on Discworld, and according to Genghiz Cohen "Give 'em a turban with a point in the middle and it just erodes their moral wossname," which almost seems to imply that being a grand vizier ''makes'' you evil. Twoflower would, of course, be the most HarmlessVillain ever, even if his moral wossname was eroded, and Cohen probably wouldn't be having with his grand vizier going evil, but it still makes me wonder what happened to him.
403** Probably. [[TheoryOfNarrativeCausality Narrative causality]] and all that. Unless he fits such a nice guy stereotype that the two forces cancel each other out.
404** It seems inevitable Twoflower would become the number 2 guy. Cohen knows the man led a revolution against the power structure. Keep your enemies closer and all that. Relatedly, he trusts Rincewind and Rincewind trusts Twoflower. Cohen is smart and can figure that out.
405** Cohen specifically chose Twoflower because Twoflower knows ''nothing'' about how to be a Grand Vizier, so my thinking is that his ignorance of how to be a Grand Vizier includes ignorance of the fact that Grand Viziers are meant to be evil, so he won't be evil.
406** Since Cohen left and then died, there's a very real possibility that Twoflower ''is now Emperor.''
407** That would be awesome!
408** Unless Cohen and the concubines found any time to themselves, cough cough. It's established that the barbarians, despite their age, are so experienced as to physically out perform far younger people, and it's mentioned that one of the younger noblewomen finds herself oddly attracted to Cohen's lion-like musk...
409** By that argument, ''Conina'' could have a claim to the imperial throne. A barbarian hairdresser empress?
410** She's probably not his only kid though, and he probably didn't think about telling her (she didn't give the appearance of having had much interaction with him).
411** She's definitely not his only kid. In ''Literature/TheLastHero'' he mentions that he's got at least a half-dozen or so.
412** Evil isn't the same as dangerous, though. It could be that Twoflower starts developing an irresistable urge to pull the wings off flies or something but otherwise remains a loyal and effective government official. He could also have become evil but stayed loyal to Cohen, spending his time inflicting evil schemes on Cohen's enemies.
413** Also remember that in ''The Last Hero'' Twoflower actually ''betrayed'' Cohen, just as evil Grand Visiers always do, when he revealed his emperor's scheme to a foreign power and asked that foreign power to thwart it.
414** Given what the scheme was, he might have been just worried (rightfully) that it was going to do some serious damage to the rest of the world.
415** Regardless of the motivation, the end result is that he betrayed/rebelled against his ruler, and the scheme he set in motion indirectly ''lead to the ruler's death.'' So narrative causality has twisted Twoflower into the traditional role of "evil" grand visier, even with every individual act and every individual motivation in the sequence being arguably "good". That's what narrativium does in Discworld.
416** Except that Cohen is already 'evil' (well ignorant), so betraying him to save the world would be...not so evil, maybe.
417** That's the beauty of the thing: narrativium ''can'' be beaten, but it is easier for it to be twisted. And what is the easiest way to twist the [[EvilChancellor Evil Grand Vizier that betrays his liege]] trope? Making the betrayal a logical consequence of the Grand Vizier being a ''[[TheGoodChancellor Good]]'' Chancellor, of course! As it says above, Twoflower has followed the traditional path of the 'evil' grand vizier, betraying his monarch and at least to some degree usurping his power... but since he is such a fundamentally nice guy, to get that result the entire situation became one where the betraying, usurping Grand Vizier was ''doing the right thing'' and saving the world.
418** As of ''The Complete Discworld Atlas'', the successor to Cohen in leadership isn't Twoflower. It's his daughter Pretty Butterfly, who chairs the People's Benificent Republic of Agatea.
419[[/folder]]
420
421[[folder:Ankh-Morpork size]]
422
423* So is Ankh-Morpork a single city or is it an entire country? How is it so diplomatically powerful if its just a single city-state? Is it just because its the only industrialized city on the Sto Plains? I understand that Vetinari is so good he can turn a single city into an independent world power, but it still bugs me.
424** Rome.
425** Athens.
426** '''[[PunctuatedForEmphasis SPARTA!!]]'''
427** ...And so on. Before the industrialized world, city-states ''were'' powerful, hence why they're called "city-''states''"
428** Ankh-Morpork imports cabbage. It mostly exports finished goods by transforming raw materials into just about anything a craftsman can make.
429** Consider Hong Kong. A city with no natural resources whatsoever except a fairly good harbour. And yet it turned into the financial centre of the Pacific. Ankh-Morpork is the biggest city on the Circle Sea coast, therefore it's where everyone on the Circle Sea goes to trade. And the city leaches off that. It's been said in the stories - what Ankh-Morpork exports is ideas. It sells its culture to the rest of the Disc.
430** This. It's outright ''stated'' that Ankh-Morpork isn't powerful due to force, it's powerful because if you cross them they will call in your mortgages, bribe your friends and buy out your army from under you. They conquered the world through force once (Tacticus et all), made themselves the trading centre of the entire disc, then let the rest of the world go because economic dominance is so much less hassle.
431** [[SugarWiki/FunnyMoments "Let others boast of martial dash, for we have boldly fought with cash. We own all your helmets, we own all your shoes, we own all your generals, touch us and you'll lose."]]
432** Ankh-Morpork is similar to Florence or Venice during Renaissance - a small city-state with a massive influence due to massive trade-connections.
433** The Discworld isn't very big, or very heavily populated. That's the problem with building on the back of a turtle.
434
435[[/folder]]
436
437[[folder:Annagramma's money]]
438
439* In the Tiffany Aching books, where does Annagramma's money come from? In ''Wintersmith'' she reluctantly confesses that her family is just as poor as the rest of the girls', and Mrs. Earwig doesn't come off as a person who'd pay for her student's toys - more like one who'd pick a student who is around the same level of affluence as herself. That being said, the source of Mrs. Earwig's income is mysterious, as well - it's unlikely that even she could break the rule of witchcraft of not accepting money for her services, if she ever did any; the other witches would lose all respect for her they might have had.
440** By extension, how does [=ZakZak's=] Magical Emporium stay in business in a place like Lancre - most witches can't afford the shop's goods and/or consider them ridiculous. Many of the young witches buy a lot of trinkets, but it doesn't seem that they can afford any but the cheapest articles available, and it's explicitly stated that for non-witches or wizards it's incredibly bad idea to pretend to be one.
441** There is a guild of conjurers, so it's apparently ok to do stage magic as long as you make it very clear you aren't doing actual magic.
442** It seems like I recall Mrs. Earwig being married to a wizard, and wizards ''are'' allowed to take money for their services. And it's possible that Annagramma has a job somewhere. People would like having a witch working for them. Or at the very least, would hate what would happen if they decided not to hire a witch. She may not use witchiness on the job, but still.
443** Mrs. Earwig seems like the sort of person who'd pick Annagramma as an apprentice because she seems so arrogant, sniff with disdain when she learns it's just a front the girl puts on, then buy her enough nice clothes and trinkets to maintain the ruse ''while making sure Annagramma is grovelingly grateful for this''. It'd explain why Annagramma was so quick to parrot back all of Mrs. Earwig's opinions in the previous book: she's being emotionally blackmailed by her teacher, and knows that if she doesn't stay on her good side, all her trinkets can be taken away and her upper-crust pretensions, humiliatingly shattered.
444** I could definitely see Mrs. Earwig being the sort to give Annagramma enough of an allowance to keep up appearances. And there are some canon examples where witches are shown apparently doing work for money in addition to the barter system. In fact, there's quite a lot made in the Tiffany books about having a "marketable non-magical skill" that can bring useful goods/money in when needed. Mrs. Earwig is a published author of a book on "Magick", presumably she was paid in money by the publisher. Nanny publishes "The Joye Of Snackes" for money, though Granny both realizes Nanny should have been paid and bullies her into spending most of the money before they return home from Ankh-Morpork. Granny raises goats and keeps bees. She may barter the milk and honey for some of the things she needs, and if she lived nearer civilization, might sell it. Tiffany makes and sells/barters cheeses. Gammer Beavis apparently "teaches school over the mountain" and does her own shoe repairs. Miss Tick is a traveling school teacher. Miss Level used to perform in the circus. I don't think there's so much a prohibition against accepting money for any of your services when you're a witch, it's just more likely that the people you serve don't have any money either, just items/favors to barter with, and you don't withhold help from those who need it. While a good witch is more likely to pass those goods/services they don't need on to someone else who needs them (like Miss Level's comment about storing her extra food "in other people"), there's also nothing I can remember that would bar a witch from taking her extra apples/milk/cheeses/goods to the nearest market large enough to attract more people who use money than those who use a system of "favors". Mrs. Earwig seemed to live in a more populated area than Bad Ass, so maybe they even have a local market? And Mrs. Proust runs Boffo's in Ankh-Morpork and seems to have no problems selling both shop and mail order goods for money.
445
446[[/folder]]
447
448[[folder:Ankh-Morpork's population]]
449
450* How does Ankh-Morpork support its huge population? A million people is fairly respectable in the modern world, but Ankh-Morpork is still essentially in a pre-industrial setting - there are no railways or steamships to bring in food. Ok, there have been big pre-industrial cities like Imperial Rome, but they had to rely on things like huge annual grain fleets grown by armies of slaves. Ankh-Morpork is just a city state and doesn't control a huge amount of territory.
451** They are the center of practically all the world trade. Just about anything going from somewhere to anywhere else goes through Ankh-Morpork, if they aren't immediate neighbours. Ships, barges and cartloads enter the city every day by thousands to trade their goods. Read for example ''Night Watch'' - it mentions how the city's economy works. The other newer books also include occasional mentions, but not quite so many.
452** That explains why Ankh-Morpork is ''rich'', but it doesn't really explain how it sustains itself - most food can only go so far without spoiling. There is no reliable way of transporting the colossal amounts of food needed to the city; Ankh-Morpork apparently lacks canals and the Ankh itself barely qualifies as liquid so river traffic seems unlikely. Even if plenty comes in by cart where do all the grain, vegetables and meat come from? The Sto Plains have plenty of other cities and towns to feed. For that matter how does sufficient water reach the populace? Ankh-Morpork is a place which should have a roughly similar infrastructure to Jacobean London but sustains a population four times the size without any trouble.
453** [[Main/AWizardDidIt Ankh-Morpork is home to the Disk's most prestigious college of wizardry]]. [[Main/BigEater The wizards like to have ''very'' large meals]]. Do the math.
454** A few of the books ([=CoM=], Jingo, Thud, etc.) mention the busy docklands area, which implies that a lot of their food is imported by ship from neighbouring countries around the circle sea and the existence of the Pork Futures warehouse indicates that they have the ability to store food at low temperatures to stop it spoiling. Basically, Ankh Morpork is the workshop of the world. They make their money in manufacturing, then spend it on food.
455** Can't store anything in the Pork Future warehouse - the pork futures already hog up (ha!) all the space.
456** That's not what was implied - it was stated that Ankh-Morpork has the ''ability'' to refrigerate food. No one said the food was actually stored inside the Pork Future warehouses.
457** That extreme cold is actually a byproduct of the slabs of meat in porktentia. It's not a case of the not-yet-pork being kept cold by the warehouse, but of the speculative pork's magical energies keep the warehouse cold.
458** Food and other products come in by three routes: from the mountains via river Ankh by barges, from the Sto Plains by carts and from the Circle Sea countries by ships. In their base forms many foodstuffs last for a long time - bread comes in as flour, vegetables come from close by, and are under right circumstances quite durable, as are some fruit, like apples, and meat mostly comes in alive in the form of cattle, pigs and chicken. Only fish is killed beforehand for obvious reasons, and can be dried or salted, as in fact can many other foodstuffs. People who have back yards also grow stuff like potatoes in them. The infrastructure is very well planned, better than anything that was available in real-world Renaissance, and some magical, alchemical and steampunk solutions may also be at play in preserving the food, if the cold storages featured in the stories are any implication.
459** Not to mention that a dietary staple (rats) for the city's largest minority (dwarfs) is indigenous to the city itself.
460** And the dietary staple (rocks) for its second largest minority (trolls) only goes bad on a geological time-scale.
461** Even the humans can rest assured that their eggs and dairy products will be delivered fresh, provided they [[Literature/ThiefOfTime have the right milkman]].
462** But when we first see Ankh-Morpork it is a crime ridden hell hole run by a long line of incompetent maniacs. Yet it already has a million people at the start of ''Literature/TheColourOfMagic''... how did this excellently planned infrastructure function in the pre-Vetinari days? Heck, the city doesn't even have an organised Merchant's Guild until Twoflower arrives! As for barges we are told time and again that the Ankh is barely water anymore by the time it reaches the sea and a lot of that is silt from the plains. Not great for a thriving river traffic. It's difficult to imagine the old school pre-Ridcully wizards lifting a staff to help bring in cargo, the Alchemists are jokes until ''Moving Pictures'' and the 'steampunk' aspects don't generally come in until fairly late in the series.
463** The key error in this question is "planned". Why should it have to be planned? The city evolved, building on top of itself, and the infrastructure evolved with it. The city couldn't grow beyond the ability of the infrastructure to support it, though may have reached a precarious point where a shock to the system could upset things. See ''Literature/NightWatchDiscworld'' where Reg starts talking about planning food distribution through People's Warehouses, adding what is shown to be an unnecessary level of planning, and where the Revolution is shown to put a spanner in the works of the city of 30 years ago. If you don't believe this is possible without planning, go and read the Science of Discworld series and concetrate on the bits about emergent phenomena.
464** Remember what Creator/TerryPratchett said about how the Disk is "at the far end of the probability curve" and is mostly held together by belief? People beleive that their food will come in somehow, so it does, somehow. If they were to think too hard about it, the waveform would collapse and they would all die.
465** If someone's willing to buy the food, people will be willing to get it there. It's not necessarily a flawless system, but when money talks, people listen.
466** It's stated, I think it's in ''Night Watch,'' that Ankh-Morpork is actually bigger than just the city within the walls, referred to elsewhere as its fiefdom; there are huge fields and farms outside the actual city that belong to Ankh-Morpork, and provide it with much of the food and essentials it needs. The Morporkians do have to trade, barter and buy a lot of stuff from other countries to feed the entire population (and to get certain things that for various reasons aren't easily available in their part of the world), but they don't rely solely on other nations to get what they need.
467** It's probably worth observing that London had a population of one million in 1800. Ankh-Morpork, broadly speaking, has that technology level and a comparable geogrpahical situation.
468** And although ''The Colour Of Magic'' does give the impression of a crime-ridden hellhole, that book's events within the city are nearly all confined to the dockyards and the Broken Drum. Less-squalid areas are mentioned in passing (e.g. Ankh is implied to be upper-class), they're just not the sort of neighborhood Twoflower came to the city to look at.
469** One of the few advantages to having a functioning nose in Ankh-Morpork is that if your food spoils, by comparison, who's going to notice?
470** In one of the earlier Watch books (I forget which) it is said people on first arriving in the city ask how it keeps going, what is the basis of its civic economy and so on, given it has a river you can chew they would ask where the water comes from. The question is not really answered, and in fact the text notes people ''should'' be asking that but instead tend to seek out the ladies of negotiable affection. I guess, as several notes above, it people don't think about it, arrangements are made.
471** On a related note, regarding where the water comes from given that the Ankh is 'chewable' (although no one on the right mind would want to do so), I reasoned that they had a similar solution as early Venice, (which also had water supply problems given that it's built on a salt marsh) and relied on rain water collection (which I'm pretty sure is refered to in canon at some point), plus wells and possibly underground streams, the existance of both of which is supported by canon.
472** Which way to, you know...the, you know the young ladies, right?
473** Ah, yes. It's past the Post Office, 200 yards down, and then widdershins at the lights.
474
475[[/folder]]
476
477[[folder:Carrot's powers outside of Ankh-Morpork]]
478
479* I understand why Carrot has supernatural befriending powers in Ankh-Morpork, as he's the rightful heir and narrative causality, but why do those powers work in Klatch? Narrative usually doesn't have the king universally beloved ''globally'', just in their own dominion.
480** He's not the King of Ankh-Morpork, though, any more than his sword is the Sword of Ankh-Morpork. He's ''The Hidden King'', and his sword is ''The Sword''. He's supernaturally friendly because everyone thinks kings should get along with the common man. They go over it in ''Guards! Guards!'', pointing out what everyone expects in a long-lost heir to the throne. It's not narrative in one setting so much as the power of uniqueness and expectation from that unique thing on the Disc empowering the narrative ''everywhere''.
481** It's also mentioned in ''Jingo'' that countries are "always flogging spare royalty off each other". He's probably nearly as closely related to Klatchian royalty as his Morporkian ancestors, and if it's already established that royalty is transferrable across countries, then even if it was area-dependent why wouldn't it work in Klatch?
482** Because when he's in Klatch, he's Lawrence of Arabia.
483** Don't you mean he's that guy from ''Shadowe of the Dessert''?
484** I think the best way to think about Carrot is that he is based off of two character types. He is the Long Lost Heir to the Throne, and also the Dashing Hero. When he is in a situation where the narrative causality of Kingship would not work, he becomes the Hero of the story.
485** ''Krisma. Bags of krisma''. He has indeed a very special relationship to Ankh-Morpork, but he still exudes charisma whenever he goes.
486[[/folder]]
487
488[[folder:Guild of Merchants]]
489
490* Why is the Ankh-Morpork Guild Of Merchants so feeble? Trade is the thing the city does best but the merchants - who presumably are responsible for a lot of this money - never turn up in meetings Vetinari has with the guilds (when even the Beggars are represented).
491** It seems as if the Merchant's Guild does not overly concern itself with city politics (unless it interfered with their trade one assumes). In ''Going Postal'' we meet Tim Parker (the merchant Moist reunited with his long lost love) who says he is the current Grand Ma'ster[sic] of the Guild of Merchant's (something he implies moves around annually) and he mentions how their Guild may not be posh like the Assassins or the Alchemists but 'there's lots of us' which further implies they could have quite an impact should they choose to intervene. The Financiers of the same book are clearly very important but do not seem to take the lead (or even necessarily show up) at Council meetings. Given how may Guilds there are it seem likely the Merchant's are present but simply see no reason to involve themselves in such matters. Also they may not be quite as powerful as they could be as separate guilds represent themselves in all matters, including trading, such as the Armourers.
492** Exactly. It's mentioned more than once that people don't (usually) conspire against Vetinari or otherwise rock the boat because the resultant disorder would just make things worse. This, one imagines, is especially true with commerce.
493** The Merchants Guild isn't nearly as old as those of the Assassins or Beggers, or the Thieves either if you count their centuries of "unofficial" organized crime. The merchants only started to unify in ''The Colour Of Magic'', and they'd spent their early years paying mercenaries to run those pesky barbarian-hero-types out of town, not scheming to bolster their political influence.
494** It's also possible that the Merchants are a lot less unified than the other Guilds. The powerful ones are Guilds like the Assassins and Seamstresses, those we know have scary enforcers and close-knit memberships and are therefore well suited to keeping everyone on the party line and projecting that agenda onto city politics. The Merchants don't have those advantages and therefore probably spend more time arguing over what the guild's policy actually ''is'' than on presenting their opinion to the Patrician. Take the ''Jingo'' crisis for an example: the master of Assassins could dictate guild policy and be demanding talks with Vetinari while the merchants are still mired in arguments between those trading in war supplies and those with interests in Klatch.
495** Let us not forget that the aforementioned Mr. Parker did show up at last (where we could see him) during a council meeting in ''Making Money''.
496** Another reason for the Merchants' Guild not being all that prominent is that it keeps losing people to even newer, more specialized Guilds. Vetinari apparently allows ''any'' profession to start its own guild, if it can show that the majority of its members agree. That means that any time a vocation previously lumped under "Merchants" thinks it'd be advantageous to establish a Guild of its own, its members can withdraw from the Merchants' Guild.
497** If/When Creator/TerryPratchett gets around to writing Raising Taxes, the third Moist von Lipwig book, I wouldn't be surprised if the Merchants get a more prominent role, and the whole economic status of Ankh-Morpork in general.
498
499[[/folder]]
500
501
502
503[[folder:Dwarf females and immigrants]]
504
505* So dwarfs object to their daughters taking on female characteristics, going around openly-female, the like. I get that it's supposed to be a parallel for second-generation descendants of immigrants going native, they're giving up "dwarf" traditions and embracing human ones. There's also the obvious parallel of homosexuality and transexuality in a conservative culture. It's fairly easy to follow. The problem is that dwarfs should be ''just as opposed'' to dwarfs showing obviously ''male'' characteristics. You get it beaten over your head in ''The Fifth Elephant'': "Which one's male and which one's female?" "They're both ''dwarfs.''" Presumably the dwarf language doesn't have a word for "she" in the same sense that English doesn't apply gender to words like Romantic language do, so technically speaking, "she" should be a no more offensive Morporkian substitution than "he" is.
506** Obviously male characteristics are considered dwarfy, like going around drinking beer and getting into bar fights.
507** Granted, but there are still activities on the Disc that are very clearly Male Human activities. Theatre, for example. Hwel seems to be more ashamed of not loving gold than he is about being in the theatre business. Soldiering. Being part of the Watch (Cuddy and Angua showed up at the same time; we're led to believe that, until that point, there'd been no female Watchmen).
508** Dwarfs have theatre, opera and policemen as well. They don't have women's work, and therefore there is no feminine culture.
509** Also, the more conservative grags are opposed to ''any'' dwarf living above ground. Obviously there are too many dwarfs living above ground for them to matter much. Prejudice isn't logical, but after a few generations of "normalcy" the reasons for prejudice generally fade away, though of course, never completely.
510** Since when does "not feminine" mean the same as "masculine"? Drinking beer, swinging an axe, and singing about gold isn't acting like a man, it's acting like a ''dwarf''. It just so happens that the male humans are typically a bit more dwarfish than the female ones.
511** Exactly. Breathing or enjoying a cheeseburger is no more a male/female human action than quaffing is for dwarves.
512** Cassanunda would be an example of a dwarf not accepted by other dwarfs for being "too male".
513** Like you pointed out, male and female are humans obsessions. However, human male culture have similarities with dwarfish traits, while female culture have things like shaving, and not working in mines. It's no wonder they consider being a "she" to be offensive. Dwarfs associate the pronoun not with biology, but human culture.
514** True- the dwarfs are essentially a culture which never got round to crystalising biological sex as a cultural instution, and, as such, distinctions based on biological sex do not necessarilly imply any great binary which dicatates social roles and patterns of behaviour. All dwarfs are gender neutral, and so they refer to themselves in a gender neutral sense, which just happens to be identical to the masculine sense in Morpokian and English, at least if we accept that "it" tends to refer to inanimate objects, or at least to non-humans, and so could be construed as offensively dehumanising, uh, dedwarfising. It's also possible that they actually don't really see human males as being particularly masculine, given that their defining characteristics are, to dwarfs, largely "dwarfy" rather than distinctly masculine. It's possible that, on an emotional level, they only really grasp human females as expressing a defined gender, and so only biologically female dwarfs (and, hypothetically, transgendered dwafs) feel encouraged to adopt any non-dwarfish characteristics.
515** Note that dwarfs aren't very tolerant of mavericks and tradition-breakers in general, whether or not gender is involved. Hwel was kicked out of his community for daydreaming, Gimlet almost got lynched for serving meats other than rat, and Tak only knows what other dwarfs would think of Mad!
516** To sum up a lot of what we see above, dwarfs don't have a genderless society. They have a ''one-gender society.'' Everyone is expected to act like a dwarf, and 'dwarf' is a gender role along with a species. Gender is a performance; it's the way you act and the way you are treated by society. Human males are expected to act 'manly.' Human females are expected to act 'womanly.' Dwarfs, regardless of personal plumbing, are expected to act 'dwarfish.' It just so happens that the gender role 'dwarf' much more closely resembles the gender role 'man' than the role 'woman.'
517* there’s a crucial point about dwarfs and dwarf society too - they are, by human standards, extremely long-lived; married dwarfs appear to have few children and an indeterminate proportion of them never marry at all. Their political institutions appear to be elective or by appointment. It seems that as long as the transmission of property rights (a key function of marriage) is generally recognised and stable, and the membership of the clans which seem to be important to them generally recognised, then the exact details of the biological status of individuals within them are not really tremendously important.
518
519[[/folder]]
520
521[[folder:Dwarf and troll magic]]
522
523* What kind of magic do dwarfs and trolls have? Dwarfs are considered to be premier broomstick makers, but this is obviously not exclusive to them as a species. What else can they do? Are there dwarf and troll wizards and witches?
524** They can make and repair broomsticks used for flying. We don't know if they actually ''enchant'' the things themselves or not.
525** Well, trolls ''exist'', is that not magic? Dwarfs, on the other hand... It looks that the closest thing to "magic" they have is the same as witches', which is mostly knowing sometimg the observers don't, in respect to mining more than medicine. So it looks like they get the short end of the stick on that. (Not one of those puns intended.)
526** Well, the dwarfs seem to have some sort of magic with their various 'darks'. If trolls have magic, it's likely something to do with rocks and not really comprehensible to humans. And also one or the other species likely built the Devices.
527** Probably not, as they both seem to have very complete histories, and the dwarfs at least don't know where Devices come from. For all we know, the Devices were created by a race that's long extinct.
528** Or the Creator accidentally left some widgets from his toolbox behind, same as he left the Octavo.
529** Or, of course, it doesn't matter where they came from; they are just 'devices', as in 'plot'.
530** Considering that getting trained as either a wizard or a witch would entail ''admitting what sex they are'', it's possible that dwarfs haven't '''dared''' attempt to learn either type of magic until now. Perhaps that'll change as openly-gendered dwarfs like Cheery and Casanunda become more tolerated in their society.
531** In ''Feet of Clay'', Vimes says there's no-one like a dwarf for forging magical rings. Coupled with the broomstick thing, I see "dwarf magic" as being very much to do with creating magical items. They'd probably say you don't need to actually know ''spells'' to do this, you just need to know your craft.
532[[/folder]]
533
534[[folder:Eskarina's little brothers]]
535
536* If Eskarina Smith had a little brother, would he still be a wizard? Because he'd be the eighth son of an eighth son, but Esk already got the "eighth son of an eighth son" deal, even though she's not actually an eighth son, and if she had any elder sisters, would probably not be an eighth ''anything''.
537** ...I'm not sure I follow this, but I think 'eighth son' is just being poetic/chauvinistic. Esk is an ''eighth child of an eighth child'', so she's a massively powerful wizard, and if she'd had a little brother he probably would also have been a wizard, but not as powerful as her. It's irrelevant, anyway, because it didn't happen, and ''Equal Rites'' was written before the Discworld was really solidified as a series.
538** How do you know it didn't happen? People keep saying things didn't happen when they can't know it didn't, it just didn't ''in the book''.
539** Guess we'll have to wait until the next generation, and see if Covetousness Carter (an eighth child) has an eighth child who's a wizard.
540** If any eighth child of an eighth child was born a wizard, surely somebody would have noticed that such heredity applied to both sexes, and it wouldn't just be the Krullians who acknowledge that women can be wizards. (Note that witchcraft isn't restricted to eighth daughters, else Esme and Lily Weatherwax couldn't both have been witches.) Esk's case was unique, because of the mix-up with Drum Billet's staff.
541** It's not ''only'' eighth sons of eighth sons that become wizards. It's just that eighth sons of eighth sons are always magically talented because of the way the number 8 is significant on the Disc.
542** For the exact same reason, a ninth son of an eighth son is no more powerful or likely to become a wizard than the seventh son ''because people on the Disc don't expect them to''.
543** If peoples' expectations were the ''only'' reason why eighth sons of eighth sons became wizards, doesn't that imply that a wizard whose father is belatedly exposed as having fathered an out-of-wedlock son, making the wizard # 9 instead of # 8, could lose his powers?
544** Not if he is already a wizard see? 'cause I reckon that magical talent is not only a thing that people are born with, but also something people can get if they're stubborn enough. If an assumed 8th son of an 8th son had that fact as a motivation and became a wizard, then the revelation does nothing because he has already become a wizard, i.e. he was stubborn enough, but if he didn't became a wizard in spite of the assumption, then stands to reason it was because he wasn't actually the 8th son, nor stubborn enough. It stands to reason.
545
546[[/folder]]
547
548[[folder:Rob's wives]]
549
550* Something which occurred to me while rereading ''The Wee Free Men'': Rob Anybody is described as the Big Man of the clan, a title which means he's married to the kelda. In ''A Hat Full Of Sky'' he's married to Jeannie, and Jeannie shows a dislike for Tiffany, being the person who was almost married to Rob in ''The Wee Free Men''. So, was he or wasn't he the husband of the kelda who dies in the first book? He's the Big Man, which indicates he was, but he never mentions being married before, and he's definitely given as a first-time father when Jeannie is pregnant in ''A Hat Full Of Sky''.
551** One possible explanation I thought of is that the old kelda's first husband (the actual Big Man) died some time before the start of ''The Wee Free Men''. Rob Anybody is 'the Big Man' in that he's taken over any duties that the Big Man has, but he's not actually the kelda's husband, nor is he the father of any of the other Feegles.
552** He's one of the kelda's sons who became Big Man because of natural leadership skills, thus tapping him as best of the candidates for marriage.
553** Yes, the old kelda's husband is deceased, and he passed on his Big Man title to one of their sons (because ''someone'' has to ride herd on them who's not confined to the cave). The only other member of the kelda's generation whom we meet is her lone surviving brother: William, the old gonaggle.
554** Recycled names? TP elsewhere refers to the "Dave Problem" - where lots of Thieves in Ankh-Morpork are called Dave and ingenuity gets stretched with regard to providing distinguishing nicknames. (There's a Trope about this, OneSteveLimit, or something). This also gets applied to Feegle - all the Wullies and Rabs and soforth. We may be thinking of multiple Robs here? (Also... if only one male Feegle gets to marry and have sex, how do the rest of the feegle males deal with this? Is it sublimated into anger and aggression?)
555** Judging by how ignorant/innocent of sexual mores and concepts Rob's brothers seem to be (e.g. not comprehending why Tiffany doesn't want them watching over her in the bath), it's likely that Feegles don't actually ''have'' a sex drive unless they're married. Like animals with an exclusive breeding season, sex doesn't even cross their minds unless and until the circumstances demand it.
556
557[[/folder]]
558
559[[folder:Susan and invisibility]]
560
561* Why does Susan have the power to turn invisible? She supposedly inherited it from her Grandfather but the problem is we are told many times that Death isn't actually invisible, just most humans refuse to acknowledge "Seven foot tall skeleton in black cloak walking around with big-ass scythe" so their brains sort of filter him out. Even when he interacts with humans they block all the bad data living them with vague feeling that something isn't quite right with that tall fellow. But what's so hard too believe about Susan?
562** Being too exceptional to believe is not the only way to remain unseen in plain sight. See also the method by which a person turns off their "I am here" signal, as well as the effect by which Susan somehow adds a bit of fog to peoples' immediate memories. It is quite possible that Death has the "I am here" signal in a purely metaphorical sense, since Death can appear without notice or warning as two versions of the old saying go, so she may have inherited the "unusually uninteresting sight" autoability rather than just the natural "ignore this" sense that comes from a talking skeleton holdign a scythe. Her father sure seemed to have it through parts of ''Mort''.
563** There are scenes where Death is present in a room, or a street, waiting for a client to snuff it, and ''no-one'' acknowledges his presence, not even through a mental filter. Not to mention that Death is technically everywhere at once all the time, but he only materializes for special clients. So I'm not seeing what your problem is here.
564** It's not only Death who can pass unnoticed. It's a power that seems to come with the job of AnthropomorphicPersonification, including ones that aren't scary enough for people to actively blot out of their minds. Heck, even ''Gaspode'' is subject to others' [[WeirdnessCensor selective deafness]].
565** Death has a whole bunch of powers of possibly unlimited extent, so making himself literally invisible is probably not difficult. She presumably inherited those too.
566
567[[/folder]]
568
569[[folder:Guild of Gamblers]]
570
571* Why is there a Guild of Gamblers, aside being a one-shot joke with the Alchemists? Guild of con-men or people running gambling places, certainly, but why call themselves the Guild of Gamblers? How does that work, you have to roll a six twice to join up or what?
572** It's a catchier name than the Guild of people who run gambling establishments? It's shorthand (like how the Plumbers Guild is really the Guild of Plumbers and Dunninkindivers)? For the record they have cropped more than once (just about), in one instance not even a joke but contributing to a major political discussion!
573** If I'm not mistaken, they ''do'' draw cards to see who gets to be Guildmaster each year.
574** They also regulate the crooked tricks they all use, so that a match between any two Guild members is reduced back into a game of skill and chance, since both are using the exact same shaved dice/cards.
575** Why is a Guild of Gamblers less likely than Beggars or Thieves? If the argument is that gambling is something people only do as a hobby rather than as a career, I direct you to the trope ProfessionalGambler.
576
577[[/folder]]
578
579[[folder:Troll names]]
580
581* If trolls are named after various types of rock and/or minerals (Ruby, Chrysophrase, Igneous, Coalface...), why isn't Detritus? The definition of detritus is specifically organic material, though a modern definition often includes manmade trash, but not minerals.
582** That's the joke. He's trash. Slightly figurative, but maybe it comes from the sort of stuff that's around just after they're born - and he was in a rubbish dump.
583** [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detritus_(geology) Actually...]]
584** There are also trolls named Asphalt, Moraine (accumulation of soil and rock) and Brick.
585
586[[/folder]]
587
588
589[[folder:Turtle food]]
590
591* What do Great A'Tuin and the Turtles ''eat''? For that matter, what happens to the excretions?
592** As for the dung, it was mentioned somewhere that the Discworld is orbited by small planetoids made of the stuff. Presumably, the rest simply de-orbits and floats off into space or collides with the underside of the disc/animals. For the food, it can be assumed that arrangements are made.
593** There was a line in one of the books (maybe Hogfather) where the turtle ate asteroids that would've collided with the Disc.
594** It was Thief Of Time actually.
595** According to the story of the Fifth Elephant, the four elephants aren't just made of flesh and bone, but metals too. Possibly A'Tuin and its quartet of passengers are more akin to trolls than to organic life, making asteroids a perfectly-nutritious diet for them.
596
597[[/folder]]
598
599[[folder:Assassins and Thieves Guilds]]
600
601* How does it even make sense for Ankh-Morpork to actually have a thieves' guild and an assassins' guild? Is it a case of AristocratsAreEvil?
602** Actually, both guilds are considerably less evil than the majority of the city's inhabitants as both groups tend to do their best to minimise collateral 'untidiness', and in fact both are considerably more efficient at dealing with miscreants ('miscreants' being those who attempt to move in on their alloted trades without being guild members) than the Watch, in that there are few limits on what they are allowed to do to law-breakers.
603** As mentioned in ''Guards! Guards!'', the Thieves' Guild is much more effective at crime prevention than the Watch; all they have to do is work ''less''.
604** And citizens can rest assured that Guild thieves won't ''kill'' people during a robbery, because that'd be impinging on the Assassins' Guild's territory. For example, Guild muggers attend special classes to learn how to knock a person out without causing permanent damage. Likewise, Guild assassins don't swipe stuff.
605** It is also mentioned that the thieves' guild has cut out the middleman, and is more or less the insurance industry as well - pay the monthly charge, get a card to keep in your wallet, and you're never stolen from - all perfectly legal, easier all around. Even when they do steal, they face harsh penalties if they steal more than is permitted, to prevent stealing more than a person can take. As for the assassins, they cut down on non-hired killers quite well.
606** Plus it can't be a case of Aristocrats are evil, as we're told in one book no true gentleman would dream of being trained as a thief. Boggis may well be a very important member of the city ''now'', even mentioned in Feet of Clay as a potential candidate for ''Patrician'', but that's because times have changed and the Guild is an important organization for the smooth running of the city, not because any nobles are trained there.
607** It's a case of Vetinari being Vetinari. Organized crime already existed when he attained the Patricianship, so rather than waste his time trying to eliminate it, he made both Guilds official, and therefore accountable. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
608** The assassins were already official since they occur in Winder's time.
609** Not exactly. They existed, and the crappy government never tried to do anything about them, but they weren't legally recognized.
610** You're getting them mixed up with the ''Thieves'' Guild. The Assassin's Guild still had the same "posh school to send your kids to" reputation even when Vetinari was a child and a student of the place.
611** O/P has the right question, just the wrong target. Remember Discworld is a parody, originally of the Fantasy Genre. If you played D&D in the 80's/early 90's, or read the books that inspired Gygax, you couldn't throw a stick in any large city without hitting the headquarters of a shadowy organisation completely unknown to the authorities. Fantasy Cities have Theives and Assassins Guilds, the Narativium says so.
612** Because they were a real thing once. Why is it a problem when they are in a book?
613
614[[/folder]]
615
616[[folder:Assassins' Guild name]]
617
618* I've only read the Watch books, so this may be answered in another, but why is the Assassins' Guild still named that way? Their only role appears to be to assure they aren't responsible for whatever murder is central to the plot, educate the young nobility and send trainee assassins on trial runs to Vimes' home. The Thieves' guild seems to provide its own expeditive justice, so they don't really need to bring in the assassins for that.
619** Because you can still go to them to hire a trained killer to assassinate a target of your choice, as long as the target isn't on their "do not kill" list.
620** But does the Watch still go after the murderer then?
621** Nope. Assasins leave a chit verifying that it was official assassin business. Watch might get to check with the Guild to make sure the chit is legitimate, but they only get involved with deaths when its a non-Guild murder and the Guild can't (or won't) do anything about it. Same as the way they can't stop Thieves' Guild thievery.
622** Presumably the Guild is still successfully inhuming people on a regular basis, as the discussion of taxes in ''Jingo'' revealed it'd made several million dollars in the previous year. That can't just be from tuition.
623** Don't bother about the logic of the Assassins' Guild. The way I personally rationalise things goes like this : Discworld runs on narrative causality, so things that are plot-important/believable/make 'sense' happen. The Assassins, by tradition, take this one step further : they do lots of things that are otherwise irrational, because they're traditional, or just cool - for instance, refusing to inhume people from a distance, or wearing black instead of colours that actually don't show up at night (Vetinari, of course, has realised this). Therefore, Discworld has an Assassins' Guild because assassins are cool. Lawyered.
624
625[[/folder]]
626
627[[folder:Guild of Seamstresses name]]
628
629* Okay, Guild of Seamstresses. Why is it called that again? I know what it actually is, but can someone explain the wordplay to me, because so far no one has given me the plausible explanation without hesitation and doubt.
630** It's not wordplay. Prostitutes call themselves seamstresses because that's a much more respectable occupation. This is TruthInTelevision - in the 19th century, in places where prostitution was illegal, prostitutes would often pretend to be seamstresses or dressmakers, and "seamstress" became a slang term for a prostitute. The joke is that, in Ankh-Morpork, the prostitutes calling themselves seamstresses vastly outnumber the genuine seamstresses.
631** Outnumber the genuine seamstresses? It's been established in-story that they vastly outnumber the ''sewing needles''.
632** Significantly, it's a source of income that allows a woman to work from home, without any visible tools or output (everyone has some textiles about the house), and without any sort of contracts or regular customers. In other words, without actually searching her house and following her social contacts, you can't tell if a woman is earning her living by casual sewing or prostitution.
633** Actually, it is wordplay, a bit. "They call themselves seamstresses. Hem hem."
634** In one of Shakespeare's plays, he has a Bawd(or madam) referring to the ladies who board in her house as "three or four gentlewomen who make their livings by the prick of their needles".
635** I always thought of it along the terms of 'threading a needle'.
636
637[[/folder]]
638
639[[folder:Colon's military service]]
640
641* Fred Colon is said to be a military man with an exemplary rec- well a record. But when did he have the time? He was in at least 2 regiments according to ''Jingo'', so did he leave the watch to join the army and then come back? He was in the Watch when Vimes joined in ''Night Watch''. And I'm fairly sure in ''Night Watch'' he talked about wanted to join the army. And then the next time we see him he's been in the Watch for years and years and suddenly a military man?
642** There's about 30 years separating the two times of NW, so even if we put GG at 10 years before the start of NW that still gives us about 20 years to play around with. If he left with a year of the revolution, he could do 3-4 years in each regiment, and still make it to Watch Sergeant in time to appear in GG.
643** Considering how the past events in ''Night Watch'' wrapped up, it's possible that Fred couldn't stomach working in the Watch after seeing [[spoiler: his friends cut down by the new Patrician's men]], so resigned from police work for a time. Colon may be dim, but he's human, and he does get outraged when aristocrats abuse their privileges and treat the Watch as expendable.
644* it’s described (particularly in Jingo, but mentioned elsewhere) that aristocrats “raise the regiments” in times of need. There is no standing army, as such; only a semi-permanent cadre of Officers, NCOs and senior “other ranks” in the various retinues of the aristocracy. Armies presumably campaign during the traditional “season” (roughly Easter to Harvest) or specific campaigns, so Fred Colon’s military service might consist of short periods separated by indeterminate intervals.
645
646[[/folder]]
647
648[[folder:Ridcully and football]]
649
650* An interesting point, in Reaper Man it's mentioned that Ridcully wants to put together a football team (yes, it actually mentions the word 'football'), yet in Unseen Academicals he seems dead-set against it, so what happened between the two that changed his mind so drastically?
651** Getting a much clearer view of the athletic prowess of his employees, no doubt.
652** It's only mentioned in Reaper Man as a rumour that's going around the city. It might not have been true.
653** In ''Literature/ReaperMan'', a dialogue between the two Ridcully brothers reveals that Mustrum is dead against smoking to the point of being militant about it. Yet get to ''Literature/UnseenAcademicals'' and he's practically an addict - he has withdrawal symptims when Mrs Whitlow confiscates his tobacco. So attitudes change?
654*** The sheer amount of secondhand smoke in a place like Unseen University could plausibly give a man a nicotine addiction all by itself. Moreover, Mustrum was isolated from UA's internal culture until he was brought in to lead the university. It's quite possible that years of living among the other wizards have worn some of the "corners" off his attitudes and preferences.
655
656[[/folder]]
657
658[[folder:Vetinari as a fat man]]
659
660* So if [[CharacterizationMarchesOn the fat Patrician from the first couple books is Vetinari]], does that mean that Vetinari probably has that kind of horrible baggy skin thing people get when they lose massive amounts of weight? Apparently he goes from obese to bony. That's quite unusual. And there is also the fact that as a teenage student, he acts the way he does in later books, so his personality changes and then changes back. Those pesky History Monks again, you think? Or perhaps the stress of being Patrician caused him to have a brief lapse in acting in accordance with his basic nature of being ascetic and extremely clever, and also to drown his sorrows in food. Still: baggy skin. Ewww.
661** Vetinari wore a fatsuit and only pretended to be dumb and have a different personality, because face it the city council would have never picked someone as competent as him in charge of the city.
662** WordOfGod was that he lost weight because of the stress of the job. When pressed, though, Pratchett admitted to just having become a better writer.
663** There's a speculative piece of fanfic that tries to square this particular circle: [[http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7158148/1/The-Beginning The Beginning]]. It's quite plausible!
664** Actually, if it weren't for him being directly referenced as Vetinari is might actually be possible to assume that this figure was actually Lord Snapcase (was he referred to as 'mad', or 'homicidal'?).
665*** Acually, the Patrician isn't mentioned by name until ''Sourcery'', where he is thin.
666** I believe it was Lord Winder who was Homicidal, and Lord Snapcase who was Mad. Which always rather puzzled me; Snapcase was one of the later Patricians, and you'd expect a title as plain and matter-of-fact as "Mad" to have been snapped up by one of the very early ones, since it's fairly heavily implied that pretty much every Patrician has been a few cards short of a full deck.
667** Nobody ever said they couldn't have had more than one Mad Lord Fill-in-the-Blank as Patrician. The last king died sufficiently long ago that epithets like "Mad" or "Homicidal" have surely all been used several times, albeit probably no more than once a generation for each.
668** I'm fairly certain there _have_ been multiple patricians called "Mad Lord..." Snapecase has also been referred to as Psycho-Neurotic Lord Snapecase, though. [Note: previous claims about use of the word mad as a generic title are not supported by the Discworld Wiki, though three of the named patricians (and Vetinari) have no title given except Lord. There has also been at least one other never Canonically mentioned, as we hear about Olaf Quimby II but never OQ I]
669** The Patricianship isn't hereditary, though. There's no reason to assume Olaf Quimby I was Patrician just because his son was.
670** We don't use numbers after a name for anyone but royalty in Britain. This can get messy when dealing with historical records of a family with traditional/hereditary forenames, like some of the Scottish clans. You'll occasionally see senior/junior or pere/fils, but mostly you just have to suck it up.
671** And yet Olaf Quimby II is canon, nevertheless. Perhaps, in that respect, Ankh-Morpork nobility take after a more continental tradition than RealLife Britain, ''a la'' Vetinari's and other noble families' Italianate surnames.
672
673[[/folder]]
674
675[[folder:Young wizards and geeks]]
676
677* Why do all young wizards we see seem to be the magical equivalent of science geeks? Are there no young magically talented men interested in the wizardly equivalent of Liberal Arts in Unseen University?
678** because the whole point of UU is to corral the wizards, and get them too wrapped up in over-eating and internal politics, or anything else they see fit, BEHIND WALLS rather than conducting general free-for-all warfare in the wider world. Wizards might be comic in some ways but they are also plain dangerous, and it doesn’t do to forget that.
679** The closest things we've seen were in ''Literature/MovingPictures'' and ''Literature/SoulMusic''... which implies that magical liberal arts are the domain of [[EldritchAbomination forces they'd rather not meddle in]].
680*** Magic on the Discworld is connected to belief. Anything magical that is likely to directly alter people's feelings (the arts) or study and manipulate people's feelings (most of the social sciences) is going to set up nasty feedback loops. About the only things it's "safe" to do in terms of "magical liberal arts" would be the study of languages (and I think they have a few position titles for that) or of history. And history on the Discworld is so fragmented that I can easily imagine UA's faculty having given up on the field in disgust.
681** A few of Rincewind's job titles have a Liberal Arts-y flavor to them.
682** In ''Literature/MakingMoney'', Dr. Hicks (later, Hix) called [[strike: necromancy]] Post-Mortem Communications a "fine art", because persuading the dead to stop by for a chat is largely a matter of theatrics.
683** And if not done right it can be fatal.
684** It's easier to get funding in the sciences. And, more seriously, magic is the Disc's science. Because of this, there isn't really a liberal arts tradition for universities on the Disc. (Mind you, the ''creation'' of one would make for a fun book.)
685** The wizard who headed the Liberal Studies program got eaten by the Luggage, way back in ''The Light Fantastic''. Could be, the University council never ''did'' get around to appointing a replacement.
686*** The University back then still ran on KlingonPromotion. You keep what you kill, so technically The Luggage is the professor of Liberal Arts. But since it's not a wizard, that falls to the nearest Wizzard to take the job, bucket and coal, and duties.
687[[/folder]]
688
689[[folder:Margolotta and Angua]]
690
691* How come both lady Margolotta and Angua's family share the exact same surname? (it's not like we've seen any other vampires/Uberwald people with the same surname so I doubt it's meant as a generic name) Given the fact that one's a vampire and the other a clan of werewolves its damn unlikely that they're related.
692** It's not a surname at all. Von Überwald simply means "of Überwald". It signifies that they're both nobility of the region. Though usually such titles are quite a bit more precise.
693** About the preciseness: It's indicated that the whole region was made up of patches of feuding countries, changing rulership, borders and names rather quickly (see middle European history for a nice round world example)."Überwald" was probably as specific as you could get, without having to change the name every three days.
694** The canonicity is questionable, but ''VideoGame/DiscworldNoir'' features a third clan of Uberwald nobility with the name von Uberwald.
695** All three families' names probably date back to the Evil Empire, which encompassed most if not all of Uberwald; hence, the lack of precision. It's likely that all three families were elevated to noble status in the first place under the Evil Emperor, who was really into monsters (see ''Unseen Academicals'').
696** As far as I know, Angua actually is her surname. Her first name is Delphine, though she's only ever referred to as such by her parents in ''Literature/TheFifthElephant''. Calling her parents "Von Uberwald" is probably more of an honorific, just like Richard in Shakespeare's Richard III is known as "Gloucester" until he's crowned (since he's the Duke of Gloucester).
697
698[[/folder]]
699
700[[folder:Margolotta's accent]]
701
702* On a similar note, what the hell happened to Margolottas's accent in ''Unseen Academicals''?
703** Most Überwaldians seem to be able to shed their accents at the drop of the hat if it suits them. She probably alters her accent to suit her needs at the moment. In Ankh-Morpork it's smart to sound like one of the locals.
704** And when teasing Vimes, it's smart-alecky to ''play up'' your accent.
705
706[[/folder]]
707
708[[folder:Moist's suit]]
709
710* Moist's suit. Not the golden one, the tatty grey one. In ''Going Postal'', Mr Pump apologises for destroying it with spot remover... and yet in ''Making Money'', Moist uses it to sneak out of the bank. What happened there?
711** He bought another one or already owned several? Tatty grey suits aren't exactly a rarity.
712** Which is ''exactly'' why Moist would buy another one.
713** Probably one with stains on it too, plus ripped pockets and no buttons..."yeah officer I saw this bloke, you should've seen the state of him, no buttons on his suit, all stained and I don't want to think about what was hanging out of his pocket. His face guv? Wurl...average I suppose, I don't recall really, but that suit..."
714
715[[/folder]]
716
717[[folder:Belief]]
718
719* This might be a silly question (I haven't read the books, just what TV Tropes has to say about them), but... Belief changes the nature of reality in Discworld. Reality there is bleaker than most characters normally realize (unless they're knurd from drinking Klatchian coffee). If the people who think it isn't bleak outnumber the people like Vimes who naturally see things as they are, how come their world hasn't become less bleak to match their beliefs?
720** While belief is important, it seems to have more effect on the supernatural than on more mundane things (for want of a better term). This is made most clear in ''Small Gods'' where Om's power is directly related to the number of people who believe in him, but on the other hand it ''doesn't matter'' what shape someone believes the world is, it's still flat and gets carried through space on a giant turtle.
721** Because most people don't believe, they just hope, which is completely different. Carrot is an exception, he really is an optimist, and note how everything always seems to go well for him...
722** More importantly, it's not just the belief of the people in the world that controls things. It's the beliefs and expectations of ''the readers''. Exactly how Narrativium interacts with the broader multiverse (of which the real world is obviously a part) is never made clear, but it is made clear that even in-universe, the universe of Discworld is not the only one.
723** The meta-answer is that Creator/TerryPratchett is JustForFun/OneOfUs, and those mentions of Quantum are not just a throw-away. You might like to start by reading up on Heisingbergs Uncertanty Principle, and Schrodingers Cat. Also consider the famous Double Slit experiment. Shine a beam of light at a barrier (such as a piece of card) with 2 thin slits in, onto a screen behind. Because light is a wave, two sets of 'ripples' extend from the back of the slits. Projected onto the screen you see a interference pattern where these two ripple cross. Now fire a series of single photons, 1 at a time at the barrier. You end up with the same interference pattern, indicating that a single photon can ''go through both slits simultaneously''. That's not the cool bit. If you then set detectors up to watch this happen ''it stops happening'' - being observed changes the thing observed. DW belief is a sort of observation. Now go and read the books. Really, what's stopping you?
724** Don't read up on them too closely, or you'll discover that physics in the real world doesn't work anything like that. And learning would be wrong. (Seriously, Discworld has not a damn thing to do with science or maths, just enjoy it as it is.)
725** It's not that being observed changes the thing, is the measuring that changes the object. Also, if you set a detector it doesn't stop from happening, what that test proves is that those particles can behave as both things, they actually are both things until you try to measure them. It behaves as a wave until you put try to measure it, and then the waveform thingy collapses and bop, you have a particle behavior.
726
727[[/folder]]
728
729[[folder:Equivilant Exchange]]
730
731* In ''The Colour of Magic'', it's stated that doing anything with magic requires an equivalent amount of energy as doing it manually. Except that for a very few instances after that book, this is NEVER again the case (This really hits when just one book later, a wizard levitates to the top of the tallest tower in the the university because he doesn't feel like walking).
732** Yeah, by knocking a stone off the top of the tower and using its falling force to catapult himself upwards. The thing is played straight in every instance, whether it's just levitation or actual teleportation.
733
734[[/folder]]
735
736[[folder:Round worlds]]
737
738* If it's such a surprise to the wizards that planets are round in our universe, why was it already called "The Roundworld Project"?
739** Because the bubble that the mini-universe is contained inside was also a sphere?
740** Also, in the first book, humans successfully flee into space. Then in the second book, the elves muck with the timeline and the humans don't get off. The wizards undo the timeline mucking but discover the humans STILL don't escape, because they need just the right amount of elvish influence...even though they originally escaped with none at all. What?
741** The elves were there in the first timeline, but the wizards don't know it until they go inside Roundworld in the second book.
742** But in the second book they were pulled into Roundworld as a side-effect of the elves going there, so before that, the elves shouldn't have been in Roundworld.
743** The best explaination is probably that the humans evolved extelligence on their own the first time around, just like we did on the RealLife version of Roundworld. The reason that chasing off the elves in the second book reduced Roundworld humans to un-extelligent slackers is that the elves only had time to sing the first note of their "song" -- presumably, a note that soothes the intended victim so it'll listen to the rest of the performance -- and that "soothing" effect lingered. When the wizards refrained from stopping them, the elves finished their song and thus, had time to introduce creativity to the human precursors -- something that would've evolved anyway, but the elves didn't know that -- yet their hanging around afterwards still tampered with history just enough to cause MedievalStasis and prevent humans from leaving the planet.
744
745[[/folder]]
746
747[[folder:7A]]
748
749* The number 8 is avoided whenever possible on the Discworld, I get that. My question is, why is it euphemistically referred to as 7A? Shouldn't it be 7B, because it's the second 7 not the first? This has been bugging me for more than a decade.
750** That's how we do nu bering in the UK. If you build a new house on a patch of land between number 7 and number 9, it becomes 7A. We don't renumber 7 to 7A and make the new one 7B
751** Take it up with the folks in charge of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_floor#12A real life.]]
752** Except that your link notes the thirteenth floor can be called 12A or 12B. So my question stands, why would anyone call it 7A (or 12A) when it is quite obviously the ''second'' 7 (or 12)?
753** Same reason that [[Franchise/StarTrek the first NCC-1701 was just "Enterprise" and the second was "Enterprise-A"]].
754** It's the second 7, but the first to require a letter. Why should they start at the second letter?
755
756[[/folder]]
757
758[[folder:Krull]]
759
760* Is Creator/TerryPratchett coming back to flesh out Krull the way he's fleshed out the rest of the Disc? It's more or less the only territory without any description past ''The Colour of Magic''...
761** Well, except the Wymberg and old Grandpa troll (or was that Light Fantastic?). Also remember, 1 book is also the most description most places get, I mean, only one book is featured in Genua AFAIK, and Al Khali is far from mapped despite appearing in two different books. Hells, the only places that are really well mapped are AM and Lancre (and Death's Domain, but that doesn't appear on any normal map).
762** Krull was (very) briefly mentioned in ''The Last Hero'', and twice in ''Mort'' before that.
763** And Al Khali is visited in both ''Sourcery'' and ''Jingo'' yet it hasn't got a map yet either.
764** or Muntab, of which virtually all we know is that it is the subject of the “Muntab Question”
765*** Where's Muntab?
766
767[[/folder]]
768
769[[folder:Goths]]
770
771* How are there goths ("these idiots who write poetry in their rooms and dress like vampires but are really vegetarians") on the disc when they haven't even heard of rock music yet?
772** Did you miss ''Literature/SoulMusic''? Also, since when is rock music a prerequisite for goths?
773** Soul Music never happened, the timeline got changed. And goths come from goth music, which comes from punk, which comes from rock.
774** Sure it happened. The exact events were changed, sure, but as late as ''The Truth'' you have both Lord Vetinari and Otto referencing it, with the latter shouting "Music viz rocks in!" triumphantly at one point. So rock and roll ''is'' around in some form.\
775And just because that's how goths came about in our world doesn't mean that's what happened on the Disc. On the Disc, it may just be because there's, you know, actual vampires to emulate.
776** People with that sort of more-morbid-than-thou attitude were behaving like that long before rock music existed in real life, too. Much of Goth fashion emulates Byron-style Romantics.
777** because Pterry thought they were a good joke, of course...
778** There are the reverse-Goths in ''Literature/CarpeJugulum'', where the younger Vampyres play a sort of reverse D&D where they "cosplay" and act out people called Pamela and Shirley, who dress drably and lead completely mundane human lives as shop assistants and accountants.
779[[/folder]]
780
781[[folder:Skullcap]]
782
783* Random nit: Why is Vetinari portrayed wearing a small skullcap resembling a yarmulke in some of the official art? It seems to be mainly in "official" depictions (his visage on a stamp or paper money) but not in like 90% of the Kidby art. Is this an artist-specific tic, or some part of his official dress uniform as head of state?
784** I figured it was just some thing the Patrician wears for such depictions, but it's more noticeable since most previous instances were on coins instead of paper, so it A) wore down and B) wasn't just Vetinari, but rather the last few Patricians.
785** I thought it was supposed to be a "Renaissance intellectual prince" thing?
786** Yep. I think Stephen Briggs started this one; it was part of his original Vetinari costume, and the only part to have remained when the rest of the costume switched from "Renaissance nobleman" to "Victorian gentleman". The first time it actually gets mentioned in a book, I think, is ''Making Money'' where it's actually part of the plot. Kidby generally seems to draw the Patrician face-on, so you can't ''see'' the skullcap...
787** If I'm not mistaken, the skullcap is also mentioned in "Going Postal" when Vetinari is put on a postage stamp. Could be wrong about that though.
788** The Pope and Cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church also wear skullcaps, albeit in white (pope) or red (Cardinals). So it isn't just a Jewish thing. Apparently senior dignitaries of the Catholic Church are preserving the formal robes and dress of mediaeval Italian princes - which, of course, they were at that time! The parellel - British judges and lawyers are the only people, todsy, who wear formal wigs, which were commonplace three hundred years ago. What was once everyday has become ceremonial.
789*** And also, knowing Vetinari, it's a way to evoke an image of entrenched, tradition-sanctioned authority, while still solidly affirming that he ''doesn't'' wear a crown instead. Like sitting in an ordinary chair at the foot of the old Throne of Ankh, it broadcasts his disinterest in being anything more regal than an administrator.
790** The skullcap is mentioned in Making Money, also, since Cosmo Lavish has it stolen in his 'want to be Vetinari' mania.
791[[/folder]]
792
793[[folder:Dog-speak]]
794
795* Why is Angua able to speak with dogs? The books show that (non-were) wolves have an ''extremely'' different mental process and style of language to dogs (and humans), so why is she able to communicate with both dogs and wolves with ease.
796** Because she's a werewolf, not a wolf. The series mentions that a dog is what happens when you give human qualities to a wolf. A werewolf is what happens when you have a human and a wolf combined. As for also speaking to wolves, think of it as her being bilingual.
797
798[[/folder]]
799
800[[folder:Age]]
801
802* Who's older, Vetinari or Vimes? From the general dynamic between the two, I would have guessed Vetinari by a few years, but Night Watch makes it weird.
803** Why? Vetinari is implicitly a few years older than Vimes in Night Watch. He's a young gentleman, so he's still in school, college-phase to be exact, whereas Vimes is poor and thus had to get a job.
804** There might be an age difference, although not a huge one. I'd say if you really wanted to stretch the age difference, young Vimes in Night Watch could be as young as 15, since that's the age Carrot was when he started as a watchman, and young Vetinari might be about 19 or 20, since it mentions that the school prefects (including Downey, in the scene where Downey is bothering him) are all at least 18. And of course, young Vetinari acts a bit older than young Vimes, since young Vetinari is always calm, cool, and collected, while young Vimes is a bit naive and moody, although that could just be a matter of personality. So maybe they could be some five years apart. But in The Fifth Elephant, Vimes did mention (to Margolotta) that he thinks Vetinari is about his age. Vetinari probably just comes across like he's significantly older than Vimes because he outranks him and also just acts more mature than everyone by about a thousand years.
805
806[[/folder]]
807
808[[folder:Death's appearances]]
809
810* Does everyone who dies meet Death (or an appropriate associate) or not? I can find many quotes, some bordering on BadassBoast, that suggest so, but then there's ''Literature/{{Mort}}'', which directly implies that he doesn't have to personally pick up everyone as long as he picks up some of them.
811** CharacterizationMarchesOn and many ideas used early on[[note]]such as trolls, Vimes in Guards! Guards! compared to in Thud! and the like[[/note]] disappear or are drastically changed in later books.
812** The scene where Death comes for the small deep-sea tube worm clarifies this: Death ''has'' to appear personally for the deaths of wizards and some others, as per ''Mort'', but he also ''chooses'' to attend ones that aren't crucial nodes to make sure that things are operating smoothly. As he's become more interested in mortal affairs, he's probably showing up voluntarily to more of them than he used to.
813
814[[/folder]]
815
816[[folder:French translation]]
817
818* In French, the word 'Singe' means both Monkey and Ape. So how do the French translations of Discworld novels deal with the fact that it is 'monkey' and not 'ape' that is the Librarians BerserkButton
819** They use the word 'anthropoïde' . 'Singe' is used for the BerserkButton.
820** Presumably they do the same thing they do in the Finnish translation, as Finnish also doesn't have different words for the two. they turn it into a distinction between 'monkey' and 'orangutan', having the Librarian insist on the latter.
821** In the Brazillian Portuguese translation (which also doesn't have a word for "ape"), it became "monkey" and "simian"
822** The Norwegian translation treats it thus: The word for both "monkey" and "ape" is "apekatt" (which means "ape-cat," despite apes not being related to cats in any way), but this word is often shortened to just "ape." So in these translations, the Librarian simply resents being likened to cats, and the warning goes "You can call him an ape if you like, but ''don't mention the part with the cat!"''
823*** Demonstrating once again the absolute brilliance of the Discworld translators
824** In German, we only have 'Affe', too, though there is the much more rarely used word 'Menschenaffe' ('Man-Ape). The problem is solved by having him rage over being called 'Tier', i.e., 'animal'.
825
826
827[[/folder]]
828
829[[folder:Carrot writing to his parents]]
830
831* Why is there so little mention of Carrot writing to his parents in the later books? For that matter, what ever happened to Minty?
832** He is still writing to his parents. Minty was his ChildhoodSweetheart (probably. He was almost sure that she is female) but he got her in trouble and was forced to go to city. It is mentioned that Minty never replied to his letters.
833** It's been many years since Carrot left home. It's entirely likely that Minty's gotten involved with somebody else by now, just as Carrot did with Angua.
834
835[[/folder]]
836
837[[folder:Cohen the last hero]]
838
839* How exactly is Cohen the 'last' hero? In the very first book Rincewind knows several, it's mentioned that there are so many going to Ankh-Morpork that they're considered a queue, and Rincewind introduces Twoflower to Hrun. Even History Monks (which is starting to be the handwave for everything) wouldn't explain what suddenly happened to all of them.
840** The barbaric type of hero is dying out, because they either died or retired or in at least one case joined the watch. Hrun is mentioned in Interesting times as a retirer, and Cohen seems shocked at the numbers of heros dying in battle or of old age.
841** But I've also read the theory that the title refers to Carrot as the "clean" kind of hero who is taking the torch from the barbars.
842* I believe there's a short story called Troll Bridge in which Cohen and a Troll under-a-bridge reminisce over how downhill heroing and villaining has become in recent times. So it isn't that Cohen is the last literal hero as a profession...more that he's a hipster.
843[[/folder]]
844
845[[folder:Assassin Insurance]]
846
847* In Literature/MakingMoney, Topsy Lavish pulls a very clever ploy where she leaves all her shares in the bank to her dog, leaves the dog to Moist von Lipwig, and then files a contract with the Assassins' Guild to kill Moist if the dog suffers an unnatural death. Not only does this set the plot in motion by ''forcing'' Moist to accept the responsibilities he was ducking, but in a way it also protects him. The Assassins won't kill the dog, because that's not going to look good on anyone's resume, and they won't kill ''Moist'' because you can't have two contracts out on a single individual. Apparently even if the first contract is ''conditional''. Is it just me or is this the best form of Assassination Insurance ever? If you are a rich and powerful individual (and thus a likely target for Assassination) simply take a contract out on yourself with some ridiculous conditions. Or, if having yourself inhumed is against Assassin rules, get someone to do it for you. I'm surprised the nobles of Ankh-Morpork ever fear the Assassins if this sort of situation can be arranged. And they certainly know the Guild's rules well enough; most of them were educated there.
848** Remember that taking contracts is fully optional for the assassins guild. Going by Pratchett's style, I'd assume that this happened once, and the guild bent its considerable influence into fulfilling the conditions for assassination, thus earning a commission and discouraging smartasses in one fell swoop.
849*** And if not the assassins themselves decide to make a demonstration out of you for being a smartass, that particular scam DOES seem a bit like tempting fate. I'm sure that wouldn't be a problem on Discworld or anything... "A contract to assassinate me if and only if a dragon sits on the throne (hehe, as if that will happen. Everyone know they are extinct... huh? Why is everyone screaming and pointing towards the sky?)"
850** For that matter, there's technically no reason a human couldn't take out a contract on themselves, then specify a date five hundred years in the future at which it's to be carried out. So long as they pay the full fee in advance, with no refund for the person's heirs if they die of natural causes before it comes due, the Guild surely wouldn't have a problem with that: they get their money, the target gets protection from them, and they might even ''defend'' the target from non-Guild killers if they have the chance. It'd be the Assassins' version of life insurance, same as the Thieves' Guild offers theft "insurance".
851** The Assassins probably allow that little loophole... as long as they can control it themselves. Seems like a pretty good way of weaselling out of contracts they don't like. "No, sorry, can't kill that 'Carrot' chap for you. Already have a contract on him, see. Since when? About five minutes. So sorry, please enjoy a glass of "lemonade" on your way out."
852
853[[/folder]]
854
855[[folder:Double meaning Snuff]]
856
857* So, anyone knows the double meaning of ''Literature/{{Snuff}}'', and why does the latest book has it for a title? I've read it and wonder if I've missed something other than Vimes randomly taking a pinch of snuff here and there.
858** Well, there's the tobacco tax that drives people to smuggle, which is a big motive behind the villains, and Wee Mad Arthur discovers the goblin slaves in a Hondwanaland tobacco farm, so it does have bearing on the plot. In addition to tobacco snuff, there's also the meaning of it meaning "to kill", which is something that Vimes won't ever do, no matter how much someone deserves it. There's probably more to it, but if so, I don't know what.
859** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvV03htXBeU Word of God]]: the word "snuff" is being used to refer to both the tobacco product and to the act of death. In the book, the former is causing the later.
860
861[[/folder]]
862
863[[folder:Feet memory]]
864
865* Why does Sam Vimes have to use the sense memory of his feet to find his way back to the History Monks' temple in ''Night Watch'', when Lu Tze explicitly tells him that they are in the funny foreign temple next to the shonky shop on (I think) Half Moon Street? It's a ''tour de force'' of memory, sure, but a completely unnecessary one!
866** Either Vimes isn't good at remembering directions, or that's just how he finds his way around--instead of remembering street names and other landmarks, he finds his way by his feet.
867** Vimes self-identifies as a "really suspicious bastard". He probably didn't believe Lu-Tze was telling him the truth about the location of the Monks' headquarters, or at least he trusts his own feet more than a little bald wrinkly smiling man.
868** Besides, he's 30 years in the past. Just because the monk headquarters in Vimes' present is next to the sonky shop doesn't necessarily mean that it was there 30 years ago (remember, the sonky shop didn't even exist 30 years ago, if I recall correctly).
869** The Sam Vimes that got the explanation was in a stable out-of-the-normal-timeline timeloop. Lu Tze says something about Vimes not cooperating unless he has all the answers, then takes him aside to have a little chat and gives him all the information Vimes wants. The the history monks send that knowing Vimes back in time to the point where he started asking questions, so he can give himself the information he really needs, but it's a censored version, not including, among others the location of the temple. It kinda goes: "I am you, and I can prove it, so trust me. I have asked them all the questions and gotten all the answers and we are okay with the course of action, but you can't have all the answers right now." Once Not-Knowing-Vimes is convinced, the part of time containing Knowing-Vimes gets deleted. Basically It's the time monks working with loopholes and making things messy in very creative ways.
870** This. Remember, Vimes is ''surprised'' that he recalls Soon Shine Sun's name, and is puzzled that the Garden of Inner-City Tranquility feels so familiar. He doesn't have any ''conscious'' memory of his conversation with Sweeper, just the fragmentary shadows of memory that linger after a time-loop.
871
872[[/folder]]
873
874[[folder:Lady Luck]]
875
876* Is Lady Luck a goddess or an anthropomorphic personification?
877** [[FalseDichotomy Yes]].
878** Goddess. IIRC she never actually appears outside Dunmanifestin, and the thing about anthropomorphic personifications is that they have to be personifications; i.e. make the thing they personify happen in a human analogue. Death walks (through walls)and talks (with his bare jawbone), as he does the Duty. The Lady is never shown to actually cause luck to happen (beyond playing games with the lives of men).
879** The Lady did appear to Rincewind in person in one of the earliest books.
880** Apparently the gods aren't sure...
881
882[[/folder]]
883
884[[folder:Wizards and knowing death time]]
885
886* Why don't wizards who know their time of death use this knowledge? I mean a wizard can do something dangerous (i. e. jump from a high cliff) without putting his life in danger if he is to die several years later?
887** They don't learn about it that far in advance. They learn maybe a few weeks before it happens. And they do use the knowledge--usually by throwing big parties, emptying out their wine cellars, lending money from people, drinking on the tab (credit) without fitting the bill afterwards, that sort of thing.
888** In fact, I think that it was either in Mort or Soul Music that Albert returns back into the world after centuries spent in Death's domain, enters Mended Drum (formerly Broken Drum) and is asked by current barkeep to fit the bill he made those hundreds of years ago when he was two weeks away from dying.
889** It's likely that sensing one's death only applies to death by natural causes. If a witch or wizard chooses to take risks that might oblige Death to reschedule their appointment for an earlier date, that's their own lookout.
890** It's not just "likely", it's stated outright in ''Reaper Man'' when Windle is grousing about nobody remembering it's his death-day.
891** FridgeHorror thought: it'd only take one smartarse spending the decade between his mountaineering accident and his actual death in a vegetative state on magical life support to discourage the rest.
892** I forget where it says this, but I'm pretty sure that's the WordOfGod explanation. The quote goes something along the lines of, "They are aware that there is such a thing as a ''lingering'' death." ''Nanny Ogg's Cookbook'' also mentions an instance of a wizard who died of drinking too much at his Going-Away Party.
893** I would have thought Wizards would be all too aware of what happens to people who try to be Mister Clever-Dick on the Disc. What with narrativium and vengeful gods and all.
894** It's pretty explicitly stated that wizards (and witches) only know when their ''natural'' lives end; i.e. if they are allowed to die of old age. They can't foresee murders, death in battle or accidents which might end their lives ahead of time.
895** Is it? I remember at least one wizard who knew death was coming, so he climbed inside an impregnable box-- sans air-holes-- and died of asphyxiation.
896** Presumably he was going to die of a heart attack or something anyway, and the suffocation just sped up the timetable by a few hours while adding a dose of irony.
897** Or it was a SelfFulfillingProphecy. The wizard in question only knew death was coming because mere hours earlier, Death had taken a mild but understandably rather disconcerting interest in him at a previous general meeting. He just happened to have the box around out of paranoia that one of his colleagues was going to try taking his job via KlingonPromotion.
898** If wizards could foresee their own deaths by anything ''other'' than natural causes, there probably wouldn't have been as much of a tradition of "dead men's pointy boots" at UU prior to Ridcully's administration.
899
900[[/folder]]
901
902[[folder:Harry King the knight]]
903
904* It's mentioned in ''Snuff'' that Harry King owes his knighthood, or at least thinks he does, to Vimes putting in a good word for him with Vetinari. Did this troper overlook some event that would make Vimes well-disposed to Harry, or leave him owing the man a favor? Sure, William de Worde and Moist von Lipwig are both indebted to Harry, but Vimes isn't fond of either of them.
905** Is Vimes so corrupt that the only time he'll give someone a good word is in return for services rendered? Maybe he just noticed a competent, reasonably honest, self-made businessman.
906** No criticism against Vimes intended, here; I just wondered if I'd missed a short story or something where King and he were shown getting along well.
907** Have you read ''The World of Poo'', the companion book to ''Snuff''? In that book, Harry makes a brief appearance for a conversation with the young boy who is the main character. This book is Young Sam's favorite book in ''Snuff''. It could be that Vimes takes kindly to Harry King partly because he's somehow indulged Young Sam's interest in poo in a similar way. If Harry made Young Sam's year by taking him on a tour similar to the one in the book, I suspect Vimes would pretty much be his friend for life. Even if that's not the reason, Vimes loves making the old school aristocracy uncomfortable. Vimes becoming one of their number seriously ruffles their feathers. I wouldn't totally put it past Vimes to suggest Harry King for all of the above (he performs a valuable service in the city, which is more than you can say for most of the old peerage, and has pulled himself up by his own bootstraps, much like Vimes has) plus the delicious bonus that the very existence of ''Sir'' Harry King will annoy the self-important aristocracy he hates so much.
908
909[[/folder]]
910
911[[folder:Ridcully as Archchancellor]]
912
913* How and why is Ridcully selected to be Archchancellor of the Unseen University? He was away from Ankh-Morpork (according to his L-Space Wiki profile) for nearly 40 years! Wouldn't it be better if they named someone who actually ''stayed'' in the city? Given, most senior wizards don't have a good track record at being trusthworthy, but one would think that 40 years' absence would leave Mustrum Ridcully largely out-of-touch of the institution he's supposed to be leading.
914** Him being out of touch was the whole reason they picked him, it's stated outright in his first appearance.
915** More specifically, they picked someone out of touch with the University partly to avoid the things that happened in the first nine books of the series, which included power hungry archchancellors trying to take over and destroy the world, and they were all acutely embarrassed at what they'd done during ''Sourcery''. They picked a new leader in an effort to distance the university from all of that.
916** So, someone who hasn't been in Ankh-Morpork cannot be corrupted by Ankh-Morpork? That actually makes a lot of sense!
917** They hoped someone out of touch would be easy to assasinate once he'd outlived his usefulness.
918** Good luck trying to put a dagger into the back of someone who's good at hunting and shooting with crossbows and probably other hunting methods, and is also one of the rare wizards who is actually in a pretty good shape.
919*** The wizards, not being outdoorsy types with experience of all this, probably DidNotThinkThisThrough ...
920** Note that Ridcully is also very qualified, his list of achievements and awards is often stated to be extremely impressive, and he's always portrayed as a truly powerful wizard in a way many of the other senior facility never are. Coupled with that is the impression that given he had never expressed any interest in political power, and had actively avoided it by going out into the countryside, he would be an unambitious, boring, stable man, of the kind they really needed at that moment.
921
922[[/folder]]
923
924[[folder:Younger wizard origin]]
925
926* If wizards aren't allowed to get married and have children, where did the younger wizards come from?
927** Eighth son of an eighth son is a wizard, and you might get the random wizard out of regular breeding of normal people. Also, probably a fair number of wizards sleep around at least a little with the seamstresses if nothing else; it really isn't a problem as long as they have seven children or less.
928** Same place you get young [[Franchise/StarWars Jedi]] from.
929** It's not just hereditary. Even in a magically-inclined family like the Weatherwaxes, there are plenty of non-magical people in each generation too.
930** When magic does run in families, the sisters and non-wizard brothers of wizards are certainly free to have kids. Some of those will carry the knack; Victor Tugelbend took after his uncle, for example. And speaking of Victor, anyone who flunks or drops out of UU would be free to get married if they want, as is a wizard who's renounced the title like Mrs. Earwig's husband.
931
932[[/folder]]
933
934[[folder:Reading guide]]
935
936* I can't make heads or tails of [[http://www.lspace.org/books/reading-order-guides/the-discworld-reading-order-guide-20.jpg this (fan-made) reading order]]. What IS that mess? Where does it start? Where does it end? It just twists around like a snake! This seems to be the ''only'' suggested reading order out there, too- at least, it's the only one that anybody links to. I just want to know where I should start reading ''Discworld'', I shouldn't have to have a spiral-shaped brain to figure that out!
937** Look at the legend at the top left. It's really fairly clear--each row is a subseries, and the reading order is left to right. The dotted lines just mean something in the book refers back to the book connected by the dotted line.
938
939[[/folder]]
940
941[[folder:Twoflower's Luggage]]
942
943* In Interesting Times, Rincewind brags about the luggage only to be told that they're [[WeHaveThoseToo common in the Agatean Empire.]] Only Twoflower found his in one of those mystical "there one minute gone the next" shops and clearly treated it as some sort of valuable artifact, so... were there just a ''lot'' of those shops?
944** There are exactly as many of those shops as there are stories that need them. Narrativium, remember. The Luggage has a bit more personality most chests, and is clearly the sapient pearwood version of a main character. You could only get a chest with special qualities like that in a special sort of shop (and for a very special traveler too), and the Disc's narrative field happily obliged.
945** We never actually get to look inside any of the ''other'' animated travel accessories from ''Interesting Times''. It's possible that most of them ''aren't'' BiggerOnTheInside, and don't sprout teeth and start swallowing people when they're pissed off or their owner is threatened. So naturally Twoflower would still consider his unusual and would've gotten it somewhere special.
946
947[[/folder]]
948
949[[folder:Leonard of Quirm's age]]
950* Leonard is specifically described as "not, in fact, all that old" but merely [[YoungerThanTheyLook old-looking]] in ''Literature/MenAtArms''. ''The Art of Discworld'' states that he was a contemporary of Nanny Ogg (and that they had a bit of a fling), who in ''Literature/{{Maskerade}}'' turns out to have had a sketch done of her as a young woman, which Granny estimates was sixty years ago. So Nanny is probably at least 76. It's possible, although not stated, that Leonard did the sketch of Nanny (the "doodle, doodle, doodle" phrase she uses describing the young artist who did the sketch is also used in ''Literature/MenAtArms'' in reference to Leonard). Also, due to the events of ''Literature/WyrdSisters'', all the characters who were in Lancre at the time are fifteen years younger than those who weren't. If we assume Leonard did the sketch of Nanny, he'd probably be at least ninety, which he's explicitly stated not to be ("he would probably still look about the same at the age of ninety"). Even if he didn't do the sketch, you'd have to assume she was a fair bit older than him when they had their fling, but if he ''did'' do the sketch (seventy-five years ago!) then something is hinky. Unless Granny's estimate was very uncharitable, perhaps.
951** Knowing Leonard, he may have invented an anti-aging potion at some point, then gotten distracted and forgotten all about it.
952** Or he just happened to be on a landscape-painting tour of Lancre during the ''Wyrd Sisters'' time-skip incident. If he can visit the sunken version of Leshp for inspiration, another trip to the Ramtops is no bother.
953[[/folder]]
954
955[[folder:The development of new technology]]
956* Wouldn't the development of moving pictures and firearms - things already seen on the Disc, but weaponized by bad guys - repeat itself with the way people were progressing with tech on the Disc? Would there be a way to keep things getting out of hand like they did before?
957** For Firearms: enough people (including the Assassins) would have reason to tamp down on the ''re''development, given what happened in ''Men At Arms''. And there's enough trouble with the various "spring-gonne" type items; several characters mention how much trouble the holders would be in if they were 'officially' caught with the spring-gonne, including from the Assassin's guild, so there seems to be an informal agreement to impede gun usage/development.\
958\
959For moving pictures: the "bag guy" in that case was (partially) "Location, location, Location". The first theater screen was build near a weak spot in reality, allowing The Things From The Dungeon Dimensions through with enough people believing in what the screen was showing. If they chose a different second spot, or just remembered how the first movie industry was a financial disaster, there might not be a problem.
960
961[[/folder]]

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