The Discworld Thread

Otto is great and probably my favorite Discworld vampire but yeah Sacharissa and William are much better as background characters where they're much less subject to scrutiny.

Admittedly this viewpoint is probably influenced by reading the Lipwig books before the Truth.

Oh yeah, Otto was great. But he was the only one of the main crew (Rocky was barely there) that I actively liked.

Since it seems we don't have a dedicated thread to the Watch series, I might as well post this here.

Seems like the cast is well underway. I am kinda bothered by the fact that Carcer is a person of colour, but apart from that all the actors definitely look the part, apart possibly for Lady Sybil's actress. I don't think I have seen them elsewhere so I can't comment on their abilities.

Edited by C105 on Sep 11th 2019 at 5:59:32 PM

Sybil's actress I think I'd need a body shot of to decide how well she looks the part. A lot of the good lady's physical description in the books is about how she's built like a galleon and so forth.

Carrot, though, that is some square-chinned boy scout perfection right there.

Honestly the thing I am most curious about re: Carcer is just how explicit they get with his crimes. Book Carcer racks up a fairly hefty body count but mostly off-screen so I wonder if they'll keep to that less-is-more mentality.

Also apparently the series will follow a crime-per-episode format, so I wonder if they'll use Carcer as a one-off antagonist, or rather some kind of chessmaster à la Moriarty.

Can't see Carcer as a mastermind, but he could certainly pull off recurring villainy by virtue of being bastard hard to catch.

Yeah, Carcer wasn't really a mastermind, just a psychopath who was really good at what he did (mainly killing people). The guy went from prisoner to sergeant in the local Secret Police within a short time after being released.

Though his behaviour - the constant smiling, the laughter - could probably cause some people to underestimate him (and die because of that).

Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Sep 14th 2019 at 7:22:59 PM

I like their choice for Vimes and maybe Carrot depending on build, but I'm not feeling the rest.

I finally read Unseen Academicals, it sure was some sports. My awkward point of comparison is to the hundreds of sports anime out there where the characters were gripping enough even if Shank is one of the weakest antagonists (though this is definitely more of a man vs society type of story so that's forgivable).

I'm not a sports person but I think the satire came clear enough and the final match where they actually get around to playing the revised edition easily makes up for everything else since there was a lot of meandering beforehand.

Some negatives were the romance was pretty mediocre tbh, the Hix gag of being the Token Evil Teammate was my least favorite gag because it's so one-note, and Juliet's subplot is pretty weak.

The new four main characters were great, and I liked how like Thud, it gave a look at UU with all the changes happening under Vetinari's initiative with the Dean and Turnipseed moving on, Stibbons somehow managing to have all the power as the final result of his assistant status, the University's Football team, etc.

Finished Thief of Time. Liked it quite a bit, timey wimey stuff is fun when done well and Lu Tze has to be one of my favorite Discworld characters yet. Bit sad to realize that it's the last Death/Susan book, though, even if Susan's character didn't have a whole lot more to go on with. About that, did the... romance, I guess? with Lobsang feel completely random? I mean, not only is she apparently in her mid 20s or something (immortals, yeah, but that's not relevant right now) while he's a teenager, but none of their interactions were remotely romantic before it kinda was assumed at the end that they had something going on. Not sure how I feel about Jeremy essentially disappearing entirely from the story about two-thirds in, either.

Yeah, the Susan/Lobsang "romance" came out of nowhere and had little to no buildups. And Jeremy just got shafted. I would at least like Jeremy and Lobsang to interact before they dediced to merge.

My favourite part of Thief Of Time was Death's subplot about trying to recruit the other Horsemen and how becoming personifications has unexpectedly made them into, well, people.

Lu Tze and Rule One were funny too, especially when he tries to explain it to a hungry/angry/horny mammoth

Edited by jakobitis on Sep 23rd 2019 at 12:16:12 PM

Not even a third into Jingo and wow Pratchett was intensely on the money with a lot of the topics he's satirizing

The fact that a lot of the stuff that it covers is still relevant today is pretty depressing.

I'm still trying to get through Thief of Time. Had it recommended to a friend because I liked Mort and Reaper Man, but I'm just not too interested in it all. Seeing how Auditors react to being human is interesting, but I think I liked them better as background characters, and I think I prefer the Good Omens take on the Four Horsemen to the Disc's versions. Ronnie was fun, though.

Are there any other Discworld books like Going Postal? I rather liked how dark and serious it got at times, and Vetinari was at his absolute best. It's probably my favorite book ever right now.

I'd say Making Money, Thud!, Snuff, or Soul Music.

The Truth as well.

Finished Jingo.

It's definitely in my top tier and Pratchett was on fire with some of the stuff discussed throughout.

Shame Ahmed doesn't appear again AFAIK because he was great, the awkward Vetinari road trip is amazing from start to finish, and Carrot and Vimes got a really good showing in their excursion.

The alternate timeline intersecting was one of those jokes where it was pretty funny until it very suddenly wasn't. But at least this is the timeline where that didn't happen and everything worked out well.

The final Curious Squid punchline was what really got me.

I am in the process of rereading all my Discworld books, and I happened to just have finished Jingo a few days ago. I think it may qualify as my favourite story in the Watch series. The Vetinari road trip is just that enjoyable.

I think that the thing I admire most about Pratchett and his writing is how well he managed to balance the humour and serious points, he can go from lame puns and running gags and suddenly hit you square in the emotions. Even books like Jingo and Night Watch which have serious messages to put across don't have it at the complete expense of humour.

It's what I love the most about Pratchett. He shows that being funny and being serious aren't mutually exclusive.

A friend once remarked to me that the Discworld was more or less a Crapsack World, but described as funnily as possible. That's actually not a bad description. The Discworld could be written as something depressingly bleak without changing anything to the characters or the setting.

I'd say that the setting of Discworld, despite everything, is overall quite idealistic because it literally adheres to the Law of Narrative Causality. If you can find exploit the Narrative Causality, everything is going to turn out okay.

The Discworld, I feel, is more like an idealistic setting populated by very cynical characters. Most Discworld protagonists are some flavour of The Anti-Nihilist (Vimes, Vetinari, Granny Weatherwax, and Death are the most prominent examples of this) who are willing to use Cynical and Sometimes, Even Underhanded Means in order to achieve Idealistic Goals.

Edited by Nightwire on Nov 15th 2019 at 12:32:43 PM

The protagonists may be good (if not nice), but the rest of the population is regularly shown to be stupid, self-serving, selfish b*stards.

https://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/bbc-announces-watch-tv-cast/?fbclid=IwAR0L5oNDyI0I2NdDlZQAm82jxwfk3zE9XFaEuKobGm79Kr3EwS2zbPiijVs

More casting and no doubt controversy. Lord Vetinari now Lady Vetinari and there's no chance of Vimes being mistaken for this Keel. Personally I am interested in seeing how this works but they are definitely inviting controversy - rightly or not.