This is exactly why I keep telling people:
Read. Terry. Pratchett. Books.
And if you already have… well, reread them after a good while to have a new understanding of them.
Reading a Terry Pratchett book is literally just: Here's a funny little joke Here's something that you can tell is a joke but don't get and will only figure out five years later Here's a surprisingly cool fantasy concept Here's a unique and well written simile Here's a lil guy Here's something that has aged depressingly well into the modern day Here's something that has aged remarkably queer into the modern day Here's a character that you can barely understand what he's saying Here is the most terrifying and deeply disturbing concept you have ever heard, casually mentioned Here is the dumbest fucking pun you've ever heard but in the best way Here is a quote so profound that it makes you view morality and the world in a different way Here is a plot twist that you can't tell if it's genius or stupid Congratulations! You've finished the book! It has fundamentally changed you as a person and you will never be the same!
Pros:
Discworld is amazing
It’s like Tolkien but modern
You will chuckle so hard you’ll have to have to have little breaks to breathe
Small fandom so it’s easy to make friends & discuss things
Really awesome if you like series because there are 40 books
But there are actually 5+ series within that & several stand alone books so you don’t have to read all of them (although by the time you finish one series you might want to read all the rest)
The world is flat & sits on four elephants who are for some reason standing on a giant turtle and I don’t think anyone is really sure why
Easy to find a cool Discworld-related url
Range of female characters (so you know the Joss Whedon Marvel/Steven Moffat syndrome of all the main females being kickass, skinny, kickass, perfect in everyway, kickass & pretty much the same character? that syndrome is stomped into the ground, cut up into tiny pieces & mocked)
Canon lesbian characters
Some super cute tv adaptions with cameos from sir pterry himself
Deep shit reflecting on life the universe and everything, the rise and fall of political systems, the power of words, the prevalence of evil, the nature of humankind, human relationships and beliefs, and so, so much more
Super silly bits where you’re like ye gods pratchett did you really just make that pun
Ships ranging from teenage fluff to middle-aged fluff to damn hot af
Characters who oppose their society’s gender binary & nice friendly badass werewolf woman lends them dresses
Badass moments which make your insides do hoola hoops
The fucking puns
Really awesome large characters who either just don’t give a flying fuck or have to deal with fat shaming and prove that they are infinitely better, kinder, cleverer people than the fat shamers and often use their size to help them as they save lives/fight evil etc.
There’s this book called Monstrous Regiment and it’s basically 400 pages of fucking up sexism, xenophobia and gender binary
There’s a character named Adora Belle Dearheart and her partner (to clarify: she’s not his wife, he’s her husband) is called Moist what more do you want
A Christmas/winter festival book which will leave you warm and happy and philosophically questioning
Do you like funny footnotes?? So many funny footnotes
Characters getting over & challenging internalised prejudices & beliefs
Destruction of racial stereotypes
Characters call even the protagonist out on their assumption of roles which fit a white supremic system
Really good model of police/civilian relationship where the commander of police force fundamentally does not agree with the police/civilian model because “what was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? once policemen stopped being civilians, the only other thing they could be was soldiers.” - or put more simply “a watchman is a civilian, you inbred streak of piss”
young teenage witches coming to terms with their own strength & power, middle-aged witches who write cooking sex books and are as kind as can be, old witches who are canonically ace/aro spectrum and never regret that for a moment and just so fucking smart
so many witches
and there are wizards, and female wizards too
Death is a character and he’s adorable and he really really likes cats and he has a granddaughter who looks after children and hits monsters with pokers and has amazing hair
Super talented fandom who do art and fics which break your heart
Very good realistic characters and protagonists which are far from perfect aka recovering alcoholic picked up out the gutter by a (6 foot) dwarf and a woman who is large and kind but perfectly capable of looking after herself and the recovering alcoholic and a garden full of swamp dragons - and the old witch? she is only a goodie because everyone else is too busy being bad - and there’s an ex con artist who spent his life ruining others’ bc he found it fun and is only now a ‘goodie’ because he’s being blackmailed - and the person in charge is a tyrant but he’s really a very reasonable one - and there’s a guy who literally just runs away from things the entire time I’m not even exaggerating that’s like the entire plot of his books he just runs away from things
Have I mentioned the puns
Cons:
There are no cons
Discworld is amazing
I will lend you the books
This is where the dragons went ...
And although the space they occupy isn’t like normal space, nevertheless they are packed in tightly. Not a cubic inch there but is filled by a claw, a talon, a scale, the tip of a tail, so the effect is like one of those trick drawings and your eyeballs eventually realize that the space between each dragon is, in fact, another dragon.
They could put you in mind of a can of sardines, if you thought sardines were huge and scaly and proud and arrogant.
-Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
I love this, I want this to be true
I like to imagine that Sam Vimes, instead of dying properly, instead got minor godhood. All watchmen at some point thank him for his actions, his actions a ripple across the Disc. There's precedent in the Duchess of Borogravia, and in his arc. He keeps getting promotions, and hates each one. What higher status could he be unwillingly raised to than divinity, eternally watching the watchman?
Anyways, that's just a headcanon i've got
Big werwolf girlfriend and small vampire girlfriend 🥰
Sally x Angua cause I miss them
So true
tumblr users love reading. you literally stopped for this post just because it has words in it
not even in a sexual way but i’m just craving affection because i feel like crap i just want someone to hug me for a couple of hours and tell me i’m going to be okay
All hail deep, eternal friendship and Professor Tolkien who showed us such good examples of it
I think one of the great things about the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit as well is the fact that while historically the most moving relationships in a narrative are usually romantic or familial. The Lord of the Rings is one long treatise in praise of friendship. The nearest relatives in the Fellowship are cousins. The parent-child relationships and the variation of uncle-wards that is Theoden and his sister's children are fraught with dysfunction. If we set aside the periphery relationships like Sam and the Gaffer and Beregond and Bergil there is upheaval in all the parent child relationships.
But friendship now that is wholesome and exemplified in all the races. For men there is Eomer and Boromir and their bonds with Aragorn. Hobbits of course speak for themselves throughout the whole trilogy and the Hobbit. There is mourning for lack of connection between Mirkwood and Lorien for the elves. A yearning for renewed friendship. And of course the standout friendship of them all for its unlikeliness if for no other reason. Legolas and Gimli. A friendship so fast and secure that Legolas cannot consider leaving Middle Earth for his rightful place in the west without bringing Gimli with him. A dwarf. The race that was not meant to be made and certainly no dwarf has ever been even near the undying lands and Legolas knows this.
The fact that friendship can be just as eternal as a marriage vow or the bonds of blood is something that doesn't get a lot of coverage in literature and yet it permeates the life of all the heroes in The Lord of the Rings. From Aragorn to Samwise
If Hercule Poirot got transferred to our time, he’d gasp in pleasant surprise when he’d see that eggs in our stores are sorted by size and I think it’s wonderful
she/her || I’m a writer, I swear || and a huge fangirl || also a language learner and a nerd in general and a lot of other things
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