Discworld QOTD, from Eric
“The captain glared at him. The sergeant put on the poker face that has been handed down from NCO to NCO ever since one protoamphibian told another, lower-ranking protoamphibian to muster a squad of newts and Take That Beach.”
I'm so glad I grew up at the age where I was able to read each Discworld book as they were coming out.
All through my childhood and teenage years I read them again and again and again.
So much of my moral outlook comes from those stories and those characters.
So many good quotes. I started reading his Discworld series in middle school. Someone that good with words and rather philosophical at that formative age? Yeah, I was greatly influenced by his wit, empathy, and rage at how the world is.
This is wonderful, thank you! Lately I’ve started insisting that whether there’s actually any justice or mercy in the Universe is not the point, because if there isn’t we have to invent it anyway
I had a conversation with a library patron, years ago. She always insisted on nonfiction only. She said her parents had taught her to face reality. I said sometime fiction/fantasy can tell the truth like nothing else and asked if there's anything more true than Romeo and Juliet. But it's fiction.
If I ever have children, I’ve planned to avoid lying to them about things like santa clause, tooth fairy, etc. I figured there’s enough wonder in the world without lying about reality. Leave it to Terry Pratchett to have me questioning that. 🤔
That’s good news for me. When I was young, I devised traps to catch Santa, and alert me with wires leading to bells in my room, so I could confirm if it was really him or my parents. My traps weren’t sophisticated enough though. lol
Haha I felt similarly shocked that my parents put so much effort into tricking me 😂 I’ve grown to wonder how much of that effort is for the parents rather than the children.
I went the same way. We played Santa as a game we were all part of, but I wanted them to know I would never deliberately lie to them about anything important. You can use the story to teach without Believing the story.
I feel the same, though I still think there's a better way to go about it.
In The Folklore of Discworld, Pratchett and Simpson make a point about how popular culture homogenizes folklore, which they aregue detracts from it. So if I have kids, I might just focus on the more obscure Santa myths.
... Not necessarily the crazy ones like Krampus, but the idea that Santa is himself an elf and less than a foot tall. I would challenge the "mainstream" concept of Santa so that they argue with other kids about what he's like instead of whether he's real.
Usually read TSA- @theauthorguy.bsky.social is my favorite!- but this year I'm reading Xmas horror stories & it reminds me of the Hot blood collections
I thought that was you!
Got an invite code last month, still struggling with the lack of drafts or landscape mode & recent end-of-post clipping but I'm working on it!
Joined mastodon last year & mostly been there lately
The local server thing on Mastadon messed me up. I could never get the sense of a conversation going on there. May be that I followed too many people too soon -- and most of them seemed to be techies who constantly talked about stuff I didn't understand.
Among the most interesting sections in the entire series that. The moral core at the heart of Pratchett’s fiction is the thing that doesn’t get talked about - but it’s essential to why those books work.
I once quoted those first couple of lines for a social anthropology paper for University, and not only did I get an A+, but my Professor singled out the quote for praise. 😇😌
Brilliant quote, I'd forgotten it, thx. Pratchett was and is wonderful. I've got a soft spot for Weatherwax & for Vimes, but - and this is strange to write - Death is great too.
