Tag: Discworld

the-tao-of-fandom:

But yeah, as I went on about at great lenght, the parallels between Angua and Vimes are just astounding, once you start pay attention (I sure didn’t, at first), but Thud! is just a bloody masterclass like

all that stuff about not giving into the Beast part of you? Who are we talking about? The werewolf who has been having a personal identity crisis for probably half a dozen years by now, or the man with the walking substitious entity of Law in his head?

And it’s no coincidence either; as demonstrated by their (unusually) short fuses during the book (largely triggered by things being outside their control); Emphasis on marked activities to remind themselves they are not said Beast (reading to young Sam, paying for chickens – going after chickens in the first place instead of people), about not making excuses, presisting in prevening themselves from treating the people they despise badly (deep-downers for Sam, vampires for both of them) and, oh, this ENORMOUS prejudice they have against, you guessed it, VAMPIRES.

Like, it’s almost funny how similar they are in their response to Sally. Angua can wave it off as being ‘a werewolf thing’, but their reasons are pretty much the same; they hate that vampires get treated as human when they are really not. And yet Angua prevents herself from pouncing on her when her instincts tell her to do so, and Vimes tries his hardest to treat her like just another copper, even when he’s three parts furious and one part terrified off her.

(the funniest part is when they, together, confront her about spying on the watch, and then refuse to allow her to resign. Like, you successfully infiltrated the Watch and fed information to our sorta-frenemies? You’re gonna be a GREAT copper, even if we don’t like you personally.)

But the clincher for me is that, in the end, it’s Angua who brings down Vimes just as he tries to stop himself from giving into the Beast and killing any more deep-downers. In her werewolf form.

Like. I’m sure I don’t need to rattle on further on just how symbolically relevant that is.

downtroddendeity:

I woke up this morning with the urge to post a brief and thoroughly non-exhaustive list of Discworld pun/reference names of varying levels of obscurity that people may or may not have gotten, and HERE IT IS.

• Vetinari is a play on “Medici,” the extremely powerful Italian political family who sponsored and inspired Macchiavelli’s “The Prince.”
• The philosopher Didactylos’s name literally means “two fingers,” which refers to a rude British gesture roughly equivalent to flipping someone off.
• Death’s manservant Alberto Malich is named after Albertus Magnus.
• The feuding Ankh-Morpork Selachii and Venturi noble families are named, respectively, for the scientific name for sharks and a part found in jet engines. This is a reference to the feuding Sharks and Jets street gangs in the musical West Side Story, which is itself a retelling of Romeo and Juliet.
• “Nobby” is a slang term for a policeman. Nobby’s dad, Sconner, gets his name from- well, you know how the Nac Mac Feegle call people “ya wee scunner”? Same word.
• The guide to nobility Twurp’s Peerage is named after the Roundworld equivalent, Burke’s Peerage.
• Mrs. Rosemary “Rosie” Palm, head of the Guild of Seamstresses, is named for. Um. Something a bit… rude.
• All the golems mentioned in Feet of Clay have Yiddish names, and mostly uncomplimentary ones. “Dorfl” means “idiot” and “Meshugah” means “crazy.”
• The head of the dwarves running the printing press in The Truth is Gunilla Goodmountain, whose surname is a literal translation of “Gutenberg,” the inventor of movable type.
• The Smoking GNU is a reference to the GNU operating system.
• Ridcully was introduced in Moving Pictures as “Ridcully the Brown,” as an extended parody of Radagast the Brown from Lord of the Rings.
• Black Aliss is named for Black Annis, and the god Herne the Hunted is a play on Herne the Hunter.
• “Greebo” means… well, I’ll quote the Annotated Pratchett File: “’Greebo’ is a word that was widely used in the early seventies to
   describe the sort of man who wanders around in oil-covered denim and
   leather (with similar long hair) and who settles disagreements with a
   motorcycle chain – the sort who would like to be a Hell’s Angel but
   doesn’t have enough style.”
• Nanny Ogg’s house is called “Tir Nanny Ogg,” a play on “Tír na nÓg,” the otherworld in Irish mythology.
• Miss Treason’s given name, Eumenides, is another name for the Erinyes, Greek goddess of vengeance.
• Erzulie Gogol’s first name is shared with a Vodou goddess, and “Baron Saturday” is a play on “Baron Samedi.”
• Desiderata Hollow, good fairy godmother, has a first name derived from the Latin word for “to wish.”
• “Lilith de Tempscire”‘s surname is just a French translation of “Weatherwax.”
• The terrible pun in Casanunda’s name (he’s a dwarf, so he’s UNDA, not OVA) is probably obvious to a lot of people, but it took YEARS for me to notice it, so I’m including it on this list.
• The old Count de Magpyr’s name is Bela de Magpyr, after, of course, Bela Lugosi. (And Vlad also mentions an aunt Carmilla.)
• “Djelibeybi,” for those unfamiliar with British sweets or classic Doctor Who, is pronounced identically to “jelly baby.” The country of Hersheba was introduced after many, many Americans failed to get the joke- with limited success, because it’s less immediately recognizable as a play on “Hershey bar.”
• “Omnian” is a multilingual play on “Catholic.” Omni- is a root meaning “everything,” and “Catholic” originally meant “universal.”
• Lu-Tze’s name is a play on Laozi/Lao-Tzu/Lao-Tze, founder of Taoism.
• Dr. Follett, head of the Assassin’s Guild thirty years ago in Night Watch, is named for… author Ken Follett, in exchange for a significant monetary donation to charity.