Discworld & Terry Pratchett Wiki - User contributions [en]

Metatron

2018-07-04T05:29:43Z

Prime.mover:

The Voice of God. But not the voice of God. An entity in its own right. Rather like a Presidential spokesman. Speaks to [[Aziraphale]] in {{GO}}. But is kept in the dark by Higher Authority concerning the true nature of the Ineffable Design all the same. When he assumes a physical form he appears as a young man clothed in golden fire.

==Annotation==

In Cabbalistic theory (Judiac mysticism) the Metatron is the "bridge", the "gate", an intermediary between the Godhead and his human creation.

Christianity takes the logic of this a step further, identifying the Metatron with the Second Person of the Holy Trinity (who of course, in Christian theology, is God made man, a living bridge between the Godhead and humanity, who we know better as Jesus Christ.). Perhaps, with one eye on the US market, TP and NG would have had to disguise any direct appearance in this book by Jesus Christ lest they ''really'' be accused of blasphemy. Even though the return of Christ in glory is, of course, one of the culminating events of the Apocalypse (which in {{GO}} is switched off by the principal characters before it gets to this stage, thankfully).

[[Category:Good Omens characters]]
[[Category:Supernatural entities]]

Topsy Lavish

2018-07-02T12:31:51Z

Prime.mover:

{{Character Data
|title= Topsy Lavish
|photo=
|name= Topsy Turvy
|age=
|race= [[Human]]

|occupation= Chairman of the [[Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork]]
|appearance= small old woman, traces of her former red hair

|residence= [[Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork|the Bank]], [[Ankh-Morpork]]

|death= of old age, in {{MM}}
|parents=
|relatives= nephew [[Hubert Turvy]]
|children= Step children: [[Cosmo Lavish|Cosmo]] and [[Pucci Lavish]]
|marital status= widow ([[Joshua Lavish]])

|books= {{MM}}
|cameos=
}}
'''Topsy Lavish''' (née Turvy,) now deceased, was in charge of the [[Royal Bank of Ankh-Morpork]] before [[Moist von Lipwig]], and is partly responsible for his ascension to the position. A former mistress of [[Joshua Lavish]] who later became his wife, she was left 50% of the Bank by her husband. The other 1% controlling share was left to her dog, [[Mr Fusspot]]. A very clever woman, she spent most of her time in charge of the Bank fending off her in-laws, the [[Lavishes]], who wanted to run the place further into the ground than it already was. Wary of assassination attempts, she spent all of her time in her suite at the Bank, and had multiple crossbows pointed at the door, ready to be unleashed on a threatening visitor at any time.

She saw right through [[Moist von Lipwig|Moist]] on his first visit to the Bank, recognizing him for the all-around liar and crook that he really is. Naturally, she liked him immensely, and when she finally did pass away, she left her 50% of the Bank shares to [[Mr Fusspot]], making him the official Chairman - and she left the dog to [[Moist von Lipwig|Moist]].

She tried to shoot [[Death]] when he showed up to collect her, saying "you can't blame a body for trying". She now rests at the [[Temple of Small Gods]], as far away from the rest of the Lavishes as she can be.

== Annotations ==
It is possible that Topsy Lavish is a reference to [[wikipedia:Livia_Drusilla|Livia Drusilla]], later Livia Augusta of the Roman Empire. August can mean one who is an heir to a large fortune, both Livia and Lavish fitting this bill. Also, Topsy replaced Joshua Lavish's first wife, again following Livia's experience with Emperor Octavian (later Augustus). Also, Topsy's deft manipulation of the Lavish family she married into resonates well with the number of children and grandchildren Livia had who became emperors.

Her ability to see the truth of Moist von Lipwig is similar to the episode of [[wikipedia:Father_Ted|Father Ted]] (Entertaining Father Stone) where an old lady knows instantly that the priest Ted is responsible for her grandson being in a coma.

*Father Ted: "The old lady's on to us Dougel!"
*Father Dougel: "Ah, come on now Ted, how could she know?"
*Father Ted: "Old women are closer to God than we'll ever be. They get to that age and they don't need the operator anymore. They've got the direct line."

It may also be worth mentioning the roundworld nursery phrase [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/topsy-turvy#English topsy-turvy], meaning (literally and/or metaphorically) upside down, that is, confused and muddled.

[[Category:Discworld characters|Lavish,Topsy]]
[[Category:Human characters|Lavish,Topsy]]
[[de:Tüppi Üppig]]

Reverse Annotations

2018-07-01T10:38:56Z

Prime.mover:

== "Pani Poni Dash" ==
*In the anime "Pani Poni Dash", episode 15, a class is stuck on a bus dangling off the edge of a cliff. Himeko, a rather hyperactive girl, deludes herself into thinking that her "aura" is what's keeping the bus from falling, hence she's supporting the whole shebang. To illustrate this, she hallucinates a brief vision of the Discworld with her head superimposed on Great A'Tuin.

== "Family Guy" ==
*In {{MP}}, during the fight scene with the [[Ginger]]-monster, [[Victor Tugelbend]] resorts to a mean trick to get the dogs [[Gaspode]] and [[Laddie]] to leave the wrecked cinema. (Corgi paperback edition, p288) He throws a stick and calls "Fetch!" (Gaspode has enough self-control to shout "You bastard!" as his doggie instinct overtakes his rational mind and he chases the stick)

In the TV animated series "Family Guy", by far the most capable, intelligent, and mature member of the Griffin family is the family dog Brian, an anthropomorphic canine who is clearly an American Roundworld cousin of Gaspode, (but cleaner)

In an episode where Brian ends up improbably married to Lois Griffin after the (presumed) death of ignoramus paterfamilias Peter, Brian becomes suspicious of her absences and suspects she is having an affair. Uncomfortably aware his probing questions are getting too close to the truth, Lois resorts to throwing a ball. Brian, unable to help his fundamental doggy instinct, chases it, but pauses to call her a bitch...

Interestingly enough, a recurring character in ''Family Guy'' is Death, who is a skeletal figure in a black robe toting a scythe, but who lacks the essential gravitas of Discworld's [[Death]]... well, all lesser Deaths are subjects of [[Azrael]]...

({{MP}} - published 1990; ''Family Guy'' first aired on TV in 1999)

There is also an episode of ''Family Guy'', screened here by BBC3 on 9/12/12, where for reasons too intricate to summarise, an evil robotic version of Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana grabs the evil monkey living in Chris Griffin's closet, and climbs up a very high building with her simian hostage. ''Somebody'' on FG's production staff must read Pratchett....

In an episode of the related animation ''American Dad'', aired in Britain during September 2010, ultra-conservative American father of the title, CIA agent Stan Smith, is pursuing his dream of disposing of daughter Hayley's hippie slacker boyfriend. In a conversation that arouses Stan's sympathies, the boyfriend, who is underweight and totes a scraggly beard, discloses that "my mother ran away before I was born" - exactly Rincewind's description of his parentage... Hayley's slacker BF also role-plays a not-very-good wizard on an Internet "World of Warcraft" fantasy game.

Also in ''American Dad'', one episode features a rather Stepford-Wife-ish cooking and baking contest, in which Mother Francine and daughter Hayley are deadly rivals for the prize and acclaim. Both are beaten at the last gasp by a new contender - the rather fey alien Roger, who has taken on a Stepford disguise. The name Roger adopts for his victory as Langley Falls' greatest cook? ''Emmylou Sugarbean''.

== "Life on Mars" ==
*{{NW}} - centres on a honest copper thrown back thirty years in time to right a wrong and enable him to return to his present, exactly as he left it. The honest copper is confronted with the slightly primitive policing techniques of the past, and introduces elements of sensitive modern policing on a force not quite mentally equipped to accept it.

The BBC TV series '''Life On Mars''', by stunning coincidence, centres on a honest copper thrown back thirty years in time to right a wrong and enable him to return to his present, exactly as he left it. The honest copper is confronted with the slightly primitive policing techniques of the past, and introduces elements of sensitive modern policing on a force not quite mentally equipped to accept it.

It would appear that the book was released slightly before the TV series was conceived, but there may not be much in it...

== Lindsey Davis' "Falco" ==
*The Roman detective novel ''Saturnalia'', by self-confessed Pratchett-admirer Lindsey Davis, includes in its 26th chapter three witches who would have been at home in [[Lancre]]: they dress up to ensure they look like witches, don't suffer fools gladly and complain about the problems of modern witchcraft; the third witch, Daphne, is in fact absent because - [[Nanny Ogg]]-like - she has to look after her grandchildren.

''Saturnalia'' feels like a rich seam of Pratchett references! For instance, the character of Zosmio, who flaps around the cemetery in a white sheet pretending to be dead, and "haunting" the place - who else is this but Duke [[Leonal Felmet]] in his final insanity?

And the Vigiles of the fourth precinct have a lot in common with the Night Watch of the early [[Samuel Vimes]] era. At their Saturnalia party, one watchman dresses up as "a six-foot tall carrot", for instance.

The policing set-up in Vespasian's Rome places the Royal Palace under the control of the Praetorian Guard, a bunch of haughty bullies puffed up with their own self-importance who enjoy throwing their weight around, especially against ethnic minorities and a despised lowly group such as the Vigiles (Night Watch). Compare this to the Palace Guard, two of whose finest want to beat up Vimes just for annoying them (in {{G!G!}}), and [[Quirke|Mayonnaise Quirke]]'s Day Watch with its speciesist attitude to trolls and dwarfs.

The Vigile (Watchman) Fusculus is described in terms reiniscent of a rather more intelligent, slightly quirkier, version of [[Fred Colon]]. ("Fusculus" may come from a Latin root meaning ''"to confuse, to bamboozle"'' - confirmation anyone?) No sighting of an Ancient Roman Nobby Nobbs yet, but I haven't finished reading the book!

"Fishing from the same stream", as Terry phrases it, Lindsey Davis also has the Lord of Misrule at Saturnalia be "randomly" selected by getting the fateful bean in their lunch. Compare this to those earthly avatars of the [[Hogfather]], who were "randomly" selected for sacrifice by getting the bean. And the Roman Saturnalia and Discworld's Hogswatch are, of course, aspects of the same universal midwinter festival.

The resemblance, especially nasally, between Rome and the river Tiber to Ankh-Morpork and the Ankh, is also apparent from the books. Falco is a product of, and still lives in, the Shades of ancient Rome. His landlord is a CMOT Dibbler type who has tried various failed shortcuts to getting seriously rich.

At this point in Roman history, it should be noted, as L.D. explicitly does, that the lowly-born Emperor Vespasian (the first of the Flavian line) is very explicitly '''''not''''' a Patrician. As viewed through the eyes of central character, plebian-born Marcus Didius Falco (who is suspiciously Vimes-like in terms of cynicism), it was the patrician (ie, most illustrious, well-bred, and noble) Claudian line of Caesars who got Rome into the mess it is in today. Such Divine Caesars as Caligula and Nero were, in Falco's eyes, so well-bred as to be inbred. Note L.D.'s use of the word "patrician" in its correct Roman context, as well as the reminder about the extremely insane Caesars who did things such as make a favourite horse into a Senator. (And the [[Ankh-Morpork]] parellel is Lord [[Snapcase]], possibly?)

Oh, and the most blatantly obvious parallel between Lindsey Davis and Terry Pratchett is so obvious I missed it: the central character, Marcus Didius Falco, the private investigator, is, socially speaking, a product of the Roman gutter who from time to time goes on ruinous drinking benders. He is a born detective, part of whose pay goes on a sort of "widow's pension" for his dead brother's girlfriend and child. The love of his life (Helena Justina) is a woman from a vastly higher social class - in fact, the nobility - who is independently wealthy and can afford to flout convention. Although there is no record of Helena obsessively breeding any sort of animal, this spookily parallels Sam Vimes and Lady Sybil. (Although for a while Falco had the title of Keeper of the Royal Geese, as a personal gift from Vespasian, their only family pet is an ill-behaved scruffy mutt called Nux).

The rather spiky relationship between Falco and Emperor Vespasian also has echoes of Vimes and Vetinari. Vespasian insists on the minimum of ceremony and puts up with near-insolence from his Imperial Investigator, perhaps because he knows Falco gets results, or perhaps because he likes having somebody around who doesn't refrain from speaking his mind. (Falco is no friend of the Imperial system: he makes no secret, even to the Emperor, that he prefers the more egalitarian set-up of Republican Rome to that of the Empire. Just as Vimes reluctantly serves Vetinari while wanting to overthrow him and replace him with something better, Falco works for Vespasian and gives him grudging respect, whilst pining for something better that doesn't include Emperors or Kings. In both cases, Helena Justina and Sybil Ramkin, as women from noble families who have faithfully served and advised rulers past and present, are on hand to soothe over any little misunderstandings.)

And L.D., in her author's notes, also talks about the concept of ''tribute plagiarism'', of assimilating and paying homage to the best ideas of another author by recycling them in your own work, putting your own mark on them, and seeing if anyone notices.

(March 2009) - '''''Alexandria''''', Lindsey Davis's latest release in the Falco series, sees the husband-and-wife detective team, Marcus Didius and Helena Justina, travel to North Africa, ostensibly on a family holiday to Egypt.

However, the most prestigious University in the Roman Empire is simultaneously beset with murder among the Faculty. Is it a case of younger, ambitious and status-hungry academics ensuring their promotion by terminally accelerating the retirement plans of the men above them? As an accredited Imperial Investigator with the personal trust of the Emperor, Falco is roped in to investigate. Compare this to Vimes having the trust of Vetinari and being sent out of the City on missions combining policing expertise and a unique diplomatic skill, sometimes requiring the intervention of his socially better-bred wife.

We meet a very aesthetic art expert (Sir Reynold?), two local policemen with a suspiciously Nobbs and Colon aura about them, and members of the Alexandria University faculty who are as quarrelsome, fractious, and incapable of grasping reality, as any in a Faculty we know. Some of whom manifest very familiar vibes - the Head of Philosophy is a big harrumphing bear of a man whose mind runs on fairly rigid rails, for instance, and who isn't especially interested in other people's ideas unless they chime with his.

There is also an issue concerning the Librarian. And a bright young postgraduate with deep ideas. And priests of a syncretic religion with big ideas. Who have access to Sodek the sacred crocodile as an instrument of applied theology.

And all this in the first quarter of the book...--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 23:05, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

The latest book in the Falco series is called '''''Nemesis'''''.

Spotting LD's tribute plagiarisms is beginning to be fun. But in this latest episode, Falco is forced to go to a spirit medium for help (and he is left slightly spooked where she gets one thing right that she could not possibly have guessed.)

The medium is small, dressed in faded vermilion red, and wears garlands and an item of headwear consisting partly of feathers but mainly reproductions of fruit. She is irascible of temper and insists on making nettle tea before she goes to work, sending pungent vegetable odours drifting across the seance room. Falco, cynical and streetwise, gives credit to her for knowing how people work and putting on an appropriate show. But this lady evokes [[Madame Tracy]] whilst looking like Mrs [[Evadne Cake]] and gives Falco that one wavering moment of wondering if there's something in it after all...

Falco is also charged with bringing to book a ghastly criminal family, composed of a hideous overbearing monster of a mother and the thuggish sons she has alternately doted on and terrified into submission. The Claudii family come over as a Roman echo of Ma Lilywhite and her sons (although one of them isn't above hitting girls).

And in ''The Third Nero'', there is a street trader who sells pies and pastries. Xeno is also not above serving rat meat...
--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 12:49, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

== Cory Doctorow ==
From historical whodunnit to science fiction. Cory Doctorow's novel '''''Makers''''' is about a very close future, where a new wave of computer innovation backed by a co-operative capitalism akin to anarchism, brings about something like the replicators of ''Stargate-SG1''. On page 110, Geoff, who defines himself as a "chemist", remarks on drinking some ''really good'' (if chemically enhanced) coffee ([[Splot]]?). Quote: ''"Marthter, the creathathure awaketh!"'' he said, in high Igor.

Later on in "Makers", the two computer inventors, Lester and Perry, create a Cabinet of Curiosities all of their very own.

== Alan Gordon ==
Alan Gordon (born 1959) is the author of several mysteries, the first of which is based on the characters from William Shakespeare's '''''Twelfth Night'''''. He writes about jesters as advisers to the king, who actually make up a super-secret spy ring that try to keep peace and control the leaders of different countries. The Fool's Guild of these novels is portrayed as a mockery to the church, and they refer to Jesus Christ as "Their Saviour, the First Fool".

Alan Gordon began writing his novels about fools and jesters as a supra-national spy ring in 1999. This is exactly the same idea TP came up with a year or two earlier to explain the survival of the Fools' and Clowns' Guild into the modern era - that the Guild's graduates go everywhere, end up in some very high places, and periodically report back to Doctor Whiteface. Making him both very rich and very powerful.

Is it possible AG got the basic idea for the seven Fools' Guild novels from Pratchett? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Gordon_(author)]

== Douglas Adams' ''Shada'' ==
In the long-awaited novelisation of Adams' ''Dr Who'' script, the doctor (his Tom Baker incarnation) is in the captivity of the big Bad, who is demanding he read out a Galiffreyan book of lore containing the innermost secrets of the Time Lords. The Doctor, who genuinely cannot read the heiroglyphics of Ancient Gallifrey, duly does the best he can:-

''"Squiggle, squiggle." said the Dosctor, "Squiggle, squiggle, sort of an eye, I think, squiggle, squiggle..." I'm paraphrasing wildly, of course... squiggle, squiggle... ssshsh, this is a good bit! Squiggle squiggle wavy line, squggle squiggle..." ''

Not assuming Douglas Adams wrote this in the original 1976 script, but his ghost-writer Gareth Roberts might be inserting a homage to Pteppic in {{P}} here?

== Yrsa Sigurdasdottir ==
Icelandic crime fiction writer Yrsa Sigurdasdottir's debut novel '''''Last rituals''''' deals with scurrilous goings-on among postgraduate students at the University of Iceland, who have taken their PhD in Icelandic ritual magic seriously, to the point of practically testing whether the old magic rituals and curses still work in the modern world. She passes on the snippet that a legendary founder of the academic tradition in Iceland was a mediaeval wizard, whose statue still takes pride of place in front of the main University building where everyone can see it. As well as this, there is a visit to a museum of native Icelandic magic, where a minor plot-point concerns whether or not a Viking artefact, a large stone collection bowl used to contain the blood of a sacrifical victim, is the real thing, or if it has been surreptitiously switched with a modern replica and the original stolen for some nefarious purpose... has Terry been translated into Icelandic, or are these two points part of the universal pool of plot-points drawn on for {{T!}} and the general layout of Unseen University? --[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 00:34, 6 April 2011 (CEST)

==John Moore==
* In John Moore's '''''Slay and Rescue''''' there's a mention of a shoemaker who made luxury (and impossible to wear) shoes before quitting and becoming the chief [[quisition|torturer]] for king [[Brutha|Bruno]] of [[Omnia]]. (The Czech translation made the reference to {{SG}} even more explicit, translating "chief torturer" as "chief inquisitor".)
* The book '''''Bad Prince Charlie''''' by John Moore has a footnote where the author says that it's a good idea to use footnotes because Terry Pratchett uses them and people like his books, after all.
* In '''''Unhandsome Prince''''' there exists a [[Thieves' Guild]] and an [[Assassins' Guild]]. (Anybody stupid enough to enter one of the buildings to join the guild or to make use of their services will find out that they are fake - a set up by the royal guards.)

== Dragon Magazine ==
* In Issue 293, an article on minor deities appears, titled "Small Gods." To further drive home the reference, the first illustration is of a not particularly bright looking man stranded in the desert being approached by a robed figure with the head of a bull.
* In Issue 271, in the comic strip "What's New? With Phil and Dixie", a poster on a wall reads "Visit beautiful Ankh-Morpork".

== Scrapheap Challenge ==
* On the second episode of the engineering game show ''Scrapheap Challenge'' (called ''Junkyard Wars'' in the US), the Orange team named their bodged-together Power Puller "The Great A'Tuin". It lost the challenge, winning only one out of three rounds of tug-of-war against the Yellow team's "Eat My Shorts".

==Charles Stross==
* In Charles Stross's near-future technothriller ''''''Halting State''''', a character enlivens a bus ride through Edinburgh by using Augumented Reality to turn it into Ankh-Morpork.

==Ben Aaronovitch==
* Ben Aaronovitch's ''New Doctor Who Adventures'' novel ''The Also People'' features, at various points, reference to a suspicious yellow dip at parties that no-one ever eats, the Doctor having octagons in his eyes to see things others can't, a cocktail called a Double Entendre, a market trader called C!Mot and a chapter headed "A Better Class of Recurring Dream".
* Aaronovitch has stated on his blog that part of the inspiration for his ''Rivers of London'' urban fantasy series was a throwaway line in ''[[The Science of Discworld]]'' that if there were rules of magic in our world, Newton would have discovered them.

==Girl Genius==
* In one episode of the "gaslight fantasy" webcomic "Girl Genius" by Phil and Katja Foglio, the "clanks" (steampunk robots) attacking the Baron include large wooden chests with sharp teeth and mechanical legs. In case anyone thinks it might be a coincidence, the lead chest has the name of its owner written on it: "The Amazing Pratchett".

==Unravelling the Mystery==
It all started with a Big Bang. (Bang!) Think {{SOD1}}. The Wizards of Unseen University create a pocket universe, made real and tangible inside a glass-like protective sphere allowing full three-dimensional views. The wizard tasked with making sense of it all is relatively young, rather geeky, wears glasses, and affects something not unlike a shapeless grey-green parka. Meanwhile at Caltech University in Pasadena, CA, there is a youngish research physicist who is geeky in appearance, wears glasses and a shapeless grey-green parka. Knowing about holograms, he darkens the room and projects a series of hologrammatic pictures of Earth and the solar system and the Milky Way, into the air to enchant his girlfriend. This looks a lot like the enduring image of {{SOD1}} - a world-globe hanging in the air, supported nowhere. Especially when he speculates about whether the Universe and all in it might have been created to provide information for a remote intelligence, for its own ends...See ''The Hologram Excitation'' episode of American geek-science sitcom ''The Big Bang Theory''. TBBT depends on fantasy, comic-book, sci-fi and geek cultural references to power the scripts. This would appear to be the first and so far only Discworld reference, as yet. {{SOD1}} co-authors [[Jack Cohen]] and [[Ian Stewart]] are both well-known in American academic circles and hold American academic positions; both have written for the academic trade press. This could be a case where Cohen and Stewart are more famous, to a very specialised readership, than Terry?

In {{SOD3}}, Jack Cohen ruefully describes a bad experience he had whilst working as an academic and going on lecture tours across the USA. He was heckled by a tough audience to whom he was trying to explain why evolution is the accepted scientific truth and Creationism doesn't have a leg to stand on. This was in East Texas, a part of the world where evolutionists tend to be tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail, if not burnt at the stake as agents of Satan. In ''TBBT'', lead character Sheldon Cooper is from East Texas and views having moved to California as intellectual liberation. His greatest fear is losing scientific credibility and being forced to return home to teach High School science. specifically, having to teach Evolution to Creationists. (His mother is a true believer in Christianity and a Creationist.)

There is also a tantalising scene where the guys have dressed up as ''Planet of the Apes'' characters and Raj ruefully says he'd have preferred to wear the orang-utan costume but the others voted him down... a bit tenuous, but you wonder if another reference was intended here.

Season Eight saw character evolution in the initially awkward and somewhat aloof character of Amy Farrah-Fowler. She is a neurobiological doctor who performs behavioural and surgical/chemical experiments on animals, principally simians. She is a moderately skilled animal handler who knows how to get the best out of her subjects, even keeping experimental animals as semi-pets in her home. For the five or six seasons - over a hundred and twenty episodes - in which she is a core character, she is casually inaccurate in her terminology, classing everything simian as a "mere monkey". But from the very end of Season Seven and into Season Eight, she very abruptly began to make the correct distinction between "monkeys" and "apes". This came out of nowhere. Indeed, she even rebukes Sheldon for calling an orang-utan a "monkey".

Also, Sheldon, a man who hitherto had always referred to all simians as "monkeys", comes out of nowhere with a detailed discourse concerning the taxonomy of apes, and the distinction between the three species of Great Ape which singles out the poor gibbon as the only Lesser Ape, and therefore the weird kid in the playground.... Where did this suddenly come from.... could it be that one TBBT character has discovered Terry Pratchett and is playing safe around her simian co-researchers?

==Criminal Minds==
"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." was quoted at the start of season 4 episode 20 "Conflicted" by Reid in a much more sinister way than TP used it and referring to good and evil, unlike the original, unsurprising concidering that Criminal Minds deals with serial killers as a matter of course. TP was acknowledged as the originator of the saying.

==Welcome to his Nightmare==
Outrageous singer and performance artiste Alice Cooper's 2011 album '''''Welcome 2 My Nightmare''''' contains a song called ''The Congregation''. This line made me stop and wonder.

''"And here in the fiery pit of boiling death, the lawyers, pimps, and mimes."''

An intelligent and well-read chap of a Gothic inclination cannot have failed to have stumbled on the works of Terry....
[[Category:Annotations]]

==Sharpe==
* In Bernard Cornwell's ''Sharpe'' tales, about a proto-commando in the Napoleonic Wars, the huge and hulking Sergeant Harper totes a [[Piecemaker|fearsome seven-barreled musket]], originally designed for close-quarter naval use with the express intention of bringing down a battleship's mainmast and rigging. This failed as a naval weapon because sailors tend to be smaller and wirier men whose talents lie elsewhere. Besides, to fire a weapon like this from the deck of a rolling and pitching ship could be... something of an own goal. But the huge Harper, who has a suspiciously Detritus-to-Vimes relationship with Captain Sharpe, takes to it like a troll to a siege weapon. Like Carrot and Detritus, the enduring friendship and mutual respect of the two men began with a fist-fight, which, against the odds, was won by Sharpe. Sharpe is a heavy-drinking outsider who rose to officer's rank from the Regency London equivalent of the Shades (the Rookery) and made his way up from the ranks, against the odds. Lord Wellington is portrayed as a devious Vetinari-like figure (who eventually entered politics and was a most effective Prime Minister). Sharpe also exposes political corruption by his social betters and both annoys them - and gets their respect. The Rust-like disposition of many British senior officers is explicitly dwelt upon. Sharpe eventually marries to a far higher social level and his wife has enviable Sybil Ramkin-like characteristics. (Memo: Cornwell may be a Discworld fan?)

==Doctor Who Magazine==
* In the DWM comic strip "Fire and Brimstone", the Eighth Doctor's companion Izzy describes the book she's reading as featuring "This mad city called Ankh-Morpork, and an old hag called Granny Weatherwax, and the whole world, right, is a disc and sits on the back of a turtle." She asks the Doctor why they can't visit somewhere like the Discworld and he replies "Izzy, I've ''been''. It was flat."

==The ''other'' Night Watch==
* Sergei Lukyanenko's fantasy novels about the detente between Light and Dark magic users in present-day Moscow have a Pratchett homage in book five, ''The New Watch''. Day Watch member Anton Gorodetsky (Higher Light Magician) is passing a fatherly eye over his daughter Nadja's reading choices. Being a magical policeman and loving father is not easy, especially when she's ten and showing clear signs of being a magic-capable Other. He reflects that her initial ecstasy at learning she is to be sent to a school for young magicians is going to turn into crushing disappointment, when she realises it's nothing like Hogwarts. Or indeed Unseen University. Anton then muses on how Rincewind might have got it more right than Terry Pratchett ever believed, with his strategy of using no magic at all and running like Hell when confronted with peril. As he is about to become last line of defence for the Day Watch against an un-known magic user of immense ability which far outstrips his own, he ruefully wishes he had the Rincewind option....

==Meanwhile, in Oslo==
* Jo Nesbo's series of police procedural novels are about a dissillusioned copper who has turned to drink to blot it all out. Harry Hole doesn't give a stuff who he offends in search of the truth, and he treats attempts at covering up or protecting well-placed people with scorn. His superiors can't get rid of him as he's just too good at what he does. He is disparagingly Republican about Norway's residual Royalty and upper classes, and in his world, Oslo is a crapsack city based on a rather smelly river with its upmarket bits on one bank, populated by that which invariably rises to the top. He is no friend to the privileged but has no illusions about the people living on the wrong side of the river, either. His preferred pub is a low joint on the river populated by quarellsome low-life types. He tends to galvanise a jaded and demoralised police force into action, and his superiors treat him with wary respect. He prefers his native city but has been forced to travel, with protest, to other countries to investigate issues there. Hmm.

==And in rural Cheshire near a place oddly reminiscent of the Long Man==
* '''Boneland''', Alan Garner's long-in-the-making sequel to his first fantasy novels ''The Weirdstone of Brisingamen'' and ''The Moon of Gomrath'', has a lot to say about rocks. The sound of flint-knapping is rendered "Tak, Tak, Tak, Tak, Tak", for instance. And the legend of a Creator calling life into being out of stone eggs is discussed at some length. Admittedly there is also a sly reference to a certain Genesis single. But Pratchett, as a modern weaver of old strands into new stories, is homaged here.

=="Endeavour"==
*In the episode "Coda" of the ''Inspoector Morse'' prequel, Inspector Thursday mentions his old boss, one Sergeant Vimes of Cable Street.

==Hellblazer==
* In the graphic novel series featuring occultist/psychic investigator John Constantine, a story arc has him in Australia, undergoing initiation by Aborigines and entering the Dreamtime, where the Trickster God appears in the form of a kangaroo, to tell him he is the only one who can save Australia for all its people. Constantine is initially reluctant to take the case. Hmmm.
* And in Hellblazer episode 101, ''Football:It's a Funny Old Game'', he meets a [[Yob Soddoth|dread quasi-demonic entity]] whose reason for being is to reap havoc and spread violent death at football games. Hmmm.

==Illuminating insights?==
It's probably fairer to say that the provocative thinking of anarchistically-minded author Robert Anton Wilson gets filtered into the Discworld via Terry Pratchett's mind, far more often than Terry's thinking filters into the Illuminatus! universe via Wilson's (see Reading Suggestions for specifics). But a later book by Wilson, '''''Nature's God''''', has an intriguing scene. Set in Paris with the French Revolution imminent, a big society ball is being hosted by the Duc d'Orleans, a man with pretensions to overthrow the ruling monarch and become King. He has been assiduously destabilising the country so that he can step in and rescue it. As nervous dancers are circulating, asking how near they think Revolution is, a woman named as [[Roberta Meserole|the Marquise de Monnier]] is circulating and talking to people, seemingly ingenuously so. As a result ''"the seed was planted, and the inevitable sprouts appeared in conversations throughout the ballroom".'' (In real history, the Marquise de Monnier was the mistress of the Compte de Mirabeau, an aristo who somehow evaded the guillotine and became a leader of the French Revolution. She had a reputation as a fixer, schemer and arranger. As well as an unconventional lady who delighted in flauting convention. Hmmm.) In the background, a very cynical and realist policeman called [[Samuel Vimes|de Sartine]], commander of the Paris City Watch, is watching intently and preparing to throw his own handful of grit into the machine.

A shame this was practically Wilson's last book before he died, or there might have been more Pratchett homages.

Earlier in Nature's God, there is the strange case of a "mountain man" living in the American West who manages to go back in time and have long conversations with an Indian medicine man (a mystic and monk-like ascetic with a strange sense of humour, who had respect from his people for his mastery of hidden tides and his ability to Walk the Happy Hunting grounds, where Time flows differently) who died thirty years before he was born. Or else the Indian steps forwards in time to talk to Sigismundo).

''Nature's God'' was published in 2004; {{NW}} in 2002.

==Unsound?==
* In fantasy-fiction webcomic ''[[http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch07/ch07_40.html| Unsounded]]'', the teenage Thief Sette, who has a certain Tiffany Aching-like compnent to her, is forced to walk the Khert, a limbo between life and death, where her deepest fears and highest hopes take real form. Challenged by a seemingly tormented soul who feels he is in Hell to consider that she might have died without knowing it - as opposed to having arrived here in a dream or via magic - she considers this and indignantly replies '''''"I ain't dead!'''''"

==Xena: Warrior Princess==
* In one episode, Xena and friends rescue a girl from being a human sacrifice, but she is not grateful as she had been waiting to be sacrificed. This is very similar to a scene in [[The Light Fantastic]].

== The Invisible Library ==

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genevieve_Cogman Genevieve Cogman] blatantly sets her ''Invisible Library'' series novels in [[L-Space]] without even crediting TP in the acknowledgements.

Reverse Annotations

2018-07-01T10:36:42Z

Prime.mover:

== "Pani Poni Dash" ==
*In the anime "Pani Poni Dash", episode 15, a class is stuck on a bus dangling off the edge of a cliff. Himeko, a rather hyperactive girl, deludes herself into thinking that her "aura" is what's keeping the bus from falling, hence she's supporting the whole shebang. To illustrate this, she hallucinates a brief vision of the Discworld with her head superimposed on Great A'Tuin.

== "Family Guy" ==
*In {{MP}}, during the fight scene with the [[Ginger]]-monster, [[Victor Tugelbend]] resorts to a mean trick to get the dogs [[Gaspode]] and [[Laddie]] to leave the wrecked cinema. (Corgi paperback edition, p288) He throws a stick and calls "Fetch!" (Gaspode has enough self-control to shout "You bastard!" as his doggie instinct overtakes his rational mind and he chases the stick)

In the TV animated series "Family Guy", by far the most capable, intelligent, and mature member of the Griffin family is the family dog Brian, an anthropomorphic canine who is clearly an American Roundworld cousin of Gaspode, (but cleaner)

In an episode where Brian ends up improbably married to Lois Griffin after the (presumed) death of ignoramus paterfamilias Peter, Brian becomes suspicious of her absences and suspects she is having an affair. Uncomfortably aware his probing questions are getting too close to the truth, Lois resorts to throwing a ball. Brian, unable to help his fundamental doggy instinct, chases it, but pauses to call her a bitch...

Interestingly enough, a recurring character in ''Family Guy'' is Death, who is a skeletal figure in a black robe toting a scythe, but who lacks the essential gravitas of Discworld's [[Death]]... well, all lesser Deaths are subjects of [[Azrael]]...

({{MP}} - published 1990; ''Family Guy'' first aired on TV in 1999)

There is also an episode of ''Family Guy'', screened here by BBC3 on 9/12/12, where for reasons too intricate to summarise, an evil robotic version of Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana grabs the evil monkey living in Chris Griffin's closet, and climbs up a very high building with her simian hostage. ''Somebody'' on FG's production staff must read Pratchett....

In an episode of the related animation ''American Dad'', aired in Britain during September 2010, ultra-conservative American father of the title, CIA agent Stan Smith, is pursuing his dream of disposing of daughter Hayley's hippie slacker boyfriend. In a conversation that arouses Stan's sympathies, the boyfriend, who is underweight and totes a scraggly beard, discloses that "my mother ran away before I was born" - exactly Rincewind's description of his parentage... Hayley's slacker BF also role-plays a not-very-good wizard on an Internet "World of Warcraft" fantasy game.

Also in ''American Dad'', one episode features a rather Stepford-Wife-ish cooking and baking contest, in which Mother Francine and daughter Hayley are deadly rivals for the prize and acclaim. Both are beaten at the last gasp by a new contender - the rather fey alien Roger, who has taken on a Stepford disguise. The name Roger adopts for his victory as Langley Falls' greatest cook? ''Emmylou Sugarbean''.

== "Life on Mars" ==
*{{NW}} - centres on a honest copper thrown back thirty years in time to right a wrong and enable him to return to his present, exactly as he left it. The honest copper is confronted with the slightly primitive policing techniques of the past, and introduces elements of sensitive modern policing on a force not quite mentally equipped to accept it.

The BBC TV series '''Life On Mars''', by stunning coincidence, centres on a honest copper thrown back thirty years in time to right a wrong and enable him to return to his present, exactly as he left it. The honest copper is confronted with the slightly primitive policing techniques of the past, and introduces elements of sensitive modern policing on a force not quite mentally equipped to accept it.

It would appear that the book was released slightly before the TV series was conceived, but there may not be much in it...

== Lindsey Davis' "Falco" ==
*The Roman detective novel ''Saturnalia'', by self-confessed Pratchett-admirer Lindsey Davis, includes in its 26th chapter three witches who would have been at home in [[Lancre]]: they dress up to ensure they look like witches, don't suffer fools gladly and complain about the problems of modern witchcraft; the third witch, Daphne, is in fact absent because - [[Nanny Ogg]]-like - she has to look after her grandchildren.

''Saturnalia'' feels like a rich seam of Pratchett references! For instance, the character of Zosmio, who flaps around the cemetery in a white sheet pretending to be dead, and "haunting" the place - who else is this but Duke [[Leonal Felmet]] in his final insanity?

And the Vigiles of the fourth precinct have a lot in common with the Night Watch of the early [[Samuel Vimes]] era. At their Saturnalia party, one watchman dresses up as "a six-foot tall carrot", for instance.

The policing set-up in Vespasian's Rome places the Royal Palace under the control of the Praetorian Guard, a bunch of haughty bullies puffed up with their own self-importance who enjoy throwing their weight around, especially against ethnic minorities and a despised lowly group such as the Vigiles (Night Watch). Compare this to the Palace Guard, two of whose finest want to beat up Vimes just for annoying them (in {{G!G!}}), and [[Quirke|Mayonnaise Quirke]]'s Day Watch with its speciesist attitude to trolls and dwarfs.

The Vigile (Watchman) Fusculus is described in terms reiniscent of a rather more intelligent, slightly quirkier, version of [[Fred Colon]]. ("Fusculus" may come from a Latin root meaning ''"to confuse, to bamboozle"'' - confirmation anyone?) No sighting of an Ancient Roman Nobby Nobbs yet, but I haven't finished reading the book!

"Fishing from the same stream", as Terry phrases it, Lindsey Davis also has the Lord of Misrule at Saturnalia be "randomly" selected by getting the fateful bean in their lunch. Compare this to those earthly avatars of the [[Hogfather]], who were "randomly" selected for sacrifice by getting the bean. And the Roman Saturnalia and Discworld's Hogswatch are, of course, aspects of the same universal midwinter festival.

The resemblance, especially nasally, between Rome and the river Tiber to Ankh-Morpork and the Ankh, is also apparent from the books. Falco is a product of, and still lives in, the Shades of ancient Rome. His landlord is a CMOT Dibbler type who has tried various failed shortcuts to getting seriously rich.

At this point in Roman history, it should be noted, as L.D. explicitly does, that the lowly-born Emperor Vespasian (the first of the Flavian line) is very explicitly '''''not''''' a Patrician. As viewed through the eyes of central character, plebian-born Marcus Didius Falco (who is suspiciously Vimes-like in terms of cynicism), it was the patrician (ie, most illustrious, well-bred, and noble) Claudian line of Caesars who got Rome into the mess it is in today. Such Divine Caesars as Caligula and Nero were, in Falco's eyes, so well-bred as to be inbred. Note L.D.'s use of the word "patrician" in its correct Roman context, as well as the reminder about the extremely insane Caesars who did things such as make a favourite horse into a Senator. (And the [[Ankh-Morpork]] parellel is Lord [[Snapcase]], possibly?)

Oh, and the most blatantly obvious parallel between Lindsey Davis and Terry Pratchett is so obvious I missed it: the central character, Marcus Didius Falco, the private investigator, is, socially speaking, a product of the Roman gutter who from time to time goes on ruinous drinking benders. He is a born detective, part of whose pay goes on a sort of "widow's pension" for his dead brother's girlfriend and child. The love of his life (Helena Justina) is a woman from a vastly higher social class - in fact, the nobility - who is independently wealthy and can afford to flout convention. Although there is no record of Helena obsessively breeding any sort of animal, this spookily parallels Sam Vimes and Lady Sybil. (Although for a while Falco had the title of Keeper of the Royal Geese, as a personal gift from Vespasian, their only family pet is an ill-behaved scruffy mutt called Nux).

The rather spiky relationship between Falco and Emperor Vespasian also has echoes of Vimes and Vetinari. Vespasian insists on the minimum of ceremony and puts up with near-insolence from his Imperial Investigator, perhaps because he knows Falco gets results, or perhaps because he likes having somebody around who doesn't refrain from speaking his mind. (Falco is no friend of the Imperial system: he makes no secret, even to the Emperor, that he prefers the more egalitarian set-up of Republican Rome to that of the Empire. Just as Vimes reluctantly serves Vetinari while wanting to overthrow him and replace him with something better, Falco works for Vespasian and gives him grudging respect, whilst pining for something better that doesn't include Emperors or Kings. In both cases, Helena Justina and Sybil Ramkin, as women from noble families who have faithfully served and advised rulers past and present, are on hand to soothe over any little misunderstandings.)

And L.D., in her author's notes, also talks about the concept of ''tribute plagiarism'', of assimilating and paying homage to the best ideas of another author by recycling them in your own work, putting your own mark on them, and seeing if anyone notices.

(March 2009) - '''''Alexandria''''', Lindsey Davis's latest release in the Falco series, sees the husband-and-wife detective team, Marcus Didius and Helena Justina, travel to North Africa, ostensibly on a family holiday to Egypt.

However, the most prestigious University in the Roman Empire is simultaneously beset with murder among the Faculty. Is it a case of younger, ambitious and status-hungry academics ensuring their promotion by terminally accelerating the retirement plans of the men above them? As an accredited Imperial Investigator with the personal trust of the Emperor, Falco is roped in to investigate. Compare this to Vimes having the trust of Vetinari and being sent out of the City on missions combining policing expertise and a unique diplomatic skill, sometimes requiring the intervention of his socially better-bred wife.

We meet a very aesthetic art expert (Sir Reynold?), two local policemen with a suspiciously Nobbs and Colon aura about them, and members of the Alexandria University faculty who are as quarrelsome, fractious, and incapable of grasping reality, as any in a Faculty we know. Some of whom manifest very familiar vibes - the Head of Philosophy is a big harrumphing bear of a man whose mind runs on fairly rigid rails, for instance, and who isn't especially interested in other people's ideas unless they chime with his.

There is also an issue concerning the Librarian. And a bright young postgraduate with deep ideas. And priests of a syncretic religion with big ideas. Who have access to Sodek the sacred crocodile as an instrument of applied theology.

And all this in the first quarter of the book...--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 23:05, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

The latest book in the Falco series is called '''''Nemesis'''''.

Spotting LD's tribute plagiarisms is beginning to be fun. But in this latest episode, Falco is forced to go to a spirit medium for help (and he is left slightly spooked where she gets one thing right that she could not possibly have guessed.)

The medium is small, dressed in faded vermilion red, and wears garlands and an item of headwear consisting partly of feathers but mainly reproductions of fruit. She is irascible of temper and insists on making nettle tea before she goes to work, sending pungent vegetable odours drifting across the seance room. Falco, cynical and streetwise, gives credit to her for knowing how people work and putting on an appropriate show. But this lady evokes [[Madame Tracy]] whilst looking like Mrs [[Evadne Cake]] and gives Falco that one wavering moment of wondering if there's something in it after all...

Falco is also charged with bringing to book a ghastly criminal family, composed of a hideous overbearing monster of a mother and the thuggish sons she has alternately doted on and terrified into submission. The Claudii family come over as a Roman echo of Ma Lilywhite and her sons (although one of them isn't above hitting girls).

And in ''The Third Nero'', there is a street trader who sells pies and pastries. Xeno is also not above serving rat meat...
--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 12:49, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

== Cory Doctorow ==
From historical whodunnit to science fiction. Cory Doctorow's novel '''''Makers''''' is about a very close future, where a new wave of computer innovation backed by a co-operative capitalism akin to anarchism, brings about something like the replicators of ''Stargate-SG1''. On page 110, Geoff, who defines himself as a "chemist", remarks on drinking some ''really good'' (if chemically enhanced) coffee ([[Splot]]?). Quote: ''"Marthter, the creathathure awaketh!"'' he said, in high Igor.

Later on in "Makers", the two computer inventors, Lester and Perry, create a Cabinet of Curiosities all of their very own.

== Alan Gordon ==
Alan Gordon (born 1959) is the author of several mysteries, the first of which is based on the characters from William Shakespeare's '''''Twelfth Night'''''. He writes about jesters as advisers to the king, who actually make up a super-secret spy ring that try to keep peace and control the leaders of different countries. The Fool's Guild of these novels is portrayed as a mockery to the church, and they refer to Jesus Christ as "Their Saviour, the First Fool".

Alan Gordon began writing his novels about fools and jesters as a supra-national spy ring in 1999. This is exactly the same idea TP came up with a year or two earlier to explain the survival of the Fools' and Clowns' Guild into the modern era - that the Guild's graduates go everywhere, end up in some very high places, and periodically report back to Doctor Whiteface. Making him both very rich and very powerful.

Is it possible AG got the basic idea for the seven Fools' Guild novels from Pratchett? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Gordon_(author)]

== Douglas Adams' ''Shada'' ==
In the long-awaited novelisation of Adams' ''Dr Who'' script, the doctor (his Tom Baker incarnation) is in the captivity of the big Bad, who is demanding he read out a Galiffreyan book of lore containing the innermost secrets of the Time Lords. The Doctor, who genuinely cannot read the heiroglyphics of Ancient Gallifrey, duly does the best he can:-

''"Squiggle, squiggle." said the Dosctor, "Squiggle, squiggle, sort of an eye, I think, squiggle, squiggle..." I'm paraphrasing wildly, of course... squiggle, squiggle... ssshsh, this is a good bit! Squiggle squiggle wavy line, squggle squiggle..." ''

Not assuming Douglas Adams wrote this in the original 1976 script, but his ghost-writer Gareth Roberts might be inserting a homage to Pteppic in {{P}} here?

== Yrsa Sigurdasdottir ==
Icelandic crime fiction writer Yrsa Sigurdasdottir's debut novel '''''Last rituals''''' deals with scurrilous goings-on among postgraduate students at the University of Iceland, who have taken their PhD in Icelandic ritual magic seriously, to the point of practically testing whether the old magic rituals and curses still work in the modern world. She passes on the snippet that a legendary founder of the academic tradition in Iceland was a mediaeval wizard, whose statue still takes pride of place in front of the main University building where everyone can see it. As well as this, there is a visit to a museum of native Icelandic magic, where a minor plot-point concerns whether or not a Viking artefact, a large stone collection bowl used to contain the blood of a sacrifical victim, is the real thing, or if it has been surreptitiously switched with a modern replica and the original stolen for some nefarious purpose... has Terry been translated into Icelandic, or are these two points part of the universal pool of plot-points drawn on for {{T!}} and the general layout of Unseen University? --[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 00:34, 6 April 2011 (CEST)

==John Moore==
* In John Moore's '''''Slay and Rescue''''' there's a mention of a shoemaker who made luxury (and impossible to wear) shoes before quitting and becoming the chief [[quisition|torturer]] for king [[Brutha|Bruno]] of [[Omnia]]. (The Czech translation made the reference to {{SG}} even more explicit, translating "chief torturer" as "chief inquisitor".)
* The book '''''Bad Prince Charlie''''' by John Moore has a footnote where the author says that it's a good idea to use footnotes because Terry Pratchett uses them and people like his books, after all.
* In '''''Unhandsome Prince''''' there exists a [[Thieves' Guild]] and an [[Assassins' Guild]]. (Anybody stupid enough to enter one of the buildings to join the guild or to make use of their services will find out that they are fake - a set up by the royal guards.)

== Dragon Magazine ==
* In Issue 293, an article on minor deities appears, titled "Small Gods." To further drive home the reference, the first illustration is of a not particularly bright looking man stranded in the desert being approached by a robed figure with the head of a bull.
* In Issue 271, in the comic strip "What's New? With Phil and Dixie", a poster on a wall reads "Visit beautiful Ankh-Morpork".

== Scrapheap Challenge ==
* On the second episode of the engineering game show ''Scrapheap Challenge'' (called ''Junkyard Wars'' in the US), the Orange team named their bodged-together Power Puller "The Great A'Tuin". It lost the challenge, winning only one out of three rounds of tug-of-war against the Yellow team's "Eat My Shorts".

==Charles Stross==
* In Charles Stross's near-future technothriller ''''''Halting State''''', a character enlivens a bus ride through Edinburgh by using Augumented Reality to turn it into Ankh-Morpork.

==Ben Aaronovitch==
* Ben Aaronovitch's ''New Doctor Who Adventures'' novel ''The Also People'' features, at various points, reference to a suspicious yellow dip at parties that no-one ever eats, the Doctor having octagons in his eyes to see things others can't, a cocktail called a Double Entendre, a market trader called C!Mot and a chapter headed "A Better Class of Recurring Dream".
* Aaronovitch has stated on his blog that part of the inspiration for his ''Rivers of London'' urban fantasy series was a throwaway line in ''[[The Science of Discworld]]'' that if there were rules of magic in our world, Newton would have discovered them.

==Girl Genius==
* In one episode of the "gaslight fantasy" webcomic "Girl Genius" by Phil and Katja Foglio, the "clanks" (steampunk robots) attacking the Baron include large wooden chests with sharp teeth and mechanical legs. In case anyone thinks it might be a coincidence, the lead chest has the name of its owner written on it: "The Amazing Pratchett".

==Unravelling the Mystery==
It all started with a Big Bang. (Bang!) Think {{SOD1}}. The Wizards of Unseen University create a pocket universe, made real and tangible inside a glass-like protective sphere allowing full three-dimensional views. The wizard tasked with making sense of it all is relatively young, rather geeky, wears glasses, and affects something not unlike a shapeless grey-green parka. Meanwhile at Caltech University in Pasadena, CA, there is a youngish research physicist who is geeky in appearance, wears glasses and a shapeless grey-green parka. Knowing about holograms, he darkens the room and projects a series of hologrammatic pictures of Earth and the solar system and the Milky Way, into the air to enchant his girlfriend. This looks a lot like the enduring image of {{SOD1}} - a world-globe hanging in the air, supported nowhere. Especially when he speculates about whether the Universe and all in it might have been created to provide information for a remote intelligence, for its own ends...See ''The Hologram Excitation'' episode of American geek-science sitcom ''The Big Bang Theory''. TBBT depends on fantasy, comic-book, sci-fi and geek cultural references to power the scripts. This would appear to be the first and so far only Discworld reference, as yet. {{SOD1}} co-authors [[Jack Cohen]] and [[Ian Stewart]] are both well-known in American academic circles and hold American academic positions; both have written for the academic trade press. This could be a case where Cohen and Stewart are more famous, to a very specialised readership, than Terry?

In {{SOD3}}, Jack Cohen ruefully describes a bad experience he had whilst working as an academic and going on lecture tours across the USA. He was heckled by a tough audience to whom he was trying to explain why evolution is the accepted scientific truth and Creationism doesn't have a leg to stand on. This was in East Texas, a part of the world where evolutionists tend to be tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail, if not burnt at the stake as agents of Satan. In ''TBBT'', lead character Sheldon Cooper is from East Texas and views having moved to California as intellectual liberation. His greatest fear is losing scientific credibility and being forced to return home to teach High School science. specifically, having to teach Evolution to Creationists. (His mother is a true believer in Christianity and a Creationist.)

There is also a tantalising scene where the guys have dressed up as ''Planet of the Apes'' characters and Raj ruefully says he'd have preferred to wear the orang-utan costume but the others voted him down... a bit tenuous, but you wonder if another reference was intended here.

Season Eight saw character evolution in the initially awkward and somewhat aloof character of Amy Farrah-Fowler. She is a neurobiological doctor who performs behavioural and surgical/chemical experiments on animals, principally simians. She is a moderately skilled animal handler who knows how to get the best out of her subjects, even keeping experimental animals as semi-pets in her home. For the five or six seasons - over a hundred and twenty episodes - in which she is a core character, she is casually inaccurate in her terminology, classing everything simian as a "mere monkey". But from the very end of Season Seven and into Season Eight, she very abruptly began to make the correct distinction between "monkeys" and "apes". This came out of nowhere. Indeed, she even rebukes Sheldon for calling an orang-utan a "monkey".

Also, Sheldon, a man who hitherto had always referred to all simians as "monkeys", comes out of nowhere with a detailed discourse concerning the taxonomy of apes, and the distinction between the three species of Great Ape which singles out the poor gibbon as the only Lesser Ape, and therefore the weird kid in the playground.... Where did this suddenly come from.... could it be that one TBBT character has discovered Terry Pratchett and is playing safe around her simian co-researchers?

==Criminal Minds==
"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." was quoted at the start of season 4 episode 20 "Conflicted" by Reid in a much more sinister way than TP used it and referring to good and evil, unlike the original, unsurprising concidering that Criminal Minds deals with serial killers as a matter of coarse. TP was acknowledged as the originator of the saying.

==Welcome to his Nightmare==
Outrageous singer and performance artiste Alice Cooper's 2011 album '''''Welcome 2 My Nightmare''''' contains a song called ''The Congregation''. This line made me stop and wonder.

''"And here in the fiery pit of boiling death, the lawyers, pimps, and mimes."''

An intelligent and well-read chap of a Gothic inclination cannot have failed to have stumbled on the works of Terry....
[[Category:Annotations]]

==Sharpe==
* In Bernard Cornwell's ''Sharpe'' tales, about a proto-commando in the Napoleonic Wars, the huge and hulking Sergeant Harper totes a [[Piecemaker|fearsome seven-barreled musket]], originally designed for close-quarter naval use with the express intention of bringing down a battleship's mainmast and rigging. This failed as a naval weapon because sailors tend to be smaller and wirier men whose talents lie elsewhere. Besides, to fire a weapon like this from the deck of a rolling and pitching ship could be... something of an own goal. But the huge Harper, who has a suspiciously Detritus-to-Vimes relationship with Captain Sharpe, takes to it like a troll to a siege weapon. Like Carrot and Detritus, the enduring friendship and mutual respect of the two men began with a fist-fight, which, against the odds, was won by Sharpe. Sharpe is a heavy-drinking outsider who rose to officer's rank from the Regency London equivalent of the Shades (the Rookery) and made his way up from the ranks, against the odds. Lord Wellington is portrayed as a devious Vetinari-like figure (who eventually entered politics and was a most effective Prime Minister). Sharpe also exposes political corruption by his social betters and both annoys them - and gets their respect. The Rust-like disposition of many British senior officers is explicitly dwelt upon. Sharpe eventually marries to a far higher social level and his wife has enviable Sybil Ramkin-like characteristics. (Memo: Cornwell may be a Discworld fan?)

==Doctor Who Magazine==
* In the DWM comic strip "Fire and Brimstone", the Eighth Doctor's companion Izzy describes the book she's reading as featuring "This mad city called Ankh-Morpork, and an old hag called Granny Weatherwax, and the whole world, right, is a disc and sits on the back of a turtle." She asks the Doctor why they can't visit somewhere like the Discworld and he replies "Izzy, I've ''been''. It was flat."

==The ''other'' Night Watch==
* Sergei Lukyanenko's fantasy novels about the detente between Light and Dark magic users in present-day Moscow have a Pratchett homage in book five, ''The New Watch''. Day Watch member Anton Gorodetsky (Higher Light Magician) is passing a fatherly eye over his daughter Nadja's reading choices. Being a magical policeman and loving father is not easy, especially when she's ten and showing clear signs of being a magic-capable Other. He reflects that her initial ecstasy at learning she is to be sent to a school for young magicians is going to turn into crushing disappointment, when she realises it's nothing like Hogwarts. Or indeed Unseen University. Anton then muses on how Rincewind might have got it more right than Terry Pratchett ever believed, with his strategy of using no magic at all and running like Hell when confronted with peril. As he is about to become last line of defence for the Day Watch against an un-known magic user of immense ability which far outstrips his own, he ruefully wishes he had the Rincewind option....

==Meanwhile, in Oslo==
* Jo Nesbo's series of police procedural novels are about a dissillusioned copper who has turned to drink to blot it all out. Harry Hole doesn't give a stuff who he offends in search of the truth, and he treats attempts at covering up or protecting well-placed people with scorn. His superiors can't get rid of him as he's just too good at what he does. He is disparagingly Republican about Norway's residual Royalty and upper classes, and in his world, Oslo is a crapsack city based on a rather smelly river with its upmarket bits on one bank, populated by that which invariably rises to the top. He is no friend to the privileged but has no illusions about the people living on the wrong side of the river, either. His preferred pub is a low joint on the river populated by quarellsome low-life types. He tends to galvanise a jaded and demoralised police force into action, and his superiors treat him with wary respect. He prefers his native city but has been forced to travel, with protest, to other countries to investigate issues there. Hmm.

==And in rural Cheshire near a place oddly reminiscent of the Long Man==
* '''Boneland''', Alan Garner's long-in-the-making sequel to his first fantasy novels ''The Weirdstone of Brisingamen'' and ''The Moon of Gomrath'', has a lot to say about rocks. The sound of flint-knapping is rendered "Tak, Tak, Tak, Tak, Tak", for instance. And the legend of a Creator calling life into being out of stone eggs is discussed at some length. Admittedly there is also a sly reference to a certain Genesis single. But Pratchett, as a modern weaver of old strands into new stories, is homaged here.

=="Endeavour"==
*In the episode "Coda" of the ''Inspoector Morse'' prequel, Inspector Thursday mentions his old boss, one Sergeant Vimes of Cable Street.

==Hellblazer==
* In the graphic novel series featuring occultist/psychic investigator John Constantine, a story arc has him in Australia, undergoing initiation by Aborigines and entering the Dreamtime, where the Trickster God appears in the form of a kangaroo, to tell him he is the only one who can save Australia for all its people. Constantine is initially reluctant to take the case. Hmmm.
* And in Hellblazer episode 101, ''Football:It's a Funny Old Game'', he meets a [[Yob Soddoth|dread quasi-demonic entity]] whose reason for being is to reap havoc and spread violent death at football games. Hmmm.

==Illuminating insights?==
It's probably fairer to say that the provocative thinking of anarchistically-minded author Robert Anton Wilson gets filtered into the Discworld via Terry Pratchett's mind, far more often than Terry's thinking filters into the Illuminatus! universe via Wilson's (see Reading Suggestions for specifics). But a later book by Wilson, '''''Nature's God''''', has an intriguing scene. Set in Paris with the French Revolution imminent, a big society ball is being hosted by the Duc d'Orleans, a man with pretensions to overthrow the ruling monarch and become King. He has been assiduously destabilising the country so that he can step in and rescue it. As nervous dancers are circulating, asking how near they think Revolution is, a woman named as [[Roberta Meserole|the Marquise de Monnier]] is circulating and talking to people, seemingly ingenuously so. As a result ''"the seed was planted, and the inevitable sprouts appeared in conversations throughout the ballroom".'' (In real history, the Marquise de Monnier was the mistress of the Compte de Mirabeau, an aristo who somehow evaded the guillotine and became a leader of the French Revolution. She had a reputation as a fixer, schemer and arranger. As well as an unconventional lady who delighted in flauting convention. Hmmm.) In the background, a very cynical and realist policeman called [[Samuel Vimes|de Sartine]], commander of the Paris City Watch, is watching intently and preparing to throw his own handful of grit into the machine.

A shame this was practically Wilson's last book before he died, or there might have been more Pratchett homages.

Earlier in Nature's God, there is the strange case of a "mountain man" living in the American West who manages to go back in time and have long conversations with an Indian medicine man (a mystic and monk-like ascetic with a strange sense of humour, who had respect from his people for his mastery of hidden tides and his ability to Walk the Happy Hunting grounds, where Time flows differently) who died thirty years before he was born. Or else the Indian steps forwards in time to talk to Sigismundo).

''Nature's God'' was published in 2004; {{NW}} in 2002.

==Unsound?==
* In fantasy-fiction webcomic ''[[http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch07/ch07_40.html| Unsounded]]'', the teenage Thief Sette, who has a certain Tiffany Aching-like compnent to her, is forced to walk the Khert, a limbo between life and death, where her deepest fears and highest hopes take real form. Challenged by a seemingly tormented soul who feels he is in Hell to consider that she might have died without knowing it - as opposed to having arrived here in a dream or via magic - she considers this and indignantly replies '''''"I ain't dead!'''''"

==Xena: Warrior Princess==
* In one episode, Xena and friends rescue a girl from being a human sacrifice, but she is not grateful as she had been waiting to be sacrificed. This is very similar to a scene in [[The Light Fantastic]].

== The Invisible Library ==

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genevieve_Cogman Genevieve Cogman] blatantly sets her ''Invisible Library'' series novels in [[L-Space]] without even crediting TP in the acknowledgements.

Reverse Annotations

2018-07-01T10:36:11Z

Prime.mover:

== "Pani Poni Dash" ==
*In the anime "Pani Poni Dash", episode 15, a class is stuck on a bus dangling off the edge of a cliff. Himeko, a rather hyperactive girl, deludes herself into thinking that her "aura" is what's keeping the bus from falling, hence she's supporting the whole shebang. To illustrate this, she hallucinates a brief vision of the Discworld with her head superimposed on Great A'Tuin.

== "Family Guy" ==
*In {{MP}}, during the fight scene with the [[Ginger]]-monster, [[Victor Tugelbend]] resorts to a mean trick to get the dogs [[Gaspode]] and [[Laddie]] to leave the wrecked cinema. (Corgi paperback edition, p288) He throws a stick and calls "Fetch!" (Gaspode has enough self-control to shout "You bastard!" as his doggie instinct overtakes his rational mind and he chases the stick)

In the TV animated series "Family Guy", by far the most capable, intelligent, and mature member of the Griffin family is the family dog Brian, an anthropomorphic canine who is clearly an American Roundworld cousin of Gaspode, (but cleaner)

In an episode where Brian ends up improbably married to Lois Griffin after the (presumed) death of ignoramus paterfamilias Peter, Brian becomes suspicious of her absences and suspects she is having an affair. Uncomfortably aware his probing questions are getting too close to the truth, Lois resorts to throwing a ball. Brian, unable to help his fundamental doggy instinct, chases it, but pauses to call her a bitch...

Interestingly enough, a recurring character in ''Family Guy'' is Death, who is a skeletal figure in a black robe toting a scythe, but who lacks the essential gravitas of Discworld's [[Death]]... well, all lesser Deaths are subjects of [[Azrael]]...

({{MP}} - published 1990; ''Family Guy'' first aired on TV in 1999)

There is also an episode of ''Family Guy'', screened here by BBC3 on 9/12/12, where for reasons too intricate to summarise, an evil robotic version of Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana grabs the evil monkey living in Chris Griffin's closet, and climbs up a very high building with her simian hostage. ''Somebody'' on FG's production staff must read Pratchett....

In an episode of the related animation ''American Dad'', aired in Britain during September 2010, ultra-conservative American father of the title, CIA agent Stan Smith, is pursuing his dream of disposing of daughter Hayley's hippie slacker boyfriend. In a conversation that arouses Stan's sympathies, the boyfriend, who is underweight and totes a scraggly beard, discloses that "my mother ran away before I was born" - exactly Rincewind's description of his parentage... Hayley's slacker BF also role-plays a not-very-good wizard on an Internet "World of Warcraft" fantasy game.

Also in ''American Dad'', one episode features a rather Stepford-Wife-ish cooking and baking contest, in which Mother Francine and daughter Hayley are deadly rivals for the prize and acclaim. Both are beaten at the last gasp by a new contender - the rather fey alien Roger, who has taken on a Stepford disguise. The name Roger adopts for his victory as Langley Falls' greatest cook? ''Emmylou Sugarbean''.

== "Life on Mars" ==
*{{NW}} - centres on a honest copper thrown back thirty years in time to right a wrong and enable him to return to his present, exactly as he left it. The honest copper is confronted with the slightly primitive policing techniques of the past, and introduces elements of sensitive modern policing on a force not quite mentally equipped to accept it.

The BBC TV series '''Life On Mars''', by stunning coincidence, centres on a honest copper thrown back thirty years in time to right a wrong and enable him to return to his present, exactly as he left it. The honest copper is confronted with the slightly primitive policing techniques of the past, and introduces elements of sensitive modern policing on a force not quite mentally equipped to accept it.

It would appear that the book was released slightly before the TV series was conceived, but there may not be much in it...

== Lindsey Davis' "Falco" ==
*The Roman detective novel ''Saturnalia'', by self-confessed Pratchett-admirer Lindsey Davis, includes in its 26th chapter three witches who would have been at home in [[Lancre]]: they dress up to ensure they look like witches, don't suffer fools gladly and complain about the problems of modern witchcraft; the third witch, Daphne, is in fact absent because - [[Nanny Ogg]]-like - she has to look after her grandchildren.

''Saturnalia'' feels like a rich seam of Pratchett references! For instance, the character of Zosmio, who flaps around the cemetery in a white sheet pretending to be dead, and "haunting" the place - who else is this but Duke [[Leonal Felmet]] in his final insanity?

And the Vigiles of the fourth precinct have a lot in common with the Night Watch of the early [[Samuel Vimes]] era. At their Saturnalia party, one watchman dresses up as "a six-foot tall carrot", for instance.

The policing set-up in Vespasian's Rome places the Royal Palace under the control of the Praetorian Guard, a bunch of haughty bullies puffed up with their own self-importance who enjoy throwing their weight around, especially against ethnic minorities and a despised lowly group such as the Vigiles (Night Watch). Compare this to the Palace Guard, two of whose finest want to beat up Vimes just for annoying them (in {{G!G!}}), and [[Quirke|Mayonnaise Quirke]]'s Day Watch with its speciesist attitude to trolls and dwarfs.

The Vigile (Watchman) Fusculus is described in terms reiniscent of a rather more intelligent, slightly quirkier, version of [[Fred Colon]]. ("Fusculus" may come from a Latin root meaning ''"to confuse, to bamboozle"'' - confirmation anyone?) No sighting of an Ancient Roman Nobby Nobbs yet, but I haven't finished reading the book!

"Fishing from the same stream", as Terry phrases it, Lindsey Davis also has the Lord of Misrule at Saturnalia be "randomly" selected by getting the fateful bean in their lunch. Compare this to those earthly avatars of the [[Hogfather]], who were "randomly" selected for sacrifice by getting the bean. And the Roman Saturnalia and Discworld's Hogswatch are, of course, aspects of the same universal midwinter festival.

The resemblance, especially nasally, between Rome and the river Tiber to Ankh-Morpork and the Ankh, is also apparent from the books. Falco is a product of, and still lives in, the Shades of ancient Rome. His landlord is a CMOT Dibbler type who has tried various failed shortcuts to getting seriously rich.

At this point in Roman history, it should be noted, as L.D. explicitly does, that the lowly-born Emperor Vespasian (the first of the Flavian line) is very explicitly '''''not''''' a Patrician. As viewed through the eyes of central character, plebian-born Marcus Didius Falco (who is suspiciously Vimes-like in terms of cynicism), it was the patrician (ie, most illustrious, well-bred, and noble) Claudian line of Caesars who got Rome into the mess it is in today. Such Divine Caesars as Caligula and Nero were, in Falco's eyes, so well-bred as to be inbred. Note L.D.'s use of the word "patrician" in its correct Roman context, as well as the reminder about the extremely insane Caesars who did things such as make a favourite horse into a Senator. (And the [[Ankh-Morpork]] parellel is Lord [[Snapcase]], possibly?)

Oh, and the most blatantly obvious parallel between Lindsey Davis and Terry Pratchett is so obvious I missed it: the central character, Marcus Didius Falco, the private investigator, is, socially speaking, a product of the Roman gutter who from time to time goes on ruinous drinking benders. He is a born detective, part of whose pay goes on a sort of "widow's pension" for his dead brother's girlfriend and child. The love of his life (Helena Justina) is a woman from a vastly higher social class - in fact, the nobility - who is independently wealthy and can afford to flout convention. Although there is no record of Helena obsessively breeding any sort of animal, this spookily parallels Sam Vimes and Lady Sybil. (Although for a while Falco had the title of Keeper of the Royal Geese, as a personal gift from Vespasian, their only family pet is an ill-behaved scruffy mutt called Nux).

The rather spiky relationship between Falco and Emperor Vespasian also has echoes of Vimes and Vetinari. Vespasian insists on the minimum of ceremony and puts up with near-insolence from his Imperial Investigator, perhaps because he knows Falco gets results, or perhaps because he likes having somebody around who doesn't refrain from speaking his mind. (Falco is no friend of the Imperial system: he makes no secret, even to the Emperor, that he prefers the more egalitarian set-up of Republican Rome to that of the Empire. Just as Vimes reluctantly serves Vetinari while wanting to overthrow him and replace him with something better, Falco works for Vespasian and gives him grudging respect, whilst pining for something better that doesn't include Emperors or Kings. In both cases, Helena Justina and Sybil Ramkin, as women from noble families who have faithfully served and advised rulers past and present, are on hand to soothe over any little misunderstandings.)

And L.D., in her author's notes, also talks about the concept of ''tribute plagiarism'', of assimilating and paying homage to the best ideas of another author by recycling them in your own work, putting your own mark on them, and seeing if anyone notices.

(March 2009) - '''''Alexandria''''', Lindsey Davis's latest release in the Falco series, sees the husband-and-wife detective team, Marcus Didius and Helena Justina, travel to North Africa, ostensibly on a family holiday to Egypt.

However, the most prestigious University in the Roman Empire is simultaneously beset with murder among the Faculty. Is it a case of younger, ambitious and status-hungry academics ensuring their promotion by terminally accelerating the retirement plans of the men above them? As an accredited Imperial Investigator with the personal trust of the Emperor, Falco is roped in to investigate. Compare this to Vimes having the trust of Vetinari and being sent out of the City on missions combining policing expertise and a unique diplomatic skill, sometimes requiring the intervention of his socially better-bred wife.

We meet a very aesthetic art expert (Sir Reynold?), two local policemen with a suspiciously Nobbs and Colon aura about them, and members of the Alexandria University faculty who are as quarrelsome, fractious, and incapable of grasping reality, as any in a Faculty we know. Some of whom manifest very familiar vibes - the Head of Philosophy is a big harrumphing bear of a man whose mind runs on fairly rigid rails, for instance, and who isn't especially interested in other people's ideas unless they chime with his.

There is also an issue concerning the Librarian. And a bright young postgraduate with deep ideas. And priests of a syncretic religion with big ideas. Who have access to Sodek the sacred crocodile as an instrument of applied theology.

And all this in the first quarter of the book...--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 23:05, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

The latest book in the Falco series is called '''''Nemesis'''''.

Spotting LD's tribute plagiarisms is beginning to be fun. But in this latest episode, Falco is forced to go to a spirit medium for help (and he is left slightly spooked where she gets one thing right that she could not possibly have guessed.)

The medium is small, dressed in faded vermilion red, and wears garlands and an item of headwear consisting partly of feathers but mainly reproductions of fruit. She is irascible of temper and insists on making nettle tea before she goes to work, sending pungent vegetable odours drifting across the seance room. Falco, cynical and streetwise, gives credit to her for knowing how people work and putting on an appropriate show. But this lady evokes [[Madame Tracy]] whilst looking like Mrs [[Evadne Cake]] and gives Falco that one wavering moment of wondering if there's something in it after all...

Falco is also charged with bringing to book a ghastly criminal family, composed of a hideous overbearing monster of a mother and the thuggish sons she has alternately doted on and terrified into submission. The Claudii family come over as a Roman echo of Ma Lilywhite and her sons (although one of them isn't above hitting girls).

And in ''The Third Nero'', there is a street trader who sells pies and pastries. Xeno is also not above serving rat meat...
--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 12:49, 24 June 2010 (UTC)

== Cory Doctorow ==
From historical whodunnit to science fiction. Cory Doctorow's novel '''''Makers''''' is about a very close future, where a new wave of computer innovation backed by a co-operative capitalism akin to anarchism, brings about something like the replicators of ''Stargate-SG1''. On page 110, Geoff, who defines himself as a "chemist", remarks on drinking some ''really good'' (if chemically enhanced) coffee ([[Splot]]?). Quote: ''"Marthter, the creathathure awaketh!"'' he said, in high Igor.

Later on in "Makers", the two computer inventors, Lester and Perry, create a Cabinet of Curiosities all of their very own.

== Alan Gordon ==
Alan Gordon (born 1959) is the author of several mysteries, the first of which is based on the characters from William Shakespeare's '''''Twelfth Night'''''. He writes about jesters as advisers to the king, who actually make up a super-secret spy ring that try to keep peace and control the leaders of different countries. The Fool's Guild of these novels is portrayed as a mockery to the church, and they refer to Jesus Christ as "Their Saviour, the First Fool".

Alan Gordon began writing his novels about fools and jesters as a supra-national spy ring in 1999. This is exactly the same idea TP came up with a year or two earlier to explain the survival of the Fools' and Clowns' Guild into the modern era - that the Guild's graduates go everywhere, end up in some very high places, and periodically report back to Doctor Whiteface. Making him both very rich and very powerful.

Is it possible AG got the basic idea for the seven Fools' Guild novels from Pratchett? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Gordon_(author)]

== Douglas Adams' ''Shada'' ==
In the long-awaited novelisation of Adams' ''Dr Who'' script, the doctor (his Tom Baker incarnation) is in the captivity of the big Bad, who is demanding he read out a Galiffreyan book of lore containing the innermost secrets of the Time Lords. The Doctor, who genuinely cannot read the heiroglyphics of Ancient Gallifrey, duly does the best he can:-

''"Squiggle, squiggle." said the Dosctor, "Squiggle, squiggle, sort of an eye, I think, squiggle, squiggle..." I'm paraphrasing wildly, of course... squiggle, squiggle... ssshsh, this is a good bit! Squiggle squiggle wavy line, squggle squiggle..." ''

Not assuming Douglas Adams wrote this in the original 1976 script, but his ghost-writer Gareth Roberts might be inserting a homage to Pteppic in {{P}} here?

== Yrsa Sigurdasdottir ==
Icelandic crime fiction writer Yrsa Sigurdasdottir's debut novel '''''Last rituals''''' deals with scurrilous goings-on among postgraduate students at the University of Iceland, who have taken their PhD in Icelandic ritual magic seriously, to the point of practically testing whether the old magic rituals and curses still work in the modern world. She passes on the snippet that a legendary founder of the academic tradition in Iceland was a mediaeval wizard, whose statue still takes pride of place in front of the main University building where everyone can see it. As well as this, there is a visit to a museum of native Icelandic magic, where a minor plot-point concerns whether or not a Viking artefact, a large stone collection bowl used to contain the blood of a sacrifical victim, is the real thing, or if it has been surreptitiously switched with a modern replica and the original stolen for some nefarious purpose... has Terry been translated into Icelandic, or are these two points part of the universal pool of plot-points drawn on for {{T!}} and the general layout of Unseen University? --[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 00:34, 6 April 2011 (CEST)

==John Moore==
* In John Moore's '''''Slay and Rescue''''' there's a mention of a shoemaker who made luxury (and impossible to wear) shoes before quitting and becoming the chief [[quisition|torturer]] for king [[Brutha|Bruno]] of [[Omnia]]. (The Czech translation made the reference to {{SG}} even more explicit, translating "chief torturer" as "chief inquisitor".)
* The book '''''Bad Prince Charlie''''' by John Moore has a footnote where the author says that it's a good idea to use footnotes because Terry Pratchett uses them and people like his books, after all.
* In '''''Unhandsome Prince''''' there exists a [[Thieves' Guild]] and an [[Assassins' Guild]]. (Anybody stupid enough to enter one of the buildings to join the guild or to make use of their services will find out that they are fake - a set up by the royal guards.)

== Dragon Magazine ==
* In Issue 293, an article on minor deities appears, titled "Small Gods." To further drive home the reference, the first illustration is of a not particularly bright looking man stranded in the desert being approached by a robed figure with the head of a bull.
* In Issue 271, in the comic strip "What's New? With Phil and Dixie", a poster on a wall reads "Visit beautiful Ankh-Morpork".

== Scrapheap Challenge ==
* On the second episode of the engineering game show ''Scrapheap Challenge'' (called ''Junkyard Wars'' in the US), the Orange team named their bodged-together Power Puller "The Great A'Tuin". It lost the challenge, winning only one out of three rounds of tug-of-war against the Yellow team's "Eat My Shorts".

==Charles Stross==
* In Charles Stross's near-future technothriller ''''''Halting State''''', a character enlivens a bus ride through Edinburgh by using Augumented Reality to turn it into Ankh-Morpork.

==Ben Aaronovitch==
* Ben Aaronovitch's ''New Doctor Who Adventures'' novel ''The Also People'' features, at various points, reference to a suspicious yellow dip at parties that no-one ever eats, the Doctor having octagons in his eyes to see things others can't, a cocktail called a Double Entendre, a market trader called C!Mot and a chapter headed "A Better Class of Recurring Dream".
* Aaronovitch has stated on his blog that part of the inspiration for his ''Rivers of London'' urban fantasy series was a throwaway line in ''[[The Science of Discworld]]'' that if there were rules of magic in our world, Newton would have discovered them.

==Girl Genius==
* In one episode of the "gaslight fantasy" webcomic "Girl Genius" by Phil and Katja Foglio, the "clanks" (steampunk robots) attacking the Baron include large wooden chests with sharp teeth and mechanical legs. In case anyone thinks it might be a coincidence, the lead chest has the name of its owner written on it: "The Amazing Pratchett".

==Unravelling the Mystery==
It all started with a Big Bang. (Bang!) Think {{SOD1}}. The Wizards of Unseen University create a pocket universe, made real and tangible inside a glass-like protective sphere allowing full three-dimensional views. The wizard tasked with making sense of it all is relatively young, rather geeky, wears glasses, and affects something not unlike a shapeless grey-green parka. Meanwhile at Caltech University in Pasadena, CA, there is a youngish research physicist who is geeky in appearance, wears glasses and a shapeless grey-green parka. Knowing about holograms, he darkens the room and projects a series of hologrammatic pictures of Earth and the solar system and the Milky Way, into the air to enchant his girlfriend. This looks a lot like the enduring image of {{SOD1}} - a world-globe hanging in the air, supported nowhere. Especially when he speculates about whether the Universe and all in it might have been created to provide information for a remote intelligence, for its own ends...See ''The Hologram Excitation'' episode of American geek-science sitcom ''The Big Bang Theory''. TBBT depends on fantasy, comic-book, sci-fi and geek cultural references to power the scripts. This would appear to be the first and so far only Discworld reference, as yet. {{SOD1}} co-authors [[Jack Cohen]] and [[Ian Stewart]] are both well-known in American academic circles and hold American academic positions; both have written for the academic trade press. This could be a case where Cohen and Stewart are more famous, to a very specialised readership, than Terry?

In {{SOD3}}, Jack Cohen ruefully describes a bad experience he had whilst working as an academic and going on lecture tours across the USA. He was heckled by a tough audience to whom he was trying to explain why evolution is the accepted scientific truth and Creationism doesn't have a leg to stand on. This was in East Texas, a part of the world where evolutionists tend to be tarred, feathered and run out of town on a rail, if not burnt at the stake as agents of Satan. In ''TBBT'', lead character Sheldon Cooper is from East Texas and views having moved to California as intellectual liberation. His greatest fear is losing scientific credibility and being forced to return home to teach High School science. specifically, having to teach Evolution to Creationists. (His mother is a true believer in Christianity and a Creationist.)

There is also a tantalising scene where the guys have dressed up as ''Planet of the Apes'' characters and Raj ruefully says he'd have preferred to wear the orang-utan costume but the others voted him down... a bit tenuous, but you wonder if another reference was intended here.

Season Eight saw character evolution in the initially awkward and somewhat aloof character of Amy Farrah-Fowler. She is a neurobiological doctor who performs behavioural and surgical/chemical experiments on animals, principally simians. She is a moderately skilled animal handler who knows how to get the best out of her subjects, even keeping experimental animals as semi-pets in her home. For the five or six seasons - over a hundred and twenty episodes - in which she is a core character, she is casually inaccurate in her terminology, classing everything simian as a "mere monkey". But from the very end of Season Seven and into Season Eight, she very abruptly began to make the correct distinction between "monkeys" and "apes". This came out of nowhere. Indeed, she even rebukes Sheldon for calling an orang-utan a "monkey".

Also, Sheldon, a man who hitherto had always referred to all simians as "monkeys", comes out of nowhere with a detailed discourse concerning the taxonomy of apes, and the distinction between the three species of Great Ape which singles out the poor gibbon as the only Lesser Ape, and therefore the weird kid in the playground.... Where did this suddenly come from.... could it be that one TBBT character has discovered Terry Pratchett and is playing safe around her simian co-researchers?

==Criminal Minds==
"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." was quoted at the start of season 4 episode 20 "Conflicted" by Reid in a much more sinister way than TP used it and referring to good and evil, unlike the original, unsurprising concidering that Criminal Minds deals with serial killers as a matter of coarse. TP was acknowledged as the originator of the saying.

==Welcome to his Nightmare==
Outrageous singer and performance artiste Alice Cooper's 2011 album '''''Welcome 2 My Nightmare''''' contains a song called ''The Congregation''. This line made me stop and wonder.

''"And here in the fiery pit of boiling death, the lawyers, pimps, and mimes."''

An intelligent and well-read chap of a Gothic inclination cannot have failed to have stumbled on the works of Terry....
[[Category:Annotations]]

==Sharpe==
* In Bernard Cornwell's ''Sharpe'' tales, about a proto-commando in the Napoleonic Wars, the huge and hulking Sergeant Harper totes a [[Piecemaker|fearsome seven-barreled musket]], originally designed for close-quarter naval use with the express intention of bringing down a battleship's mainmast and rigging. This failed as a naval weapon because sailors tend to be smaller and wirier men whose talents lie elsewhere. Besides, to fire a weapon like this from the deck of a rolling and pitching ship could be... something of an own goal. But the huge Harper, who has a suspiciously Detritus-to-Vimes relationship with Captain Sharpe, takes to it like a troll to a siege weapon. Like Carrot and Detritus, the enduring friendship and mutual respect of the two men began with a fist-fight, which, against the odds, was won by Sharpe. Sharpe is a heavy-drinking outsider who rose to officer's rank from the Regency London equivalent of the Shades (the Rookery) and made his way up from the ranks, against the odds. Lord Wellington is portrayed as a devious Vetinari-like figure (who eventually entered politics and was a most effective Prime Minister). Sharpe also exposes political corruption by his social betters and both annoys them - and gets their respect. The Rust-like disposition of many British senior officers is explicitly dwelt upon. Sharpe eventually marries to a far higher social level and his wife has enviable Sybil Ramkin-like characteristics. (Memo: Cornwell may be a Discworld fan?)

==Doctor Who Magazine==
* In the DWM comic strip "Fire and Brimstone", the Eighth Doctor's companion Izzy describes the book she's reading as featuring "This mad city called Ankh-Morpork, and an old hag called Granny Weatherwax, and the whole world, right, is a disc and sits on the back of a turtle." She asks the Doctor why they can't visit somewhere like the Discworld and he replies "Izzy, I've ''been''. It was flat."

==The ''other'' Night Watch==
* Sergei Lukyanenko's fantasy novels about the detente between Light and Dark magic users in present-day Moscow have a Pratchett homage in book five, ''The New Watch''. Day Watch member Anton Gorodetsky (Higher Light Magician) is passing a fatherly eye over his daughter Nadja's reading choices. Being a magical policeman and loving father is not easy, especially when she's ten and showing clear signs of being a magic-capable Other. He reflects that her initial ecstasy at learning she is to be sent to a school for young magicians is going to turn into crushing disappointment, when she realises it's nothing like Hogwarts. Or indeed Unseen University. Anton then muses on how Rincewind might have got it more right than Terry Pratchett ever believed, with his strategy of using no magic at all and running like Hell when confronted with peril. As he is about to become last line of defence for the Day Watch against an un-known magic user of immense ability which far outstrips his own, he ruefully wishes he had the Rincewind option....

==Meanwhile, in Oslo==
* Jo Nesbo's series of police procedural novels are about a dissillusioned copper who has turned to drink to blot it all out. Harry Hole doesn't give a stuff who he offends in search of the truth, and he treats attempts at covering up or protecting well-placed people with scorn. His superiors can't get rid of him as he's just too good at what he does. He is disparagingly Republican about Norway's residual Royalty and upper classes, and in his world, Oslo is a crapsack city based on a rather smelly river with its upmarket bits on one bank, populated by that which invariably rises to the top. He is no friend to the privileged but has no illusions about the people living on the wrong side of the river, either. His preferred pub is a low joint on the river populated by quarellsome low-life types. He tends to galvanise a jaded and demoralised police force into action, and his superiors treat him with wary respect. He prefers his native city but has been forced to travel, with protest, to other countries to investigate issues there. Hmm.

==And in rural Cheshire near a place oddly reminiscent of the Long Man==
* '''Boneland''', Alan Garner's long-in-the-making sequel to his first fantasy novels ''The Weirdstone of Brisingamen'' and ''The Moon of Gomrath'', has a lot to say about rocks. The sound of flint-knapping is rendered "Tak, Tak, Tak, Tak, Tak", for instance. And the legend of a Creator calling life into being out of stone eggs is discussed at some length. Admittedly there is also a sly reference to a certain Genesis single. But Pratchett, as a modern weaver of old strands into new stories, is homaged here.

=="Endeavour"==
*In the episode "Coda" of the ''Inspoector Morse'' prequel, Inspector Thursday mentions his old boss, one Sergeant Vimes of Cable Street.

==Hellblazer==
* In the graphic novel series featuring occultist/psychic investigator John Constantine, a story arc has him in Australia, undergoing initiation by Aborigines and entering the Dreamtime, where the Trickster God appears in the form of a kangaroo, to tell him he is the only one who can save Australia for all its people. Constantine is initially reluctant to take the case. Hmmm.
* And in Hellblazer episode 101, ''Football:It's a Funny Old Game'', he meets a [[Yob Soddoth|dread quasi-demonic entity]] whose reason for being is to reap havoc and spread violent death at football games. Hmmm.

==Illuminating insights?==
It's probably fairer to say that the provocative thinking of anarchistically-minded author Robert Anton Wilson gets filtered into the Discworld via Terry Pratchett's mind, far more often than Terry's thinking filters into the Illuminatus! universe via Wilson's (see Reading Suggestions for specifics). But a later book by Wilson, '''''Nature's God''''', has an intriguing scene. Set in Paris with the French Revolution imminent, a big society ball is being hosted by the Duc d'Orleans, a man with pretensions to overthrow the ruling monarch and become King. He has been assiduously destabilising the country so that he can step in and rescue it. As nervous dancers are circulating, asking how near they think Revolution is, a woman named as [[Roberta Meserole|the Marquise de Monnier]] is circulating and talking to people, seemingly ingenuously so. As a result ''"the seed was planted, and the inevitable sprouts appeared in conversations throughout the ballroom".'' (In real history, the Marquise de Monnier was the mistress of the Compte de Mirabeau, an aristo who somehow evaded the guillotine and became a leader of the French Revolution. She had a reputation as a fixer, schemer and arranger. As well as an unconventional lady who delighted in flauting convention. Hmmm.) In the background, a very cynical and realist policeman called [[Samuel Vimes|de Sartine]], commander of the Paris City Watch, is watching intently and preparing to throw his own handful of grit into the machine.

A shame this was practically Wilson's last book before he died, or there might have been more Pratchett homages.

Earlier in Nature's God, there is the strange case of a "mountain man" living in the American West who manages to go back in time and have long conversations with an Indian medicine man (a mystic and monk-like ascetic with a strange sense of humour, who had respect from his people for his mastery of hidden tides and his ability to Walk the Happy Hunting grounds, where Time flows differently) who died thirty years before he was born. Or else the Indian steps forwards in time to talk to Sigismundo).

''Nature's God'' was published in 2004; {{NW}} in 2002.

==Unsound?==
* In fantasy-fiction webcomic ''[[http://www.casualvillain.com/Unsounded/comic/ch07/ch07_40.html| Unsounded]]'', the teenage Thief Sette, who has a certain Tiffany Aching-like compnent to her, is forced to walk the Khert, a limbo between life and death, where her deepest fears and highest hopes take real form. Challenged by a seemingly tormented soul who feels he is in Hell to consider that she might have died without knowing it - as opposed to having arrived here in a dream or via magic - she considers this and indignantly replies '''''"I ain't dead!'''''"

==Xena: Warrior Princess==
* In one episode, Xena and friends rescue a girl from being a human sacrifice, but she is not grateful as she had been waiting to be sacrificed. This is very similar to a scene in [[The Light Fantastic]].

== The Invisible Library ==

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genevieve_Cogman Genevieve Cogman]'s ''The Invisible Library'' series blatantly sets her novels in [[L-Space]] without even crediting TP in the acknowledgements.

Book:The Fifth Elephant/Annotations

2018-06-29T20:18:42Z

Prime.mover:

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 3 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 14)'''''

The character [[All Jolson]] is a play on the name of Al Jolson, a vaudeville, radio, and film entertainer of the 20th century, perhaps best known for being the star of the first sound movie, [http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0018037/ ''The Jazz Singer''].

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 13 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 26)'''''

"...the deep fat mines at Shmaltzberg..." Shmaltz is Yiddish for chicken fat, as well as Polish for just fat.

'''''Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 29'''''

Vetinari describes Überwald: ''a mystery inside a riddle wrapped in an enigma.'' This was - word for word - Winston Churchill's description of Soviet Russia in the 1940's.

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 29 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 46)'''''

"Send a [[clacks]] to our agent..."

"Clacks" is obviously a play on "fax." The [[Roundworld]] counterpart of the Clacks was known as the optical telegraph or [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line Semaphore Line]. Invented in the late 18th century and operated into the early 19th century before being made obsolete by electrical telegraphy, semaphore lines were used by the governments of France, Britain, and other European countries to convey vital information more rapidly than horseback riders could. Semaphore lines could only send about two words a minute, and were thus much less efficient than those of Discworld.

For some interesting background reading on these real-life semaphore lines, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo The Count of Monte Cristo] by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandre_Dumas Alexandre Dumas] has an incident where the protagonist deliberately interferes with the semaphore traffic in order to misdirect and corrupt messages. It is inconceivable to think that Pratchett was unaware of this scene.

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 58 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 81)'''''

[[Leonard of Quirm]] says of his mechanical cipher device, "I think of it as the '''E'''ngine for the '''N'''eutralizing of '''I'''nformation for the '''G'''eneration of '''M'''iasmic '''A'''lphabets...."

The acronym is ENIGMA, which was the name of the mechanical cipher device used by the Germans in World War II. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine Enigma Machine] entry at Wikipedia.

'''''Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 99'''''

"There were a few rivers, their courses mostly guesswork, and the occasional town or at least the name of a town, probably put in to save the cartographer the embarrassment of filling his chart with, as they say in the trade, ''MMBU''."

The Discworld version of MMFD ("Miles and Miles of F---ing Desert"). Allegedly used by RAF pilots flying in gulf regions, and popularised by ''Frederick Forsyth'''s novel ''The Fist Of God''.

'''''Corgi (GB) paperback, p.223'''''

The Dwarfish idea of the ''Jar'akh'haga''' or ''ideas taster''. Here it is Dee, later seen to be unhappily gender-confused. Interestingly, the great British comedian and nation's favourite intellectual Stephen Fry recounts being given such a job commission for upper-crust society magazine, the ''Tatler'', by its flamboyant editor Marc Boxer. In typically flowery language, Boxer explained he wanted Fry to look after the otherwise disregarded small details and see they were as right and quirky as they could be before going to print. Fry became Boxer's ''ideas-smeller'' with a roving brief to look at all aspects of the magazine as a reader would, and adjust accordingly. ('''''the fry chronicles - an autobiography''''', pp 307-310)

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 161 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 207)'''''

"It's colder up here, Vimes thought. He's quicker on the uptake." [Referring to [[Detritus]].]

Anachronism. In earlier books (''[[Feet of Clay]]'' and ''[[Jingo]]'') Detritus' greater intellectual ability when cold is indicated by a marked improvement in his language. For instance, in ''[[Jingo]]'' (Harper Torch US, p. 295), on a cold night in the Klatchian desert, he has lines like, "What do you want me to do with him, Mr. Vimes?" "All present and correct, sir!" and "With rather more efficiency, sir." No "deses" and "dems," etc. Yet throughout the trip to Uberwald, which is presumably colder than the desert of Klatch at night, Detritus' language never improves.

But Detritus does say that he is undercover as he does not want the dwarves to know about his intelligence! NW - a neatly self-referential idea, since, as demonstrated in Maskerade, *thick* Detritus is useless at undercover work.

'''''Harper Collins (US) paperback, p. 222 (Corgi (GB) paperback, p. 281)'''''

"...the Koboldean Cycle..." This epic opera of the dwarfs bears certain resemblances to Wagner's [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_cycle Ring Cycle], a series of four operas, often performed over four nights, with a total running time of about 15 hours. Not quite as long as the five-week Koboldean Cycle. The eponymous Ring in Wagner's operas was forged by a dwarf named Alberich (reminiscent of [[Low King]] runner-up [[Albrecht Albrechtson]]). Kobold is a German word usually translated as "goblin." It also gives the English language the metal name ''Cobalt''. Interestingly enough, another mine-dwelling supernatural entity is called a ''nickel''.

'''''Corgi (UK) paperback, pp 238 - 239'''''

Vimes, un-used to Igors, asks "I'm sorry? Is all your family called Igor?" to which the resident Igor serving Lady [[Margolotta]] replies "Oh yeth, thur. It avoidth confuthion".

Compare this with the Monty Python "Bruces" sketch, where the newly-arrived Professor of Hobbes, Locke, Richards and Beneau is asked "That's going to cause a bit of confusion. Mind if we call you Bruce to keep it clear?"

'''''Corgi (UK) paperback, p370'''''

Vimes gives an order to Detritus to fire the [[Piecemaker]]:-

"Blow the bloody doors off!" Which Detritus does, not only taking out the werewolves' castle doors but also a goodly part of the frontage of the castle, which is explicitly described as being "in ruins" following a second shot of the mighty crossbow.

This evokes the 1965 film, ''The Italian Job'', where bankrobbing mastermind Michael Caine upbraids his hapless gelignite man (who has just vaporised an entire security van) with the line which has passed into movie history:-

'''''"You were only meant to blow the bloody doors off!"'''''
Note that Vimes, who is aware of the destructive capacity of the Piecemaker and normally forbids Detritus from using it, very deliberately omits the ''"you were only meant to..."'' part of the line....

Shortly after this, Angua greets her family for the first time in years. Two of her female relatives in the Clan, members of the ''"Freuden durch Kraft!"'' movement and faithful followers of her brother Wolfgang, are called '''Unity''' and '''Nancy'''. On Roundworld in the 1930's, there were a famous group of sisters from the English upper classes, who were notorious for effectively being groupies to assorted European dictators and despots. Unity Valkyrie Mitford was devotedly in love with Adolf Hitler and his philosophy, to the effect that she tried to blow her own brains out (such as they were) in bitter disillusionment at the onset of war. She was all prepared to live out the war as an exile in Germany, but delicate diplomatic arrangements were made to prevent something that would have been an embarrassment to all sides, (this threatened to bring the war into disrepute and make it a laughing stock, a prospect that for the one and only time brought the wartime British and German governments into full agreement) and she was returned to Great Britain via neutral intermediaries. Nancy Mitford, in common with a surprisingly large number of members of the British upper-class intelligentsia, had her own flirtation with Joseph Stalin and Soviet communism. (which must have led to some lively dinner-table conversations round at the Mitfords). Stalin was wiser and more fore-sighted than Hitler: he made sure he was out when Nancy called.(More here[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_Mitford])--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 21:52, 13 January 2008 (CET)

'''''Corgi (UK) paperback, p376'''''
"Well, things couldn't get any worse" he said.
"Oh, they could if there were snakes on here with us" said Lady Sybil.

See annotation for page 279 of [[Book:Carpe Jugulum/Annotations|Carpe Jugulum]]. Sybil has changed the setting for the "rural myth" from a coach to a sleigh.

Additional comment: This is also very likely a reference to the Indiana Jones movies, where the title character throws himself into dangerous situations with aplomb, and is afraid of nothing--except snakes.

When [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Carrot]] returns to the Watch House and passes judgement upon [[Fred Colon]]'s time as Acting-Captain, it is interesting to note in passing that the form of judgement follows the time-honoured Royal Navy ritual of "Requestmen and Defaulters". This is where the ship's captain, or in his absence the First Lieutenant, hears petitions from sailors and passes judgement on misdemeanours and disciplinary offences. The Captain's ceremonial sword is laid on the table, forming a physical barrier between judge and accused. It is there to remind the errant sailor that on board Her Majesty's Ship, all justice ultimately originates with the Monarch, who has delegated it to the Captain, via his commission, to use well and wisely. Should the case be found proven, the Captain turns the sword so that the point is directly facing the guilty party - symbolic of the Royal Justice. (We see here that both Colon and Nobbs twist and turn to "escape the accusatory point"). This piece of vivid theatre is something no sailor who has witnessed it will ever forget, and was quite possibly more salutary than the actual punishment. Carrot's eventual judgement wasn't even a reprimand, (Carrot realises that Colon was promoted way past his level of competence, which would not have happened if he, Carrot, had not put personal interests ahead of the good of the Watch, and followed the orders he was given - he was at fault too. So the whole sorry incident needed to be forgiven and forgotten as quickly as possible, and ''certainly'' before Vimes arrived home) but something Colon will in all probability take to the grave with him...

[[Category:Annotations|Fifth Elephant,The]]

Talk:Deep-Downers

2018-06-29T06:20:06Z

Prime.mover: /* Snuff? */ new section

Might a potential annotation for this page have the suggestion that the leather clothing of the Deep-Downers be reminiscent of the KKK? Meldrew4291 13:53 12 July 2016 (BST)

== Snuff? ==

"The Deep-Downers are faced down and somewhat humiliated by Low-King Rhys in Snuff."

Were they? I've just re-read it and I don't remember anything about dwarves. Might the writer of this statement be thinking of [[Thud!]]? --[[User:Prime.mover|that's wot I '''sed''' ...]] ([[User talk:Prime.mover|talk]]) 06:20, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

Talk:Stinky

2018-06-29T06:08:13Z

Prime.mover:

I'm curious: how come a paragraph of informatory material has been completely replaced by another? What was actually wrong with the original? Is there a house rule here that has been violated by the original? Just curious, in case I feel the need to contribute more comprehensively. --[[User:Prime.mover|that's wot I '''sed''' ...]] ([[User talk:Prime.mover|talk]]) 08:48, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
:That's pretty much what I was wondering. I haven't worked up to replacing the deletions yet; feel free yourself, of course. What's left of the article may be improved, but useful bits have just been trashed. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 16:30, 25 June 2018 (UTC)
::How's that? --[[User:Prime.mover|that's wot I '''sed''' ...]] ([[User talk:Prime.mover|talk]]) 06:08, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

Stinky

2018-06-29T06:07:50Z

Prime.mover:

{{Character Data
|photo=Blank.jpg|
|name=Stinky
|race=[[Goblin]]
|age= unknown
|occupation=Watchman, Clacks Operator, Petty Thief
|appearance= Small and slightly hobbled from a badly set broken leg
|residence=
|death=
|parents=
|relatives=
|children=
|marital status=
|books=[[Snuff]]
|cameos=
}}

'''Stinky''' is one of the [[goblins]] in the City Watch novel {{SN}}. He is first seen on the property of Constable [[Feeney Upshot]] after the arrest of [[Sam Vimes]] in connection with the suspected murder of [[Jethro Jefferson]]. Stinky was the first to ask the venerable watchmen for "JUST-ICE!"

His name comes from his absolute stink. Sam Vimes noted that it wasn't so much a smell as a sensation of your dental enamel evaporating.

There are definite hints that there's more to Stinky than meets the eye; he knows things he couldn't possibly know, and alludes to being a protector of sorts for the goblin race in general. He shows extreme resilience to physical damage, surviving what should have been a fatal injury at the hands (well, feet) of the infamous [[Stratford]], by whom he was crushed underfoot and supposedly killed.

He is also at one point made a probationary special constable of the Shire Watch, and is the first goblin watchman on the Disc.

He also becomes an operator of the newly erected [[clacks]] tower: while he does not know how to read, he is quick to learn the letters by their shapes.

His ability to communicate with animals gives him the skills of a horse whisperer. When Sam Vimes — with reluctance bordering on fear — needed to mount a fast horse to chase after the murderer, Stinky calmed the horse and got it to kneel for Vimes to straddle it with ease.

{{stub}}
[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[de:Stinky]]

Talk:Stinky

2018-06-25T08:48:07Z

Prime.mover: Created page with "I'm curious: how come a paragraph of informatory material has been completely replaced by another? What was actually wrong with the original? Is there a house rule here that h..."

Witchfinder Army

2018-06-16T23:01:55Z

Prime.mover:

The '''Witchfinder Army''' is an organization which is now made up of only two members; Sergeant [[Shadwell]] and Private [[Newton Pulsifer]]. The Army is paid for by both the angel [[Aziraphale]] and his opposite number [[Anthony Crowley|Crowley]], but that's still not very much at all.

About the only thing the Witchfinder Army ever accomplished in its post-Restoration heyday (excluding sterling work put in two centuries later by R.S.M. [[Nurker]] to make the Empire safe for missionaries) was the burning at the stake of one [[Agnes Nutter]]. The was done by [[Newton Pulsifer]]'s great-grandfather 1, Major Thou-Shalt-Not-Commit-Adultery Pulsifer, who was rather satisfied with himself until the gunpowder was lit and the nails came flying out.

1 support? See [[Talk:Witchfinder Army|discussion]].

[[Category:Good Omens]]

Talk:Borogravia

2018-06-12T06:51:43Z

Prime.mover: /* Small? */

==Language==
Borogravian to High Borogravian: the Roundworld analogy might be the difference between all the various local German dialects, and the "High German" that was used as a kind of common language? I know enough to know that the "Plattdeutsch" of Northern Germany (Dutch and Danish borders)is only just intelligible to the Swiss and Austrians, and vice-versa... perhaps Borogravia has as many dialects and local peculiarities?

To be honest, any "language community" consists of a group of dialects that all share enough common features for them to be thought of as belonging to the same language: English, for instance, has got Scots and Geordie accents at one end of the country, which shade through many different variants to Cornwall and Kentish at the other end. What we call "BBC English", or "Standard English", performs the same uniting function in the English-speaking world.

Even in a minority language like Welsh, a tuned ear can detect differences of vocabulary, idiom and even grammar between Flintshire (top right-hand corner) Caernarfon/Ynys Mon (top left-hand corner) Ceredigion (west coast) and the south. There is a "pure" High Language that gets trotted out at Eisteiddfods and which is used in the Beibl. (Religion tends to be the other usage of High Languages: think of the High English" of the '''''Book of Common Prayer''''' and the '''''King James Bible'''''. This ties in well with {{COM}}'s description of "High Borogravian" as a language of magic and religion.) --[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 11:29, 10 October 2007 (CEST)

==Pun==
You're all way better at etymology than me - I just read the nation's name as "Borrow Gravy Ah" (possibly a pun in the same class as [[Djelibeybi]]). [[User:JaffaCakeLover|JaffaCakeLover]] 18:14, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
:I think the assumption was that it came from Lewis Carrol's "Borogoves" welded onto the German form "...gravia", a region ruled by a ''Graf''. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 20:01, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

There was a brand of gravy powder called Boro = Boro Gravy (unsigned comment by 222.155.204.88, 24 February 2011)
:Interesting if true, but it can't be Googled, Yahooed or Binged. ''Bistogravia'', now...--[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 17:37, 30 May 2011 (CEST)

==Dark Empire==
The "Dark Empire" seems to me a reference to Ronald Reagans' Term: "Evil Empire". --[[User:EinFritz|EinFritz]] ([[User talk:EinFritz|talk]]) 23:36, 6 October 2013 (GMT)
:Very well could be. Unfortunately not much has been written about the Dark Empire yet. --[[User:Zdm|Zdm]] ([[User talk:Zdm|talk]]) 04:49, 7 October 2013 (GMT)

==Modern parallel?==
Hmm. Bellicosity: check. Overbearing religion: check. Absurd propaganda: check. There are ways it's
unlike, of course. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 22:57, 29 May 2011 (CEST)

== Small? ==
"small, backward country,..." About half way through the book we find it's not so small, in fact it's larger than Zlobenia. Or is it that Zlobenia is also small, and even smaller than Borogravia? --[[User:Prime.mover|that's wot I '''sed''' ...]] ([[User talk:Prime.mover|talk]]) 20:00, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
:It's larger than many countries according to {{CDA}} map, but then Genua has also grown from a small city-state to a large country as well. I have trouble considering the atlas as canon; I'd need to scour the book for clues. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 20:38, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

::Doubleday hardback p.178: 'And I have to add, for my part," said Blouse, in his talking-to-a-meeting voice, 'that Borogravia is in fact larger than Zlobenia, although most of the country is little more than barren mountainside--' --[[User:Prime.mover|that's wot I '''sed''' ...]] ([[User talk:Prime.mover|talk]]) 21:51, 11 June 2018 (UTC)
:Yea; so neither of them sounds very large. The great areas shown on the ''Atlas'' mapp could hardly be all barren mountainside. Their insignificance in the rest of the chronicles and their narrative similarity to the pre-and-post-Yugoslavian Balkans don't support very large countries. Keep digging. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 23:20, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

::Nope, I'm all out. Okay, I'll shut up now. --[[User:Prime.mover|that's wot I '''sed''' ...]] ([[User talk:Prime.mover|talk]]) 06:51, 12 June 2018 (UTC)

Talk:Borogravia

2018-06-12T06:51:18Z

Prime.mover: /* Small? */

Talk:Borogravia

2018-06-11T21:51:34Z

Prime.mover:

Talk:Borogravia

2018-06-11T21:51:07Z

Prime.mover: /* Small? */

Talk:Borogravia

2018-06-10T20:02:09Z

Prime.mover:

==Language==
Borogravian to High Borogravian: the Roundworld analogy might be the difference between all the various local German dialects, and the "High German" that was used as a kind of common language? I know enough to know that the "Plattdeutsch" of Northern Germany (Dutch and Danish borders)is only just intelligible to the Swiss and Austrians, and vice-versa... perhaps Borogravia has as many dialects and local peculiarities?

To be honest, any "language community" consists of a group of dialects that all share enough common features for them to be thought of as belonging to the same language: English, for instance, has got Scots and Geordie accents at one end of the country, which shade through many different variants to Cornwall and Kentish at the other end. What we call "BBC English", or "Standard English", performs the same uniting function in the English-speaking world.

Even in a minority language like Welsh, a tuned ear can detect differences of vocabulary, idiom and even grammar between Flintshire (top right-hand corner) Caernarfon/Ynys Mon (top left-hand corner) Ceredigion (west coast) and the south. There is a "pure" High Language that gets trotted out at Eisteiddfods and which is used in the Beibl. (Religion tends to be the other usage of High Languages: think of the High English" of the '''''Book of Common Prayer''''' and the '''''King James Bible'''''. This ties in well with {{COM}}'s description of "High Borogravian" as a language of magic and religion.) --[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 11:29, 10 October 2007 (CEST)

==Pun==
You're all way better at etymology than me - I just read the nation's name as "Borrow Gravy Ah" (possibly a pun in the same class as [[Djelibeybi]]). [[User:JaffaCakeLover|JaffaCakeLover]] 18:14, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
:I think the assumption was that it came from Lewis Carrol's "Borogoves" welded onto the German form "...gravia", a region ruled by a ''Graf''. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 20:01, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

There was a brand of gravy powder called Boro = Boro Gravy (unsigned comment by 222.155.204.88, 24 February 2011)
:Interesting if true, but it can't be Googled, Yahooed or Binged. ''Bistogravia'', now...--[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 17:37, 30 May 2011 (CEST)

==Dark Empire==
The "Dark Empire" seems to me a reference to Ronald Reagans' Term: "Evil Empire". --[[User:EinFritz|EinFritz]] ([[User talk:EinFritz|talk]]) 23:36, 6 October 2013 (GMT)
:Very well could be. Unfortunately not much has been written about the Dark Empire yet. --[[User:Zdm|Zdm]] ([[User talk:Zdm|talk]]) 04:49, 7 October 2013 (GMT)

==Modern parallel?==
Hmm. Bellicosity: check. Overbearing religion: check. Absurd propaganda: check. There are ways it's
unlike, of course. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 22:57, 29 May 2011 (CEST)

== Small? ==

"small, backward country,..." About half way through the book we find it's not so small, in fact it's larger than Zlobenia. Or is it that Zlobenia is also small, and even smaller than Borogravia? --[[User:Prime.mover|that's wot I '''sed''' ...]] ([[User talk:Prime.mover|talk]]) 20:00, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Talk:Borogravia

2018-06-10T20:01:53Z

Prime.mover:

==Language==
Borogravian to High Borogravian: the Roundworld analogy might be the difference between all the various local German dialects, and the "High German" that was used as a kind of common language? I know enough to know that the "Plattdeutsch" of Northern Germany (Dutch and Danish borders)is only just intelligible to the Swiss and Austrians, and vice-versa... perhaps Borogravia has as many dialects and local peculiarities?

To be honest, any "language community" consists of a group of dialects that all share enough common features for them to be thought of as belonging to the same language: English, for instance, has got Scots and Geordie accents at one end of the country, which shade through many different variants to Cornwall and Kentish at the other end. What we call "BBC English", or "Standard English", performs the same uniting function in the English-speaking world.

Even in a minority language like Welsh, a tuned ear can detect differences of vocabulary, idiom and even grammar between Flintshire (top right-hand corner) Caernarfon/Ynys Mon (top left-hand corner) Ceredigion (west coast) and the south. There is a "pure" High Language that gets trotted out at Eisteiddfods and which is used in the Beibl. (Religion tends to be the other usage of High Languages: think of the High English" of the '''''Book of Common Prayer''''' and the '''''King James Bible'''''. This ties in well with {{COM}}'s description of "High Borogravian" as a language of magic and religion.) --[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 11:29, 10 October 2007 (CEST)

==Pun==
You're all way better at etymology than me - I just read the nation's name as "Borrow Gravy Ah" (possibly a pun in the same class as [[Djelibeybi]]). [[User:JaffaCakeLover|JaffaCakeLover]] 18:14, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
:I think the assumption was that it came from Lewis Carrol's "Borogoves" welded onto the German form "...gravia", a region ruled by a ''Graf''. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 20:01, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

There was a brand of gravy powder called Boro = Boro Gravy (unsigned comment by 222.155.204.88, 24 February 2011)
:Interesting if true, but it can't be Googled, Yahooed or Binged. ''Bistogravia'', now...--[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 17:37, 30 May 2011 (CEST)

==Dark Empire==
The "Dark Empire" seems to me a reference to Ronald Reagans' Term: "Evil Empire". --[[User:EinFritz|EinFritz]] ([[User talk:EinFritz|talk]]) 23:36, 6 October 2013 (GMT)
:Very well could be. Unfortunately not much has been written about the Dark Empire yet. --[[User:Zdm|Zdm]] ([[User talk:Zdm|talk]]) 04:49, 7 October 2013 (GMT)

==Modern parallel?==
Hmm. Bellicosity: check. Overbearing religion: check. Absurd propaganda: check. There are ways it's
unlike, of course. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 22:57, 29 May 2011 (CEST)

== Small? ==

"small, backward country,..." About half way through the book we find it's not so small, in fact it's larger than Zlobenia. Or is it that Zlobenia is also small, and even smaller than Borogravia? --[[User:Prime.mover|that's wot I '''sed'''; ...]] ([[User talk:Prime.mover|talk]]) 20:00, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Talk:Borogravia

2018-06-10T20:00:16Z

Prime.mover:

==Language==
Borogravian to High Borogravian: the Roundworld analogy might be the difference between all the various local German dialects, and the "High German" that was used as a kind of common language? I know enough to know that the "Plattdeutsch" of Northern Germany (Dutch and Danish borders)is only just intelligible to the Swiss and Austrians, and vice-versa... perhaps Borogravia has as many dialects and local peculiarities?

To be honest, any "language community" consists of a group of dialects that all share enough common features for them to be thought of as belonging to the same language: English, for instance, has got Scots and Geordie accents at one end of the country, which shade through many different variants to Cornwall and Kentish at the other end. What we call "BBC English", or "Standard English", performs the same uniting function in the English-speaking world.

Even in a minority language like Welsh, a tuned ear can detect differences of vocabulary, idiom and even grammar between Flintshire (top right-hand corner) Caernarfon/Ynys Mon (top left-hand corner) Ceredigion (west coast) and the south. There is a "pure" High Language that gets trotted out at Eisteiddfods and which is used in the Beibl. (Religion tends to be the other usage of High Languages: think of the High English" of the '''''Book of Common Prayer''''' and the '''''King James Bible'''''. This ties in well with {{COM}}'s description of "High Borogravian" as a language of magic and religion.) --[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 11:29, 10 October 2007 (CEST)

==Pun==
You're all way better at etymology than me - I just read the nation's name as "Borrow Gravy Ah" (possibly a pun in the same class as [[Djelibeybi]]). [[User:JaffaCakeLover|JaffaCakeLover]] 18:14, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
:I think the assumption was that it came from Lewis Carrol's "Borogoves" welded onto the German form "...gravia", a region ruled by a ''Graf''. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 20:01, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

There was a brand of gravy powder called Boro = Boro Gravy (unsigned comment by 222.155.204.88, 24 February 2011)
:Interesting if true, but it can't be Googled, Yahooed or Binged. ''Bistogravia'', now...--[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 17:37, 30 May 2011 (CEST)

==Dark Empire==
The "Dark Empire" seems to me a reference to Ronald Reagans' Term: "Evil Empire". --[[User:EinFritz|EinFritz]] ([[User talk:EinFritz|talk]]) 23:36, 6 October 2013 (GMT)
:Very well could be. Unfortunately not much has been written about the Dark Empire yet. --[[User:Zdm|Zdm]] ([[User talk:Zdm|talk]]) 04:49, 7 October 2013 (GMT)

==Modern parallel?==
Hmm. Bellicosity: check. Overbearing religion: check. Absurd propaganda: check. There are ways it's
unlike, of course. --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] 22:57, 29 May 2011 (CEST)

== Small? ==

"small, backward country,..." About half way through the book we find it's not so small, in fact it's larger than Zlobenia. Or is it that Zlobenia is also small, and even smaller than Borogravia? --[[User:Prime.mover|that's wot I sed ...]] ([[User talk:Prime.mover|talk]]) 20:00, 10 June 2018 (UTC)

Book:Monstrous Regiment/Annotations

2018-06-10T15:13:44Z

Prime.mover: /* References */

==Historical==
In the British Army, the Tenth of Foot are, or were, the Lincolnshire Regiment. Originally raised in 1685 to fight the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion, the regiment later fought in the American War of Independence, where Washington's army derisively nicknamed them "the yellowbellies" because of the buff-yellow cuffs, turnbacks, and lapels of their red tunics. (a regiment only wore blue turnbacks if it had been granted "Royal" status, which the Lincolns did not achieve till the late 19th century). After service in Egypt in the early 1800's, their cap-badge became a stylised sphynx and pyramid. The Regiment died almost to the last man at Gandamack in Afghanistan in 1840, with its last survivor escaping with one of the regimental colours. It fought later on the Crimea, in WW1 and WW2, and finally "died" in 1960 when amalgamated into the Northampton Regiment. Later defence cuts saw further amalgamations, and the current "ghost" of this old unit lives on as part of the Royal Anglian super-regiment. Interestingly, the Lincolns were also known as "The Poachers", partly as a reference to their rural recruiting ground, and partly because of the song "The Lincoln Poacher", which was an unofficial regimental march:

'' 'tis my delight on a shining night...''

The story of {{wp|Christian_Davies|Christian Davies}} seems to wind though the book and the author likely noticed it in his research. Born ''Christian Cavanaugh'' and using several names through her career, she served as an infantryman and later dragoon for thirteen years (1693 - 1706) until revealed as a result of her second serious wound. Even after the discovery she remained with the 4th Royal North British Dragoons (eventually the ''Scots Greys'') as a sutler and became a celebrity throughout the army, meeting Queen Anne to receive a fairly handsome pension. Parallels include coming from a pub family (Polly), looking for her husband (Jack), and being a bit of a lad (well, lass) of versatile sexuality (the Working School dropouts). 
The phenomenon is not uniquely British. See also {{wp|Louise Antonini|Louise Antonini}} in the French army AND navy.

The "Cheesemongers" is a nickname for the Life Guards of the Household Cavalry, also known as (apparently) The Bangers, The Lumpers, The Fly-Slicers, The Picadilly Butchers, The Roast and Boiled, The Ticky Tins. (But the rest of the British army affectionately refers to the Household Division as "the Woodentops") The Cheesemongers is a derogatory nickname dating from 1788 when the regiment was being re-organised. Some commissions were refused because the officers concerned were the sons of merchants and tradesmen, even, shock horror, grocers and general provisioners, and therefore not, “gentlemen.” Issues of education, social standing, independent income, et c, still appear to matter in these upscale regiments in 2008: 230 years ago, it mattered a lot more!

There does not appear to ever have been a British Army unit nicknamed the "Ins-And-outs". However, the 96th Regiment of Foot (The Welsh Regiment) were nicknamed "the Ups-And-Downs". Again, the curse of amalgamation means that the Welsh Regiment today lives on as 2nd Battalion the Royal Welch.

==References ==

'''''The Duchess'''''. A pub where a woman called Polly Perks has a big stake. Think of long-running BBC radio soap opera '''The Archers''', where the village pub, the Bull, is run by licencee Sid Perks. And for many years, also by his wife. '''''Polly Perks'''''.

It would be utterly unsurprising if a bit of Hašek’s classic satire '''''{{wp|The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk|The Good Soldier Svejk}}''''' creeps in there as well... in fact, there are odd echoes.

The idiot-savant Svejk, a peasant who hides cunning under a stupid-seeming exterior,narrowly evades arrest by the secret policeman Corporal Bretschneider (Strappi?) and on enlistment into the 91st, is assigned as batman to the officer Lieutenant Lukaš and at one point has to shave him (cf Polly and Blouse). The company cook is a mystic who claims to receive spiritualist messages from long-dead monarchs. The regiment belongs to an Army serving a dying empire (Austro-Hungary, which fits the central European vibe of "Borogravia") and in fact crumbles into defeat in its first serious engagement. Svejk spends a long time detached from his unit and trying to find his way back to it, evading capture and the enemy on both sides (he is nearly shot for spying and/or desertion)

Another general observation: on page 342 of the paperback of {{CJ}}, when the vampires are defeated in Escrow, one of the defeated vampyres is called ''Maladicta''. Did she decide on a career change shortly after this and joined the Army to forget?

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 24|"The official story is that she's in mourning."}}

The Duchess of Borogravia appears to have certain affinities with {{wp|Queen Victoria|Queen Victoria}}.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 47|"Private Bloodfnucker hnas a fnord, fnargeant," he said accusingly.}}

It is difficult to believe this is not a shout out to Shea and Wilson's ''{{wp|Illuminatus!|Illuminatus!}}''. The question that needs to be answered is: ''Have you seen the fnords?''

{{Annotation|HB, page 85) ''a banknote'' - of course, Borogravia uses paper banknotes, ahead of Ankh-Morpork, but possibly fuelled out of desperation and ''fiat currency''. See here: [[Annagovia|a possible sample banknote]]

'''''Doubleday hardback page 85''''': ''this was very soon going to be a barefoot army....''
Like the Confederates in the American Civil War, who were plagued with supply difficulties and shortages; it was estimated in 1864 that 60% of the confederacy's soldiers went into battle barefoot. In the last months of the war the Confederacy was like Borogravia, fighting on pride and a refusal to see the war was lost. What was especially poignant was that one state, South Carolina, had a footwear industry creating sufficient to shoe the whole Army and then some. But most of its output went into storage as it saw no reason to supply anyone other than its own state's troops and was unwilling to give away the surplus - its allied states had to ''buy'' the boots or go without. And the Confederate government respected individual states' rights and did not force this state to equip the whole Army gratis...

'''''Doubleday hardback page 86''''':
Blouse has somehow remained a second lieutenant for eight years. In practically every Army, this is the lowest entry-grade rank for a commissioned officer and most people move on to the next grade after between six months and a year (at the outside). He has either annoyed people, or else dismally failed to impress, to have been relegated to the rear for so long.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 127|"We have met the enemy and he is nice":}}

'' 'Was she supposed to think ''We have met the enemy and he is nice?'' Anyway, he wasn't. He was smug....''

a parody of the famous Pogo quotation :"We have met the enemy and he is us" which, in turn, refers to a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie, stating "We have met the enemy, and they are ours."

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 45|Several of the cadets go by nicknames:}}

''"...'Shufti' Manickle..."''

Shufti is a military term meaning a quick look or reconnoitre. It is actually derived from an arabic word that was learned and brought back to England by British troops defending the Empire in the Middle East.

''"...'Wazzer' Goom..."''

''Wazz'' (rhyming with "jazz") is a slang word meaning "to urinate", and hence "urine". Thus "Wazzer" can be a nickname for anyone who has a reputation for urinating, usually inappropriately.

Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 59:-
Jackrum is warning the Detail of possible hard times ahead by reminiscing about the retreat from Khurusck, where he went three days without either food or water. The Roundworld parallel is the German retreat from Kursk in the late summer and autumn of 1943, where the remnant of the German army defeated by the Russians fought several hundred miles back to the next defensible position, the line of the river Dneiper. Many units went wholly unsupported by logistic support, marching at least without food in a blazing late summer. At least the water supply was eased when the autumn rains started... (ref. Guy Sajer, ''The Forgotten Soldier''. Sajer relates the privations of the forced march out of Kursk to the west, one step ahead of the Russians, where pondwater was a luxury and the only food discovered were green potatoes and an old stale loaf. The Russians were also expected to live off the land - their logistics service gave priority to bringing up fuel and ammunition, food rations coming a poor third. Sajer himself contracted dysentery, possibly from drinking contaminated water, and nearly died of it. Thus do Famine and Pestilence follow in War's tracks).

The incident in the village where the Last Detail have to play cat-and-mouse with a numerically superior enemy patrol who are out looking for them: Manfred von Richtofen, later to become the Red Baron of aerial combat, started WW1 as a cavalryman and relates a suspiciously similar tale of being caught out by Cossacks on the Eastern Front in WW1. Although the violence here is directed against a Russian Orthodox priest suspected of using his church bells to signal to Russian troops that the Germans were here. [http://www.patriotfiles.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=305|Die Rote Kampfflieger]

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 208|We first meet the dead Borogravian generals, in a reveneant zombie state in the crypt at Kneck.:}}

German SS leader, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, kept a castle at Wewelsburg as a meeting-place for the inner orders of the SS movement. Underneath his fortress was a crypt with places for perhaps twelve corpses, which he intended to be the last resting place for the fighting generals who led the Waffen-SS in combat.

Today, some evolutions of the wargaming hobby involve sci-fi/fantasy gaming scenarios where in 1945, the Germans stave off final defeat by learning how to reanimate their dead soldiers as zombie divisions, causing the Allies a bit of a headache. This is also yet another theme of Shea and Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''' - in the concluding acts, a division of German soldiers ceremonially poisoned by Himmler on April 30th 1945 and consigned to Lake Totenkopf under a bio-mystical preservation field are revived as zombies (under the command of General Hanfgeist), to wreak destruction and consternation and take unfinished business back to the Russians in East Germany, thus starting WW3.

There is also, of course, a popular computer game on exactly this theme. ("You are the hero seeking to prevent revived Nazi Zombies taking over the world. You must seek and destroy them in their Bavarian castle lair.") it's caled the Wolfenstein Series, dating from yhe early 1980's. Terry may have played it. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein]

The Detail encounter the zombie soldiers on pp270-273.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 311|Whilst discussing disguising himself as a woman, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a few of his previous forays into "Theatricals":}}

''"I got a huge round of applause as the Widow Trembler in 'Tis Pity She's A Tree."''

This may refer to the 1630s play ''{{wp|Tis_Pity_She%27s_a_Whore|Tis Pity She's a Whore}}'' (also known as "Giovanni and Annabella", or simply "Tis Pity") by John Ford. This device is also used in {{MM}}, where Professor [[John Hicks]] artlessly reveals he is a member of the [[Dolly Sisters Players]], and have you seen my Lord Fartwell in '' 'Tis Pity She's An Instructor in Unarmed Combat''?

''"The world turned upside down"'' - this is a reference to Cornwallis' surrender of British armies to Washington, at the end of the War of Independence, where the bands sardonically played this tune during the surrender ceremonies.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 328|Vimes says "''Ze chzy Brogocia proztfik''":}}

''"Didn't I say I was a citizen of Borogravia?"''

''"No. ''Brogocia'' is the cherry pancake, ''Borogvia'' is the country"''

This is probably a reference to the famous (and possibly untrue) political moment when the president John F. Kennedy said ''Ich bin ein Berliner'' [I am a jam-filled doughnut] instead of ''Ich bin Berliner'' [I am a citizen of Berlin]. Apparently, satirists had a field day, and for several weeks the political cartoons were filled with talking doughnuts. See {{wp|Ich bin ein Berliner|Ich bin ein Berliner}}.

The title {{MR}} is a reference to John Knox's ''{{wp|The_First_Blast_of_the_Trumpet_Against_the_Monstrous_Regiment_of_Women|The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women}}'', a treatise against female rulers in the 16th century. Knox had Mary Tudor, Mary Stuart and Mary of Guise in mind. It was his misfortune that the next ruler of England, Elizabeth I, although theoretically on Knox's side, took offence at his title and argument. Fiction writer Laurie R King has also made use of the phrase in connection to the {{wp|Women%27s_suffrage|suffragette}} movement in the United Kingdom. I should make it clear that Pratchett is not adopting Knox's ideas, almost the reverse in fact.

== See also ==

Annotations for [[Borogravia]] and [[Zlobenia]].

== External ==

* [http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/monstrous-regiment.html Monstrous Regiment] in the [[Annotated Pratchett File]]

'''From the APF:-''' + [p. 28] "you can call me Maladict"

"The name is both a play on the name 'Benedict' and on the word 'maledict', which Webster's defines as accursedness or the act of bringing a curse. "

The word ''maledict'' is also the term used to describe the moment in a cartoon speech bubble where a character, provoked beyond endurance, starts to seriously swear. And as we all know that cartoons are for children, normal fonts are replaced in the speech bubble with what Terry calls "the sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard", to leave no doubt that swearing is happening, without referencing any real or actual swear words. ("The sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard" may of course be supplemented with little pictures, say skulls and lightning flashes, from the Wingdings fonts) This representation of cussing in a cartoon strip is known in the trade as '''''maledict'''''.

The word "maladict" could also be a play on "mal addict", with "mal" being the French for "bad", referring to Maladict's serious coffee addiction. As for what provoked Mal to join the Ribboners - see note above regarding p342 of {{CJ}}.

If I can quote the APF official annotation:

+ [p. 86] "One shilling extra 'per Diem'"

Using this information and UK army pay scales, one can estimate that a second lieutenant in the Borogravian army receives approximately 1807 shillings per year as payment, compared to 2012 shillings per year for a first lieutenant; and that there are approximately 11.16 Borogravian shillings to one UK pound.

As my original afp source for this annotation puts it: "Working this out may be the single geekiest thing I have ever done."

Er... an easier way to get to the same result ref. pay scales for junior officers is to go to Terry Pratchett's favourite author George McDonald Fraser, who in one of his autobiographical short stories reveals that the pay rate for a full Lieutenant in the British Army (in 1946) was in fact seven shillings a day. (£3,5/- per week). Like Borogravia, the British currency had been thoroughly devalued and ravaged by six years of total war. This ties in well with the calculation above and took less brainstrain...

On page 217 of the Harper Collins hardback and 239 of the Harper Torch paperback, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a classmate named Wrigglesworth, who was particularly good at impersonating women. In the 1981 movie ''Zorro the Gay Blade'', Zorro's long-lost twin brother (who is rather flamboyantly gay) goes by the name of Bunny Wigglesworth.

This might also be a knowing nod to that icon of the Great British Boys' Adventure Story, Squadron Leader James "Biggles" Bigglesworth.
The Biggles books chart his life roughly from age nine, as a typical product of Empire and the British Raj in India, through his answering the patriotic call to the British colours in World War One (he tries the Infantry, realises it isn't to his taste, then transfers to the fledgling Royal Flying Corps where he becomes an Ace). In between the wars he and his jolly - all-male - band of chums become freelance adventurers, then when WW2 happens, he rejoins the RAF, much to the woe of the beastly Hun, the braggart Italians and the diabolical Japanese. After the war, he is signed up to Scotland Yard as Commander of the "Air Police" and occasional special agent - indeed, his last active service as an over-age James Bond is a dangerous (and deniable) incursion into the Gulag to spring his old arch-enemy Erich von Stalheim from Soviet captivity, sometime around 1965, when Biggles would have been as old as the century....

It is noticeable that ''in all that time'' Biggles is only diverted ''once'' from the manly bosom of his chums by a woman's infernal wiles, and otherwise he remains a confirmed bachelor all his life. Unkind commentators have deduced somewhat...errrm.... ''homoerotic'' overtones in the intensity of his relationship with Bertie, Algy and the boy who he takes in as protègé, Ginger Hepplethwaite, (who is described in quite loving physical detail by Captain Johns). What could be ''more'' natural than a band of bosom chums spurning the advances of women, and going off into the wilds of the world together in pursuit of healthy masculine activity,(often at the direction of a shadowy father-figure and Intelligence patriarch called Colonel Raymond, who takes close attention to the lads) and indeed doing so until they are in their late fifties and early sixties?

[[Category:Annotations|Monstrous Regiment]]

Stratford

2018-06-10T09:38:57Z

Prime.mover:

{{Character Data
|title= Stratford
|photo= Stratford.png|Stratford, as drawn by [[User:TMOH|TMOH]]
|name= Stratford (first name unknown)
|age= early twenties
|race= Human
|death= killed by [[Willikins]]
|occupation= murderer in the employ of [[Gravid Rust]]
|appearance= Looks like everyone else: average height, mousy hair, no scars that show.
|residence= [[The Shires]]
|books= {{SN}}
}}

'''Mr Stratford''' (first name unknown) was a homicidal maniac and all-round nut job in the employ of [[Gravid Rust]], who murdered at least sixteen people and an unknown number of goblins, including the goblin woman whose murder set off the events of ''[[Snuff]]''. He was young, with mousy hair and no scars that show--as generic-looking as [[Moist von Lipwig]], in fact, except when he got angry enough for the beast inside to show through, just like [[Carcer]]. Good with a slingshot, but more often seen wielding a machete or a nasty-looking assortment of small knives. He didn't like water, and wouldn't get on a boat if he could help it.

He first came to the attention of [[Samuel Vimes|Commander Vimes]] during the latter's investigation of the murder on [[Hangman's Hill]]. He tried to outwit Vimes aboard the ''[[Wonderful Fanny]]'' by disguising himself as the river rat "Eddie Brassbound", but found himself outmaneuvered instead and, after a fight in the wheelhouse, left to go down with the ship.

But Stratford was not an easy man to kill, and he resurfaced on the riverboat, the ''[[Roberta E. Biscuit]]'', where he tried to kill Vimes' son, [[Young Sam Vimes]] Jr., only instead to be ambushed in a trap set by Vimes Sr., who had not been drunk as Stratford had first thought, (having seen him ingest many drinks named after him that night), and had set a trap for him. Only then did Stratford also meet Vimes' butler, [[Willikins]], who had been disguised as the bartender who had made and served Vimes all of the "virgin" Sam Vimes' cocktails all night.

He was duly arrested and put on a Watch transport bound for [[Ankh-Morpork]]. Before he could be conveyed into the hands of [[Daniel Trooper|One-Drop Trooper]], however, the wagon had a nasty collision with a mail coach, allowing Stratford to escape in all the confusion. He is however intercepted by [[Willikins]] on the road shortly after and was quickly subdued. Permanently.

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Human characters]]
[[Category:Snuff]]
[[de:Straßfurt]]

Lucy Tockley

2018-06-10T09:19:26Z

Prime.mover: /* Annotations */

{{Character Data
|title= Lucy Tockley
|photo=Blank.jpg|
|name= Lucy Tockley, a.k.a. Diamanda
|age= 17
|race= [[Humans|Human]]
|occupation= [[Witches|Witch]]
|appearance= Slender
|residence= [[Lancre]]
|death=
|parents= Mother's maiden name was Keeble
|relatives=
|children=
|marital status= Maiden
|books= {{LL}}
|cameos=
}}

''Lucy Tockley'' is a teenage girl who dabbles in the occult and fashions herself a self taught witch. She calls herself "Diamanda" because it sounds more 'witchy'. For the same reason, she paints her nails black, and wears black lace and a floppy black velvet hat with a veil.

After her mother died, Lucy's father sent her to [[Sto Lat]] for an education. She returns to [[Lancre]] and inspires a small group of half a dozen girls, including [[Agnes Nitt|Agnes "Perdita" Nitt]], "Amanita" DeVice, and "Muscara" (nee Susan) to form a coven. As Diamanda playing the role of teacher, they practice her version of witchcraft, learned from books. She teaches them about candle magic, scrying, the "Raising of the Cone of Power, and reading cards (presumably [[Caroc Cards]] referred in other chronicles of the Discworld.) Despite the proud claim that the cards contain the "distilled wisdom of the ancients," Diamanda has no respect for the actual tradition of witchcraft, a highly sensible practice passed from one witch to the next through apprenticeship. She scorns the mundane and woefully stagnant ways of the established witches of Lancre. Her version of witchcraft is progressive and ''stylish.'' Most dangerously, Diamanda leads her amateur coven in raising power, dancing, at the stone circle called [[The Dancers]]. Through this act, and her hunger for occult power, Lucy Diamanda invites the [[Elf|Elves]] through the weakened barriers and into [[Discworld]].

For a seventeen year old, Lucy displays an impressive amount of magical power. [[Esmerelda Weatherwax]] discovers that this unnatural sudden appearance of magical ability is due to a gift from [[Queen of the Elves]]. This bargain takes its toll on Diamanda in the events which follow. Already in thrall to the Elves, Diamanda runs into the circle of stones in defiance of Granny Weatherwax. She is shot by an elf arrow while fleeing from the execution order of the Queen she had trusted and is saved by the witch she had so haughtily defied. In a deep sleep, Lucy is taken to [[Magrat Garlick]] for healing in the [[Lancre Castle]]. Magrat patches her physical wounds but later removes the iron bindings put in place by the older witches. Freed from the iron protection, when Lucy awakens she is under the elf enchantment and allows the elves entrance. The cruel elves show their gratitude by inflicting further wounds on Lucy.

There is no indication that Lucy continues with witchcraft after her ordeal with the elves. She may have lost any shred of power after contact is severed with the Queen. Her name is not mentioned in later books featuring [[Agnes Nitt]] and [[Tiffany Aching]] or any witches in Lancre.

== Annotations ==
Lucy Tockley's renaming herself as "''Diamanda''" could be a reference to the song, '[[wikipedia:Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds|Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds]]', a song by [[wikipedia:The Beatles|The Beatles]].

Alternatively, the name may have been inspired by {{wp|Diamanda Galás|Diamanda Galás}}.

[[Category:Discworld characters|Tockley, Lucy]]
[[Category:Human characters|Tockley, Lucy]]
[[Category:Witches|Tockley, Lucy]]
[[de:Lucy Tockley]]

Book:The Wee Free Men/Annotations

2018-06-09T21:52:01Z

Prime.mover:

in the APF, Breebart and Kew write:-

+ [p. 153] "'We'll dance the FiveHundredAndTwelvesome Reel to the tune o' "The Devil Among The Lawyers"'"

There are Foursome, Eightsome and Twelvesome Reels, which involve exchanges of partners between two, four or six couples. 512 is eight cubed, so presumably it's more complicated, but basically the same. "The Devil Among The Lawyers" is possibly a reference to Burns' "The Deil's Awa' Wi' The Exciseman", or to 'The Devil Among The Tailors', (or, as it's sometimes known, 'The Deil Amang the Tailors') a well-known folk-dance tune (which is in fact, I'm told, the original tune for an Eightsome Reel).

==Discussing the reference:-==

*George McDonald Fraser wrote three books of semi-autobiographical short stories about his time as a subaltern in the Gordon Highlanders just after the end of WW2. He spent a little under two years as a junior officer in one of Scotland's most famous (some might say notorious) Army regiments. What becomes clear from his books is that the Gordons have many similarities to the Feegle. His Scottish soldiers essentially ARE the Feegle, only cleaner, neater, and subject to military discipline - they are even known by nicknames such as Daft Bob, Wee Wullie, et c.

In fact, in WW2, the 51st (Highland)Infantry Division, whose insignia was a stylised "HD", were known to the rest of the British Army as "The Hydraulics", because "those bloody Scotsmen would lift anything".

Scottish regiments certainly saw grand theft as a challenge: elsewhere in his writings, McDonald Fraser recounts being busted down to private from lance-corporal, because a raiding party of Cameron Highlanders stole the tent from over his and his comrades' heads while they slept.

Pterry notes that the Feegles who adopt Tiffany as Kelda are virtually all alike, accent-wise, save for those who accompanied the new Kelda from her birthplace in the Long Lake clan.
Ref Breebart and Kew:-

+ [p. 152] "He spoke differently too, [...]"

While the other Nac Mac Feegle sound like people doing Rab C Nesbitt impressions (Nesbitt is a well-known Scots character (of the dirty, foul-mouthed, sexist drunkard kind) from a BBC comedy series), William has the sort of exaggerated Ayrshire burr you might hear folk put on when reciting Robert Burns (the famous Scots poet, who wrote 'Auld Lang Syne').

* McDonald Fraser describes his Gordon Highlanders similarly, as being 80% drawn from Glasgow (ie, Rab C. Nesbitts and Billy Connollys) but with the remaining 20% drawn from the real Scottish Highlands and Islands. (apart from a draft from the Liverpool Scottish with thick Scouse accents and names like McDonald, McLeod, et c)

In the first book of short stories, ''The General Danced At Dawn'', it may interest students of Feegledom to note that a 128-some reel was actually danced, (in Libya in 1946), at the end of an otherwise disastrous General's inspection. This 'record' stood until 24th April 1988, when inspired by Fraser's story and according to the 1989 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, "The most complex Scottish country dance ever held was a 256-some reel, choreographed by Ian Price, which took place ... in Vancouver, Canada." As far as is known, this remains the most intricate single-set Scottish reel danced anywhere by anybody, although larger groups have since taken the field (no 'floor' being big enough) in Toronto (512) and Aberdeenshire (1254) as aggregations of smaller sets.

The Scottish general gets progressively drunker over dinner, and prevails on the wee pipe-sergeant (the Regiment's principal piper and to all intents and purposes, its Gonnagal and guardian of its tradition) to expand the dancing. From the conventional foursome and eightsome reels, to the rarely danced and far longer sixteensome.

To correct Breebaart and Kew who say: ''512 is eight cubed, so presumably it's more complicated, but basically the same''.

Not quite, gentlemen: the thing about Scottish dancing is that the length of the dance increases almost exponentially as you proceed upwards through powers of two. A twosome is simple; a foursome takes longer as each dancer has to interact with three others before it can end. In an eightsome, each dancer has to physically dance a measure with each of ''seven'' other dancers. In a sixteensome, that's fifteen other people, and it takes proportionately longer. Now imagine....

The General then calls for a thirty-twosome reel. Then he gets delusions of grandeur and calls for a sixty-foursome: one of the longest and most complex Scottish reels ever performed anywhere.

By now, it's one in the morning, the Military Police are out, curious Arabs are wondering what the noise is (it's a full Highland pipe band), the English regiment who share the barracks are awake, and German prisoners of war housed nearby are considering a protest under the Geneva Convention. (In fact, in a Vimes/Night Watch sort of way, the Military Police are unsure as to whether or not they have the authority to arrest a General, even a Scottish one, for drunken disorderly behaviour and related offences...)

But the General carries on...

"I say, pipey, is there any reason why we couldn't..."

And a one hundred and twenty-eightsome happens, which takes one hour and twenty eight minutes to dance to a conclusion... by Highlanders, whooping Arabs, Northumberland Fusiliers, and German prisoners of war roped in to make up the numbers.

The 512-some reel is the next logical step up, would take between six and seven hours to dance to a finish, and only Feegles would be daft enough to dance it.

It could also be noted that the most Feegle-like of the Highlanders, the habitually filthy, illiterate, shambling wreck who is Private McAuslan, (nicknamed "Private Piltdown" by the defending officer at his court-martial) is reduced to an embarrassed red-faced mumbling Rob Anybody (in the presence of Tiffany) by a beautiful girl with whom he disastrously falls in love... this is MacAuslan, a man who, when short of money, raided the platoon armoury, and then was caught by the Military Police trying to sell the Arabs a three-inch mortar and shells.

more here: [[Daft Wullie]]

Over on the APF, I find a certain confirmation for this annotation! Terry Pratchett is quoted as saying:-

''"These are modern authors whose books I will automatically buy knowing that life is going to get that little bit richer:

Pratchett lists five authors, but at the top of the list is....

'''''George McDonald Fraser''''' (The Flashman books)''

Discovering TP is a GMcD-F fan kind of seals the Feegles-Gordon Highlanders asociation, methinks?

Incidentally, any reader of the Flashman books will notice immediately that McDonald Fraser, like TP, is also a great exponent of explanatory footnotes (although these are grouped in a separate section at the end - more "endnotes", really)

--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 13:17, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

More here [[Talk:Pictsies]] concerning Feegle-speak.

There's a link, on the Reading Suggestions page, to Irish children's author Pat O'Shea. Re-reading the early chapters of {{WFM}}, it has just struck me how the scene between Tiffany and Miss Tick, when they meet for the first time, is in all aspects pure pastiche of O'Shea. The setting reflects one of the bizarre, slightly dream-like, "country fairs" of her Irish faeryscape - right down to the in-line text drawings. There is O'Shea's obligatory talking animal - not Cù Rùa the wise fox, but the "yellow, sick, toad" There is the superficially whimsical dialogue between Tiffany and Miss Tick, but which hides deeper realities. It has the same, slightly eerie, almost-making-sense, quality of a conversation in a dream, that O'Shea excels at.

Check out '''''The Hounds of the Morrigan''''', particularly the Swapping Fair scenes, to see what I mean here...--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 13:26, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

''No King, no Lords, no Gentry, no Taxes!'' - this was the slogan of angry workers in Scotland in the 1820's, first forced off the land into the city slums during the Highland Clearances, and then discovering that during the industrial recession and near-famine of the 1820's, not even ill-paid factory work was available to them. Scottish soldiers who had served faithfully in the Napoleonic Wars were also being demobbed (no Army pensions and invalidity pay in those days)to discover that what they were returning to was something a lot less than a land fit for heroes. 60,000 workers went on mass strike, and even artillery was mobilised to the streets of Glasgow and Edinburgh as a threat and deterrent. ''Nae Quin! Nae Lairds....''

Tiffany and the Feegle fight the Grimhounds. The wee Gonnagal fights them off with the Notes of Pain - the excruciatingly supersonic sound of the mousepipes.

This is reminiscent of the scene in Michael Moorcock's ''Corum'' cycle, where Corum and the Companion to Heroes are trapped inside a stone circle in the snowy frozen waste by the fell hounds of the FhoiMhoir. The psychotic Gaynor, Prince of the Damned, leaves them there to starve or be torn to pieces if they try to escape. (Yes, I'd be psychotic too if my parents had called their son Gaynor). They are rescued by the wizard Calatin, who uses a horn to subdue the dogs - one blast causes them to mill in confusion, a second is fiercely painful, the third kills.

As Moorcock was drawing extensively from Irish mythology, this could be another case of "fishing in the same stream".

'''HarperCollins, Paperback. Page 11''' 
"She didn't call the downland [[the Chalk]], she called it 'the wold.' Up on the wold the wind blows cold, Tiffany had thought, and the words had stuck that way." 
This is a reference to the English folk rhyme: 
''At Brill on the hill 
The wind blows shrill 
''The cook no meat can dress 
''At [[wikipedia:Stow-in-the-Wold|Stow-in-the-Wold]] 
''The wind blows cold'' 
''I know no more than this ''

[[Category:Annotations|Wee Free Men,The]]

Book:Monstrous Regiment/Annotations

2018-06-09T21:47:39Z

Prime.mover:

==Historical==
In the British Army, the Tenth of Foot are, or were, the Lincolnshire Regiment. Originally raised in 1685 to fight the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion, the regiment later fought in the American War of Independence, where Washington's army derisively nicknamed them "the yellowbellies" because of the buff-yellow cuffs, turnbacks, and lapels of their red tunics. (a regiment only wore blue turnbacks if it had been granted "Royal" status, which the Lincolns did not achieve till the late 19th century). After service in Egypt in the early 1800's, their cap-badge became a stylised sphynx and pyramid. The Regiment died almost to the last man at Gandamack in Afghanistan in 1840, with its last survivor escaping with one of the regimental colours. It fought later on the Crimea, in WW1 and WW2, and finally "died" in 1960 when amalgamated into the Northampton Regiment. Later defence cuts saw further amalgamations, and the current "ghost" of this old unit lives on as part of the Royal Anglian super-regiment. Interestingly, the Lincolns were also known as "The Poachers", partly as a reference to their rural recruiting ground, and partly because of the song "The Lincoln Poacher", which was an unofficial regimental march:

'' 'tis my delight on a shining night...''

The story of {{wp|Christian_Davies|Christian Davies}} seems to wind though the book and the author likely noticed it in his research. Born ''Christian Cavanaugh'' and using several names through her career, she served as an infantryman and later dragoon for thirteen years (1693 - 1706) until revealed as a result of her second serious wound. Even after the discovery she remained with the 4th Royal North British Dragoons (eventually the ''Scots Greys'') as a sutler and became a celebrity throughout the army, meeting Queen Anne to receive a fairly handsome pension. Parallels include coming from a pub family (Polly), looking for her husband (Jack), and being a bit of a lad (well, lass) of versatile sexuality (the Working School dropouts). 
The phenomenon is not uniquely British. See also {{wp|Louise Antonini|Louise Antonini}} in the French army AND navy.

The "Cheesemongers" is a nickname for the Life Guards of the Household Cavalry, also known as (apparently) The Bangers, The Lumpers, The Fly-Slicers, The Picadilly Butchers, The Roast and Boiled, The Ticky Tins. (But the rest of the British army affectionately refers to the Household Division as "the Woodentops") The Cheesemongers is a derogatory nickname dating from 1788 when the regiment was being re-organised. Some commissions were refused because the officers concerned were the sons of merchants and tradesmen, even, shock horror, grocers and general provisioners, and therefore not, “gentlemen.” Issues of education, social standing, independent income, et c, still appear to matter in these upscale regiments in 2008: 230 years ago, it mattered a lot more!

There does not appear to ever have been a British Army unit nicknamed the "Ins-And-outs". However, the 96th Regiment of Foot (The Welsh Regiment) were nicknamed "the Ups-And-Downs". Again, the curse of amalgamation means that the Welsh Regiment today lives on as 2nd Battalion the Royal Welch.

==References ==

'''''The Duchess'''''. A pub where a woman called Polly Perks has a big stake. Think of long-running BBC radio soap opera '''The Archers''', where the village pub, the Bull, is run by licencee Sid Perks. And for many years, also by his wife. '''''Polly Perks'''''.

It would be utterly unsurprising if a bit of Hašek’s classic satire '''''{{wp|The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk|The Good Soldier Svejk}}''''' creeps in there as well... in fact, there are odd echoes.

The idiot-savant Svejk, a peasant who hides cunning under a stupid-seeming exterior,narrowly evades arrest by the secret policeman Corporal Bretschneider (Strappi?) and on enlistment into the 91st, is assigned as batman to the officer Lieutenant Lukaš and at one point has to shave him (cf Polly and Blouse). The company cook is a mystic who claims to receive spiritualist messages from long-dead monarchs. The regiment belongs to an Army serving a dying empire (Austro-Hungary, which fits the central European vibe of "Borogravia") and in fact crumbles into defeat in its first serious engagement. Svejk spends a long time detached from his unit and trying to find his way back to it, evading capture and the enemy on both sides (he is nearly shot for spying and/or desertion)

Another general observation: on page 342 of the paperback of {{CJ}}, when the vampires are defeated in Escrow, one of the defeated vampyres is called ''Maladicta''. Did she decide on a career change shortly after this and joined the Army to forget?

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 24|"The official story is that she's in mourning."}}

The Duchess of Borogravia appears to have certain affinities with {{wp|Queen Victoria|Queen Victoria}}.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 47|"Private Bloodfnucker hnas a fnord, fnargeant," he said accusingly.}}

It is difficult to believe this is not a shout out to Shea and Wilson's ''{{wp|Illuminatus!|Illuminatus!}}''. The question that needs to be answered is: ''Have you seen the fnords?''

{{Annotation|HB, page 85) ''a banknote'' - of course, Borogravia uses paper banknotes, ahead of Ankh-Morpork, but possibly fuelled out of desperation and ''fiat currency''. See here: [[Annagovia|a possible sample banknote]]

'''''Doubleday hardback page 85''''': ''this was very soon going to be a barefoot army....''
Like the Confederates in the American Civil War, who were plagued with supply difficulties and shortages; it was estimated in 1864 that 60% of the confederacy's soldiers went into battle barefoot. In the last months of the war the Confederacy was like Borogravia, fighting on pride and a refusal to see the war was lost. What was especially poignant was that one state, South Carolina, had a footwear industry creating sufficient to shoe the whole Army and then some. But most of its output went into storage as it saw no reason to supply anyone other than its own state's troops and was unwilling to give away the surplus - its allied states had to ''buy'' the boots or go without. And the Confederate government respected individual states' rights and did not force this state to equip the whole Army gratis...

'''''Doubleday hardback page 86''''':
Blouse has somehow remained a second lieutenant for eight years. In practically every Army, this is the lowest entry-grade rank for a commissioned officer and most people move on to the next grade after between six months and a year (at the outside). He has either annoyed people, or else dismally failed to impress, to have been relegated to the rear for so long.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 127|"We have met the enemy and he is nice":}}

'' 'Was she supposed to think ''We have met the enemy and he is nice?'' Anyway, he wasn't. He was smug....''

a parody of the famous Pogo quotation :"We have met the enemy and he is us" which, in turn, refers to a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie, stating "We have met the enemy, and they are ours."

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 45|Several of the cadets go by nicknames:}}

''"...'Shufti' Manickle..."''

Shufti is a military term meaning a quick look or reconnoitre. It is actually derived from an arabic word that was learned and brought back to England by British troops defending the Empire in the Middle East.

Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 59:-
Jackrum is warning the Detail of possible hard times ahead by reminiscing about the retreat from Khurusck, where he went three days without either food or water. The Roundworld parallel is the German retreat from Kursk in the late summer and autumn of 1943, where the remnant of the German army defeated by the Russians fought several hundred miles back to the next defensible position, the line of the river Dneiper. Many units went wholly unsupported by logistic support, marching at least without food in a blazing late summer. At least the water supply was eased when the autumn rains started... (ref. Guy Sajer, ''The Forgotten Soldier''. Sajer relates the privations of the forced march out of Kursk to the west, one step ahead of the Russians, where pondwater was a luxury and the only food discovered were green potatoes and an old stale loaf. The Russians were also expected to live off the land - their logistics service gave priority to bringing up fuel and ammunition, food rations coming a poor third. Sajer himself contracted dysentery, possibly from drinking contaminated water, and nearly died of it. Thus do Famine and Pestilence follow in War's tracks).

The incident in the village where the Last Detail have to play cat-and-mouse with a numerically superior enemy patrol who are out looking for them: Manfred von Richtofen, later to become the Red Baron of aerial combat, started WW1 as a cavalryman and relates a suspiciously similar tale of being caught out by Cossacks on the Eastern Front in WW1. Although the violence here is directed against a Russian Orthodox priest suspected of using his church bells to signal to Russian troops that the Germans were here. [http://www.patriotfiles.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=305|Die Rote Kampfflieger]

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 208|We first meet the dead Borogravian generals, in a reveneant zombie state in the crypt at Kneck.:}}

German SS leader, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, kept a castle at Wewelsburg as a meeting-place for the inner orders of the SS movement. Underneath his fortress was a crypt with places for perhaps twelve corpses, which he intended to be the last resting place for the fighting generals who led the Waffen-SS in combat.

Today, some evolutions of the wargaming hobby involve sci-fi/fantasy gaming scenarios where in 1945, the Germans stave off final defeat by learning how to reanimate their dead soldiers as zombie divisions, causing the Allies a bit of a headache. This is also yet another theme of Shea and Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''' - in the concluding acts, a division of German soldiers ceremonially poisoned by Himmler on April 30th 1945 and consigned to Lake Totenkopf under a bio-mystical preservation field are revived as zombies (under the command of General Hanfgeist), to wreak destruction and consternation and take unfinished business back to the Russians in East Germany, thus starting WW3.

There is also, of course, a popular computer game on exactly this theme. ("You are the hero seeking to prevent revived Nazi Zombies taking over the world. You must seek and destroy them in their Bavarian castle lair.") it's caled the Wolfenstein Series, dating from yhe early 1980's. Terry may have played it. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein]

The Detail encounter the zombie soldiers on pp270-273.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 311|Whilst discussing disguising himself as a woman, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a few of his previous forays into "Theatricals":}}

''"I got a huge round of applause as the Widow Trembler in 'Tis Pity She's A Tree."''

This may refer to the 1630s play ''{{wp|Tis_Pity_She%27s_a_Whore|Tis Pity She's a Whore}}'' (also known as "Giovanni and Annabella", or simply "Tis Pity") by John Ford. This device is also used in {{MM}}, where Professor [[John Hicks]] artlessly reveals he is a member of the [[Dolly Sisters Players]], and have you seen my Lord Fartwell in '' 'Tis Pity She's An Instructor in Unarmed Combat''?

''"The world turned upside down"'' - this is a reference to Cornwallis' surrender of British armies to Washington, at the end of the War of Independence, where the bands sardonically played this tune during the surrender ceremonies.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 328|Vimes says "''Ze chzy Brogocia proztfik''":}}

''"Didn't I say I was a citizen of Borogravia?"''

''"No. ''Brogocia'' is the cherry pancake, ''Borogvia'' is the country"''

This is probably a reference to the famous (and possibly untrue) political moment when the president John F. Kennedy said ''Ich bin ein Berliner'' [I am a jam-filled doughnut] instead of ''Ich bin Berliner'' [I am a citizen of Berlin]. Apparently, satirists had a field day, and for several weeks the political cartoons were filled with talking doughnuts. See {{wp|Ich bin ein Berliner|Ich bin ein Berliner}}.

The title {{MR}} is a reference to John Knox's ''{{wp|The_First_Blast_of_the_Trumpet_Against_the_Monstrous_Regiment_of_Women|The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women}}'', a treatise against female rulers in the 16th century. Knox had Mary Tudor, Mary Stuart and Mary of Guise in mind. It was his misfortune that the next ruler of England, Elizabeth I, although theoretically on Knox's side, took offence at his title and argument. Fiction writer Laurie R King has also made use of the phrase in connection to the {{wp|Women%27s_suffrage|suffragette}} movement in the United Kingdom. I should make it clear that Pratchett is not adopting Knox's ideas, almost the reverse in fact.

== See also ==

Annotations for [[Borogravia]] and [[Zlobenia]].

== External ==

* [http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/monstrous-regiment.html Monstrous Regiment] in the [[Annotated Pratchett File]]

'''From the APF:-''' + [p. 28] "you can call me Maladict"

"The name is both a play on the name 'Benedict' and on the word 'maledict', which Webster's defines as accursedness or the act of bringing a curse. "

The word ''maledict'' is also the term used to describe the moment in a cartoon speech bubble where a character, provoked beyond endurance, starts to seriously swear. And as we all know that cartoons are for children, normal fonts are replaced in the speech bubble with what Terry calls "the sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard", to leave no doubt that swearing is happening, without referencing any real or actual swear words. ("The sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard" may of course be supplemented with little pictures, say skulls and lightning flashes, from the Wingdings fonts) This representation of cussing in a cartoon strip is known in the trade as '''''maledict'''''.

The word "maladict" could also be a play on "mal addict", with "mal" being the French for "bad", referring to Maladict's serious coffee addiction. As for what provoked Mal to join the Ribboners - see note above regarding p342 of {{CJ}}.

If I can quote the APF official annotation:

+ [p. 86] "One shilling extra 'per Diem'"

Using this information and UK army pay scales, one can estimate that a second lieutenant in the Borogravian army receives approximately 1807 shillings per year as payment, compared to 2012 shillings per year for a first lieutenant; and that there are approximately 11.16 Borogravian shillings to one UK pound.

As my original afp source for this annotation puts it: "Working this out may be the single geekiest thing I have ever done."

Er... an easier way to get to the same result ref. pay scales for junior officers is to go to Terry Pratchett's favourite author George McDonald Fraser, who in one of his autobiographical short stories reveals that the pay rate for a full Lieutenant in the British Army (in 1946) was in fact seven shillings a day. (£3,5/- per week). Like Borogravia, the British currency had been thoroughly devalued and ravaged by six years of total war. This ties in well with the calculation above and took less brainstrain...

On page 217 of the Harper Collins hardback and 239 of the Harper Torch paperback, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a classmate named Wrigglesworth, who was particularly good at impersonating women. In the 1981 movie ''Zorro the Gay Blade'', Zorro's long-lost twin brother (who is rather flamboyantly gay) goes by the name of Bunny Wigglesworth.

This might also be a knowing nod to that icon of the Great British Boys' Adventure Story, Squadron Leader James "Biggles" Bigglesworth.
The Biggles books chart his life roughly from age nine, as a typical product of Empire and the British Raj in India, through his answering the patriotic call to the British colours in World War One (he tries the Infantry, realises it isn't to his taste, then transfers to the fledgling Royal Flying Corps where he becomes an Ace). In between the wars he and his jolly - all-male - band of chums become freelance adventurers, then when WW2 happens, he rejoins the RAF, much to the woe of the beastly Hun, the braggart Italians and the diabolical Japanese. After the war, he is signed up to Scotland Yard as Commander of the "Air Police" and occasional special agent - indeed, his last active service as an over-age James Bond is a dangerous (and deniable) incursion into the Gulag to spring his old arch-enemy Erich von Stalheim from Soviet captivity, sometime around 1965, when Biggles would have been as old as the century....

It is noticeable that ''in all that time'' Biggles is only diverted ''once'' from the manly bosom of his chums by a woman's infernal wiles, and otherwise he remains a confirmed bachelor all his life. Unkind commentators have deduced somewhat...errrm.... ''homoerotic'' overtones in the intensity of his relationship with Bertie, Algy and the boy who he takes in as protègé, Ginger Hepplethwaite, (who is described in quite loving physical detail by Captain Johns). What could be ''more'' natural than a band of bosom chums spurning the advances of women, and going off into the wilds of the world together in pursuit of healthy masculine activity,(often at the direction of a shadowy father-figure and Intelligence patriarch called Colonel Raymond, who takes close attention to the lads) and indeed doing so until they are in their late fifties and early sixties?

[[Category:Annotations|Monstrous Regiment]]

Rincewind

2018-06-09T11:58:04Z

Prime.mover: /* Travels */ "Commentating" is the wrong word here

{{Character Data
|title= The Wizzard
|Rincewind Illustrated by [[User:puggdogg|Michael Collins]] a.k.a. puggdogg
|photo= Rincewind.jpg|
|name= Rincewind, first name unknown. Has referred to himself as Rincewand (see {{TLC}}), but don't believe it.
|age= Possibly born in 1932 UC, making him 32 in {{COM}} and 57 as of {{TLH}}.
|race= [[:Category:Human characters|Human]]
|occupation= [[:Category:Wizards|Wizzard]], egregious professor of cruel and unusual geography
|appearance= Young, athletic, often disheveled
|residence= Currently Unseen University
|death=
|parents=
|relatives= possibly [[Bill Rincewind]]; [[Lavaeolus]] might be an ancestor. [[Dr Rjinswand]] on [[Roundworld]] is a parellel-world version who has discovered something as good and as dangerous as magic, in nuclear energy...
|children=
|marital status=
|books= [[:Category:Rincewind Series|Rincewind series]]
|cameos= {{M}}, {{UA}}
}}
'''Rincewind''' has been an important character since the ''[[Discworld]]'' series started. He is a polite yet cowardly [[Wizard's magic|wizard]] with (almost) no magical ability and whose ambition in life is simply to continue having a life. He has been on many adventures, but almost entirely by accident. He is however gifted with languages, speaking several including [[Chimeria|Chimeran]], [[Vanglemesht]], [[Sumtri]], [[Black Oroogu]], [[Borogravia|High Borogravian]] and [[Trob|beTrobi]].

==Character==
He starred in {{COM}}, {{TLF}}, {{S}}, {{E}}, {{IT}} and {{TLC}}, and was also a major character in the graphic novel, {{TLH}} as well as in {{SOD1}} novels. He was born under the "Small Boring Group of Faint Stars", a sign associated with chess board makers, sellers of onions, manufacturers of plastic images of small religious significance and people allergic to pewter. Rincewind became the owner of [[the Luggage]] after it was given to him as a present by [[Twoflower]] in {{TLF}}.

He has a particular attraction to potatoes, and has in his time been mistaken for a demon, a god, lunch, a hero, a woman, and many other things. At one point he even very briefly visited [[Roundworld]], appearing on an aeroplane mid flight as Dr. Rjinswand, a nuclear physicist, in {{COM}}, who specializes in the breakaway oxidation phenomena of certain nuclear reactors.

Maybe because he was the first major Discworld character, maybe because of his "hidden" bravery, or maybe because of his amazing incompetence, he has always been (and probably always will be) one of the most popular Discworld figures.

In ''The Art of Discworld'', Terry Pratchett mentions that Rincewind probably has at least one more story to tell, but also says that the character's cowardly nature limits what stories can be told.

==Magical abilities==
Rincewind's magical ability is almost nonexistent. He never passed an exam at [[Unseen University]]. The highest score he received was 2% for spelling his name right. In fact, we are informed that he actually managed to receive negative marks in Basic Firestarting, an issue still hotly debated by the Faculty - "''How the Hell did he manage that''!" - even in the early pages of {{IT}}. Even when we first met him however he still had the right to wear the brass octogram confirming he is a UU alumnus. One wonders how he got into Unseen in the first place.

It has been estimated that when Rincewind finally dies, the average magical ability for the species will go up a fraction. What he cannot spell right, apparently, is his job description, because he has ''WIZZARD'' written in large letters on his pointy hat. The reason for this incompetence lies within an incident where he opened the [[Octavo]] and one of the great eight spells of the [[creator]] jumped out and settled down in his brain. This spell frightened off any other spells which Rincewind tried to learn.

Nevertheless, he has managed to do some impressive magic on very few occasions (e.g. in {{TLF}}), most often without his consent, although once near ''The Light Fantastic's'' climax, he was able to mentally unlock a door through apparently no efforts or powers but his own (albeit at great strain). This interestingly echoes another magical misfit, [[Magrat Garlick]], who similarly forced a thick unyielding door to open to her by using the power of magic.

While woefully inept at performing magic of his own, Rincewind does possess all wizards' baseline ability to sense magical energies, including the colour octarine. In ''Sourcery'', the saturation of the Disc with thaumic force accumulated in Rincewind as in other wizards, temporarily endowing him with the power to utilize spells, albeit ''very'' clumsily and erratically.

== Age and Early Life ==
Not much is known about Rincewind's early life. In {{IT}}, it is mentioned that "''Rincewind had no personal experience of either parent''." He has stated on more than one occasion that his mother "''ran away before he was born'' (is there a possibility his mother just ran away from home to have Rincewind and Rincewind is just looking for an excuse to be far away?)." However, Rincewind clearly remembers a birthday card with a '''Now you are Five...''' badge attached to it - which is the worst possible present anyone could receive at the age of six. He also remembers having had a stuffed toy lamb plush as a child, (mentioned in {{TLC}}.)

In {{TLF}}, Rincewind remembers his grandad telling him about [[Cohen]], again implying he grew up without his parents. In the same book, [[Trymon]] obtains Rincewind's "''precise place and time of birth''," from university records, so that an astrologer can cast a horoscope, implying that there is some record of Rincewind's birth.

Rincewind, [[Trymon]] and the [[Librarian]] all attended the University at around the same time, and are presumably the same age. In {{IT}}, Rincewind remembers hanging around with Noodle Jackson when he, (Rincewind,) was a very young student, implying that Rincewind has spent much of his life at [[Unseen University]].

==Travels==
[[Image:Rincewind in Ankh Morpork.jpg|200px|left|thumb|Rincewind In Ankh Morpork]]
Rincewind must be one of the most travelled characters in the Discworld series. He has seen [[Hell]], the [[Dungeon Dimensions]], the end of the world and its creation (where he very probably started life with a discarded egg sandwich). He has been to [[XXXX]], [[Klatch (continent)|Klatch]], the Moon, the [[Agatean Empire]], the [[Rim]] and all sorts of other interesting places. However, he probably cannot describe any of these places, because he was always running so fast that his feet barely touched the ground.

He seems to be constantly running away from danger (as such, most of his scars are on his back). He is the first to call himself a coward, although he's frequently frustrated by circumstances which cause him to be accidentally heroic. He always gets himself into dangerous situations, because he always has to help the helpless and innocent, even if half the time he would rather run away before it starts to happen to him. Also he is very realistic and rather cynical, so he knows when a situation is wrong and when, for instance, a bunch of poor foolhardy kids are going to get themselves killed (in {{IT}}).

He has been "''almost''" dead so often that [[Death]] calls Rincewind his hobby and does not actually know when he is going to die. Rincewind's [[life-timer]] has evolved in shape, much to Death's professional interest: far from resembling a simple hour-glass, it now manifests as a multi-dimensional glass nightmare, describing as having apparently been created by a glass-blower who had hiccups in a time machine. This is most likely due to his extensive dimensional and temporal travels while in constant fear of death. It is impossible to track the sand inside with any degree of accuracy, as occasionally it appears to move backwards.

Mentioned during the events of {{TLC}}, [[Death]] has come up with a theory about Rincewind: He is aware that many cultures and civilisations have the concept of the Eternal Champion, the eternal, ever-renewed hero, the Champion with a thousand faces. As Death is {{death|unable to enlighten, even by default, on conditions in the next world}}, He generally refrains from commenting. Privately, though, Death is aware of the particular Discworld condition that every condition and state of mind must have its opposite - thus Drunk - [[Knurd]], Crime - [[Anticrime]], Matter - Antimatter, etc. He has wondered, as He regards Rincewind's unique [[life-timer]], whether this belongs to the Eternal Coward, the anti-hero with a thousand retreating backs. Many cultures, after all, have the legend of an Eternal Champion who one day will be reborn in time of greatest need, (He even knows there is one in undying sleep underneath [[Lancre]], and there certainly was one in [[Holy Wood]].) It is possible that the balance of nature calls for an Eternal Coward who, when faced with waking up one morning to face down great threat, will pull the covers over his head and ignore the alarm clock.

==Unseen University Career==
After a failed career as a student, Rincewind was the UU library assistant for a while. He got on well with the [[Librarian]], and might well be the person who knows most about the Librarian, apparently even his name.

Aside from running away, his single greatest talent is an innate gift for languages: He can scream for mercy in nineteen languages and just scream in another forty-four.

Rincewind is currently the [[Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography]] at [[Unseen University]], along with at least eighteen other positions that none of the other wizards wanted (see {{SOD3}}), such as Health and Safety Officer. His degree is ''B. Mgc. Unseen University (failed)'' (see {{COM}}, 2. ''The Sending of Eight'', second paragraph).
However, in the opening chapters of {{IT}}, [[Ridcully]] ascertains the truth in a clear and businesslike fashion. Rincewind has effectively been operating under false pretenses and claiming a status for himself - as a full, graduate wizard - to which he clearly has no right.

While nobody is sorrier to have to point this out than Ridcully, the sanctions available under University lore for the punishment of imposters are quite clear-cut and offer no room for mitigating circumstances (absent corroborating testimony from university faculty), and he, Ridcully, would be quite shockingly negligent in his duties as [[Archchancellor]], if he did not order Rincewind to be nailed upside-down to one of the principal supporting pillars of the Brass Bridge at low tide, to be released at the next low tide.

After a pause to let this sink in, Ridcully then suggested that these things can be rectified and a retroactive honorary degree may be conferred if, for instance, a non-wizard in such an unenviable position were to go out and perform a great service of benefit to Wizards and all mankind, after which he, Rincewind, would be free to call himself a Wizzard, (and spell it with as many "z"'s as he likes), but with no wages, teaching no classes, but the full right to attend meals, have an office, and receive coal deliveries (he currently receives 19; one for each role he fills--in the summer, his office is an inferno, since if he does not burn all his coal, he will receive no more--in line with Ridcully's order that to receive a replacement, one must use up all of the previous supply of anything).

Rincewind eventually conceded (in as many words) that Ridcully was being very fair-minded, under the circumstances, and consented to let himself be sent to the [[Counterweight continent|Counterweight Continent]] as the University's [[Great Wizard|expeditionary force]]. It may be inferred from Rincewind's subsequent promotion to the post of Egregious Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography that Ridcully has been faithful to his word and the honorary degree has been conferred, at last making Rincewind officially a wizard, albeit by a back-door route.

By the time of {{SOD3}}, Rincewind appears to have gained ''some'' amount of respect from the senior Faculty, as he sits at their meetings, perhaps as a result of his ingenious plan in {{SOD2}}; this seems to have raised his self-esteem somewhat, as he tries to insist on being called ''Professor'' Rincewind.

He is now also, quite reluctantly, a member of the "[[Unseen Academicals]]" [[football]] team.

As of {{RS}} Rincewind is referred to as a Professor and is involved in research into the pharmacological actions of the flora of the [[Netherglades]]. His research has revealed the juice of a certain yellow flower induces absolute certainty about everything in the patient for up to fifteen minutes, while the juice of a floating water hyacinth causes absolute uncertainty in the patient for up to half an hour.

==Philosophy==
Rincewind's philosophy on life is noted for its simplicity. He spends most of his time running away, and never particularly bothers with where he's running away to - what he's running from is always more important.

Rincewind is also firmly convinced that there are no causes worth dying for. As he sees it, you can pick up another five causes on any street corner, but you only have one life.

He views positive developments in his life with deep suspicion, reasoning that they are usually just a setup for some newer and more horrible fate to befall him. He is, almost invariably, correct.

As his list of misadventures has grown longer, Rincewind has grown increasingly cynical about how his own life works, and recently went so far as to volunteer for a suicidal mission to prevent the [[Silver Horde]] from blowing up the gods, because he figured he would end up on the mission anyway, either by force or by accident (as is probably true).

He feels he suffers from a sort of pre-emptive karma. The universe, as soon as something nice is about to happen to him, causes something awful to happen that not only balances out the good thing, but goes on happening right through the time during which the good thing is trying to happen, thus effectively blotting it out. It has been mentioned that there is possibly an anti-Rincewind to which only good things happen. Rincewind would very much like to meet him, preferably while holding a big stick. This may or may not be [[Bill Rincewind]]. One could in fact say that the only good luck he has is how safely he escapes his bad luck.

Rincewind also very much values [[potato]]es, apparently associating them, at a subconscious level, with women, sex, or both. He eventually underwent therapy for the problem.

==Misc==

Rincewind will appear on [http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/wiltshire/hi/people_and_places/arts_and_culture/newsid_9327000/9327675.stm Royal Mail stamps in 2011] along with [[Nanny Ogg]]

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[Category:Leading characters]]
[[Category:Serial characters]]
[[Category:Human characters]]
[[Category:Wizards]]
[[de:Rincewind]]

Talk:Pysdxes

2018-06-09T11:04:23Z

Prime.mover: Created page with "Not sure how this would be added as a section, but it may be appropriate to link to the roundworld concept of the {{wp|Pyx|pyx}}, a similarly ceremonial small box for carrying..."

Not sure how this would be added as a section, but it may be appropriate to link to the roundworld concept of the {{wp|Pyx|pyx}}, a similarly ceremonial small box for carrying consecrated wafers to the infirm. Apologies, I'm new and still stupid. --[[User:Prime.mover|that's wot I sed ...]] ([[User talk:Prime.mover|talk]]) 11:04, 9 June 2018 (UTC)

Book:Monstrous Regiment/Annotations

2018-06-09T10:51:21Z

Prime.mover:

==Historical==
In the British Army, the Tenth of Foot are, or were, the Lincolnshire Regiment. Originally raised in 1685 to fight the Duke of Monmouth's rebellion, the regiment later fought in the American War of Independence, where Washington's army derisively nicknamed them "the yellowbellies" because of the buff-yellow cuffs, turnbacks, and lapels of their red tunics. (a regiment only wore blue turnbacks if it had been granted "Royal" status, which the Lincolns did not achieve till the late 19th century). After service in Egypt in the early 1800's, their cap-badge became a stylised sphynx and pyramid. The Regiment died almost to the last man at Gandamack in Afghanistan in 1840, with its last survivor escaping with one of the regimental colours. It fought later on the Crimea, in WW1 and WW2, and finally "died" in 1960 when amalgamated into the Northampton Regiment. Later defence cuts saw further amalgamations, and the current "ghost" of this old unit lives on as part of the Royal Anglian super-regiment. Interestingly, the Lincolns were also known as "The Poachers", partly as a reference to their rural recruiting ground, and partly because of the song "The Lincoln Poacher", which was an unofficial regimental march:

'' 'tis my delight on a shining night...''

The story of {{wp|Christian_Davies|Christian Davies}} seems to wind though the book and the author likely noticed it in his research. Born ''Christian Cavanaugh'' and using several names through her career, she served as an infantryman and later dragoon for thirteen years (1693 - 1706) until revealed as a result of her second serious wound. Even after the discovery she remained with the 4th Royal North British Dragoons (eventually the ''Scots Greys'') as a sutler and became a celebrity throughout the army, meeting Queen Anne to receive a fairly handsome pension. Parallels include coming from a pub family (Polly), looking for her husband (Jack), and being a bit of a lad (well, lass) of versatile sexuality (the Working School dropouts). 
The phenomenon is not uniquely British. See also {{wp|Louise Antonini|Louise Antonini}} in the French army AND navy.

The "Cheesemongers" is a nickname for the Life Guards of the Household Cavalry, also known as (apparently) The Bangers, The Lumpers, The Fly-Slicers, The Picadilly Butchers, The Roast and Boiled, The Ticky Tins. (But the rest of the British army affectionately refers to the Household Division as "the Woodentops") The Cheesemongers is a derogatory nickname dating from 1788 when the regiment was being re-organised. Some commissions were refused because the officers concerned were the sons of merchants and tradesmen, even, shock horror, grocers and general provisioners, and therefore not, “gentlemen.” Issues of education, social standing, independent income, et c, still appear to matter in these upscale regiments in 2008: 230 years ago, it mattered a lot more!

There does not appear to ever have been a British Army unit nicknamed the "Ins-And-outs". However, the 96th Regiment of Foot (The Welsh Regiment) were nicknamed "the Ups-And-Downs". Again, the curse of amalgamation means that the Welsh Regiment today lives on as 2nd Battalion the Royal Welch.

==References ==
'''''The Duchess'''''. A pub where a woman called Polly Perks has a big stake. Think of long-running BBC radio soap opera '''The Archers''', where the village pub, the Bull, is run by licencee Sid Perks. And for many years, also by his wife. '''''Polly Perks'''''.

It would be utterly unsurprising if a bit of Hašek’s classic satire '''''{{wp|The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk|The Good Soldier Svejk}}''''' creeps in there as well... in fact, there are odd echoes.

The idiot-savant Svejk, a peasant who hides cunning under a stupid-seeming exterior,narrowly evades arrest by the secret policeman Corporal Bretschneider (Strappi?) and on enlistment into the 91st, is assigned as batman to the officer Lieutenant Lukaš and at one point has to shave him (cf Polly and Blouse). The company cook is a mystic who claims to receive spiritualist messages from long-dead monarchs. The regiment belongs to an Army serving a dying empire (Austro-Hungary, which fits the central European vibe of "Borogravia") and in fact crumbles into defeat in its first serious engagement. Svejk spends a long time detached from his unit and trying to find his way back to it, evading capture and the enemy on both sides (he is nearly shot for spying and/or desertion)

Another general observation: on page 342 of the paperback of {{CJ}}, when the vampires are defeated in Escrow, one of the defeated vampyres is called ''Maladicta''. Did she decide on a career change shortly after this and joined the Army to forget?

{{Annotation|HB, page 85) ''a banknote'' - of course, Borogravia uses paper banknotes, ahead of Ankh-Morpork, but possibly fuelled out of desperation and ''fiat currency''. See here: [[Annagovia|a possible sample banknote]]

'''''Doubleday hardback page 85''''': ''this was very soon going to be a barefoot army....''
Like the Confederates in the American Civil War, who were plagued with supply difficulties and shortages; it was estimated in 1864 that 60% of the confederacy's soldiers went into battle barefoot. In the last months of the war the Confederacy was like Borogravia, fighting on pride and a refusal to see the war was lost. What was especially poignant was that one state, South Carolina, had a footwear industry creating sufficient to shoe the whole Army and then some. But most of its output went into storage as it saw no reason to supply anyone other than its own state's troops and was unwilling to give away the surplus - its allied states had to ''buy'' the boots or go without. And the Confederate government respected individual states' rights and did not force this state to equip the whole Army gratis...

'''''Doubleday hardback page 86''''':
Blouse has somehow remained a second lieutenant for eight years. In practically every Army, this is the lowest entry-grade rank for a commissioned officer and most people move on to the next grade after between six months and a year (at the outside). He has either annoyed people, or else dismally failed to impress, to have been relegated to the rear for so long.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 127|"We have met the enemy and he is nice":}}

'' 'Was she supposed to think ''We have met the enemy and he is nice?'' Anyway, he wasn't. He was smug....''

a parody of the famous Pogo quotation :"We have met the enemy and he is us" which, in turn, refers to a message sent in 1813 from U.S. Navy Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry to Army General William Henry Harrison after the Battle of Lake Erie, stating "We have met the enemy, and they are ours."

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 45|Several of the cadets go by nicknames:}}

''"...'Shufti' Manickle..."''

Shufti is a military term meaning a quick look or reconnoitre. It is actually derived from an arabic word that was learned and brought back to England by British troops defending the Empire in the Middle East.

Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 59:-
Jackrum is warning the Detail of possible hard times ahead by reminiscing about the retreat from Khurusck, where he went three days without either food or water. The Roundworld parallel is the German retreat from Kursk in the late summer and autumn of 1943, where the remnant of the German army defeated by the Russians fought several hundred miles back to the next defensible position, the line of the river Dneiper. Many units went wholly unsupported by logistic support, marching at least without food in a blazing late summer. At least the water supply was eased when the autumn rains started... (ref. Guy Sajer, ''The Forgotten Soldier''. Sajer relates the privations of the forced march out of Kursk to the west, one step ahead of the Russians, where pondwater was a luxury and the only food discovered were green potatoes and an old stale loaf. The Russians were also expected to live off the land - their logistics service gave priority to bringing up fuel and ammunition, food rations coming a poor third. Sajer himself contracted dysentery, possibly from drinking contaminated water, and nearly died of it. Thus do Famine and Pestilence follow in War's tracks).

The incident in the village where the Last Detail have to play cat-and-mouse with a numerically superior enemy patrol who are out looking for them: Manfred von Richtofen, later to become the Red Baron of aerial combat, started WW1 as a cavalryman and relates a suspiciously similar tale of being caught out by Cossacks on the Eastern Front in WW1. Although the violence here is directed against a Russian Orthodox priest suspected of using his church bells to signal to Russian troops that the Germans were here. [http://www.patriotfiles.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=305|Die Rote Kampfflieger]

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 208|We first meet the dead Borogravian generals, in a reveneant zombie state in the crypt at Kneck.:}}

German SS leader, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, kept a castle at Wewelsburg as a meeting-place for the inner orders of the SS movement. Underneath his fortress was a crypt with places for perhaps twelve corpses, which he intended to be the last resting place for the fighting generals who led the Waffen-SS in combat.

Today, some evolutions of the wargaming hobby involve sci-fi/fantasy gaming scenarios where in 1945, the Germans stave off final defeat by learning how to reanimate their dead soldiers as zombie divisions, causing the Allies a bit of a headache. This is also yet another theme of Shea and Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''' - in the concluding acts, a division of German soldiers ceremonially poisoned by Himmler on April 30th 1945 and consigned to Lake Totenkopf under a bio-mystical preservation field are revived as zombies (under the command of General Hanfgeist), to wreak destruction and consternation and take unfinished business back to the Russians in East Germany, thus starting WW3.

There is also, of course, a popular computer game on exactly this theme. ("You are the hero seeking to prevent revived Nazi Zombies taking over the world. You must seek and destroy them in their Bavarian castle lair.") it's caled the Wolfenstein Series, dating from yhe early 1980's. Terry may have played it. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein]

The Detail encounter the zombie soldiers on pp270-273.

{{Annotation|Corgi PB, page 311|Whilst discussing disguising himself as a woman, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a few of his previous forays into "Theatricals":}}

''"I got a huge round of applause as the Widow Trembler in 'Tis Pity She's A Tree."''

This may refer to the 1630s play ''{{wp|Tis_Pity_She%27s_a_Whore|Tis Pity She's a Whore}}'' (also known as "Giovanni and Annabella", or simply "Tis Pity") by John Ford. This device is also used in {{MM}}, where Professor [[John Hicks]] artlessly reveals he is a member of the [[Dolly Sisters Players]], and have you seen my Lord Fartwell in '' 'Tis Pity She's An Instructor in Unarmed Combat''?

''"The world turned upside down"'' - this is a reference to Cornwallis' surrender of British armies to Washington, at the end of the War of Independence, where the bands sardonically played this tune during the surrender ceremonies.

{{Annotation|Doubleday HB, page 328|Vimes says "''Ze chzy Brogocia proztfik''":}}

''"Didn't I say I was a citizen of Borogravia?"''

''"No. ''Brogocia'' is the cherry pancake, ''Borogvia'' is the country"''

This is probably a reference to the famous (and possibly untrue) political moment when the president John F. Kennedy said ''Ich bin ein Berliner'' [I am a jam-filled doughnut] instead of ''Ich bin Berliner'' [I am a citizen of Berlin]. Apparently, satirists had a field day, and for several weeks the political cartoons were filled with talking doughnuts. See {{wp|Ich bin ein Berliner|Ich bin ein Berliner}}.

The title {{MR}} is a reference to John Knox's ''{{wp|The_First_Blast_of_the_Trumpet_Against_the_Monstrous_Regiment_of_Women|The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women}}'', a treatise against female rulers in the 16th century. Knox had Mary Tudor, Mary Stuart and Mary of Guise in mind. It was his misfortune that the next ruler of England, Elizabeth I, although theoretically on Knox's side, took offence at his title and argument. Fiction writer Laurie R King has also made use of the phrase in connection to the {{wp|Women%27s_suffrage|suffragette}} movement in the United Kingdom. I should make it clear that Pratchett is not adopting Knox's ideas, almost the reverse in fact.

== See also ==

Annotations for [[Borogravia]] and [[Zlobenia]].

== External ==

* [http://www.lspace.org/books/apf/monstrous-regiment.html Monstrous Regiment] in the [[Annotated Pratchett File]]

'''From the APF:-''' + [p. 28] "you can call me Maladict"

"The name is both a play on the name 'Benedict' and on the word 'maledict', which Webster's defines as accursedness or the act of bringing a curse. "

The word ''maledict'' is also the term used to describe the moment in a cartoon speech bubble where a character, provoked beyond endurance, starts to seriously swear. And as we all know that cartoons are for children, normal fonts are replaced in the speech bubble with what Terry calls "the sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard", to leave no doubt that swearing is happening, without referencing any real or actual swear words. ("The sort of characters only found on the top row of a computer keyboard" may of course be supplemented with little pictures, say skulls and lightning flashes, from the Wingdings fonts) This representation of cussing in a cartoon strip is known in the trade as '''''maledict'''''.

The word "maladict" could also be a play on "mal addict", with "mal" being the French for "bad", referring to Maladict's serious coffee addiction. As for what provoked Mal to join the Ribboners - see note above regarding p342 of {{CJ}}.

If I can quote the APF official annotation:

+ [p. 86] "One shilling extra 'per Diem'"

Using this information and UK army pay scales, one can estimate that a second lieutenant in the Borogravian army receives approximately 1807 shillings per year as payment, compared to 2012 shillings per year for a first lieutenant; and that there are approximately 11.16 Borogravian shillings to one UK pound.

As my original afp source for this annotation puts it: "Working this out may be the single geekiest thing I have ever done."

Er... an easier way to get to the same result ref. pay scales for junior officers is to go to Terry Pratchett's favourite author George McDonald Fraser, who in one of his autobiographical short stories reveals that the pay rate for a full Lieutenant in the British Army (in 1946) was in fact seven shillings a day. (£3,5/- per week). Like Borogravia, the British currency had been thoroughly devalued and ravaged by six years of total war. This ties in well with the calculation above and took less brainstrain...

On page 217 of the Harper Collins hardback and 239 of the Harper Torch paperback, Lieutenant Blouse mentions a classmate named Wrigglesworth, who was particularly good at impersonating women. In the 1981 movie ''Zorro the Gay Blade'', Zorro's long-lost twin brother (who is rather flamboyantly gay) goes by the name of Bunny Wigglesworth.

This might also be a knowing nod to that icon of the Great British Boys' Adventure Story, Squadron Leader James "Biggles" Bigglesworth.
The Biggles books chart his life roughly from age nine, as a typical product of Empire and the British Raj in India, through his answering the patriotic call to the British colours in World War One (he tries the Infantry, realises it isn't to his taste, then transfers to the fledgling Royal Flying Corps where he becomes an Ace). In between the wars he and his jolly - all-male - band of chums become freelance adventurers, then when WW2 happens, he rejoins the RAF, much to the woe of the beastly Hun, the braggart Italians and the diabolical Japanese. After the war, he is signed up to Scotland Yard as Commander of the "Air Police" and occasional special agent - indeed, his last active service as an over-age James Bond is a dangerous (and deniable) incursion into the Gulag to spring his old arch-enemy Erich von Stalheim from Soviet captivity, sometime around 1965, when Biggles would have been as old as the century....

It is noticeable that ''in all that time'' Biggles is only diverted ''once'' from the manly bosom of his chums by a woman's infernal wiles, and otherwise he remains a confirmed bachelor all his life. Unkind commentators have deduced somewhat...errrm.... ''homoerotic'' overtones in the intensity of his relationship with Bertie, Algy and the boy who he takes in as protègé, Ginger Hepplethwaite, (who is described in quite loving physical detail by Captain Johns). What could be ''more'' natural than a band of bosom chums spurning the advances of women, and going off into the wilds of the world together in pursuit of healthy masculine activity,(often at the direction of a shadowy father-figure and Intelligence patriarch called Colonel Raymond, who takes close attention to the lads) and indeed doing so until they are in their late fifties and early sixties?

[[Category:Annotations|Monstrous Regiment]]

Book:The Wee Free Men/Annotations

2018-06-09T10:45:49Z

Prime.mover:

in the APF, Breebart and Kew write:-

+ [p. 153] "'We'll dance the FiveHundredAndTwelvesome Reel to the tune o' "The Devil Among The Lawyers"'"

There are Foursome, Eightsome and Twelvesome Reels, which involve exchanges of partners between two, four or six couples. 512 is eight cubed, so presumably it's more complicated, but basically the same. "The Devil Among The Lawyers" is possibly a reference to Burns' "The Deil's Awa' Wi' The Exciseman", or to 'The Devil Among The Tailors', (or, as it's sometimes known, 'The Deil Amang the Tailors') a well-known folk-dance tune (which is in fact, I'm told, the original tune for an Eightsome Reel).

==Discussing the reference:-==

*George McDonald Fraser wrote three books of semi-autobiographical short stories about his time as a subaltern in the Gordon Highlanders just after the end of WW2. He spent a little under two years as a junior officer in one of Scotland's most famous (some might say notorious) Army regiments. What becomes clear from his books is that the Gordons have many similarities to the Feegle. His Scottish soldiers essentially ARE the Feegle, only cleaner, neater, and subject to military discipline - they are even known by nicknames such as Daft Bob, Wee Wullie, et c.

In fact, in WW2, the 51st (Highland)Infantry Division, whose insignia was a stylised "HD", were known to the rest of the British Army as "The Hydraulics", because "those bloody Scotsmen would lift anything".

Scottish regiments certainly saw grand theft as a challenge: elsewhere in his writings, McDonald Fraser recounts being busted down to private from lance-corporal, because a raiding party of Cameron Highlanders stole the tent from over his and his comrades' heads while they slept.

Pterry notes that the Feegles who adopt Tiffany as Kelda are virtually all alike, accent-wise, save for those who accompanied the new Kelda from her birthplace in the Long Lake clan.
Ref Breebart and Kew:-

+ [p. 152] "He spoke differently too, [...]"

While the other Nac Mac Feegle sound like people doing Rab C Nesbitt impressions (Nesbitt is a well-known Scots character (of the dirty, foul-mouthed, sexist drunkard kind) from a BBC comedy series), William has the sort of exaggerated Ayrshire burr you might hear folk put on when reciting Robert Burns (the famous Scots poet, who wrote 'Auld Lang Syne').

* McDonald Fraser describes his Gordon Highlanders similarly, as being 80% drawn from Glasgow (ie, Rab C. Nesbitts and Billy Connollys) but with the remaining 20% drawn from the real Scottish Highlands and Islands. (apart from a draft from the Liverpool Scottish with thick Scouse accents and names like McDonald, McLeod, et c)

In the first book of short stories, ''The General Danced At Dawn'', it may interest students of Feegledom to note that a 128-some reel was actually danced, (in Libya in 1946), at the end of an otherwise disastrous General's inspection. This 'record' stood until 24th April 1988, when inspired by Fraser's story and according to the 1989 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, "The most complex Scottish country dance ever held was a 256-some reel, choreographed by Ian Price, which took place ... in Vancouver, Canada." As far as is known, this remains the most intricate single-set Scottish reel danced anywhere by anybody, although larger groups have since taken the field (no 'floor' being big enough) in Toronto (512) and Aberdeenshire (1254) as aggregations of smaller sets.

The Scottish general gets progressively drunker over dinner, and prevails on the wee pipe-sergeant (the Regiment's principal piper and to all intents and purposes, its Gonnagal and guardian of its tradition) to expand the dancing. From the conventional foursome and eightsome reels, to the rarely danced and far longer sixteensome.

To correct Breebaart and Kew who say: ''512 is eight cubed, so presumably it's more complicated, but basically the same''.

Not quite, gentlemen: the thing about Scottish dancing is that the length of the dance increases almost exponentially as you proceed upwards through powers of two. A twosome is simple; a foursome takes longer as each dancer has to interact with three others before it can end. In an eightsome, each dancer has to physically dance a measure with each of ''seven'' other dancers. In a sixteensome, that's fifteen other people, and it takes proportionately longer. Now imagine....

The General then calls for a thirty-twosome reel. Then he gets delusions of grandeur and calls for a sixty-foursome: one of the longest and most complex Scottish reels ever performed anywhere.

By now, it's one in the morning, the Military Police are out, curious Arabs are wondering what the noise is (it's a full Highland pipe band), the English regiment who share the barracks are awake, and German prisoners of war housed nearby are considering a protest under the Geneva Convention. (In fact, in a Vimes/Night Watch sort of way, the Military Police are unsure as to whether or not they have the authority to arrest a General, even a Scottish one, for drunken disorderly behaviour and related offences...)

But the General carries on...

"I say, pipey, is there any reason why we couldn't..."

And a one hundred and twenty-eightsome happens, which takes one hour and twenty eight minutes to dance to a conclusion... by Highlanders, whooping Arabs, Northumberland Fusiliers, and German prisoners of war roped in to make up the numbers.

The 512-some reel is the next logical step up, would take between six and seven hours to dance to a finish, and only Feegles would be daft enough to dance it.

It could also be noted that the most Feegle-like of the Highlanders, the habitually filthy, illiterate, shambling wreck who is Private McAuslan, (nicknamed "Private Piltdown" by the defending officer at his court-martial) is reduced to an embarrassed red-faced mumbling Rob Anybody (in the presence of Tiffany) by a beautiful girl with whom he disastrously falls in love... this is MacAuslan, a man who, when short of money, raided the platoon armoury, and then was caught by the Military Police trying to sell the Arabs a three-inch mortar and shells.

more here: [[Daft Wullie]]

Over on the APF, I find a certain confirmation for this annotation! Terry Pratchett is quoted as saying:-

''"These are modern authors whose books I will automatically buy knowing that life is going to get that little bit richer:

Pratchett lists five authors, but at the top of the list is....

'''''George McDonald Fraser''''' (The Flashman books)''

Discovering TP is a GMcD-F fan kind of seals the Feegles-Gordon Highlanders asociation, methinks?

Incidentally, any reader of the Flashman books will notice immediately that McDonald Fraser, like TP, is also a great exponent of explanatory footnotes (although these are grouped in a separate section at the end - more "endnotes", really)

--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 13:17, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

More here [[Talk:Pictsies]] concerning Feegle-speak.

There's a link, on the Reading Suggestions page, to Irish children's author Pat O'Shea. Re-reading the early chapters of {{WFM}}, it has just struck me how the scene between Tiffany and Miss Tick, when they meet for the first time, is in all aspects pure pastiche of O'Shea. The setting reflects one of the bizarre, slightly dream-like, "country fairs" of her Irish faeryscape - right down to the in-line text drawings. There is O'Shea's obligatory talking animal - not Cù Rùa the wise fox, but the "yellow, sick, toad" There is the superficially whimsical dialogue between Tiffany and Miss Tick, but which hides deeper realities. It has the same, slightly eerie, almost-making-sense, quality of a conversation in a dream, that O'Shea excels at.

Check out '''''The Hounds of the Morrigan''''', particularly the Swapping Fair scenes, to see what I mean here...--[[User:AgProv|AgProv]] 13:26, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

''No King, no Lords, no Gentry, no Taxes!'' - this was the slogan of angry workers in Scotland in the 1820's, first forced off the land into the city slums during the Highland Clearances, and then discovering that during the industrial recession and near-famine of the 1820's, not even ill-paid factory work was available to them. Scottish soldiers who had served faithfully in the Napoleonic Wars were also being demobbed (no Army pensions and invalidity pay in those days)to discover that what they were returning to was something a lot less than a land fit for heroes. 60,000 workers went on mass strike, and even artillery was mobilised to the streets of Glasgow and Edinburgh as a threat and deterrent. ''Nae Quin! Nae Lairds....''

Tiffany and the Feegle fight the Grimhounds. The wee Gonnagal fights them off with the Notes of Pain - the excruciatingly supersonic sound of the mousepipes.

This is reminiscent of the scene in Michael Moorcock's ''Corum'' cycle, where Corum and the Companion to Heroes are trapped inside a stone circle in the snowy frozen waste by the fell hounds of the FhoiMhoir. The psychotic Gaynor, Prince of the Damned, leaves them there to starve or be torn to pieces if they try to escape. (Yes, I'd be psychotic too if my parents had called their son Gaynor). They are rescued by the wizard Calatin, who uses a horn to subdue the dogs - one blast causes them to mill in confusion, a second is fiercely painful, the third kills.

As Moorcock was drawing extensively from Irish mythology, this could be another case of W"fishing in the same stream".

'''HarperCollins, Paperback. Page 11''' 
"She didn't call the downland [[the Chalk]], she called it 'the wold.' Up on the wold the wind blows cold, Tiffany had thought, and the words had stuck that way." 
This is a reference to the English folk rhyme: 
''At Brill on the hill 
The wind blows shrill 
''The cook no meat can dress 
''At [[wikipedia:Stow-in-the-Wold|Stow-in-the-Wold]] 
''The wind blows cold'' 
''I know no more than this ''

[[Category:Annotations|Wee Free Men,The]]

Death of Fleas

2018-06-09T10:44:36Z

Prime.mover:

The Death of Fleas is the often-disregarded ''other'' lesser Death who survived Death's round-up at the end of {{RM}}. He was revealed to be, fittingly, a passenger on the skeleton of the [[Death of Rats]]. When Death of Rats is allowed to live on as a separate Death, he opens a paw to reveal the Death of Fleas sheltering within. Whilst [[Death]] does indeed call back all the lesser Deaths with the exception of Rat, there is no definite objective proof that he recalled Fleas. Given the historical association between Rats and Fleas and Death (rat-borne fleas are blamed for spreading the Black Death in a collaborative cross-species exercise that reduced the human population of Europe by a third) it would be nice to think Fleas is still out there doing the siphonapteran Duty.

[[Category: Supernatural entities]]

Mystick Alley

2018-06-09T10:42:34Z

Prime.mover:

This is a lesser street in upmarket Ankh. It near-diagonally links [[Scoone Avenue]] to [[Brookless End]]. It is interesting in this context that its near-neighbours are Caroc Alley(C2-D2)* and Runecaster Way*(D3). There are two possible explanations for this:-

* Some commentators, especially those looking at references in {{COM}} and other very early Discworld books, have associated this area with the Wizards' Quarter which the protaganists watch burning with multicolour flame and explosions, from a very safe distance. This might make factories and workshops in this area - assuming they have not relocated to the [[Thaumatological Park]] - a "service industry" for the University, perhaps the alchemists. (If the magical industries have moved on, the street names remain as a memorial?)

*This may well be a sly and hidden homage, or parody, of the whole "Diagon Alley" business that provides a hidden "wizards' quarter" to magic-users in the Harry Potter world of J.K. Rowling.

Neighbouring streets on the revised and updated version of {{SAM}} included with {{CAM}} include Dwimmer-Craft Lane*(D3), Mandrake Mead*(D3), Rue-Magie*(D3-D4), and Nine-Bean Row*(C3-D3). This supports the hypothesis that this area was - perhaps still is - the "Wizards' Quarter of {{COM}}.

(Think of the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk: Jack traded a cow for exactly nine beans which generated a magical and possibly dimension-crossing Beanstalk. A [[Catbury]] experiment in genetics and [[Professor of Extreme Horticulture|Extreme Horticulture ]] that went woefully wrong? This could be a folk-memory of the Beanstalk Event.) Conversely and possibly more relevantly, it could be a lift from William Butler Yeats' poem, ''The Lake-Isle of Inisfree'':-

''Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, And live alone in the bee-loud glade?''

*''streets too minor on the map, or never used as locations in the books, therefore not significant enough to merit a separate entry of their own. For those interested in looking them up on the {{CAM}} map - which has grid-references where {{SAM}} doesn't - the map reference is quoted in brackets.''

[[Category: Streets of Ankh-Morpork]]

Holofernes Street

2018-06-09T10:40:05Z

Prime.mover:

'''Holofernes Street''' rises at [[Pseudopolis Yard]] and extends via [[New Bridge]] to Fetters Lane, where it meets the river again. It was a location in {{MAA}}, where a helpful gargoyle found a far-flung fragment of the ill-used dragon [[Chubby]], who had been used as an improvised explosive device to attack the [[Assassins' Guild]].

== Annotation ==

In the deuterocanonical* books of the Bible, the book of Judith tells the story of how the invading Persian king Nebuchadnezzar's general, Holofernes, sent to ravage Israel for not submitting to Persian rule, was assassinated by the wiles of the Jewish widow Judith. Basically, she shared his bed, got him drunk, waited for him to drop off, then beheaded him. As few things seem to excite men more than a glamorous female Assassin - as no doubt [[Alice Band]] and her colleagues are aware - this has reverberated down the ages in song, literature and art. Mr [[Mericet]] would have given Judith the pink slip instantly: recall that the final test for the student Assassin is having to slay a seemingly sleeping body in a bed...

*ie, second-division, accepted as Canonical by some Christian denominations but dismissed as apocryphal by others. The Church of England hedges its bets by including it in its New English Bible, but putting it into a separate box labelled "Apocrypha"

[[Category: Streets of Ankh-Morpork]]

Talk:Book:Raising Steam

2013-11-16T03:30:33Z

Prime.mover:

[[Ned Simnel|'''Simnel''']], you say... where have I heard that name before? --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 00:21, 2 October 2013 (GMT)

The title (when we were expecting [[Book:Raising Taxes|Raising Taxes]]) suggests that The Author is jerking us around again. It's more evidence of his genius, I guess, that we seem to enjoy it so much: rather like the [[Patrician]], innit? --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 23:58, 14 October 2013 (GMT)

Not even halfway through it yet, but there is a surge of relief that something like the old Terry Pratchett has returned to us. After the God-awful {{SOD4}} and the dissappointingly lacklustre "Long Earth" books, this was not necessarily a given.
It has to be said, though, the jarring, un-Pratchett-like author's voice that so fouled up {{SOD4}} was not completely absent from {{RS}}. The dialogue between Mustrum Ridcully and Lu-Tze is written in this voice - which felt so utterly wrong for the characters or the usual quality of Discworld writing that you wondered if Rhianna had been given a few pages to write. Or Rob Williams. [[User:AgProv|AgProv]] ([[User talk:AgProv|talk]]) 02:41, 14 November 2013 (GMT)
== Awdry ==
I've only just caught notice that this is out (I'm annoyingly out of the country at the moment, and where I am Pratchett has not yet broken ground) -- but I find myself wondering if pTerry is channeling the Reverend W. Awdry in this one ...? --[[User:Prime.mover|that's wot I sed ...]] ([[User talk:Prime.mover|talk]]) 03:28, 16 November 2013 (GMT)

User:Prime.mover

2013-11-16T03:29:22Z

Prime.mover: Created page with "yet another wiki I can't resist contributing to"

yet another wiki I can't resist contributing to

Talk:Book:Raising Steam

2013-11-16T03:28:56Z

Prime.mover:

[[Ned Simnel|'''Simnel''']], you say... where have I heard that name before? --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 00:21, 2 October 2013 (GMT)

The title (when we were expecting [[Book:Raising Taxes|Raising Taxes]]) suggests that The Author is jerking us around again. It's more evidence of his genius, I guess, that we seem to enjoy it so much: rather like the [[Patrician]], innit? --[[User:Old Dickens|Old Dickens]] ([[User talk:Old Dickens|talk]]) 23:58, 14 October 2013 (GMT)

Not even halfway through it yet, but there is a surge of relief that something like the old Terry Pratchett has returned to us. After the God-awful {{SOD4}} and the dissappointingly lacklustre "Long Earth" books, this was not necessarily a given.
It has to be said, though, the jarring, un-Pratchett-like author's voice that so fouled up {{SOD4}} was not completely absent from {{RS}}. The dialogue between Mustrum Ridcully and Lu-Tze is written in this voice - which felt so utterly wrong for the characters or the usual quality of Discworld writing that you wondered if Rhianna had been given a few pages to write. Or Rob Williams. [[User:AgProv|AgProv]] ([[User talk:AgProv|talk]]) 02:41, 14 November 2013 (GMT)
== Awdry ==
I've only just caught notice that this is out (I'm annoyingly out of the country at the moment, and where I am Pratchett has not yet broken ground) -- but I find myself wondering if pTerry is channeling the Reverend W. Awdry in this one ...? --[[User:Prime.mover|that's wot I '''sed''' ...]] ([[User talk:Prime.mover|talk]]) 03:28, 16 November 2013 (GMT)