You fear tomorrow, and you've made your fear your god.

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heavily inspired by THIS post

Happy pride to Jackrum's little lads 🌈 they really are lgbt all at once

🦇🦇🦇

So I'm rereading Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching series, and, well...

I was today years old when I realised that the song "Hiver" in Steeleye Span's album Wintersmith (an album written about that series, which came out in 2013, which I discovered nearly a decade ago and which I have listened to enough time to know entirely by heart), was not, in fact, titled after the French word for "winter", as I had believed for the better part of a fucking decade, but after the Hiver, the main antagonist of the second Tiffany Aching book, which I have read a number of time and should have really recognized because the song's lyrics are almost word for word the hiver's speech in the novel.

Anyway, I shall now turn in my Discworld fan badge and then go shovel a hole in the snow and bury myself in it.

‘Even tyrants have to obey the law.’ He paused, looking thoughtful, and continued: ‘No, I tell a lie, tyrants do not have to obey the law, obviously, but they do have to observe the niceties. At least, I do.’

-- Terry Pratchett - Making Money

Carnivorous ... cause the last unicorn was yesterday

This is the highest compliment I can bestow, but Dungeon Meshi reads like it was written for, if not by, Terry Pratchett.

Oh, you have a dungeon with monsters and adventurers? How does it work? Who pays? How do you get enough supplies? People will eat anything when hungry; do they eat the monsters? People will cook feasts from rotten meat and weeds; what feasts can you make with monsters?

By the way, here is a terrible pun about soup.

You want heroes to have peril, but also to live? Easy! Just have a ressurection spell. Well how does it work? What's the point? What would people give to live forever? What would people give to die?

Here's a dwarf whose magical shield is a wok.

And if they come back, it still hurts right? Do people remember? What happens if they forget that, outside of the dungeon, they can't come back? What if the thing that brings them back also ties them to the dungeon more and more, changes them, makes them different without knowing why.

Whilst you were thinking about that, the halfling founded an adventurers guild. It's an actual union with dues etc. btw he's a deadbeat dad apart from this.

The dwarf from earlier carries familial trauma that will haunt you for the next decade. The protagonist holds his sister's skull as the first proof that there is anything left of her. The two female leads share a love so deep that giving it a name would pollute it. The protagonist's sword is a mollusc.

From the Neil Gaiman: Dream Dangerously 🥺❤ (you can watch it here in US or with US vpn :) <3) (or just this bit on youtube here :))

Neil Gaiman: I miss him most when I get stuck. You know, I'll just be working on something and I'll go, "Oh, this isn't quite it," and all I want to do is just call Terry, tell him what's going on and have him say, "Ah, grasshopper, the answer is there in the question." And I'd go, "Oh, for fuck's sake, Terry, just tell me."

[Terry Pratchett laughing]

This makes me so sad and also I'm trying to remember if any of the Discworld books dealt with late stage capitalism

Reading a Terry Pratchett book is literally just: Here's a funny little joke Here's something that you can tell is a joke but don't get and will only figure out five years later Here's a surprisingly cool fantasy concept Here's a unique and well written simile Here's a lil guy Here's something that has aged depressingly well into the modern day Here's something that has aged remarkably queer into the modern day Here's a character that you can barely understand what he's saying Here is the most terrifying and deeply disturbing concept you have ever heard, casually mentioned Here is the dumbest fucking pun you've ever heard but in the best way Here is a quote so profound that it makes you view morality and the world in a different way Here is a plot twist that you can't tell if it's genius or stupid Congratulations! You've finished the book! It has fundamentally changed you as a person and you will never be the same!

one of the differences between good omens the show vs good omens the book that will always fuck me up is the post-bookshop fire scene. crowley goes from picking himself up, dusting himself off, accepting the loss of aziraphale and Just Driving Anyway to completely falling apart. i do get why people have gripes with it being changed so fundamentally, and i've thought about it a lot myself, but i've never been able to bring myself to get mad about it. i always circle back to how the book was written by two best friends. that drunken, wrecked, grief stricken scene was written in a post-pratchett world. he lost his best friend.

@neil-gaiman you're a saint

Nijel was one of those people who, if you say ‘don’t look now’, would immediately swivel his head like an owl on a turntable. These are the same people who, when you point out, say, an unusual crocus just beside them, turn round aimlessly and put their foot down with a sad little squashy noise. If they were lost in a trackless desert you could find them by putting down, somewhere on the sand, something small and fragile like a valuable old mug that had been in your family for generations, and then hurrying back as soon as you heard the crash.

-- Terry Pratchett - Sourcery

I went to an antique store today and, in addition to a book on medieval and renaissance miniatures and a simple and dainty but sturdy handkerchief, I got a couple of other neat finds.

One of these was a question mark stickpin! Long have I loved the late Victorian-Edwardian trend of question mark pins, and now I have one! Of course it’s not one of the super fancy gold and diamond ones, but it’s certainly enough for me, and I’ve never seen one for such a low price ($5).

The last thing I got is just *chef’s kiss*. It’s a tiny little silver* mesh coin purse to keep on a chatelaine. No, even smaller than that. No, even smaller. Smaller. Think ridiculously and amusingly wee. The purse itself is ever so slightly shorter than my index finger. The ring to connect it to the chatelaine is subtly decorated (I absolutely adore the subtle decorations on so many Victorian-1910s things, including glasses frames) on either side, the outer rim, and even the inner rim(!). At the center of the elongated hexagonal frame is a circular lid, approximately the size of a quarter, to open the purse. Upon opening it, you will see that the lid isn’t just a flat surface, but is one of those spring coin dispensers. This can hold about 3 coins, and can accommodate dimes, although they are a little tricky, as they are almost too small to fit, pennies, and nickles (which are on the large side). Quarters cannot fit into the dispenser, but can be held in the purse. I’m usually not personally one for tassels (at least on my own items), but I kinda like the chain tassle on this. Despite how it appears in the photo, the chains are not a tangled mess. The mesh is surprisingly heavy, but it’s super cool. The mesh moves with unexpected fluidity and drapes quite nicely. It sorely wants polishing, but that’s not that big of a deal. I can’t help thinking of dwarfish micromail from Discworld.**

*Well, presumably silver at the ring and at the frame. I’m not sure about the mesh. **Seriously, you hold this thing and suddenly you’re a fashionable dwarf lady. Didn’t you see Jools wearing a similar one in the latest issue of Bu-Bubble?