nestofstraightlines:

mad-dame-zou:

Terry Pratchett’s crusade against the abuse of exclamation marks never fails to amuse me.

And that’s how we know to be very scared when we read to the end of this sentence

WHERE!! IS!!! MY!!!! COW!!!!!

And what are MY weapons? she thought.  And the answer came to her instantly: pride.  Oh, you hear them say it’s a sin; you hear them say it goes before a fall.  And that can’t be true.  The blacksmith prides himself on a good weld; the carter is proud that his horses are well turned out, gleaming like fresh chestnuts in the sunshine; the shepherd prides himself on keeping the wolf from the flock; the cook prides herself on her cakes.  We pride ourselves on making a good history of our lives, a good story to be told.

And I also have fear–the fear that I will let others down–and because I fear, I will overcome that fear.  I will not disgrace those who have trained me.

And I have trust, even though I am not sure what it is I am trusting.

Terry Pratchett, “I Shall Wear Midnight”
(Not your ordinary ‘weapons,’ and not the ordinary things touted as strengths in novels for young people or for anyone really.  Don’t we usually want our kids to read about heroes who aren’t ‘prideful’?  Who aren’t scared or who overcome fear completely rather than embracing it as a driving force?  Who trust in some thing or person or ideal and know what that is?  But think about what real, ordinary people’s ordinary driving forces are.  Haven’t MOST people done something scary or difficult because they were afraid of letting people down?  Haven’t MOST people felt pride in a job well done and then wanted to do it again?  Haven’t MOST people felt a sort of undirected trust that ‘things will be okay’ or ‘that thing won’t happen’ or a trust in THEMSELF that they don’t recognize as such?  These plain old ordinary feelings can be important, Pratchett says, and they CAN be used as weapons against evil when understood.)

nestofstraightlines:

copperbadge:

hyvetyrant:

nestofstraightlines:

I figured I might as well mark this inaugural post of my foray into Tumblr with something of tremendous stupidity. Thus!

Commander Sam Vimes is Ironhead (I was also considering Copperman or Stoneface).

Captain Carrot Ironfounderson is Captain Ankh-Morpork And Its Supporting Rural Environs.

Sergeant Detritus is The Incredible Splatter. It’s like a Hulk, only splattier.

Sergeant Fred Colon is Wowhawk, expert marksman whose arrows seek out dragons’ voonerables even – no especially – if it’s a million-to-one shot.

Captain Angua Von Uberwold is Blonde Wolf. She spends a lot of her time pissed off, not least because somehow ‘Blonde Wolf’ fails somehow to sound as sexy and mysterious as ‘Black Widow’ or ‘Scarlet Witch’.

Sergeant Cheery Littlebottom is (sorry) Phwoar.

They are brought together by the shadowy Havelock Vetinari, Agent of W.A.T.C.H. (probably) to protect the Disc from threats the like of which it has never – well, yet another cataclysmic threat, anyway.

The background elements which are stock, and the Tower of Art belongs to Jack Saxon.

Hey, @copperbadge. This seems relevant to your varied interests!

Okay I love all of this but I actually absolutely lost it at Cheery as PHWOAR. 

My very first tumblr post is doing the rounds again. I peaked early.

[Simony] was aware of the rush of air, a sudden breath in the universe. He looked around in time to see a wave lift a ship out of the water and smash it against the dunes.

A distant scream colored the wind.

The soldiers stared. “There were people under there,” said Argavisti.

Simony dropped the flask.

“Come on,” he said.

And no one, as they hauled on timbers in the teeth of the gale, as Urn applied everything he knew about levers, as they used their helmets as shovels to dig under the wreckage, asked who it was they were digging for, or what kind of uniform they’d been wearing.

Terry Pratchett, Small Gods

(via seepkis)

on Big Deal Moments in Discworld

the-tao-of-fandom: puzzleaddictyomz: beanmoreau: fandomsandfeminism: fandomsandfeminism: telaryn: copperbadge: badgerbee: discworldtour: poorlydescribedpterrybooks: discworldtour: Guards! Guards! has one of the first Big Deal Discworld moments for me, and I’m not very good at articulating what that means. The moment I’m thinking of is the dragon’s speech to Wonse – “we were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and…

degenezijde:

buzzfeed:

This Baby Was Born With The Exact White Streak In Her Hair As Her Mother

discworldtour: It was much better to imagine men in some smokey room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who…

attractivegkry:

copperbadge:

whenflowersfade:

blorpulous:

my turtle goes trick-r-treating

@copperbadge

Well a turtle just won the entire internet’s Halloween costume contest, everyone else can go home. 😀

There is no way I could get any of mine to wear something like this, so I’m going to sit here and stew in my own envy.

scribefindegil: Listen. Discworld witch Mabel Pines. She makes the best Shambles with little to no apparent effort. Utterly incapable of Borrowing (which, ah, might turn out to be a blessing in disguise) If you ask Mabel she will say that she’s great at flying. If you ask anyone else (especially someone unfortunate enough to have…

bookhobbit: don’t mind me I’m just over here getting emotional about Sourcery and how most of the people Rincewind meets in the book for longer than five seconds is trying to be someone else from Conina the born warrior who wants to be a hairdresser to Nijel the spindly awkward grocer’s son who wants to…