Hello my Beautiful Watchers, in the (good lord) 6+ years that I’ve been talking about
books and stuff on youtube I’ve avoided doing any videos about my favourite series,
primarily because I never really got over the sense of loss and deep sadness at the
tragically too early passing of the author due to Alzheimer’s disease.
It emotionally affected me on a level usually only reserved for close friends and family
members.
However, being back in my childhood home seems to have stirred something in me as I suddenly
gone from not to 100 in my desire to gush about his work for a bit sooo….
I hope that's what you’re in the mood for today.
Before we begin I would just like to take a second to let you admire my dad’s home
office with it’s floor to ceiling bookshelves and (1, 2, 3) 4 computer monitors.
He is literally a mad scientist.
I make a lot more sense as a person now eh?
Anyway.
Sir Terry Pratchett was a British journalist turned fantasy writer who lived in Somerset,
England.
He wrote a total of 70 books in his lifetime which covered a range of fictional subjects,
but of course he’s best well known for the focus of today’s video’s: The Discworld
Novels.
For his services to literature he was knighted by the Queen of England in 2009, after which
he famously decided that any self-respecting knight needed to own his own sword so, he
hand-forged one himself partly out of meteorite metal that he personally gathered.
I had the great honour of seeing it in person in a memorial pop up museum a few years ago.
It was just before I moved out of the country and was probably one of the more deeply emotional
moments of my life to date.
I admit sword trivia isn’t super relevant to his writing but it gives you an idea of
what a fucking badass this guy was.
Most of you may know by now that one of my cats is named after him so that should give
you an indication of my level of fanboy when it comes to this author.
Sir Terry has turned up interrupting me in enough bloopers that it might actually be
kind of weird for you to hear me using his name to refer to the man himself for once.
So where to start, well, the briefest description of the setting is…
A flat world, a disc if you will, rests on the back of four unbelievably massive elephants,
which themselves stand on the shell of a giant turtle named great A’tuin, who eternally
flies through space.
Sir Terry explains that it exists in a part of the universe that’s just magical enough
that you could get away with this sort of thing.
The stories are fairly well spread out over the disc, though the most popular setting
is the massive sprawling city state of Ankh-Morpork which I’ll swing back to in just a moment.
One of the first reasons I love this series is the humour.
My beautiful watchers, I promise you Sir Terry is the wittiest author you’ll ever come
across.
These books can be a laugh out loud funny from start to finish.
I will say its very British humour i.e. fuelled by a lot of sarcasm and dry wit with a generous
helping of absurdity as well.
If that's not your jam, and you’ve found you've struggled with British comedies before
then you might not get as much out of them as I do.
Because his books are so very very funny, engaging and creative, some people fail to
realise that Sir Terry was also a pretty intense person with very strong political views and
he wasn’t afraid to work that into his novels.
Themes of social, racial and economic inequality feature almost constantly along with critiques
of the blind acceptance of the status quo.
There's fantasy races of all shapes and sizes on the discworld, though the three most populous
besides humans are dwarfs and trolls.
Trolls are silicon based lifeforms, appearing at a glance to be living rocks.
Their brain function speeds up and slows down depending on the temperature so they tend
to appear quite stupid on an averge day but catch one on a winters night and they’ll
be able to explain quantum theory to you.
Dwarfs start out pretty much standard tolkien-esque in early novels but Sir Terry really gets
into their fascinating culture as the world expands.
A very interesting example is their gender.
The male and female sexes are virtually indistinguishable, universially having deep voices and long beards
and over the years a social pressure has developed for all dwarfs to present male and keep their
biological sex a secret.
Apparently a major part of dwarven courtship is attempting to subtly figure out your partner's
sex without being rude.
This whole thing isn’t just a quirk by the way, Sir Terry was using stuff like this to
make people question gender norms decades before the common awareness of it was raised.
The before mentioned Ankh-Morpork is heavily based on the city of London though with a
bizarre mix of features that seem to range from the medieval period to the late victorian
era.
Sir Terry also worked in a lot of pop culture references so some things seem positively
modern at times.
The city used to have kings but a few centuries before a revolution resulted in the city being
run by a “Patrician” from then on.
It still seems to still be a lifetime position but at least isn’t hereditary.
The current Patrican is called Lord Vetinari.
He's a really fun character, he’s a pure embodiment of the glorious bastard trope,
being one step ahead of almost everyone at all times.
He’s also really intimidating.
He has this catchphrase for when he’s dismissing you, he just says “don’t let me detain
you” in a way that makes it very clear that what he’s actually saying is “don’t
give me a reason to”.
Vetinari has a super out of the box way of thinking about everything.
He solved the issue of crime in the city basically by legalizing it.
You’re allowed to steal things as long as you’re a licensed thief and a part of the
guild of thieves.
You’re only allowed to steal a certain amount each quarter, and people can make a voluntary
donation to the guild and avoid it altogether.
As the guild is now in charge of stopping unlicensed thievery and are quite zealous
in doing so due to protect their profit margin, the criminal element of the city effectively
controls itself.
Other notable guilds include the assassins, the beggars and the alchemists whose building
regularly explodes as they keep messing with new chemicals.
My personal favorite character makes an appearance in almost every single book, the personification
of Death.
He’s also a really fun character because of how differently he thinks to most people
which makes sense considering he’s an anthropomorphic concept that's been around since the dawn
of time and will remain until the end of the universe.
Most of the time he’s a side character, popping up after someone dies to lead their
soul to the afterlife.
He’s usually played pretty straight but Sir Terry manages to make him really really
funny despite, or possibly because of this.
He stars in some of his own books eventually, though he often shares the spotlight with
his adopted human granddaughter Susan Sto Helit.
His deal is he worked with humans for so long he couldn’t help develop an interest in
them, and attempts to learn more about what it is to be human.
Because of this investment, he will occasionally indirectly intervene to save the world from
cosmic threats, usually by outsourcing to Susan who isn’t bound by as many divine
non-interference laws as he is.
The very early Discworld novels leaned very heavily towards being one for one parodies
and satires, putting comedic or more cynical twists on other well-known works of fiction
and real-world events, later novels still often involved places and people who were
obvious allegories, but the cast of characters that the stories focused on developed super
distinct and unique personalities of their own.
Also changing over time was the nature of the sequels.
The first half dozen or so had more of an emphasis on one-shot characters and events
that just happened to all share a world, but Sir Terry quickly started getting into longer
running series, usually with ensemble casts.
Sir Terry also used the discworld books to deconstruct and analyze fairytale tropes and
explore how the fiction we grow up with affects our subconscious expectations for real life.
The way he makes you think about this is really clever.
Unlike in our world on the disc, the power of stories, narrative and expectations actually
does hold sway over big world-changing events.
The story beats, tropes and clichés of fairytales and legends spring up on a fairly regular
basis.
If a monster arises to steal a fair maiden a hero inevitably pops up to save them and
when a man becomes a grand vizier to a king he feels compelled to plot against him, that
sort of thing.
The reason being in this dimension in which physics and reality are more of a suggestion
than a law, the power of people’s belief is a tangible thing so intense it changes
the world to suit it, so people’s deep-seated expectations of an outcome can drive fate
and destiny to make it happen.
What makes this theme even more interesting is that most of the population are on at least
some level aware of it.
Some find it comforting as it means most problems will sort themselves out eventually, some
seek ways to use it to their own advantage to varying levels of success and some hate
it, feeling it reduces their free will and even manage to defy it on occasion.
This power of belief also applies to the gods of the Discworld.
Gods are created by religions and their natures change depending on what people believe about
them, they can gain power or lose it all together depending on how many people believe in them
and how genuinely they believe it.
FYI this theological concept is also explored very creatively by Sir Terry Pratchett’s
friend Neil Gaiman who’s featured on this channel a few times now.
They’re making season two of Good Omens, I just found out today.
..Okay.
As tempting as it is to ignore a negative in a series you love, I do feel behooved to
mention that there is an uncomfortable amount of fat shaming in these novels.
It’s not always there but once you start to notice it it can be a little unpleasant.
I don’t think it was intended to be hateful, it just comes off a little thoughtless.
A bit of a blind spot in an otherwise very conscientious author.
Not necessarily a negative, but, I think important to note that, I think the effect that Sir
Terry’s alzheimer's had on later books is very noticeable.
Both in the quality of the writing as doing it all himself became impossible and the tonal
shift that I think understandably came about from him knowing that he was dying combined
with the anger he talked about feeling regarding the lack of information available to him about
his disease.
The stories take on a darker tone.
Not, I’m happy to say a less optimistic one, just more of an emphasis on the dark
concepts and even more focus on the heavy subjects than before.
Whether this change increases or decreases your enjoyment of them of course depends entirely
on you and what resonates with you.
Right I’m gonna give you a rundown of two of the most popular aforementioned series.
The City Watch collection and The Witches novels
The watch books are best described as police procedurals set in a pseudo medieval fantasy
setting, so in addition to petty crime, misdemeanors and murders, they also have to deal with things
like dragons, magical self aware weapons that corrupt people’s mind and clay golem revolutions.
Do keep in mind these books were written in Britain a good 30 years ago when being a copper
was perceived as more of an honest, humble but honorable profession.
Sir Terry does include a huge problem with corruption in the watch in the first two books,
but after a while all the bad apples get sorted out and you’re just left with the fundamentally
good policemen.
This probably wouldn’t bother a British reader but might feel a little off to Americans
and people in other countries that are dealing with escalating police violence right now.
I do sometimes wonder how and if Sir Terry would have addressed that sort of thing in
his books if he’d not been taken from us so soon.
The main focus tends to lean towards Commander Vimes, a complex man and grizzled veteran
with an iron-hard sense of justice, kinda like Dirty Harry if he wasn’t trigger happy.
He starts the series kind of as a burnout but gets a second wind put in him, making
a lot of the stories about his second chance at making a difference to the world.
He’s on the verge of retirement in basically every book but can never quite let go enough
to actually do it.
The guy who turned his life around was Captain Carrot.
His very concept is hilarious because he’s very very clearly the long lost son of the
line of kings and the true heir to the throne of Ankh-Morpork.
He’s got all the fantasy cliche’s including the distinctive birthmark and a family sword
passed down through the ages.
At the start of his story, all the stars appear to be aligning for his epic rise to fame and
fortune, but in one of the previously mentioned defiance of fantasy story expectations, it
turns out he doesn't really approve of monarchy as a political structure and has zero interest
in being a king.
He just wants to be a policeman.
He sort of comes off as a classic himbo at first but he’s way more intelligent than
he lets on, it just took him a while to get used to life in the big city because he was
raised by an isolated group of dwarfs.
He’s so genuinely enthusiastic, determined and positive he tends to inspire people around
him to do better, even if it's somewhat against their will.
He’s also insanely likeable to pretty much everyone, in a way that Vimes thinks should
be really annoying but you can’t help but forgive it because you end up liking him so
much yourself.
Then there's Sergeant Angua the werewolf who doubles up as the forces k9 division, Sergeant
Detritus the troll who uses a siege ballista as a hand-held crossbow and Sergeant Colon
and Corporal Nobby Knobbs who are endearing incompetent leftovers from before the watch
made its comeback.
Fuck, this such a good series.
Now the witches novels started out as a parody of Macbeth but incorporating the what-if concept
that the witches were the heroes and wanted to arrange a better ending for everyone involved.
After that Sir Terry kept it going and detailed the adventures of these three titular witches
keeping their backwater kingdom safe and occasionally travelling around the world.
These novels are a little more balanced in their main characters, being fairly evenly
split between the three of them if they’re not working as a unit.
Their names are Granny Weatherwax, and Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick.
Granny is undeniably a very good person but she often comes off as grumpy and impatient,
mostly because she gets a little emotionally exhausted from having to keep up with people's
constant misconceptions about witchcraft, assigning dark occult magics to what is often
just common sense.
If someone comes to her seeking help for back pain she ends up having to give them a noxious
looking potion to drink during the full moon to keep them happy, before doing sneaky chiropractics
on them to actually fix the issue.
That's not to say that she can’t do magic, she’s just very aware that solving issues
using it always comes at a cosmic price so 9 times out of 10 it’s better to just fix
things yourself.
This attitude can sometimes lead to other magical beings underestimating her, but a
fair example of how ridiculously powerful she actually is is one time a family of vampires
bit her, and instead of her starting to crave blood they ended going mad craving tea and
biscuits.
Naggy Ogg is relatively straightforward in comparison and just a delight.
She’s the mother and grandmother of a huge family and is incredibly open, caring and
kind to almost everyone.
One thing in particular I like about her is despite her age she’s consistently very
sex positive.
Magrat is the junior witch of the group and, like the people who annoy Granny Weatherwax,
is a little too into the somewhat superfluous occult traditions associated with witchcraft.
Something the older witches try to be understanding of.
It sometimes frustrates Magrat that Nanny Ogg performs her scrying in the leftover soapy
water in her laundry tub instead of in a crystal ball, without so much as a purple candle for
ambience.
The three of them together low-key embody the three elements of the neopagan triple
goddess, the Maiden, the Mother, and the Crone though no one would dare call Granny Weather
wax a crone to her face.
Other such frightfully heathen beliefs play a part in their stories on the regular.
Other fun characters who pop into these and other novels include:
Rincewind, a wizard utterly incapable of performing even the simplest magic.
He’s a lovable abstract coward who somehow falls into situations that require him to
save the world over and over again.
Cohen the barbarian.
The answer you didn’t realise you needed to the question of what happens when the most
legendary hero to ever live gets really really really old but retains all of his nearly undefeatable
combative abilities.
The Librarian.
The book keeper of Ank Morports wizard university who was turned into an orangutan in a magical
accident and has henceforth resisted all attempts to turn him back because he likes being crazy
strong and not having to wear trousers.
Cheery Littlebottom, the first openly female dwarf in the world.
Reg Shoe, an zombie undead rights activist turned police officer.
Gaspode the Wonder Dog, a mangy flea ridden talking dog with surprisingly useful street
smarts.
Dorfl, a giant magically powered clay man with a newly discovered concept of personal
freedom.
Death's white horse, binky.
He’s mostly just a normal horse but he’s really cool.
Death at one point tried a skeletal horse and a flaming steed but found them wildly
impractical as modes of transport.
The death of rats, a small but very driven part of Death that Death allows autonomy.
Quoth the raven, the death of rat’s translator and steed.
And the The Wee Free Men, Celtic coded pixies that escaped the fay lands and like the Discworld
so much they believe its their afterlife.
A violent but cheerful group.
So yeah, I hope that if you’re also a fan of the series you enjoyed this mugging down
memory lane, please do let me know in the comments which book or character is your favourite,
I will never get tired of gushing with people about this series.
If you’ve not had the pleasure of Sir Terry’s work, I, of course, would never try to pressure
anyone into reading something but if you don’t you will be deeply disappointing me and making
me cry.
Why would you do that my beautiful watchers when all I do is try to bring you joy?
Before you go, don’t forget to do all those help a Youtuber survive on this hellsite things
like liking, sharing, commenting and subscribing, please take care of yourselves out there and
I hope to see you next time.