The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 30: Eric Pt.2 (The Moustaches We Made Along The Way)
Episode Date: September 14, 2020The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan-Young and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. ...This week, Part 2 of our recap of “Eric”. Bees! Fits! Narrative Causality! Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: thetruthshallmakeyefretpod@gmail.comWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Troy by Adèle Geras - GoodreadsRL Stine on Fear Street, Young Adult fiction, and why he doesn't like writing about zombiesQuetzalcoatl - Wikipediaponce (n.)Juan Ponce de León - WikipediaSexy French Depression (feat. Rachel Bloom) - "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend"Odysseus - Greek MythologySiren | Definition, Legend, & History | BritannicaAncient Troy: The City & the Legend | Live ScienceYou're Dead To Me, The Aztecs - BBC Radio 4Angry Aztecs by Terry Deary - GoodreadsAztec Depictions in Pop Culture: 500 Years After the Fall | Comic-Con@Home 2020Aztec mythology in popular culture - WikipediaMacrobians - Wikipediawww.reddit.com/r/TTSMYF/Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com
Transcript
Discussion (0)
So do we have something I can publish to go in the soft open?
Oh, yeah. Sorry, I just sat here and bitched about my day for five hours.
12 minutes. You're good. And some of that was bitching about the patriarchy, which is always
acceptable. We should think about doing something special for our podcast birthday.
Yes, on the 4th of November.
Remember, remember.
Gunpowder, trees and plots. And it's episode 30 today. Oh, yay, with 30.
Oh, no, that's seen going to be a reality for me.
30 plus bonuses.
It happens for you before it happens to me.
Yeah, that is the nature of time.
I can't wait for the year where you're 30 and I'm 29. I'm going to be so smug that year.
Yeah, I think I'm just going to double down and keep calling you a Zoomer.
Yeah, that's fair.
Despite accuracy.
If it helps, though, I'll be spending most of it in a scrambling panic trying to get my life
together, which with the current economic uncertainty might be quite fun.
Economic and pandemic uncertainty. Have you seen the news?
All the restrictions are coming. Well, not all restrictions.
Quite a lot of restrictions are coming back, apart from with such weird caveats that it's
basically impossible to do anything. So it's the no more gatherings of over six people,
unless it's a wedding or a funeral, which apparently is immune to disease.
Pandemic.
Yeah. And also, obviously, the government's going to keep trying to bully us back into
full-time office work.
Which makes no sense. Well, I mean, no, I can understand what the government's doing.
It makes perfect monetary sense for their friends, and that's the main thing.
I am going to learn to make really cute little turtle pendants with wire and stones.
What kind of stones go with turtles?
I don't know. For the practice ones, I'm going to use some pretty stones I found on the beach.
Oh, nice. What are the turtles made from?
Wire.
Wire turtle. Oh, cute, cute.
Yeah. So it's going to be like a thick purple wire outline and then like copper wire coiled
around it and wrapped around the stone to make it look like a shell.
Oh, nice.
Yeah. So they're going to be really pretty.
I'm deciding whether or not to do the poetry thing this year.
When's that again?
October. I'll write a poem a day for a month.
Did you do it last year?
I did. I made myself do it even though I was like really tired and overwhelmed.
Yeah.
So I figure if I could do it last year, I should be able to do it this year.
It's worth trying.
Yeah.
As long as you don't get too hard on yourself if you don't.
Well, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, the main thing is there is nobody who's going to punish you for not completing,
so there's no problem with starting.
Yeah, but I mean, I might self-flagellate a little bit just for shits and grins.
Oh, as long as it's to a nice beat.
EDM is perfect for self-flagellation, I've heard.
I have been accidentally speaking in the style of Alexis for most of the day because I was
listening to David Tennant interview Dan Levy, which was a really good episode of his podcast,
by the way.
I'll listen to that.
Do you know I never got to the end of that lockdown thing with David Tennant and Michael Sheen?
Oh my God, you need to watch the last episode. It's the best one.
Do I? I just, I think maybe I was in the wrong place for it because I watched it during peak
lockdown. I was like, you know, this is just fucking depressing. I don't want to watch this.
Yeah, I'm less enjoying. At the beginning of lockdown, it was like, oh, it's so clever that
they're making all this stuff a lockdown like that and the mash report and have I got news for you.
Now, if I consume anything even slightly like that, it's like, oh, it's just,
it's all going to happen again, isn't it?
For sure. I remember saying on the podcast, at the beginning, all I wanted to listen to
or watch was stuff that was acknowledging it. I only wanted to listen to recent episodes of a
podcast where they were living in this same world that I was, and now it's almost the opposite.
No, no, I don't want to. I want full escapism because like, I just feel the second lockdown
coming in my waters and your waters. Oh no, I can feel it in my waters.
My feet are too hot and I'm going to take my socks off and wait for it because I'm sure in
about 15 minutes we'll go on my feet are cold. I'm thinking about it. So just look out for that
little Easter egglessness. That's the kind of effort I put into today's episode. I saw Joanna
reading the entire Iliad and I thought, well, that lets me off the hook.
I didn't actually read the entire Iliad so much as got annoyed about
him saying that Patrick Lee's was Achilles. Did you not get past the introduction?
No, I skim read the Iliad. I've read it before. I know you've read it before.
And I recently, do you remember when we were talking about Helen of Troy
in the Pyramids episode? I mentioned that there was a book I'd read
as like a preteen that I really loved that was about the Trojan Moor from the perspective
of young girls living in Troy. Was it the Iliad? No, it was called Troy. It was by this author,
Adele Jarass. After we talked about it in the Pyramids episode, I did actually reread it
because I remembered it because I remembered it being like a really horny book. I reread it.
It's not very horny. I was obviously just quite young.
What's your bar for horny now?
Like if you're not fadding yourself by the end of chapter one, it's not really a horny book.
Look, I've gone through sex and out the other side of this.
Right, podcast, podcasty podcast.
Hello and welcome to the True Charming Key Fret, a podcast in which we are reading and
recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series one at a time in chronological order.
I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part two of our discussion of Eric,
the ninth Discworld novel, but technically an illustrated novella.
Before we go into it, quick note on spoilers. This is a spoiler light podcast.
Obviously heavy spoilers for Eric, the book we're on, but we will avoid spoiling any future events,
major future events in the Discworld series. And we're saving any and all discussion of
The Shepherd's Crown, the final Discworld novel until we get there. So you dear listener can
come on the journey with us through the eight circles of hell and beyond. I don't think the
books are that bad. I quite like them. We've got the eight circles of hell still to come in this
book, Joanna. Oh yeah, that's a good point. I'm a bit of a comfortable shoes on for that.
Yeah, that's all right. It's next week. Do we have anything to follow up on from last week?
I don't think we sat homework to be. Oh, I said I'd read the rest of that play. I didn't say no.
I actually read some of it this week. A couple of dispatches from the ram world before we get
into it then. Sure. Anna messaged us on Facebook. She's working her way through the podcast,
just finished equal rights and pointed out that our Chancellor's cut angle is probably
cute angle is in a cute angle, which totally went over my head. Huh. So I'm glad we have
especially a yeah, a cute angle. Yeah. Stacey on Instagram. We talked about Hey, Stacey last
week. I want to be like a kids radio show. Hi, Stacey. Thank you for this lovely birthday.
We were talking last week about how prolific RL Stein is and she pointed out that he also had
a whole bunch of young adult novels. So that's a rabbit hole. I'm going to go down on Kindle.
I think having given it more than half a minute's thought since I saw that comment,
I'm pretty sure I did read a couple of them. I think I must have done and then probably moved
schools to one that just didn't have them in the library or something. Yeah, because I was such
a prolific reader. All a lot of my books came from the library because otherwise it got expensive.
Exactly. I think the ones I mainly bought were the animal arc books. Oh, I loved animal arcs so
much. So those ones aren't just one person. Those ones are like a weird conglomerate thing.
Yes. Yeah. I know that now. I don't think I'd have minded even if I hadn't known them.
I was dying. Jacqueline Wilson when I was a little bit older was another one I had loads of
because I also used to get some of my sister's old books. So I had all the Jacqueline Wilson
from her. Animorphs was one I had a lot of. Okay, see, I've never read the Animorphs series but
I've read it too much. Oh, really? That's right up teenage use earlier. I've heard so much about it
and apparently it's like a really good depiction of war and PTSD and shit. I was a bit young to
kind of get that from it. It was just a cool. All I know about it is the weird ass covers.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Horrible histories was one I had loads of. Oh, I had so many horrible
histories. One last dispatch from the Ramald, Andy on Twitter, point now we were talking about
adaptations that a lot of people really like the Jack Reacher adaptation, even though it's
Tom Cruise playing him and the guy's meant to be like six foot seven or something. But I don't
believe that because I don't believe anyone could enjoy anything related to Tom Cruise.
Okay, would you like to tell us what happened previously on Eric? No, but I will.
Such a happy bunny. I do want to tell you I rate it.
I remember the happy, fuzzy bunny makes more money. Oh, you could fuck off, mate.
Time to lean, time to clean, Joanna. Jinkies, it's old man capitalism.
Oh, wait, no, that was my waitressing job. What else were the other sales one?
Happy bunnies make more money. There was something about these.
And then just put on happy hardcore until we all want to die.
I have three aker bombs during the split shift and crack them from there.
God, that was hated that job. Yeah, me too. Never try and sell solar panels over the phone, kids.
In England, in winter. Yes, but you see they work from
photovoltaic. Well done. Well done, Joanna. Oh, no, these weren't photovoltaic. These were the
evacuated tube system that work from ambient light rather than direct sunlight and therefore
actually work slightly better on an overcast day because there's less reflection.
This was bullshit, listeners. I'm pretty sure thinking back, this was bullshit.
It was at least at the time or didn't care enough to question it.
Okay, anyway, this is Francine. Would you like to tell me what happened previously on Eric?
I think I've been quite clear that I do. Previously on Eric.
Yeah, death tends to his hive and more pork swelters and rinse wind inconveniences everyone by
fleeing loudly through the dungeon dimensions. Our favorite interdimensional coward incorporates
in suedopolis as the unwilling participant in an adolescent male fantasy. Eric, nearly 13,
is a demonologist with a short but sturdy wish list. The world, it's most beautiful woman and
eternal life in which to enjoy them. Astoundingly, rinse wind seems capable of helping a snap of
the fingers takes the pair into space and another snap teleports them into the clutching
jungle for tribute, you understand. Meanwhile, inhale corporate nonsense.
Marvelous. Kept it short. It is a novella after all. Excellent. So this time on Eric.
Yes, what 50 pages have we in store? Oh, we should say which section pages?
Oh, God, yeah, we're organized. So sorry, part two is in the new illustrated version,
taking us from it's page 50 in my version and starts with it was the first chariot rinse
wind had ever seen that was pulled by llamas and ends on page 105 in my section with it probably
isn't even built yet. Rinse wind tried snapping his fingers. This time it worked.
And in the non illustrated paperback, it is from page 46 to page 100 as demonstrated by my red
postage. Excellent, minor pink. Nice. Because feminism. No, that's purple. Oh, yeah. Anyway,
this time on Eric in part two, a plucky band of misfits rinse wind Eric. Oh my God,
I love it, but it's always a plucky band of misfits.
We're going to have a plucky band of people who fit in.
Plucky band of fits. Oh, that's always a fun topic. Sorry, completely off topic for a second.
That's always a fun topic is words that don't get used without the modifying prefix.
Yes. So that's a game that Jack and I play. So one that came up earlier was scathed versus
unscathed. You never say you came out of something scathed. Disgruntled is one of the good ones.
Yes. Extremely gruntled.
So it's not an episode of the true shimicky threat if I can't get our plucky band of misfits in at
least once. Yes, I know that's why I pointed it out as a as a as a nod to those who pay attention,
which apparently today is me. So. Well done. Anyway, I'll let you continue with your sentence.
Our plucky band of misfits are taken by Lama chariot to the home of the Tasman people
and receive a bit of groveling on the way. Eric demands tribute as Rincewind takes part in a
lengthy conversation by chisel. After a procession, Eric receives his tribute and Rincewind feels
more than a bit uneasy. There's much feasting and apparently a bit of worship. Some grand
incomprehensible speeches take place much like at most weddings. This is normally when one should
duck out for a smoke. Quasovacotl gets harangued by his demonic boss. Rincewind investigates a
temple meets Ponce de Querm, a prisoner looking for the fountain of youth, and learned that there's
a bit of prophecy about rulers around these Tasman parts, and it's not so great to be king.
As the boys await sacrifice with Kring 2.0 refusing to help out, the luggage makes a
magnificent entrance. Quasovacotl makes a less magnificent entrance and gets tragically squashed.
The Tasman decide to start worshipping the malevolent box on its dear little legs,
and Rincewind, Eric and Ponce get a hot breakfast for their trouble. Ponce de Querm
drops Kring 2.0 giving us all a lovely holiday. Asterfugal sulks in hell about a lack of control.
Rincewind, with another snap of the fingers, takes himself and Eric to somewhere shaky and wooden
in search of the disc's most beautiful woman. After a particularly dramatic exit from what turns
out to be an aphibian horse, Rincewind and Eric face an army. The luggage, a one-box siege, arrives
at the Saultian gates, and Rincewind accidentally lets in the aphibian army as he tries to run away.
As the soldiers of aphibian sort battle politely through the streets,
Rincewind and Eric are taken to meet some fantastic military minds.
Rincewind, Eric and commander Lavalos head through a secret passage into the citadel of Sault.
As they learn that Eleanor of Sault isn't too fussed about being rescued, Rincewind accidentally
burns down the city and the topless towers crumble. As Rincewind snaps his fingers again,
Lavalos heads home-ish. I have no idea if I'm saying Lavalos, Lavalos, right, so we're just
going with it. I had an opinion on this earlier and I forgot what it was. Excellent. Yeah.
Laviolos, I thought. Laviolos. I was kind of saying it like that. Laviolos.
Let's go with that. Laviolos. Sounds more like a pretty flower.
Oh, and I didn't interrupt you for once, but shaky and wooden, like Tom Cruise, am I right?
Excellent, well done. Oh, nothing like comic timing.
So check in on helicopter and loincloth watch, tragically no helicopters,
many loincloths implied. Okay, that's fine. Mostly to continue justifying the bit.
Are you going to quietly drop it one day, do you think? Nope. Okay, cool, cool.
It's like in the episode plan template now. Okay, quotes, is mine passed?
Yes, mine's quite near the end. So this is Rincewind and Pontstakorm hanging around in the
Tasman jungle. Cool, cool, cool. He stepped out into the dawn light, which was fine.
Where he went wrong was stepping into a semicircle of Tasman. They had spears,
they had exquisitely chipped obsidian spearheads, which, like their swords,
were nowhere near as sophisticated as ordinary coarse inferior steel weapons. Was it better
to know that you were going to be skewered by delicate examples of genuine ethnic origin rather
than nasty forge made items hammered out by people not in contact with the cycles of nature?
Probably not, Rincewind decided. Hmm, existential, I like it.
I think mostly because there genuinely would be people who were like, well,
is this spear organic before you shove it through my chest?
I had a metal flail before it was called. So,
page 84 on the non-ministerated version. They've gone to find Leviolas for the first time, I think.
Oh, hello. He said, gloomily. It's you. It was amazing how much information can be crammed into
a couple of words. To achieve the same effect, the man could have said, it's been a long night.
I'm having to organise everything from the wooden horse building to the laundry rotor.
These idiots are about as much help as a rubber hammer. I never wanted to be here
anyway. And on top of all this, there's you. Hello, you.
Excellent. I love being able to put that much aggression into a simple greeting.
I do like being able to communicate a lot with a little. Yes.
I've tried to perfect the art of saying, thank you the way one would normally say, fuck you.
Thanks. Yeah, cool. So, characters.
Characters. So, we meet Quizovacotil, the gods that the Tezzaman people are currently worshiping.
I do like that he's actually a demon who's just kind of decided to adopt this little tribe.
That's very nice of him. It's a little side project, isn't it?
Yeah. But his name comes from an actual Aztec god, Quetzalcoatil.
I am probably fucking up all the pronunciation and I'm really sorry here.
But like, for any Aztecs listening, very sorry.
Well, some of the language used around Aztec culture, especially in naming,
is still used in indigenous Mexican culture today.
That's not surprising. It wasn't that long ago, since colonialism went squash, was it?
Exactly. So yeah, Quetzalcoatil is a natural Aztec god meant to return at some point.
I was looking at like depictions of especially the Aztec gods in popular culture.
And I will link to this in the show notes. There is an amazing Wikipedia list of just
where these gods have shown off in pop culture like Quetzalcoatil has been used as some kind of
character from like D&D, Yu-Gi-Oh, Beyblade. Anime loves this.
What did Quetzalcoatil look like then? What's his depiction?
Oh, he's the feathered serpent. Hence the feathered boa joke.
Oh, cute. Yeah, I like it.
Yeah, I'm into it. So yeah, there's loads of different Aztec stories
about gods due to return at various points. I could have gone down a much deeper
rabbit hole about Aztec gods and worship and the whole religion.
And then I didn't because there are any to me I was in the day.
See, this is what I mean. This is why I think if we ever do bonus content,
it should just be called footnotes. And it's whenever one of us has like a spare 10 minutes,
we could just record all the shit we didn't have time to put into the show.
They even need to schedule it to be together.
All so true. I like that idea. So yeah, so Quetzalcoatil, no Quetzalcoatil,
Quetzalcoatil is the real Aztec god. We meet him and then...
Real Aztec god as opposed to this fictional Aztec god.
As opposed to the fictional Testament god.
You know, the real feathered serpent god.
Not Quetzalcoatil, the feathered boa. He's a very fetching god.
Fabulous in a Bella show. We meet Ponce de Querm.
Yeah. So. What a name.
What a name. I'm a shoot of the Querm de Querms.
Yeah. That's the Somerset de Querm.
So I'm assuming some relation to Leonard de Querm, possibly a cousin.
Yeah. We have met Leonard at this point,
but I don't think we've hung out with him. He's definitely been mentioned.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm actually met him, met him.
So I saw that and I immediately started researching origins of the word Ponce as a slang term.
Because I assumed it was some kind of like weird homophobic joke thing that he was called Ponce de Querm.
Oh no, no, no.
Yeah. Eventually discovered that I was wrong.
So yeah, but Ponce for our international listeners in the UK is kind of a homophobic
slang term, like a Ponce is a derogatory term for a gay man.
But also Ponce kind of means a bit like, oh, it's a bit lardy-dar, it's a bit posh.
Yeah. There's quite a lot of overlap between slang terms for those two.
But it comes, it is a slang word, but it originally comes from Pimp.
Really?
There's not a lot known about its etymology there.
But it was Pimp as in a man hired by a prostitute to be a sort of bouncer and caretaker.
Was that what that meant originally?
So it sort of comes from possibly from a French pensioner meeting border or lodger.
So it was a man supported by a woman in some way.
And that's where sort of, it was in the 1800s, it became a homosexual slang term.
Okay, right. Okay.
Oh, so it's been a homosexual insult for quite a long time.
No, no, 1900s, it was a homosexual insult.
1800s, it was more of this Pimp and it was kind of derogatories.
And her woman's giving you money.
Like simp.
Yeah, it basically Ponce meant simp.
Cool.
So that was good.
But yes, so that was Spanish name.
So that's not why he's called Ponce Tool, he's named for Ponce to Leon.
Yes.
Oh, so now we know Querm is Leon.
Ah, perfect.
Well, we can certainly draw that parallel.
Definitely.
Have you ever been to Leon?
No, I haven't, but I hear it's very beautiful.
Lille and Leon are two cities I would very much like to go to after this damn pandemic.
Damn pandemic.
In pandemic.
So yes, so the.
We're going to go to France again.
One day.
One day, we shall go to France and I shall eat a lot of sausage.
Sausage.
Croque monsieur, croque madame, croque mademoiselle.
Ah, moule marignée.
Il y a un grand vide, on le bidet.
Il y a un vaste, on le bidet.
I was listening to the crazy ex-girlfriend soundtrack earlier
because for some reason I had Cecil for me in my head.
Oh, nice.
I love that.
Yeah, you do end up in his sexy French depression.
I did have a brief moment of sexy French depression.
Now I need to rewatch crazy ex-girlfriend.
Oh, do you know what?
I've tried to rewatch it a few times and I realized I was just in it for the songs
because I loved the show a lot.
Yeah, but it was because it was a really like engrossing storyline
and it's not been long enough for me to forget what happens from episode to episode.
I think it's been just long enough for me.
Anyway, this is not relevant.
So, Ponce de Croix, Laviole, who's the pronunciation of his name, we're still getting.
Yeah, I mean, it's a made up word, so it's fine.
Yeah, that's fine.
Is Douglas in for Rincere of Winds?
Yeah, which is actually spelled out for once.
It's a very explicit book in a non-explicit way.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
But I really like the moment where he's sort of obviously he's Odysseus
or he's our Odysseus parallel.
Yeah.
So, he's going to go off on a...
So, if Odysseus went on an odyssey, what would Laviole's go on a...
Lavoli.
Lavoli.
Lavoli.
Do you need to be Lavoli?
No, it would not.
Ten years.
Ten years.
But he's worried he's not going to get back okay because he might have pissed the gods off
by being too sensible.
He did.
Yeah.
I mean...
And what did we learn about sirens the other day?
Not mermaids.
Winged.
They are winged asirens.
Like...
Sirens are winged.
Not mermaids.
Get old sirens.
And yes, and we've got...
Sorry.
Very weird moment.
There's been like a constant hum in my flat pretty much since I moved in and it just stopped.
Oh, shit.
No, it's fine.
I'm pretty sure it's from the extraction pipes thing.
So I'm guessing they just switched their extractors off for the night or something?
Oh yeah, cool, cool, cool.
Yeah.
I'll check my fridge is running if we have another break.
Okay.
My electricity is still on.
Yes, yes it is.
Not always a guarantee in my flat.
We meet Eleanor of Sort, which is...
She's obviously our Helen of Troy.
Yeah, I like her.
I approve of her.
Practical.
Doesn't go around mooning.
I can't be holding with mooning.
No, I don't like mooning, especially, you know, in chilly towers.
This is just like those women who die of insufficient shawls and regency novels.
Yes, always bring a big jumper for mourning your lost husband.
Yes, and then you can do the sleeves over your hands and be sweaty.
There's no point being cold just because you're sad.
That's my motto.
It's a strange motto, but it comes up surprisingly often.
I get really cold when I'm sad.
Like, do you get that?
Like when you're sad, you just feel a bit chillier?
Yeah.
I don't know why.
My body is pulling in resources and not warming me up enough.
Yeah, something like that, because you're in distress,
because like that thing I sent the other day about being like very upset
affects your tragus nerve, because your body's like,
don't know what this is, I'm just going to react like real.
Maybe it's like your body reacts like you're in some kind of distress
and gives you more vital organ blood.
Yeah, possibly.
People who know things, tell us.
Tell us why we're cold when we're sad.
Specifically that, but other things too.
If you know something, why not tell us about it?
She says with the confidence of somebody who has nothing to do with the inboxes.
Inboxes?
Inboxy pods?
Inboxi.
Inboxi, where I was last summer, traveling with my companion.
She was just a friend, obviously.
What was the same thing like in genitals?
Anyway, moving on from my sorted summer holidays.
Must you always bring genitals into it, Joanna?
Yes.
Okay.
Where were we?
Okay.
So, Eleanor.
Eleanor, sorry.
What do you have to say about Eleanor?
I just went off on one.
I am going to actually wait until we're more into the talking voice bit
to talk about Eleanor, because I have thoughts.
Do you have a purple post-it?
I've got a purple post-it.
Can you see my eyebrows wiggle in this low resolution?
Oh, I can see your eyebrows wiggle.
You've got greatly expressive eyebrows.
My eyebrows just don't do a lot.
It's because you're not used to wearing glasses.
I wear glasses and so I have to show my expressions
in an exaggerated fashion.
I think it's also because I'm quite good at manipulating my nose
when I do eyebrow stuff.
My nose goes.
Ah, yeah.
That makes sense.
Yeah.
And the ability to...
Joanna does think you just nose wiggle.
I'd make a gif out of it, but you are way too low-res.
You're going to have to take a little video of yourself doing it,
and I'll give it.
Fine.
I wait until I've got makeup on.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it does mean it's super handy if I end up in a bewitched reboot.
And you never know.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a possibility, but it might just be a half.
Chance is ending up in a bewitched reboot.
A low, but never zero.
So, yes, location-wise, we're in the Tezmin Empire
in the jungles of Central Clash for half the section,
and then the other half, we are in Sort,
who are at war with the Feeb.
We have talked quite a bit about the Sortian Wars on the podcast before
because they were discussed in pyramids.
Yes.
For those that remember,
Sort and a Feeb stand on either side of the Kingdom of the Gel.
Yes.
Which kind of stands as a buffer.
So, it was 200 miles away
because Laviolus has got a while to travel,
so they've travelled to Sort.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I can't remember what the actual, like,
geography was of where Troy was in relation to...
Well, it was thought to be completely mythological
until quite recently,
and now they've discovered where it was,
and I've forgotten, so that's great.
So, yeah, let's go on to bits we like.
Where are we starting with?
Prisoner's sacrifice and narrative causality.
Yeah, what?
This is when Rincewind is in the temple and meets Ponce
and is kind of wants to just leave in there,
chained up to get flayed alive.
Oh, sure.
Which, you know, that's fair, that's Rincewind.
That's what we know and love about him.
But the parrot points out that it's a prisoner in a temple,
and you've got to rescue him prisoners in temples
because that's what they're there for.
We learnt that in book one.
Exactly.
Or book two, whenever we found Kohen.
Book two.
Kohen.
Kohen.
Kohen.
I've never had this argument before.
We've definitely had this argument before.
And I just like it because it's the little thing
that comes up in the books is that things go a certain way
and that narrative causality is very much a thing
and that Rincewind wants none of it.
He just wants to run away until he's at home with a potato.
We haven't even got to potatoes yet.
I know, but who doesn't want to go home with a potato?
I just think they're neat.
Yay, Simpsons reference.
I also really like the line about exquisite pain, though.
Oh, yeah.
See, I know those words better.
I thought he knew the meaning of exquisite.
It doesn't belong anywhere near pain.
It's weird, isn't it?
It's something very much a veterinary type, would say.
Yes, possibly.
Well, cleaning his glasses or raising an eyebrow.
Words like exquisite and what's another one?
Illucidate.
We would make excellent villains.
So yeah, so I like that.
Everyone is getting ready to sacrifice Eric.
And Rincewind is trying to explain to Eric
that you wanted to rule the world,
and then you wanted to be given tribute
and meet the people you're ruling.
No one is happy about the landlord turning up.
Yeah, exactly.
That's why you get a direct debit set up.
You don't turn up to collect the rent.
Yeah.
Yeah, you can't expect people to be happy
about seeing you no one ever is when the landlord turns up.
It's their way of saying that metaphorically,
they're fed up with you waiting for you
to repaint the place and see to the drains.
So, Francine, if the landlord turned up,
ruling the world, what would you demand was fixed?
The landlord of the world, not my landlord.
So the equivalent of Eric turning up
and we've got him over a pyramid, as it were.
Sure.
Oh, good question, good question.
I mean, there's quite a lot right now, isn't there?
Yeah.
So let's stick with making sure the elephants are all right.
Yeah, that's fair.
I was going to go with coral reefs.
Oh, nice, yeah.
See, I like how we're both thinking small scale
to avoid saying,
can we get rid of like 90% of people?
Yeah, I feel like demanding genocide
isn't something we should do on this podcast.
Well, it's not that I want everybody to die.
It's that I just don't want them to have existed.
That's fair.
It's not, though, is it?
No.
Time travel.
Thinking of time travel.
Rincewind, unlike most time travelers,
quite wants to kill his own grandfather.
He said about the only thing he could hope for
is managing to stay alive for a few thousand years
so he can be ready to kill your own grandfather.
He's always felt that his ancestors had it coming to them.
Rincewind's ancestors, straight up to his most recent one,
his mother, who ran away before he was born,
are a source of some consternation.
Solder chips for poor old Rincewind,
who feels probably quite rightly
that he should never have been born.
Well, yes, but if he had never been born,
the sorcerer would have collapsed the entire reality.
So, you know.
That's not much consolation for poor old Rincewind, was it?
Maybe we had to go running through the dungeon dimension.
I don't know how long.
I've never been worried about accidentally killing my own time,
my own ancestor, while time traveling.
Not just because time travel isn't something
I do want to regular basis, but, like,
I don't know.
I just don't think it bothered me that much.
I don't know if this is like...
I feel like if whatever a storyline worrying
allows us to do it,
then it's not something that would cause us to not exist.
Because something, something, something paradox.
Yeah, exactly.
I also argue with that, nerds.
Okay, I'm going to say while I welcome all types of contact
in our inbox, if anyone emails me trying to explain time travel,
I will not read it because all time travel stories give me a headache.
You can forward it to me.
Okay, you can still email us about time travel,
but Francine will fill those ones.
Like, please don't...
It's kind of a threat, not a promise.
Please don't try and explain anything.
Please don't try and teach me physics.
Please don't tell me the plot of Bill and Ted,
especially the new one because I haven't seen it yet.
What is that out now?
September 16th in the UK.
Don't explain time travel to me.
There is... I don't watch time travel movies.
Cool.
Doctor Who will allow because...
They never try and make it make sense.
Yeah, it's just nonsense.
What's your last one?
So, yeah, Sartons and Captains.
This is...
The luggage is turned up during the aphidium sortie in war.
Hooray.
And there's a little interlude.
The sergeant put on the poker face,
which had been handed down from NCO to NCO,
since one proto-amphibian told another lower-ranking proto-amphibian
to muster a squad of noobs and take that beach.
And it's basically playing with this dynamic
where the captain is a teenager, he's very young,
he's just passing, he's sort of vim and figuring new ideas,
and there's a long-suffering sergeant.
Something that comes up a few times through the disc world.
And is played on in varying ways,
but I asked a friend.
Did you ask a friend?
Asked a friend for their opinion on that passage.
Because our friend is in the military.
Friend of the podcast.
Can he be called a friend of the podcast
if he has, like, less than zero interest
in anything we have to say?
Yeah, definitely.
So, yeah.
Friend of the podcast, you'll never listen to it,
so we can call him that.
Oh, can we give him a pseudonym?
Sure, what do you want to call him?
Barry.
No.
Oh.
I don't like hearing that name.
Okay.
Not for any particular reason, I just don't find it
aesthetically pleasing.
If we call him Sterling, he'll be pleased with us.
Yeah, right, Sterling, then.
Yes.
Okay.
Friend of the podcast, Sterling, is in the military
and gets very angry at things,
so I sent him that passage in this response.
I hated every second of that passage.
You could play military bingo with that,
the inexperienced spotty officer with the education
that is apparently worth fuck all
because we got this far by teaching officers
absolutely fucking nothing, clearly,
versus the grizzled veteran sergeant
who obviously knows everything
with his stoic poker face and eye rolls,
just keeps finding himself in shit situations
due to everyone else's ineptitude, obviously.
All it needs is for someone to say the following,
an oblivious yet well-meaning corporal
who is also fucking thick,
but puppy thick, not officer thick,
who keeps getting everyone's coffee orders wrong
and slipping up on well-placed comedic bananas.
So, while we love Terry Pratchett deeply,
I thought it'd be interesting to get one
of the finest military minds of our generation
to give us his thoughts on that.
You believe it or not, he's not a sergeant
after that little diatribe.
So, that was Sterling Patrick Lee's
the second best guy's thoughts
on Terry Pratchett's depiction of sergeants and captains.
Apparently, so accurate it angers real military men.
Yes.
Stick that on your blurb.
And smoke it.
Okay, so onto the bigger talking points,
and I do want to talk about the Tezman and Aztec culture,
or as I put in the notes,
Aztec's obsidian and human sacrifice.
Oh, my.
Marvelous.
Doesn't keep its edge obsidian.
It was a surprisingly nasty weapon that was quite successful.
Oh, do tell.
So, I'm going to clarify this by saying,
I am not a historian,
and I didn't prepare a full PowerPoint presentation on this.
If you want lots more info about the Aztecs
in a way that's very easy to digest,
I'm going to again recommend the podcast You're Dead to Me.
The Aztecs episode was great.
And the actual book The Horrible History is Aztec's one.
Which is one of my very favourites.
So, you can get your grubby little paws on that.
Go for it.
We will link to these in the show notes.
If not, fill your grubby little locals, I guess.
Yeah, but the obsidian will get horribly sharp.
And the fact that it shatters,
not such a bad thing if it's shattering in someone.
Oh, yuck.
Yeah, and it was accessible.
There was loads of it around.
Obsidian, is that something we get around here,
or is that a stone?
Not very prolific in the UK.
What's obsidian?
My knowledge of geology is not strong.
I'm going to assume it's very prolific around the Gulf of Mexico,
because that's where the Aztec Empire was.
Sure, sure, sure.
Obsidian, actually occurring.
Volcanic glass formed, oh, volcanic, yeah.
Yeah.
Formed as an extrusive igneous rock.
Exclusive.
This is extrusive.
Felsiclada.
So there was a couple of things I liked about the Aztec.
The obsidian thing was very much part of Aztec stuff.
Human sacrifice and cannibalism were a massive part of Aztec culture,
but it wasn't like a...
Like, they didn't just eat people.
It was a very important thing.
Well, no, so it was going a little bit far
with the cultural sensitivity here, mate.
No, no, I'm just...
It's like we shouldn't judge other people's cultures.
They didn't casually eat people.
It would be like prisoners of war.
Not like the snack.
It would be a prisoner of war, and they would spend the night...
They would spend the night before they were sacrificed
in the house of the person who was going to sacrifice them.
Weirder.
Yeah, and then after...
And it was...
It was...
I don't know, there was like a weird respect thing.
It was like...
Great.
Yeah, and so then the best bits would be sent to the ruler
and the person who sacrificed them
and who had had them in their house would eat the rest,
and it was very...
What are the best bits?
I don't know.
I'm assuming like thigh, probably.
If you're thinking humans are meant to be a bit like pig.
Yeah, but some people are weird and like into awful, so...
Yeah, I mean, I guess it depends on the ruler.
But I would also recommend...
I'm not going to quote a bunch from it,
because I would be here for ages.
Comic Con, the online Comic Con this year,
had a really good panel about depictions of Aztecs in popular culture.
Online Comic Contents, cool.
I hadn't heard about that.
Yeah, they have...
So this panel's up on YouTube now.
It's about a 45-minute video,
but it's a really interesting watch.
The speakers they've got on the panel
are from like Indigenous Mexican cultures.
And talking about how they're sort of trying to reclaim stories from this.
And this is, to be fair, not that caricature-y,
like everything they're talking about is fairly accurate.
But yeah, the weirdest thing,
I always thought of the Aztec Empire as like a really ancient thing.
And it wasn't.
They were wiped out by Cortes and colonialism in like the mid-16th century.
Well, the fun timeline fact everyone goes to
is that Oxford University and the Aztec Empire existed at the same time.
Yeah, but also if you happen to have a copy of the Discord Atlas
lying around, dear listener,
there's quite a couple of funny pages on the Tasman Empire
basically making fun of explorers discovering it.
Which made me laugh and I greatly approved of.
But yeah, so I'll link to this.
Cortes was such a prick.
Cortes was a proper fucking prick.
Motives of hell where we're going.
So this is astrophagal talking to Crosovacotl, isn't it?
Yeah, you're getting really good at rolling
these ridiculous names off your tongue here.
In Good Omens.
So the desire of hell to kind of entrap more souls
and put more evil around the place is obvious
because it's an eternal battle between two sides.
But in Erich or on the disc,
hell seems like just one possible destination of many.
So I want to know why is it important to astrophagal
to ensnare all these poor Tessamans and get them down to hell?
Why are we looking at quantity over quality here, Joanna?
You know, I really don't know.
Cool.
What purpose are the damn souls serving in hell?
Because if, say, it's grump work,
they're, you know, stoking fires and things,
then yeah, you kind of just want quantity.
You just want as many bodies as possible
to keep stoking the fires and eventually dissolving in lava
and being replaced with others.
But if you are going for individual exquisite torture,
which seems to, as we get into the next section of the book,
I would say seems to be the case,
especially where astrophagal is concerned.
Exactly, yeah.
And even before kind of the new management regime came in,
a lot of the classic hell punishments,
like the stone going up the hill,
they take a lot of one-on-one attention.
Well, maybe that's part of it.
You know, astrophagal wants to streamline somewhat
and be able to do it so one demon can torture 50
rather than needing one-on-one.
But again, why?
Is it just that the corporate mindset has seeped into him
and the idea of growth without a purposeful goal
is such a part of the round world
that it's become part of the disk hell?
Actually, that sounds pretty plausible.
Well, especially as hell is full of corporate nonsense.
Like, I think that's what makes hell so hellish.
Growth for the sake of growth.
I think that's it.
Okay, cool.
Avoid going to hell by finding the fountain of youth
and living forever.
Well, as you mentioned, Ponce de Leon
is Ponce de Cuerne's namesake.
But he was a Spanish conquistador
and I find that boring,
so I didn't look at him for very long.
No, I have, like, two notes.
Yeah, exactly.
So instead, I've gone for the macrobyans
who are legendary people in Africa.
Legend...
And I'm very sorry, but it's Herodotus again.
Oh, for fuck's sake.
But also Pliny...
Pliny, Pliny.
Also Pliny, a bit later.
Pliny.
Although he said they were Indian.
But anyway, point is,
they lived to about 120,
according to reliable historian Herodotus.
Sorry, is this Herodotus?
Fuck it, let's put some more tentacles in.
This is getting a bit dull.
Yeah, that's right.
Let's throw in a sea serpent.
Yeah, yeah, Herodotus, that guy.
Yeah.
They were also said to be the tallest
enhancement of all men.
So long live, tall handsome.
I'm into this civilization.
But apparently this was because
they had their own fountain of use.
And that's the earliest kind of version
of the legend I could find.
Also, according to Herodotus,
they did like this elaborate
kind of embalming ritual,
which sounds kind of addiction to me.
So it was getting moisture out of the corpse.
And then kind of plaster casting it.
And then decorating it.
And then the bit that's not very Egyptian
is putting it in a crystal pillar.
Right.
Which I feel like we should be able
to find a version of then in that case.
Like wouldn't that be the coolest
archaeological find in the entire world?
A bunch of crystal pillars full of corpses.
Yes.
I want it.
Into that.
This is like, that's going to be
my new interior design trend for next year.
Those watching, trend tracking.
So basically anyone who's
into finding the fountain of use,
this version might be somewhere
around the Horn of Africa,
might be somewhere in India,
but it is characterized by the water
is very sweet and very weak.
So if you think of like the dead sea
as so full of salt,
you can't really think.
This fountain is like the opposite.
It's got like nothing in it.
And so you can't even float in it kind of thing.
It's almost not water.
No viscosity.
Right.
So that's that to look out for.
On the other hand,
if you're looking for the fountain of use
around kind of Florida way in the swamps.
Like Ponds was.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or in the Caribbean.
Then it's probably going to be characterized
by being quite mineral rich
because that's the one that might have some
bearing in reality.
Because a water source,
they found that might track to some
local indigenous legends.
Was very full of magnesium,
which has like a really good effect
on longevity and things.
So that's quite a good one.
And.
So yeah, because Ponds was looking
for the fountain of youth in Florida
around the same time.
Yeah, he was looking for that one.
Yeah, but maybe he wasn't is the thing.
It's possible that that story
got a tribute to Tim afterwards
for political reasons.
And so not only is he boring
because Spanish conquistador,
but he's boring because he might not
have even done that.
He certainly never wrote about it.
But this is kind of contemporary
with Cortes going in and fucking up
the Aztec Empire.
Because literally the only military
they had advantage they had
over the Aztecs was the guns.
It just turned out that was kind of
a big military advantage.
Anyway, that's all I've got on the fountain
of youth because it doesn't exist.
Sorry.
Cool. So sortie and wars.
As far as we know, if it does, I'll find it.
I promise I'll help you find it
as well listeners after I've had my fill
and can guarantee a mortality.
I feel like if I'm going to share it
with anyone, then people will be like
Terry Pratchett or a good bet.
OK, I mean, I have like first dibs, right?
Yeah.
OK, cool.
Just checking.
You and thanks.
Sterling.
Me, Sterling and your dog.
Yeah.
Anyway, sortie and wars.
So I did, I try not to look at the annotated
Pratchett file when we plan these episodes
because I don't want to steal ideas from them.
But I have taken to double checking it
for really obvious stuff I might have missed
because let's be fair, I'm very pretty
and a dumbass.
Sexisming yourself.
That wasn't sexism.
It's just statements of fact.
Anyway, I did really like the note
where Laviolus is introduced
from the guy who does the annotated Pratchett.
Laviolus is not only a dog-laden translation
of Rincewind, but the character
is also a parody of Ulysses,
tragic hero of the Trojan Wars.
It's really not necessary to annotate
all the stuff about wooden horses and stuff,
right?
I've probably made me laugh.
I checked because I wanted to make sure,
again, if the listeners remember
our episodes on pyramids,
there is the story of the sortie and wars
is told at the symposium that Tepic attends.
That was my quote for the final episode,
which was about three pages long.
Oh, yeah.
But he has used all of those names here.
It's the same names.
Ah, smart.
Which means he planned the Odysseus parody
being Rincewind's ancestor two books ago.
That might have just been a fun little Easter egg
at the time, and then he ran with it.
Yeah, it is great.
That was really clever.
That made me really happy.
Yeah, that's cool.
But so, obviously, this is a Faust parody.
Oh, yeah.
I forgot about that bit.
I'm going off the Marlowe play
rather than Geirth mostly
because I have the Marlowe play already.
So, the reason Helen of Troy turns up
is Faustus, and his little demon
is basically showing off his new skills
with a couple of scholars.
And the scholar sort of says,
since our conference about fair ladies,
which was the beautifulest in all the world,
we have determined with ourselves
that Helen of Greece was the admirableest lady
that ever lived.
Therefore, Master Doctor,
will you do us that favour
to let us see that peerless dame of Greece?
Basically, they're drunk and want to see a fit bird.
But Faustus, obviously,
decides he loves her because fit bird.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
I don't know if we've made it clear,
but at least in the Marlowe play,
Faustus is kind of a knob.
Oh, he is in the Geirth one as well, yeah.
He's like the adult version.
Actually, Eric is perfect.
Yeah, yeah.
He's like the incarnation
of the I am very smart subreddit.
Helen of Troy is there,
or Eleanor of sorts,
to parallel that section
in Faustus slash Doctor Faustus.
And that's where the line is,
is this the face that launched
a thousand ships came from,
which I thought was quite interesting.
And the whole war between
sort and a fee is pretty much done
almost exactly as the story,
apart from the bit where they
climb out of the horse's ass,
but that was a very funny illustration.
Yeah, I always thought it was a ship
match for actually face that launched
a thousand ships.
Well, it's so when I get it,
I get what it means.
But it just what he evokes
is not what it means.
Well, he's like quoting himself there as well,
which is really wanky.
So in Tambolane,
one of his earlier plays,
it has the line Helen whose beauty
summoned Greece to arms
and drew a thousand ships to Tenedos.
Is he quoting himself
or just like honing a line he likes?
Well, yeah, I think it's,
I don't think it was meant as like
an Easter egg to his earlier work.
I think he's just like,
yeah, honing a thing.
But yeah, the face that brought
a thousand ships to a place
makes normal sense in the face
that launched a thousand ships,
which is why that phrase is mocked
whenever it's used in modern things.
Just fit the me for better, I guess.
Is this the face that launched
a thousand ships?
Alambic, you open Tamata, Mr. Marlow.
Darling.
But yeah, get a bit purple post it.
I don't like the fact that
they've sort of done the
she's fat and she's her kids
and she's not pretty anymore.
Or that the hot headed Italian types
go downhill after 35 kind of thing.
She was the most beautiful.
I said, well, if you're going to go around
reading, because no one's going to be
interested in a war fought over
a moderately pleasant lady.
Well, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, that's fair.
But yeah, there was something purple
posting that that kind of really
irked me.
Yeah, I can't say I got as far
as I just I rolled.
Yeah, it's an old joke.
But in my case, I was reading
the illustrated one.
And we're saying last week,
like the illustrations are good.
And in some cases, quite beautiful.
They didn't add a lot to me.
This extra detracted.
There's this image.
Snap and send.
Yeah, I'll snap and send it.
And I will snap and send both sides
of the page.
And this is OK.
So this is Josh Kirby style.
And everything is kind of grotesque
and cartoonish and exaggerated.
And I get that for our listeners,
because obviously this is a podcast.
Helen is depicted.
Eleanor is depicted as grotesquely,
fat and huge,
bosoms hanging all the way down,
still scantily clad.
But with children of various ages
climbing all over her.
But I think with that particularly
unflattering illustration,
I still don't understand why Pratchett
was like so pleased that Josh Kirby
ignored all of his descriptions.
But yeah, I mean,
he loved it by all accounts.
He loved all this.
So I mean, yeah.
And they are good illustrations.
They're just not pictures
of the characters described.
Yeah, I mean, to be honest,
I like them because I associate them
with the disc world.
If they were like standalone things,
I would not care for them.
I don't like that kind of
busy style of illustration.
No, but I don't know if I sent it to you.
The image of like the whole disc
and the turtle and the stars.
No, you didn't send it in the end there.
It is fantastic.
Oh yeah.
So my last one was also a bit rancy.
I'm very rancy today.
I'm sorry.
I'm having a stressful week.
Yeah, this is kind of a complete
opposite to our last episode for both of us.
Yeah, sorry.
Do you want me to try and rally it somehow?
Yeah.
Cool.
This is once the war is over.
And I did really like the war.
I thought it was quite funny
that they're battling very politely
and having this melee in the streets
and all the market sellers going on as normal.
Yeah.
Excuse me.
Pardon me.
A melee coming through.
Am I set?
Is it melee?
Melee, I think.
God, I'm so rubbish.
I'm going entirely by super smash bros though.
So yeah.
I mean, that's get a point of research.
They need to be perfectly honest.
But they're all sat around celebrating
what a good war it was after.
It was a jolly good war.
And that sort of follows on from our rant
about why we really hate bunting.
Because these are definitely the sort of guys
who expect a bit of bunting up.
But I did enjoy it.
And again, thanks to the annotated Pratchett
for giving details of this,
that the song they're saying,
the ball of Philodiphus,
is meant to be a pistake of the ball of Carimur,
which is one of those weird old rugby songs
that everyone in the UK sort of knows.
But I've never come across before.
No, me neither.
I'm kind of okay with that.
Yeah, me too.
But I did look up a bit of it.
And again, thanks to annotated Pratchett
for putting A-verse in,
because I read the whole thing
and it made my eyes fall out of my brain.
I shouldn't have been in there.
Yeah, that's fine.
One of the overheard lines
of the ball of Philodiphus
is Vestal Virgins came down from
Helio deli Filodelfi Boscrimonis.
Sorry to the Aztecs.
This is based on the line
from the ball of Carimur.
Four and 20 Virgins come down from Inverness
and when the ball was over,
there were four and 20 less.
Ha-ha!
Sex.
But again, for our international listeners,
I feel like we should explain
that in British rugby culture,
there is something called songs.
But quite often the words are rather rude,
generally about willies and bums.
Vulgar, one could say.
Very vulgar.
I was trying to think of another
like drinking song or rugby song
I could demonstrate on the podcast
and honestly...
Dublin's Faceti, obviously.
That's not right.
Is that right?
Is that right?
Oh, yes.
Oh, yeah, I suppose so.
But that's not a swing low, sweet chariot.
See, I've managed to find a
site with all the clean ones.
That's no good.
These are songs traditionally sung
at rugby games, not at the pub afterwards.
And she willed her wheelbarrow
through streets broad and narrow,
singing cockles and mussels
a lion and a foe.
Yeah, do you know what all of the rude ones are?
Chidney and Spotify playlists
and I'm not going to play it.
Also, generally, there's a lack of consent
around the willies and the bums
and what have you.
Yeah, fun thing about English culture.
Everyone looks down on the football louts
for good reason, but rugby louts
are just posh versions of those.
And let's be honest,
giving a dickhead man a lot of money
doesn't often make you more interested
in things like gender equality.
I generally avoid rooms full of drunk sports fans.
Cricket fans.
All right, fine.
Just because they're all pretty much
commoditised from having to watch
the game they ostensibly like.
Look, no, I will refuse to accept
that anyone actually likes cricket.
It is a weird sense of cultural obligation.
Like church and those weird coconut biscuits.
Along with the time travel listeners,
please do not email us explaining
the rules of cricket.
Many people have tried.
All have perished.
Right, Francine, have you got
an obscure reference finial for me?
Yes, I suppose I do.
Get your finial out for the lads.
For the lads.
For the, as you say, lads.
It's actually the next line
of your last reference, so...
It's not that obscure, I guess.
But the poem within Dr Faustus,
the face that launched his owls and chips,
goes, was this the face that launched
his owls and chips
and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
Topless towers being referenced in sort
Yes.
As being fully downy on account of the fire.
On account of the fire.
But they were supposed to be top all this.
Yes, and I'm not sure whether that's
a legit theory about what topless
was meant to mean.
Obviously, again, Marlowe just kind of
crammed something into the meter,
whether it ought to go in there or not.
But I saw a few different things.
The topless towers of Ilium
could be, yeah, top all this,
could be because they were so high
that you couldn't see the tops.
Anyway, the whole poem's kind of gross.
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss.
Her lips suck forth my soul.
See where it flies.
Anyway, Marlowe, bit of a weirdo.
Did we know that anyway?
What do we know about?
You'll know about Marlowe more than I will.
I don't really care about him.
Contemporary issue of Shakespeare.
Conspiracy theory says they were the same person, right?
Yeah, there's a conspiracy theory
that says they're the same person,
but he died way before Shakespeare.
He was murdered in a tavern fight.
He got stabbed in the eye.
Oh, was he?
Yeah, stabbed in the eye.
Stamped in the eye.
What a way to go.
Maybe, yeah.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe it was all fake.
Actually, he was Shakespeare
and somehow also the Queen.
Yes.
The new conspiracy theory.
We haven't started one of those in the podcast for a while.
Christopher Marlowe was actually Queen Elizabeth I.
I knew it.
I knew it all along.
Sometimes she forgot to take off her fake mustache
for the official portraits, you see.
If you look very carefully.
Or was it the real mustache all along?
Perhaps the real mustache
was the friends we made along the way.
All right, see yourself.
Thank you so much for listening to The True Shall Make You Threat.
We will be back next week
for the final part of our discussion of Eric.
And we'll try and cheer up a bit for that.
We will be bouncier.
We'll be in the eight circles of hell.
That always cheers us up.
Yeah.
In the meantime, you can follow us on Instagram
at The True Shall Make You Threat.
You can find us on Twitter at Make You Threat pod.
You can find us on Facebook at The True Shall Make You Threat.
You can go to our new subreddit.
I made that.
We've got a subreddit.
We'll link to it in the show notes.
It's reddit.com.
Slash R slash T T S Y M F.
Yeah.
The initials of The True Shall Make You Threat
because the full name wouldn't fit.
Yeah.
No, I just had to remember
what the initials of our podcast were.
Oh, you see, yeah.
Yeah.
You can also email us your thoughts,
queries, castles, albatrosses and snacks.
The True Shall Make You Threat pod at gmail.com.
Remember, if it's anything to do with time travel,
it will be automatically forwarded to me.
And if it's anything to do with the rules of cricket,
a raptor will eat you.
Yeah.
There's a really good Gmail filter.
You can just set up now.
You can automate that.
Well, a raptor.
Yeah.
I really don't want to set a raptor on our listeners.
So please don't email me about the rules of cricket.
Thank you very much, dear, dear little listeners,
on your dear little legs.
For now.
And in the meantime, dear listener.
Don't let us detain you.
Cream of tartar is a really handy thing to have around.
I do have it.
What's it for?
It's very good for stain removal,
especially if you get like rust stains in a good dress.
Cream of tartar is really good for removing those.
I don't often get rust stains in a good dress,
but I want to have more opportunities to do so.
How do you never get rust stains in a good dress?
Like...
How do you?
I don't want to talk about it live on air.