The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 6: The Light Fantastic Pt.3 (Let's Discuss Some Sins!)

Episode Date: December 16, 2019

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan-Young and Francine Carrel, recap and discuss every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 3 of our recap of “The Light Fantastic”. Smells! Neopaganism! Loincloths! Apes! Cults! Gherkins! Plural Apocalypse!Heads up - we spoil some of the “magic” of seances in this episode. If you’d like to avoid that, skip 23:40 - 24:35. Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail] to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:The Galaxy Song (YouTube)You’re Dead to Me - StonehengeDwarfs/DwarvesNice Try! podcast - (season one about failed utopias)Nazi Book Burnings (Wikipedia)The Order of the Solar Temple (Wikipedia)Do wind vent holes in banners make a difference? Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

That's cool, we're all going to die. That's become my answer to most things recently, it's sort of a, I was just trying to have perspective on everything because I am the sort of person who gets very very upset over small irrational things. I cried for half an hour yesterday, I have not been able to find a t-shirt. And then I found the t-shirt in a drawer I'd already looked in twice. Yeah well that's just how it goes. So I'm trying to constantly remind myself that the world is probably dying or going

to become unable to support human life soon. And you find that helpful do you? Well it puts things into perspective doesn't it? Yes but not in a very pleasing way. No but it means I'm less like, it means I can feel like I'm crying about the environment and it's just a t-shirt. Right I see, I see it's a self-image kind of thing. Yeah yeah, it makes me feel better about what I'm emotional about because really

I'm ironically quite solipsistic within that. Oh yeah very much so, attempt to find a word of perspective. Yeah I always um, not in quite such an apocalyptic manner but I do always feel better listening to the galaxy song, Monty Python. Yes remember how amazingly unlikely is your birth? There's intelligent life somewhere out in space because there's bugger all down here on earth. Hooray!

It's the other small name you've made, why does two flower have no sense of smell? Okay so this is... And when did that come up? So I actually, this is a slightly more, well this is slightly less me talking bollocks but I thought this was interesting so they get back to Ang Moorpork and there's a whole long section on the glorious smells of Ang Moorpork and how at home rinse when it feels and two flower, pretty, it's said something along the lines if he doesn't have a sense of smell and he can't really acknowledge the glorious olfactory sensation that is Ang Moorpork.

But I was thinking about it because for me smell is the most evocative memory thing, like a memory of a smell will get me in a way that a sight of visual or a sound thing won't necessarily. Sure yeah. I was thinking a lot about smell and memory and I think it's because a visual you can describe and it becomes a sound and a sound you can sort of create a mental image from. But there's no way to translate smell into another sense so when you're thinking of it as a memory thing, so a visual like, it's like a direct wire, yeah it just hits a spark

in your brain and there's an entire story behind it so it's like my mother's perfume that she always used to wear to the races or certain things cooking. Yeah sometimes I'll be somewhere and I'll smell something and it smells like my house in Jersey and I can't tell you what it is, it's like just for a second I'm like wow that's weird, that could have been anything, it could have been the cleaning products my grandma used or. It's such a tiny thing that creates this whole mental world, that's a terrible way of saying a sentence, that whole memory comes in and is so fully formed from a tiny smell like

obviously we live in a brewery town I went to school across the road from it so I smell the brewery and that takes me back to being five years old on the playground and waiting to find out if we were allowed to go on the grassy bit. Yeah that exact same smell because I moved here when I was ten that reminds me of when I just moved to Berries and Edmonds because I lived pretty much off city and it reminds me of kind of walking into town for the first time and being basically choked by the brewery. Yeah I mean if you're not used to it it's definitely, it's more porky in its sensation. Yes it is, it's very solid smell.

So what I'm saying is I feel very sorry for Tooflair and I feel like he'd be a lot better mentally if he could just smell things. He seems to be better mentally than most people in the book to be fair though. Yeah but his cautious naivety and his inability to remember things as they are but instead how he would like them to be possibly is because he can't smell the barbarian horse lords. That's a very good point. Yeah that's why he finds the tent so picturesque. If it is we'll get to it but do you recall if it's ever explained why he has no sense of smell?

No I think it's just a throwaway line. Oh my goodness. We'll find out, should we make a podcast about it? Yeah alright yeah, let's do that. Hello and welcome to the Treats Gym. Greetings Joanna. I just, I was doing that one just for the reaction. The waveforms on the screen right now pretty much mirror my heart rate.

Oh can you do that again with less panic attack? Thank you. One that's more with less anxiety. Right are we ready? I think so. Hello and welcome to the Truth Shall Make You Freight, a podcast in which we're reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan Young.

And I'm Francine Carroll. And today is part three of our discussion on The Light Fantastic. It is. The Light Fantastic is the second book in the Discworld series. It is indeed. So section three starts page 191 in the Corgi Paperback edition. This third section starts with the sentence, Around noon the following day they rode into a small mudwalled city

surrounded by fields still lush and green. Anyone on Kinville might also go on these four. Yeah. As I found out the pages do not correspond. We'll know because if you zoom in then there's... Yeah I don't know why, what I expected. It wasn't that. Note on spoilers, this is a spoiler like podcast.

Obviously had a spoilers for the book we are currently discussing. I've got to stop using the word hella. Hella. And also the books previously discussed. And the books previously discussed. But we're going to avoid spoiling any major plot points for future books if you're reading along for the first time. And we won't discuss any of the events in the final Discworld book, The Shepherd's

Crown. Until we get that. Until we get that. Francine would you like to tell us what happened previously in The Light Fantastic? Previously in The Light Fantastic. Our Winnigade withered and proto-tourists have a computer crash in the cloud. Piloted to relative safety by druidic tech support the pair find themselves mixed up in rituals more baffling than Windows 8 and nearly as upsetting.

Just as Two Flowers' worldview is about to be hacked up with a ritual knife, arthritic hero Kohen the Barbarian hobbles in to save the day and the sacrificial virgin. Protagonist count thus doubled is quickly cut back down again as the unseen university's hero kidnapped Two Flower Kohen and the gratifyingly competent Bethan. Rincewin, the target of the raid, was off onion baiting and chatting to the stony-faced locals. Yes, it's around this time that we meet the silicon-based sector of life on disc. Trolls, who aren't so scary after all, write up until they are.

Turns out lighting a fire in Grandad's mouth is a breach of etiquette even if you're a red-headed harridan in sensible shoes. The luggage deals with the heavies, the sunrise takes out gramps and Bethan can cuss his hero Herona before ending her busy day with betrothment to Kohen. All's well that ends well. Still though, that red star is getting awfully big. Excellent. Thank you.

Marvelous amounts of alliteration there. I do like alliteration. Do you have anything to follow up on from last week's episode? I don't actually have any follow-up, no. I think we set all the homework for you, sorry. Cool, so, Stonehenge and Stone Circles. I'm not going to go into a ton of detail, but I did a bit of background reading and listened to a very interesting podcast about it.

Oh yeah? Yeah, so if you want a whole load of detail, listen to Your Dead To Me, which is a BBC Sounds podcast. Nice. The host is Greg Jenner, who's the main historical consultant for horrible histories. My favourite books is A Kid For A Little, and I love them. And the TV series is great, especially the early seasons, it's a Monty Python-esque but happens to be educational.

Oh, great. It's very good. So they had an episode on Stonehenge, which was really interesting, so check that out for you on a lot more information. But a few bits, as we were talking about Druids and Stone Circles. A, no one really knows what it's for because there is no... Evidence? There's no stuff apart from the stones themselves, so there's no bits of pottery that could give

way to what it could have been used for. There's not a lot of human remains, so it probably wasn't there for sacrifice. We do know that a bunch of the stones did come from Wales, so they were brought all the way across the country. I didn't know one of the medieval or slightly later theories on it was that Arthur, King Arthur, built it with magic, so that was a cool thing. But yeah, wouldn't have been Druids because it was finished in the Bronze Age, and Druids were a thing from the Iron Age.

Oh, alright, no Bronze Druids. No, there weren't a lot of Bronze Druids. But also, we don't really know what we know about Druids. A lot of... Yeah, cool. So what I've found in trying to research the history of things is that all history comes with a caveat of, but we could be completely wrong. Yeah, yeah.

So a lot of the stuff we think we know about Druids and Druidism as a religion comes from these historians whose names I don't currently have written down. Listen to this episode of this other podcast, don't listen to me. No, Joanna, that's not how we go. Do listen to us. Do listen to us. So there was these Victorian dudes who were just really into the concept of Druids. They were the ones who put about that Stonehenge was probably built by Druids.

Victorians are weird, eh? Ah, Victorians are so... I mean, everyone is weird in all history. It's just Victorians left a lot of writing about the weird shit they did. Yeah, they keep popping up and ruining everything. Grammar, they came up and put some really weird stuff down about grammar that everyone keeps yelling about. Yeah.

All this fairy tale stuff we were on about, they kind of cleaned up all the good ones. Bloody Victorians. Yeah. So there were some historians who were really into Druids. They decided that Stonehenge was probably some kind of Druid art project. Okay. And they kind of just made up a lot and were so obsessed with Druids that they used to have Druid parties where they'd dress in these long flowing robes and they'd have long

beards and they'd talk about nature to the point where they go to Stonehenge dressed as Druids and have parties there. Sounds like a Bacchanalian. Yeah, because, well, they were... It was their idea of Bacchanalian. They had this sort of weird... It was like cosplaying. They were really into cosplaying as Druids.

So Neo-Paganism and Neo-Druidism, which a lot of people do still follow today, a lot of that comes from Victorian dudes who are really into cosplay. And I'm obviously very big on everyone who can believe what they want, but I can get a bit dickish about Neo-Druidism and Neo-Paganism because it often ties into people who are also really into Norse stuff and they tend to be a lot of, like, right wing dickheads hanging around that similar area. Yeah, weird. It kind of makes me happy that Neo-Druidism is based on Victorian cosplayers.

Complete tangent. Do you know why there's such a... I don't want to say correlation, because it's not that a lot of people into Norse culture are right wing, it's just a lot of right, far right people are into Norse culture. Yeah. Do you know why that is? Some of it's based on the idea that they are descended from white people as far back as Vikings and the Vikings were their sort of white heroes who were on the land.

So, first, before any people of colour came. Yeah. So there's a fundamental misunderstanding of early anthropology, but okay. Yep, yep. I feel like a lot of white supremacy is based on fundamental misunderstandings, especially of anthropology. Yeah, okay, yeah, no good point. And general social sciences and general logic.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to take it into an area that would give you a conniption. I mean, I'm always on the verge of conniption, it doesn't take white supremacists to make me connect. Yeah, Druids came from Victorian cosplay and dudes who really wanted to wear robes. And let's not talk about white supremacists because they're exhausting. You've made a note about white supremacists later in the show notes, do you want to? Oh, yeah, no, okay, right. We're going to end up talking about white supremacists today.

It's just that kind of day. It's just it's a white supremacist. Okay, no. Anyway, shall we talk about what actually happens in this bit of the book? Oh, it is a recap podcast now. Shall we recap? Yeah, you do that. You do that.

Okay, so in section three of The Light Fantastic, the gang enters an unnamed city, plucky bunch of heroes, ragtag, bunch of misfits. There are many, many group names I could give them, but they're not the same plucky bunch of ragtag misfits that we had in the last book. No, um, or the similarities. Similarities. It turns out there's a theme. A loincloth.

Well, we found out that's what I've got through the book, I do loincloths. Well, we're doing, we're supposed to be doing helicopter watch, no helicopters in this book. I feel like we should also have a bit of a loincloth watch for future works. Okay, yeah. Cool. So keeping out for loincloths and helicopters. So the gang enter an unnamed city. We never find out what city this is and I don't think we ever go there again.

Yeah. Yeah. There's a weird cult of people who hate magic hate. People who hate magic haters? No, there's a weird cult of people who hate magic because there's a weird red star in the sky. Yeah. Um, death pops in to say hello.

Cohen gets some diamond dentures out of a Trolls toothy nick because Trolls are dintuos, um, but friends are dwarf in the process. Rincewind does a little bit of magic as the magic haters come for them and then runs away, which he's very good at. Bravely round away. Sorry. So Rincewind to Flarenbeth and take refuge in a wandering shop and leave Cohen in the luggage behind.

The shop takes them back to Anchmore Book. Trimon, the dickish wizard, locks away the head wizards and buggers off with the octavo because he's trying to realise his destiny. Well, you know. Yeah. Rincewind gets to Anchmore Book, goes to the university, unlocks the wizards, finds Trimon opening himself up to the dungeon dimensions using the octavo. Not a good idea.

Trimon also turns the head wizards to stone. Rincewind beats the crap out of him. He's a bit tentatively and mandibly at this point. Yes, yeah. It's not really him, is it? No. I mean, I don't know if the book ever says mandibles, but I feel mandibles are strongly implied.

Yeah. I'm inferring mandibles throughout, whether or not they are explicitly mentioned. Yes. Well, we don't like explicit mandibles to be perfectly honest, but I would like to swap them a band and name it that. Cohen has ridden the luggage all the way to Anchmore Book. Bless him. I never thought of the luggage as a noble steed, but...

It's a steed. Yeah, it's not that noble. He does like eating people a bit too much to be considered noble. Turns up in time to save Rincewind's arms from falling off. Yeah. Rincewind says the eight spells from the Octavo... Eventually. Lovely.

Look, wait, it takes him a minute or two, and he gets a bit confused on pronunciation and has to help, and there's an odd smudge. But he says the eight spells, we watch them baby well turtles hatch and gray tattoo and turns around and travels away from the creepy red star. Good. Rincewind starts helping put the university back together with the help of the librarian, who is an orangutan in case we've forgotten, and two flowers decided to go home so he can remember all of his adventures, but leaves the luggage with Rincewind.

Hmm. Do you have a favourite quote from this section, Francine? I do, yeah. This is when they are in unnamed city and death pops up. And while talking about the strange cult star people, which we'll go into in a minute, he says, the death of the warrior, or the old man, or the little child, if I understand, and I take away the pain and end the suffering. I do not understand this death of the mind.

Oh, so good. Yeah, Hannah. So good. I'm not very good at putting the kind of tones of coffin that's slamming into my voice, so maybe I could add some reverb in there. If you could, that would be nice. I was just going to summon Christopher Lee back from the dead and ask him to do it. Okay, yeah, good.

So he did voice death in soul music. Oh, cool. In the animated soul music, which we'll watch at some point. Yeah. How about you then? Uh, yeah. Mine is from when we realise Trimond's sort of a bit possessed by the dungeon dimensions and the things, capitalised, that are coming.

We've both gone sinister for this one though. There's a lot of good sinister moments in this book. The actual resolution is really only a couple of pages, but the build to it in this section of the book is brilliant. Yeah, it's creepy. Because you've just had that red star kind of hanging around in the background and I've occasionally mentioned for the last two thirds and Trimond being oilier and oilier. If you were putting this on stage, I imagine you would have just a red light that gets

gradually and perceptibly more and more intense. I would. Yeah. Until by the time they actually arrive in Atmorpork and go to the university, the entire stage is just bathed in red light. Yeah. Which would be fun. Yeah.

I mean, it might look a little bit Amsterdam, but I didn't think this through. That's why. Don't do set design. Cool. Anyway, quote. Rincewind stared and knew that there were far worse things than evil. All the demons in hell would torture your very soul, but that was precisely because they valued souls very highly.

Evil would always try to steal the universe, but at least it considered the universe worth stealing. But the grey world behind those empty eyes would trample and destroy it without even according its victims the dignity of hatred. Such a beautiful quote. The idea of that total apathy and disregard for everything that makes life life is really chillingly terrifying. It is, yeah.

I think he must have found it so as well because as we said, as we said repeatedly, actually it is something he really hones in on in a lot of his villains or a lot of his antagonists, I should say. Yeah. I'd say he writes antagonists rather than, I don't think there's any character that's just straight up villainous. Carta. All right, yeah, fair enough.

We'll get there. Tea time. Okay, you know, we write. But there's a genuine, the only technical. And they're sort of written as sociopath slash psychopath. But yeah, it's the subtle anger behind that, that I feel like, you know, he reserved his anger for people who didn't care as opposed to people who cared in the wrong direction. Yes.

Yeah. So I just think it's a really beautiful quote and it's, and it is, it's a lot more terrifying than just to straight up cartoon villain twirling a moustache. Yeah, I think I've written down somewhere quite nearby in that, like, Rincement's physical reaction to looking into his eyes while no one else was kind of realizing what was going on. I'd like to take off all of my skin now, please. Yeah, who's, what was certain was that by far the most difficult thing Rincement did

in his whole life was look at Trimon without running in terror or being very violently sick. And the, the picture of having that reaction to just looking into a normal dude's eyes. Yeah. I was like, oh man, it really, he really does do creepy very well. He does creepy. And he's built it up beautifully throughout the book, like as much as you've got this red star as an underlying threat throughout, Trimon as an antagonist is written antagonistically

in that he's so ordered, organized, and he doesn't have particularly cartoonish villainous aims. No, I mean, he wants power, but every wizard in the university wants power. Hence progression by Dead Men's Curly Shoes. Yeah. Um, he's just got a different method of doing it. And if, yeah, if things hadn't gone this way with the dungeon dimensions nesting behind his eyes, then literally he wouldn't have been more of a bad guy than any other wizard

in the circumstance. Exactly. But it's also the way, like in that moment where he is so uncaring and, and Rincewind sees what's going on behind his eyes is that the other wizards are surrounding him, congratulating him. Yeah. Like at that point, they're very much, oh, it's all going to be all right now. And so for Rincewind, the coward, the nihilist, the, oh fuck, not me again.

Yeah. To be the one who goes, oh no, there's some proper bad. I'm going to have to fight it. Yeah. Is such a huge character moment for him. Yes. So I've got thoughts on that. Um, yeah, although I must say, I think the wizards, although they obviously didn't understand

quite the danger, I'm not sure it was quite so much, uh, oh, everything's going to be all right now as, all right, he's now got all the power he was after. We'd better stand on the side, stand, stand that inside rather than in front of him. But he's got this such apathy for the universe that it doesn't matter whether they're Rince on side, in front, behind. Now, I didn't know how to interpret the exact threat. Um, I wonder if you read it in a different way slowly. So when he was saying that the things the dungeon dimensions would do in this universe

that would be all, that would be evil via order, and via kind of oppression and the turning of the screw and the, um, I wasn't sure if that was, this is what the dungeon dimension creatures would do given the chance of this universe and like our proper physical laws. Or whether it was because it was being channeled through such a logical organized person. I read it, uh, as much as it was, um, it was because it was coming through Trimon because it's not quite, it's the things who currently reside in the dungeon dimension. So in the dungeon dimensions, they run around being evil and terrible, but if they get to this world through Trimon, they will, yeah, do, they'll be able to do a lot more because

the universe itself is more ordered and organized than the one they're living in. Yes. Yeah. So do you think the vessel itself being Trimon had little effect on that? It's just that it matched up nicely. I think it matched up nicely and it carries that theme well through the book, but I think the actual logistics, logistics behind what the things are doing is that they're in an ordered universe and therefore they have that to play with. Yeah. Drop an apple, it goes down. Yeah, that's it. Ooh, what can we do with dropping apples? That was my dungeon dimensions voice. It's a lot like my normal voice. Worrying. Because I get a bit mixed up between the things and the dungeon dimensions. I have to

remember the things are the things that live in the dungeon dimensions. Yes, yeah. Yeah, I'm not sure people know what we mean. The things is capitalized as is evil, weirdly. Yeah, that might be a nod to a trope, which is some fancy writers. Random capitalization. Another thing the Victorians ruined. What, they ruined random capitalization? Well, they ruined a lot of writing by putting it in. Oh, we've got to have a word with them. Yeah, yeah. Get the weed board. Actually, something else they brought. Yeah, seances. Was it you? No. We've never done a seance. No, I was talking about seances the other day with someone because I was once involved in one. Were you? Do tell. It's not,

I feel like I'm going to ruin some magic for a few people, but it was a... If you don't want your magic, Corinne, please tune out for two minutes. Yes, we will put a timestamp in the show notes. A magician friend of mine was hosting the seance. The idea is we would meet at a pub, be taken through Cambridge on a ghost tour, come back to the pub, and then there would be a seance. Obviously, the seance wasn't real. I don't want to sit here and say ghosts definitely aren't real, but I definitely don't believe that ghosts are real. So our magician friend held the seance and my partner and I were his stooges. So my partner went on the tour itself. I don't think I did. I think I just stayed at the

pub and was there to be called up as a guest for... Are you thinking of this letter type bit? Right. And then people held hands and I had to do something and I had to pass a note and I had to lurk outside of a window looking ghostly at one point. So yeah, so I was a stooge in the seance once. That was a fun experience. Oh, that is funny, although I was kind of hoping you were going to tell me about some regrettable teenage experience. Oh, I mean, don't get me wrong, I played with Ouija Boards as a teenager but nothing happened. See, I didn't. I read about all this stuff and was like, you know, as we've discussed before, so you've written to it for a little bit as a teenager. But I think I always felt that if it is real, why would I want to mess with that? Like, I don't

think it is real, but if it is, let's not let's not do it. Whereas I think I got super into it being a way where I don't think I ever really date down believed in any of it. I was just looking really wanted to. I was looking for something to do with my leftover unused belief from when I was Catholic. You didn't manage to make the thing that ate socks. No, I did not imagine a sock eater, but also I was a queer teenage girl. You have to have a witch face. It's pretty much law. Law with a W or with an R? Both. It was law, law. Anyway, how did we get on to... Oh, I'm sorry, I massively interrupted. It was the Victorians randomly capitalising things. Yes, yeah. So we have randomly capitalised evil. Yes. Evil. Oh, God. Evil. Evil. Right, we don't meet many new characters

because it's the final third of the book. That was a really smooth segue there. Yeah, that's a cool. But we do meet a lovely little dwarf named Lacture. Yes. Is it unfair to call the dwarf little? I'm having it. I'm not sure it's unfair. It's possibly unnecessary. Okay. Meet a lovely dwarf named Lacture who makes Coen's dintures for him and then Coen saves him because he's a magical race. So the creepy anti-magic star cult want to mess him up. Yeah. Which he takes very stylically. Yeah. Again, I don't think we ever see the dwarf again, but I think this is the first time we're introduced to dwarfs as a species. Yeah, I think we were mentioned in the first book when we were on about the ferry. The Twilight People. Yeah, Twilight People, thank you. But this is actual

dwarf living and working in a city and being part of society. I wonder if he was part of the Vanguard of Angkor-Pork dwarfs. Yeah, possibly. Because he went with Coen to Angkor-Pork, didn't he? Yeah, but we never really get a resolution for him. No, but I like to think. I like to think, he's out of a little shop in Angkor-Pork. Hopefully, he met a lovely dwarf who may have turned out to be a woman because gender with dwarfs is quite complicated. We will get into dwarfs and gender. Yeah. I don't know if I should be saying dwarfs or dwarfs. I'm sure people on both sides will contact us to shout at you, so don't worry. Excellent. Yeah, as long as someone's going to shout at me, I might just alternate. And yet, not a character

introduction, but obviously we see a bit more of the librarian chilling out, being ranked and he gets referred to as a monkey. He does, but it's referred to from Too Far's point of view, so I wasn't sure if that's Too Far's ignorance on Simeon kind or... Entirely possible, but because it does become a bit of a spoiler for future books, it becomes a bit of a running joke that the orangutan is not happy about being referred to as a monkey, because he's not a monkey. He's nape. I really, really want it to be the case and it probably isn't that an irate fan wrote to Terry Pratchett and said, you call him a monkey, but he's not a monkey orangutans at eight and Terry Pratchett went, right, okay, I'll make it really clear, he's an eight fan. And it was just

as started as being a dick to a fan that had written an irate letter. That's probably not what happened. All right, homework though. Let's see if we can find the origin of that joke. So where are we now and the talking points here? Yeah. Cool. Oh, I'm first. You are, that's why I was going to wait and let you talk. Yes, you were just staring at me in a kind of expectant manner, which I was enjoying so much. I didn't think to... Pratchett in any way. Sorry, no, it was just my face. Well, shall we talk about the star cult? Yeah, because that's the thing we've got most on this net and let's start off with the big one. Right, so the big one, yeah, this star cult in the unknown city. Yeah. Dicks. Yeah, I mean, basically. Yeah. Completely not a prick. It's an

interesting... This is the once in episode where I misused the term allegory. Please do. It's an interesting allegory, but he mentions to cover a lot and I'm trying to think about what the historical context was for where he was writing. I say historical. It's the mid to late 80s. Yeah. So you're talking cold war-ish? Yeah, it is cold war. There's a... Doomsday crapping is a big thing. There's a threat of nuclear war. It is. There's a lot of big things to do with cults happened quite soon after this book was published and so I feel like there was probably a fair bit of build-up. Yeah, so this was starting to happen already and also if you look at where he worked, he was working at a nuclear power plant at the time. Yes, I imagine he got letters. He probably got a lot of letters

to do with nuclear apocalypse. Apocalypse? Apocalypse eye. Apocalypse epons. Oh, it's our weekly suffixes. Our weekly, we don't know how to plural words because you really shouldn't need a plural of apocalypse. The whole point of apocalypse is really there is just one. Well, it depends how sure you want to be about the apocalypse. For instance, I would call the triassic extinction fairly apocalyptic but some stuff did come out the other side. Well, yeah. How does one define apocalypse? Does it need to be full wipeout or can you have like just a little apocalypse? I would say probably. Not that the triassic extinction is a little event. No, no, no. I think as it's a human construction,

it will probably have to end humankind. But perhaps the rest of the planet survives. That's fair. I like that. But yeah, no, this this is dark. There's the weird Nazi parallels as well. Very heavy. Yeah, like we get into they've taken a particular prejudice against magical races, which is a and they're having stars painted on their doors. So that's not really a subtle nod to the Nazis. It's and the book burning. Yes, I have a lot about book burning. Yeah, happened a lot. The Nazis did it like wholesale. Yeah, I'm trying to quickly find, please ignore the page rustling. But well, this is a podcast about a book. But this is your quote from death and this idea of these people have stopped their brains have kind of stopped. Yeah.

And it was a quite clear voice that used words like cleanse and scouring and purify and drilled into the brain like a hot sword. And for the disc, which is a as we talked about a bit in color of magic, atheism is not really a thing. There's no point not believing in the gods because the gods are present and like to smash atheists windows. So to have this cult saying no, screw the gods, screw the magic people, screw the wizards, we're being cleansed and purified. I mean, I can't say I know how I would react if a weird red star started appearing in this guy. But I feel like I wouldn't become a Nazi. Yeah. Yeah, they always say you're never sure how you're going to respond under that kind of immense pressure. But it's just,

it's just the becoming a Nazi never really comes to mind when I'm stressed. Yeah. You know, I've had those days. I've had periods where I've ended up working basically two full time jobs and I've just never become a Nazi. No, I mean, I have a very stressful day job and I spend 40 to 50 hours a week in that. And then I have a lot of second jobs and I don't get a lot of sleep. But nowhere in that if I thought, you know what, let's exterminate a race. Once or twice, I've even actually had, you know, quite near death circumstances due largely to my incompetence. But even so, never once during that time have I become Hitler. No, I had to, you know, at any visits, I poured an entire pan of boiling water on my arm or I got a knife stuck

in my hand. But nowhere in that did I grow a tiny moustache and start trying to exterminate Jews or rounding people up into concentration camps. Basically, we are saying we're better than these people. Yes, in that when we are stressed, we don't become Nazis. It's a low bar. You would do well to follow us. Highly recommend in times of stress, not becoming a Nazi. Actually, do you know what, we're taking the piss massively, but this ties in hugely to a lot of modern commentary on why people are becoming very right wing, doesn't it? Yeah, and it's to do with, you know, the world is sort of going to shit in lots of different ways and people get more extreme in their politics. Do you know what, I feel like a dick even wishing this upon Terry Pratchett, but I really wish he

was still around so he could comment on all of this. Like, I want him to arrange my thoughts in an aesthetically pleasing way. Yes. As he did so well for so long. But it is as much as we're joking, this is kind of what you see happening in the world now. There's a lot of talk about economic insecurity causing extremism. Yeah. People looking for figures of blame. Yeah. And in this, this is, these people are looking for a figure of blame for this big red star appearing in the sky and they're blaming magic and wizards and gods. Yeah. And it's turned them into Nazis who burned books. But there's, and there's a weird parallel to the kind of eighth, this is, I don't think this is something Terry Pratchett was trying to parallel, but if you look at it with the modern context,

there's also the kind of atheist dude broke culture. Oh, Richard Dawkins turned up to 11 kind of thing. Yeah. Especially when they're kind of smashing all of the temples. It's sort of a God can't help you now apply logic instead. They're smashing up temples. Well, they're not smashing up temples, but they're, Oh, sorry, in the book, in the book. Oh yeah. When did atheist dude bros become extremists? Oh God. I mean, when did atheist dude bros become extremists? All right. When did atheist dude bros leave the house? That's fair. That's fair. I want to use Bullison if they actually get up and leave. I'd rather they didn't come out too much. But yeah, no, the smashing up of the temples, the, the, what's interesting is to consider

whether these characters would have taken the same targets if the magic was still working. I feel like a big part of this is always going for people you see as weak and then yourself. Yeah. So the magical races, because there's not a lot of them, like, so the dwarfs, dwarfs specifically. Yeah. And this one wizard in a town with not a lot of wizards, the priests, the kind of easy to go forks, although there's a lot of priests, they're all divided into their own temples. Yeah. I really did like the, the description of the religious quarter in that city though. The religious three eighths. Yeah, which has just like random annexes built on the temples. Every God wants their own worshiping space. Little Bijou altar. Yeah. Which will

probably have some gold underneath it if we've learned anything from from the barbarian call back to work to episode two there. But yeah, it's terrifying. And also it goes back to this thing where he's sort of, you know, taking apathy is much worse than evil later on with Trimon. Yeah. Where you have these this red star cult going, your gods can't help you now wizards can't help you now you need to turn to logic because you can't use magic anymore. And it's so close to this thing of this apathy of logic and order and the things from the Dungeon Dimensions turning order up to 15. I think also this, it highlights one of the things I, I often get quite infuriated by which is the kind of person who says, Oh, not to go all internet with it,

reels over feels. Oh, yeah. And logic is much better than emotion and anyone who makes decisions based on emotion are terrible. And that's a lot of these people remind me of because alongside that is always the fact that they are also very driven by emotion because that is how the human mind works. Yes, everyone is driven by emotion. And quite often the people saying, Don't get so emotional about this topic. It is someone who is not affected by a topic saying it to someone who is very effective. Yeah. So they will say, Well, I'm arguing logically, you're getting emotional with me. It's like, Yes, because what this for you is an intellectual argument. And for me is my life. But even then the intellectual argument is driven by emotion. That's literally just how

the human brain works. You can't if you take out the part of the brain that deals with emotional response, those people cannot make decisions. Yeah, it's you have, they are scientifically wrong. And it makes me cross on the internet. And you know me, Joanna, I hate to be cross on the internet. So it's only my main hobby. Yeah, a little bit. Well, it goes back to the drive of the id and ego. I'm not going to go deeply into this because I don't know enough about it. This is something I studied a really long time ago. But yeah, it's the idea is that these people say, No, I'm arguing with cochlear logic is, you know, I'm completely ignoring my id, my basic drive. And it's like, you can't it's there. Yeah, it may not be at the forefront, but you can't have a

conversation. You can't have an argument without it because by pretending it's not there, you are damaging your own argument because you're not interpreting what's happening. Yeah. If you didn't have a want at the end of this, you wouldn't be arguing about it. Yeah. If you feel that you need to correct someone and disagree with them, it's because you have some emotional need. Yeah. Right, we've gone way off topic, haven't we? Possibly. Where were we? We were talking about this stupid star cult full of 80s duper Nazis. Yeah, they're just really quite infuriating, aren't they? He does it very well. And I'm not I can't draw a direct part. I was trying. I wasted most of my research time wasted most of my research. I spent most of my research time

to little conclusion, because I was trying to find a cult or an organization that was a direct parallel to the star cult. I found something he might have been slightly referencing, which was, I'm sorry, bear with me, the order of the solar temple. However, although they started in the mid 20th century, and they didn't become really notorious until 1995. However, Pratchett probably was aware of them, was more likely to be aware of them than most, because the order of the solar temple drew inspiration from Alistair Crowley. Oh, right. Who obviously Pratchett was definitely aware of, as that's where Goodoman's Crowley character comes from, it's named after.

Yeah. So maybe not. And they were very Nazi around the edges, always really Nazi around the edges. A lot of the time, they're quite communist. A lot of the time, they're quite Nazi. I think really, I think no, they're all totalitarian, I would say, even if they start off as very egalitarian. Well, it was like that nice, I was listening to something about Utopias that you got me into, and there was that nice socialist polyamorous cult that made cutlery, and then they did eugenics. It went from one to another real fast, Joanna. Although somehow, they still exist as a major cutlery company in America, so that's the whole thing. Well, and how did they manage that, I believe, because the people took the means of production. Yep.

I mean, now they're part of the catalyst machine, but they survived the horrible eugenics thing. Because people cease the means of production. I'm just saying, that's a good way to avoid eugenics, seizing production means. Welcome to our propaganda podcast. No, we're not doing socialist propaganda this week. Please refrain from seizing the means of production until after this episode. Thank you very much. So the solar temple, but the book burnings as well, like I think he was trying to reference general cultishness and Nazis, and rather one specific thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's historically the kind of big, oh, these people are evil, they're burning books, is, comes from Nazis. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it happened a lot of times before the Nazis, but I

think it was always a lot more contained, apart from the big one in China, which apparently is even not really sure it happened, because it was written about a century later, and it might have been to try and slide off the Queen Dynasty. And yeah, you know, it was a kind of a lot of time. As with all this morning, we don't really know because sources are generally unreliable. But yeah, there's been tons of book burning. I mean, when witches were burned, any written material would be burned with them, although there would rarely be any written material because most women couldn't read or write. Yes, yeah. The, yeah, the Nazis, as you say, had massive book bonfires. And I found it quite interesting that the Allied Control Council, during the anti

Nazification, I'm not sure if that's the right term, after the war, also drew up a list of over 30,000 titles to ban and destroy. After it had been pointed out that this was very Nazi parallel, they polped them instead of burned them. Right, so destroying some really material. Yeah. It's almost like control of information is a good way to then control a population. Yeah, weird that. Weird. Do you know if Elking must have been, he actually must have been. Terry Pratchett is a fan of Ray Bradbury. Yeah, definitely. There's no way he wasn't. A quote from Fahrenheit 451, which obviously heavily concerns the burning of books. Hence it being called Fahrenheit 451. Yeah, in fact, not just like what the opening

lines are. It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. And that kind of sentiment of just the joy inherent in destruction and chaos, I feel like has been massively associated with the fucking Joker. Recently, which really annoys me, because although in itself it's quite an interesting character, it's been taken on by the kind of people who you just don't want to be associated with. Yeah. It's a frustrating thing, because yeah, it's a really interesting concept, but some people seem to take that as a lifestyle guide. Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's a difference between taking an intellectual interest in looking at how a person develops, if they say,

using the Joker as an example, choose chaos over order. Yeah. That is not the same as wanting to be like them. Yeah, it's like the lead character, what's his chops and breaking bad? Walter White. Walter White, thank you, was idolized by a lot of people watching it. And it was like, oh, you missed the point. Very much so. But yeah. Well, that was the thing with definitely tangency now, but with the Buffy, where Spike was meant to be an evil character, and he was not meant to have emotional debts, and he was written to be killed off, and Joss Whedon didn't want people getting attached to this character. But the actor was kind of too good and found emotional debts to play within the scripts he was given. So he became a fan favorite,

and Joss kind of had to keep making this character do more and more awful stuff, so people wouldn't stop romanticizing him, not even because he necessarily wanted to kill him off, but it's like, no, stop liking this guy. I'm aware he's very charming, but look, sexual assault. But that's just never going to work. Ted Bundy has fans. Exactly. Oh, I mean, especially since this Netflix thing has come out, there's been a whole resurgence of fucking Ted Bundy fetishists. Yeah. Ew. But it's wrong with people. You guys, all right, you know what, Joanna? What? I know the whole don't yuck people's yum thing. I know it. I know it. Stop, like, if your thing is serial killers and rapists, no, I'm going to yuck your yum. I'm just going to,

like, completely yuck it. Stop it. Yeah. Stop it. Ew. Please. Thank you. Thank you. Anyway, so shall we try and get off this tangent and steer vaguely back towards the book we're meant to be discussing? Yeah, no, that's probably for the best. Cool. So fighting fair, Francine. Fighting fair. Fighting fair, yes. My little note here is on page 204, which I probably could have got if we weren't wanting. So this is Cohen getting into a bit of a punch up. We love Cohen. We do. Oh, we do love Cohen. Yeah, I mean, it's just a stupid little, it's just a silly little quote. Cohen had heard of fighting fair and had long ago decided he wanted no part of it, which is just, it's just an amusing little quote in this book. But it's

something that Pratchett does, like, massively revisit in various contexts. And the barbarians are big on it. Rincewind is big on it. Vimes in the Guards books is very big on not fighting fair. Yeah. Screw the Marquis de Bloody Frontiers. Yeah. The Vimes elbow. And I think it kind of speaks a bit to the romanticised idea of combat that Pratchett clearly hates a lot. Yeah. I mean, see also interesting times and monstrous regiment versus grand versions of that. But we don't want fancy jewels here. We want one scrappy old dude kicking as many people in the bollocks as possible. Yes, exactly. People who kind of romanticise fighting are people who've never been in fights, basically. Yeah. And the way Pratchett writes about it is great. I love this here

with, yeah, he's not going to fight fair. This guy has not survived till 87 by politely stabbing someone one at a time. And refraining from kicking them in the nuts when the opportunity presents. Exactly. He's a survivor and he does what he needs to do to survive while getting attached by a bunch of weird culty dudes. Yeah. Good for Cohen. So yes, again, it's just a amusing sentence in there. And I feel like it's a theme that Pratchett revisits again and again. And eventually we'll get to that really good tavern brawl where the brawlers all sit down and plan the brawl before they do it. Very WWF. Yes. But yes, I like that he ignores romanticised fighting and combat and he goes very, no, the people who survive are quite nitty gritty.

And they are consciously surviving, but he does do it in a way where you really sympathise with the fighting character. Yes. Yes, it's just very, it's just very realistic considering it's in a completely unrealistic setting. Yeah, I mean, we're talking about an 87 year old barbarian in an unnamed city. There's a cult because there's a big star and they're on a disc on elephants on a turtle. But say if there was an 87 year old barbarian in an unnamed city with a big star and discs, turtle, etc. That's definitely how he'd act at the point. Yeah. He would not fight. He would not politely invite someone to a duel. Unfortunately, Cohen doesn't make it with the rest of the guys. Did you have anything? No, no, that was it. Yeah. Cohen doesn't make it with the rest of the guys

into the magic shop, which is a shame because I love the magic shop, but... Oh yeah, do Waxler come on the magic shop for a while because you're so happy about it. I am so happy. It's just because it's one of my favourite fantasy tropes in the... I mean, I shouldn't like it. It's Deus Ex Machina. This is turned up because we need something to turn up and it's one of my favourite tropes in that I like what Terry Pratchett does with it to parody it and acknowledges this happens a lot. And even if it is a bit Deus Ex Machina, it's just a very charming trope. It's a lovely little shop, isn't it? But there's a brilliant bit here and I've forgotten what page I'm on. Just for a change. I'm good at this. The different theories of where these magic shops come from. And I like

that, you know, Terry Pratchett has obviously looked at this and gone, like, there is always a weird little shop. That's where T-Flau got his luggage. So we talked about this a bit in the last episode. Yeah. How could you get those? So you have the theory that... Yes, the cod Latin name for these wandering shops is Tavernay Vagantis. Vagantis. Vagantis. I say that with absolutely no authority. I don't know how to pronounce Latin. No, me neither. Well, it's not real Latin, is it? So there's one theory that there was a racist single talent was to buy cheap and saldera. They had this vast galactic empire or Emporium. And they've died in the heat death of their particular universe. But these wandering star shops still ply their trade,

eating their way through the pages of space time like a worm through a three volume novel. It is beautiful. Which is lovely, especially because I was trying to think of three volume novels that exist around the time that Terry Pratchett was writing. And I just feel like he's picturing a worm eating Lord of the Rings. I don't know why, but I also quite like the mental image because my copy of the Lord of the Rings is really heavy and I'd like a worm to eat it. I don't even hate Lord of the Rings, it's just so I don't have to carry around this much paper. I'll accept some holes in the book, make it more streamlined. Oh my god. You know, there's wind resistance. I'm not going to go into the accuracy of having holes in things to

decrease wind resistance, but carry on. Cool. Yep, right, tangent over. Second theory for the creation of bookshops is that they are a creation of sympathetic fate, capitalised fate, but we're not talking about the person fate, as we said goodbye to him after the last one. Well, asymptothetic fate, so maybe it's the fate of another universe. Yeah, possibly. Charged with the role of supplying exactly the right thing at the right time. And that's the Deus Ex Machina thing. They exist because we need them to exist, which is a fun thing he plays with, like existence and belief we've already talked about comes up a lot in the books. And the third theory is they're a clever way of getting around the various Sunday

closing acts, but all of these theories are good explanations and completely wrong. And we finally found out that these bookshops exist because there was one very impatient sorcerer and if shopkeepers would ditch to him and did things like that, sucking in noise that I hate. It's no demand for it. Yeah. Oh, I hate that noise so much. Calling someone to squire. Yeah. Saying, well, we'll have to order it in, and they're not being open when someone comes to collect their order. Yeah. They get turned into wandering shops. Very heavy Monty V and Varellel this time. Very much. I know we're not supposed to have mentioned Monty V and too much,

but it's very, very, very Monty Python this one. Yes. Anyway, sorry. Shame and pride. Let's discuss some sins. Yes, two of our favourites. Well, shame, I have to say, actually, is it that's a healthy response to being born Catholic? Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Shame is just a part of day-to-day life, if you can. Pride's a good sin. Not my favourite, but it is a good sin. Yeah. But basically the power behind those two, and let's call them emotions for the time being, yeah, are what make Rincewind finally do some magic. And I'm going to say, finally do some magic, even though he did a spell earlier, because it wasn't really him.

No, the other spell earlier was the eight, was the eight spell lodged in his brain, kind of going, right, fine, I'll do a woosh. Exactly. And it was very fireworks and melted a dude. Whereas this Rincewind unlocks a door out of sheer embarrassment almost. Yeah. After all of the head wizards are locked in the room with the Octavo. No, Octavo. Octavo used to be. Rincewind comes across them and notices the key is not in the lock anymore, and is trying to work out how to get them out. And the voice behind the grill, as kindly as it could manage, said, just go and find us a wizard. There's a good fellow. And at that point, Rincewind, who it will come up a lot in later books,

it's really quite insistent about the fact he is a wizard. Yes. He's not a good wizard. No, he's not a competent wizard, even. But he is a wizard. He is a wizard. And this, I think, is the first hint of that utter stubbornness on that fact, because as soon as it is implied he's not a wizard. He puts an extraordinary amount of willpower into actually performing a spell and manages to unlock this perfectly ordinary lock by sheer bloody mindedness, I'm gonna say. Yeah, it's almost an embarrassed fury. Yeah. And he becomes almost stuck at the last minute and someone behind the door whispered, I told you. And then there was a tiny grinding noise and a click. Yeah. So it really is. I mean, I'm pleased for Rincewind.

Yeah. And I find it interesting that considering he has very little dignity or shame about most things. This is the one thing he is passionate about. I'm a wizard. And he's so passionate about that that it's passionate enough to, yeah, find enough embarrassed fury to imagine. There's a great moment because someone says he can't and he tells everyone right back off and doing this. And it's Twoflower who's like, he does mean it because that little vein on his forehead is throbbing. Yeah. Do you love that Twoflower's got to know him well enough that Twoflower gets away with a lot of nonsense and they're floating around in a field of butterflies. Yeah. But he knows that there is a line with Rincewind and he knows that the line has been hit here.

And it's nice, yeah. And I mean, Twoflower clearly, it's sweet how Twoflower now knows Rincewind very well. And nearby in the book, I think as they get to Angkor Pork, Bethan is asking why they don't seem more worried about Starlight. Twoflower doesn't seem worried about this massive red apocalyptic looking star. Oh, the seaweed explanation. Yeah. And Twoflower basically says, because Rincewind doesn't scared of it. Rincewind is scared of literally everything. Yeah. This is the only thing I've not seen Rincewind scared of. If Rincewind doesn't scared of it. It's fine. Yeah. It's nothing that he's scared of. So yeah, it's nice that Twoflower, although he seems very naive and not paying attention, actually has picked up on a

few key points. And he is quite intelligent in his own way. He is. He is, yeah. He's well-meaning and he's definitely got rose-tinted glasses. The first disquad wearer with glasses. He erases four eyes. But he is clever enough to know the way things will work out. Yeah. And he's right most of the time. He believes that the world isn't really going to hurt him because he's not really involved and he doesn't get seriously hurt, but from briefly popping in on death. Yes. But Rincewind comes to get him. Yeah, exactly. He's got a friend. Yeah. Oh, do you know, I didn't mention it in the last book. I meant to the moment where Twoflower is unconscious and basically dead and Rincewind picks him up and he's really light. Yeah. There was

a quote like something about that lightness, er, filled Rincewind with like immense fear, really terrified him. And I was like, he cares. Yes. It's not just he recognised that that meant he was very ill. It filled him with fear. Yes, he was worried. He was worried enough to pop into death's domain and get him, even if he didn't know that's what he was going to do. I was going to say, I'm not sure he intended to do that, but I know. But still, they have a really, really, the friendship that develops over these two books is so sweet. It is so sweet. And I must say, Rincewind is so determinedly non-sentimental that I feel like it doesn't carry on that much and took onto the next book. No. Or onto the next one. Oh, onto the next Rincewind book, yes. Yeah.

But yes, anyway, I do love Rincewind, Twoflower, being all knowing each other. They are very sweet. I mean, the next thing I was going to talk about is something that we've talked about a whole lot already, which is that the enforcement of order is much worse than evil and logic. So I'm quite happy to skip over that because I feel like I've ranted enough about Atheist Dubro's Star Death cults. Yeah, I think we've been on goal from that one today, haven't we? Yeah. So as we're talking about Rincewind and Twoflower's adorable friendship, would you like to present your closing argument on Rincewind being amazing, Francine? Yes. Because you had these two books to convince me. Yeah. So Rincewind as a protagonist, I feel like, is, seems very simple.

And for that reason, I think, is very underrated. I get the feeling that he was actually one of Pratchett's favourites to write. I'm basing that on absolutely nothing apart from the joy he seems to take in the little details and the dialogue and the fact he keeps revisiting such a seemingly simple character. As we've already gone through, there is something really refreshing about just his very direct motivations and his very shallow, almost way of viewing things. But because of that, when he does get moments of depth, like when he's terrified for Twoflower, when he feels the kind of shame rage that makes him perform something that should be impossible, I mean, it's not just that he managed to do a simple spell, he's got the eight spells of the Octavo

in his head, which should have driven out that ability. Yeah. And then at the end here, when he beats up Trimon and a tentacly monster. Mandebles. Mandebles. His victories are the most satisfying because he's usually so helpless. So when he's driven to do these things and manages, it's kind of a twofold joyous surprise. First of all, that he's felt this depth of emotion about the circumstance and so it's driven home more to you. Yeah. And second, that he's managed to deal with it. When my other favourites like Vimes or Weatherwax succeed, like it's great and you feel really great, but it's expected. They're like ubercompetent characters. Yeah. So to have someone this incompetent have that moment of success. Yeah. It's like a little, yes, a little guy.

Yeah. And yes, that is what I have to say about that. I mean, I've got to say, rereading these books and rereading these to the way I have, where I've had to be a lot more methodical and take a lot of notes and think about talking about them, and then actually talking about them. So I've done both of those things. Good. Like I wasn't the biggest rinseburn fan. It was less I wasn't a fan of the character. I wasn't a fan of the stories the character was in. Yep. I've definitely come around a lot more to the character. You've convinced me there. Yeah. I can see the reasons to like him now. Whether I then enjoy the book season a bit more, we'll have to wait and see till the next one. I think it'll be quite interesting because I don't know about you, but I, how I

experience certainly a comedy television show or a stand up or something is very much influenced on who I'm watching it with. Yeah. So if I watched like an Eliza, what's her job? Eliza Schlesinger. Thank you. Stand up with you. We laughed and laughed and cried because of the laughing. Then I tried watching it with another friend of mine who just wasn't that into it and I wasn't laughing either. Yeah. And so I'm wondering if when we go through interesting times and the last continent especially because it's one of my favorites, you might end up finding it more funny because I'm there with a like constant grin on my face. And as well, whether I'm going to end up appreciating say soul music more because you'll be here to explain

references to me. I might have to make a same goes with the moving pictures. Yeah. I might make you watch certain things. But yeah, so we're jumping ahead to other books now. But no, I'm more convinced that I like Rincewind as a character. I'm not more convinced I'll enjoy the books he's in. Okay. And we'll get to it fairly soon when we talk about sorcery, which has always been one of my least favorites. Yeah. So that'll be fun. Yeah. That'll be fun. Yeah. So that's that's the end of that talking point. But another moment of two flower appreciation is the way he appreciates beauty. And there's a lovely little passage I'm going to read because I think it sums up his character so perfectly. Yeah. But I feel like in a really unflattering light. In an unflattering light.

But I don't think I don't know. I don't think it's unflattering. Okay, well read it. Yeah. That's old two flower Rincewind thought it's not that he doesn't appreciate beauty. He just appreciates it in his own way. I mean, if a poet sees a daffodil, he stares at it and writes a long poem about it. But two flower wanders off to find a book on botany and treads on it. Yeah. And it's the way he goes, Oh, that's a beautiful thing. And now I will focus on all the higher things I can learn about it and forget the thing itself. Yes. And I think that's that is very two flower. And I don't think that's unflattering. I feel like it's unflattering in kind of a the bit that the forgetting about the thing itself, I think has been the cause of to make it far more grandiose than it needs to be

probably has been the cause of quite a lot of ill in the world. I mean, from everything from like bloody butterfly collectors upwards. Well, yes. One thing to quantify and pin down beauty, I feel is almost always to its detriment. It is. And that's sort of the argument made about two flower throughout the book is no matter what's going on, he wants a photo of it. He doesn't want to experience it, which is, you know, I've been to quite a few live concerts and shows in the last few days. And I've sat there watching people take photos and watch it through their phone and just just watch it. Yeah. Who is going to watch that video back? You won't watch it back and have anywhere near as much emotion as you will have watching this and remembering the emotions

you had. And I think it's almost like a compulsion now. And it's much more common now that everybody has a camera with them all the time. Yeah, it's kind of itch in the back of your head when you see something beautiful. I must have to pin it down. Yeah. Even though you know logically that you're never going to look at that photo or that video. No, probably not. And a million people have taken much better photos of this thing. Exactly. Yeah. But I, but it is such an essential part of Two Flowers character, whether you think it's a positive character trait or not. He is the guy that stopped as they were about to get eaten by Belle Shamaroth. Yeah. And as we were saying when we talked about the colour of magic, like would have tried to get a selfie if this book had been

written down. The kind of intense curiosity that it suggests is an attractive trait. But it goes on to the end, the end of the book. And we're coming, we're very much running the bend to the final bit. When he's saying talking about going home and rinse and sort of says, why are you so, you need to go home? He said, well, now I've had all these adventures, I have to go home to remember them. Because you can't just have the adventure. You have to then have the not being on adventure so that you can appreciate the state of being on the adventure and sitting around and remembering it. That kind of comes back to the narrative circle we were talking about. Yes. The story has to end with the person. The hero returns home having changed. Yeah, exactly. Which is lovely.

But like I said, I don't think it's necessarily a negative thing for Rincewin. This is how he appreciates beauty and that he wants these photographs. It's just very much a part of him. He's a tourist and he's the first tourist. And for him, it's more important to have the experience of remembering than to have the experience. And yeah, it's hard to talk about it too much without spoiling a future book. Because we will get to, it's a mild spoiler, but we did say spoiler light. So we will sometimes talk about what other books we'll deal with. And we do get to see Two Flower Again and have a book about his home life. Yeah, I've mentioned that several times because I'm less considerate than you, so don't worry. Yeah, fine. So we'll get to see Two Flower

Again and we'll get to see his home life. And him wanting to make these memories so he can go home and experience them. Yeah. I think is much nicer when you think about where he's from is really like. Yes, that's true. In the context just of this book though, assuming Terry Pratchett hadn't quite built this in his head. I don't think I had built. Yeah, I mean, you're right. I'm sure Pratchett wasn't meaning this in a positive or negative way, just a very observant way. Yeah. To me, it will absolutely depend on what kind of person you are, not even what kind of person you are, just what kind of thing you've decided to feel that day. Yeah. But so the kind of philosophy that we're all encouraged to live these days is more

mindful in the moment and present. And I say these days, that's been the case for thousands of years, let's go back to all these ancient Greeks and the dropping tortoises. But now there's a tangent. Small god, I can't wait till small god. But the idea of not living in the moment because you're trying to live it in a way you can appreciate later is something I think I find unattractive because I see it in myself a lot. I find it very hard to live in a moment. I am very far from Zen. I'm so not Zen. Every time I try to be Zen, my brain makes up a million different scenarios to entertain me with while I'm Zenning. Exactly. So I think I like to imagine myself in a different

position, but I see myself in two flowers. Yeah. So I don't like it. There's a nice line just after that. He looks at things, but nothing he looks at is ever the same again. And that's the thing is shining the light on it. He looks at it with these rose-tinted spectacles, but once he sort of said that to someone else, you know, Rinceman sort of does start looking at things in a bit of a different light. And he goes, okay, this isn't just a crumbling old pile. This is the university of sort of my home. Yeah. And like Moorpork, you know, at the beginning of the colour of magic, two flowers romanticising at Moorpork, he wants to see the Horpitz and he wants to smell the smells and eat the bad food and see the taffenballs. And Rinceman's like, guy, dude, this is stay away

from the taffenball. It's very feisty. You might lose an eye. Just in general, this is a horrible rat's nest of a place. Yeah, it's a walling, but they go away for a bit. And this is, yeah, the story circle thing, the Dan Harmon thing, and return having changed. And Rinceman, by the time we get back to our Moorpork, hugely romanticising it. Romanticising gherkins. Romanticising gherkins and the smells and the seweries to sleep in and the stables. And some of that is two flowers influence. And it makes Rinceman more appreciative of what he has, because he's witnessed a lot of the world through two flowers raced into spectacles. I mean, I don't think anything would make the barbarian horse lord's tent more pleasant. Not if you have a working nose. No, but two flowers

doesn't. And maybe that's why it's so important he has photographs of things to remember, because he doesn't have that olfactory memory that we were talking about that's so important. Oh, we just came full circle. Yeah, we did. Nice. So yeah, do you have anything else, any other thoughts on the book? I think probably the same as most people. I don't have anything world-chattering. Practically it's clearly hitting a stride, just in things like character development, the kind of quick filled dialogue that I find particularly... We do love a bit of quick beat dialogue. Yes, we do. And I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. I can honestly say I'm looking forward more to a lot of the later books. Yes. But I was pleased with the chance to revisit this first pair, even though it's now become

highlighted to me quite how weird and disjointed the entire overarching storyline of the two books is. Yes. I mean, you definitely have to accept that just retconning is a big thing that's going to happen a whole bunch. Yeah. Honestly, I'm not sure I've read the two back-to-back in such quick succession for a very long time. No. It was interesting to see the characters brought up and then flowing aside. I was like, no, no, you won't do... Bring in Kohen! Kohen, that's much better than Prunt. Prunt. Yeah, it's interesting watching the creative engine. Starting to really kick into gear. Yeah. I mean, I have to say I've enjoyed reading this this time more than I have on any previous read. And I found the ending surprisingly heartwarming, because I cared

about the characters more reading it this time, because I had forced myself to slow down and think about them more. And you've brought me round on Rinswind. So Rinswind having his final little moment of saying goodbye to Twoflower and accepting the luggage into his life and heading back to the university is a very lovely moment. And yeah, I enjoyed it. Yeah. Wasn't it good? It was good. Shall we have a couple words about the one that's coming up next? Equal rights, I believe, is next. Equal rights is next. You are quite right. So provided everything comes out at the right time, we'll be having a week off from books and then coming back with Equal Rights next. Yeah. Although there may be a cheeky little Hogswatch

surprise in the mix there. Yeah, depending on how the schedule blends. If we're on schedule, there'll be a cheeky little Hogswatch surprise in the mix there. Yeah. So yeah, next one is Equal Rights. And this is the first in the Witches story arc. Is it worth saying story arc really? Is that right? I'd say it's kind of pre The Witches story arc. It's almost a proto-witch. Proto-witch. It's a proto-witch book. And it's the first time the Discworld moves away from these original characters and he expands into it as a bigger world. So it's not a direct sequel, the way like Fantastic is to the colour of magic. Yeah. I don't want to say too much about it. I want to save it till we talk about it. But I've been really looking forward to this one.

Yeah. And this is always because the first two were kind of weird and disjointed. And he wasn't planning on, I think, working in this world for longer than a couple of books when he wrote them. Yeah. I often say to people to skip them and start with Equal Rights. But I haven't reread it myself for a very long time. So whereas with this, it was a, can I convince myself that I like it this time? This is, I really hope it's as good as I remember it being. Yeah. Oh, I forgot my obscure reference again. I was going to say, before we, before we say goodbye to our dear, dear little listeners. Dear little listeners with their dear little legs. Do you have some sort of obscure reference furniture for me today? Um, yeah, I've actually got a word this time. I was looking out

for obscure references through most of it and I genuinely didn't spot any. So um, so readers with better obscure and arcane knowledge, you may have picked something up. Please do get hold of me. Yes. Messages on an albatross. But the word is plungeant, which I had not heard before and I looked up and I really, really like it. Um, the Oxford English says, especially if the sound see waves, et cetera, reverberating, mournfully resonant, also loud sounding, strident, plaintive, sad. It's a sound that resonates from the book, I believe. Yes. The climax of all this action, but it's um, yeah, just a really nice word that I'm going to try and weave into some writing at some point. Plungeant. Plungeant. Can I enjoy that? Thank you for the obscure reference bookshelf.

Right. I think that's the end of our, our discussion of the life. Fantastic. Cool. So how have you found the, uh, the journey? I can't believe you took it from me. I mean, it has been a journey. I'm appropriating. It's been a, you, you're appropriated journey. It's my way to touch you with, it's been a journey. We've been on a journey with Rinswin and Twoflower, both metaphorical and literal. And emotionally, I feel like I'm in a different place to where I started. I'm older now, wiser. We are quite a lot older. I've got a sense of gravitas about me. It's entirely possible I'm talking bollocks, but an excellent voice. I've got so much gravitas,

I've attracted a small moon. Darling, and I thought you were just pleased to see me. Right. Thank you very much for listening to The Truth Shall Make You Fret. Follow us on social media, we're on Facebook at The Truth Shall Make You Fret, Twitter at Make You Fret pod, or email us with your thoughts, queries, questions and insults. The Truth Shall Make You Fret pod at gmail.com. I'm sorry, it's so low. And of course, please rate and review us and leave us little notes wherever you get your podcasts and do send us an Albatross or five. And until next time, don't let us detain you. A bit confusing later when I look at my notes and I've just written you're dead to me,

underlined. I mean, maybe write like podcast.