It’s not a Discworld joke unless you read it, don’t parse it as a joke, and then carry on with your life for ten years until someone stops you to say something like “It’s a pavlovian response because the dog ate a pavlova” and you scream Terry’s name with enough indignant rage you hope it rattles the pillars of the multiverse so wherever his soul is he’ll hear it.
Reading a Terry Pratchett book is literally just:
Here's a funny little joke
Here's something that you can tell is a joke but don't get and will only figure out five years later
Here's a surprisingly cool fantasy concept
Here's a unique and well written simile
Here's a lil guy
Here's something that has aged depressingly well into the modern day
Here's something that has aged remarkably queer into the modern day
Here's a character that you can barely understand what he's saying
Here is the most terrifying and deeply disturbing concept you have ever heard, casually mentioned
Here is the dumbest fucking pun you've ever heard but in the best way
Here is a quote so profound that it makes you view morality and the world in a different way
Here is a plot twist that you can't tell if it's genius or stupid
Congratulations! You've finished the book! It has fundamentally changed you as a person and you will never be the same!
I think the extraordinary thing that Death shows [Dream] is the complexity of humanity. She asks him to bear witness to people in the last moment of their lives and that something happens when you look closely at something. You begin to understand it. And I think that understanding are the first steps towards love. And I think when [Dream] has that pivotal transition, he thinks to himself “If I can feel this about these people after such a short space of time, how do I feel about a man who I’ve spent 600 years with?” And so he returns to him.
— Tom Sturridge about Dream’s relationship with Death, humanity and Hob Gadling [video]