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Announcing the theme for Terry Pratchett Day 2024: START IN THE WRONG PLACE.

You'll hear people say time and time again that you can start anywhere with Terry Pratchett's work, but don't start in the right place*, so let's truly embrace the joy and chaos to be found in the many routes through Discworld and beyond.

We will be making Sunday 28th April, Sir Terry Pratchett's birthday, one brimming with bookish delight, celebrating the many ways we love and travel through his work, and we're inviting you to join us.

Follow along with The Terry Pratchett Estate to stay up to date. We will be sharing more ahead of the weekend on how to get involved.

*A lot of people say the right place is anything but the right place, which in turn, may make it an equally wrong place...

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Shiny princes :)

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@valentinemsm1th

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Letters arrived to Erebor.

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The nazis that you see in movies are as much a historical fantasy as vikings with horned helmets and samurai cutting people in half.

The nazis were not some vague evil that wanted to hurt people for the sake of hurting them. They had specific goals which furthered a far right agenda, and they wanted to do harm to very specific groups, (largely slavs, jews, Romani, queer people, communists/leftists, and disabled people.)

The nazis didn't use soldiers in creepy gas masks as their main imagery that they sold to the german people, they used blond haired blue eyed families. Nor did they stand up on podiums saying that would wage an endless and brutal war, they gave speeches about protecting white Christian society from degenerates just like how conservatives do today.

Nazis weren't atheists or pagans. They were deeply Christian and Christianity was part of their ideology just like it is for modern conservatives. They spoke at lengths about defending their Christian nation from godless leftism. The ones who hated the catholic church hated it for protestant reasons. Nazi occultism was fringe within the party and never expected to become mainstream, and those occultists were still Christian, none of them ever claimed to be Satanists or Asatru.

Nazis were also not queer or disabled. They killed those groups, before they had a chance to kill almost anyone else actually. Despite the amount of disabled nazis or queer/queer coded nazis you'll see in movies and on TV, in reality they were very cishet and very able bodied. There was one high ranking nazi early on who was gay and the other nazis killed him for that. Saying the nazis were gay or disabled makes about as much sense as saying they were Jewish.

The nazis weren't mentally ill. As previously mentioned they hated disabled people, and this unquestionably included anyone neurodivergent. When the surviving nazi war criminals were given psychological tests after the war, they were shown to be some of the most neurotypical people out there.

The nazis weren't socialists. Full stop. They hated socialists. They got elected on hating socialists. They killed socialists. Hating all forms of lefitsm was a big part of their ideology, and especially a big part of how they sold themselves.

The nazis were not the supervillians you see on screen, not because they didn't do horrible things in real life, they most certainly did, but because they weren't that vague apolitical evil that exists for white American action heros to fight. They did horrible things because they had a right wing authoritarian political ideology, an ideology that is fundamentally the same as what most of the modern right wing believes.

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things show only fans might not know and that upsets me

crowley:

in the book, when aziraphale suffocates the dove at warlock’s party, it’s CROWLEY who takes it from him and resurrects it (i’m forever bitter they changed it bc it’s so understated but such a lovely character moment)

there’s not a lot of physical description of the characters but we know that crowley is young, has dark hair and good cheekbones, wears snakeskin boots that may or may not be his feet, and can “do really weird things with his tongue” 👀👀

also when he gets annoyed/stressed, he starts to hiss

when he’s in his flat freaking out about the impending apocalypse, he tries to calm himself down by alphabetising his collection of soul music. yes really

he didn’t take credit for the spanish inquisition. in fact, he’d never even heard of the spanish inquisition until the commendation arrived, at which point he went to check it out and was so horrified by what he saw that he fucked off to the nearest cantina and got drunk for a week

is an absolute little bitch of epic proportions. like in the show a lot of his lines are delivered all cool and sassy but in the book he’s literally just bitching about everything all the time. with the paintball bit, when aziraphale says he knew crowley was always secretly nice, he doesn’t flip out and push aziraphale against a wall, he just bitches some more, because he bitches all!!! the!!! time!!! “oh lord heal this bike”? bitching. the only times he’s not bitching is when he’s throwing a temper tantrum or gleefully pranking people

“nothing but dust and fundamentalists”

he slept through almost the entire 19th century because it was so boring, except for 1832 when he got up to go to the toilet

‘… Bee-elzebub has a devil put aside for me, for me… “For me,” murmured Crowley. His expression went blank for a moment. Then he gave a strangled scream and wrenched the on-off knob.’ ;a; my poor son i just wanna protect him

back in the day, the most popular fancast for him was benedict cumberbatch. this was exactly as awful as it sounds

the reason there were so many queen songs in the show is bc there’s this whole bit in the book about how any cassette that gets left in a car for longer than two weeks morphs into a best of queen album. crowley had a bunch of eclectic tapes (he likes velvet underground, joy division, and handel) in his car but they turned into queen. and at the end of the book?  ‘Crowley inserted a cassette labled “Handel’s Water Music”, and it stayed “Handel’s Water Music” all the way home.’ MY HEART

his CANONICAL NUMBER ONE NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION AS WRITTEN BY PTERRY AND GAIMAN is to accept that superglueing valuable coins to the sidewalk then watching events unfold from a nearby cafe is not proper demonic activity

aziraphale:

his hands are apparently plump and very well manicured

wears a camelhair coat. fandom has also collectively decided he wears argyle sweaters even though this is never once mentioned in canon

upon meeting aziraphale, most people get three impressions: 1) that he is british 2) that he is intelligent 3) that he is gayer than a tree full of monkeys on nitrous oxide. he’s not british and angels are technically sexless unless they really want to make an effort… but he is intelligent

at the start of the book, he hasn’t sworn for six thousand years. the first time he swears in six thousand years is “bugger”. the second time is “oh fuck” when he gets shadwell’d

after he gets shadwell’d he doesn’t immediately possess madame tracy. instead he bodyhops across the world and at one point possesses an american televangelist on live tv and proceeds to deliver an amazing smackdown of the commercialisation of religion then ends with “gosh. am i on television?” i love him

HE’S the one to suggest killing adam. mr stuffy angel’s NUMBER ONE IDEA for dealing with the problem is to MURDER AN ELEVEN YEAR OLD BOY

his bookshop is actually just a place for him to store his collection of rare books (including a collection of bibles that have misprints like the wicked bible and the standing fishes bible). he doesn’t actually want anyone to buy them. so he opens at weird hours, makes his shop constantly smell bad, and gives people death stares whenever they step inside to make them leave as quickly as possible.

also mobsters keep threatening his shop to try to make him leave. he thanks them politely, shows them out the door, and they are never seen again.

he does his taxes on an ancient mac, which is the only technology he’s ever adopted, and they’re so scrupulously accurate he’s been investigated five times because the government’s sure he’s getting away with murder somewhere

along with benedict cumberbatch as crowley people used to fancast him as martin freeman. 2013 was a dark time.

absolute asshole. complete stinky bastard man. he’s SO CRUEL to crowley it’s unreal, and he doesn’t even realise half the time. when he admits at the end before the showdown with satan that “i’ll have always known, deep down inside, that there was some good in you”. not there was some good deep down inside crowley. that DEEP DOWN INSIDE AZIRAPHALE was the knowledge that crowley had some good in him. my heart!!!!!!!!!

miscellany:

back in my day we didn’t have any of this fancy ineffable husbands shit. we called it air conditioning and we liked it

read @irisbleufic‘s crown of thorns verse. its the ultimate go fic

IT’S CANON ACTUAL CANON that after the book crowley and aziraphale moved into a cottage in the south downs together so uhhh yeah They’re Gay Karen

i love them so much. im begging you please read the book it’s so good

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17, Legolas

17: What’s a book, movie, or show you think [character] would like?

Hmm, you know, this is not one I've spent a lot of time thinking about! When I cast my mind back over the books I've ever read (which I pretty much immediately forget everything about as soon as asked to recommend something), I found myself landing on the Monk & Robot books by Becky Chambers. I think he would be delighted by them, and I think he would also find a lot of beauty in different kinds of beings finding friendship across distance and gaps in understanding. They might be a sea-longing episode comfort read for him.

I'm trying to think of a good movie for him and I feel like I haven't seen enough Studio Ghibli, but from what I know about them, I think there's at least something there that he would love! Something with colorful animation and a lot of earnestness and heart.

Thank you for the question! Anyone, feel free to ask more from this list!

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Sometimes I just stop and remember that Rex underwent brain surgery performed by astromech droids.

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The Beast that Bothers

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The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

Favourite relationships – 3/10: Aragorn & Éomer

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Knowledge is empowering

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Fandom Problem #4809:

When someone who hates a genre is hired to write for a franchise in that genre. Congrats! You're so busy deconstructing tropes you don't like that you've destroyed everything the fans liked!