The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 113: Monstrous Regiment Pt. 3 (Gender Is A Fake Drug)

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 3 of our recap of “Monstrous Regiment”. Man? Woman? Soldier!Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:TTSMYF Presents Marc Burrows: The Magic of Terry Pratchett - We Got TicketsSteamed Hams - YouTubeThe Origins of Pneumatic Railways - London ReconnectionsAt Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson - Goodreads  Faerie Queen - song and lyrics by Heather Alexander - Spotify Discovery - YouTubeMonstrous Regiment Playlist (BatSuitClad) - Spotify11 things we learned from new Terry Pratchett doc ‘Escape to the Discworld’ - Penguin Steeleye Span - The Ups and Downs - YoutubeList of foods named after people - Wikipedia   Clothing terminology - Wikipedia Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

I'm not going to have another Real Advice coffee after this one. If you start getting blurry towards the end of the episode, I'll tell you to cut it out. I had a really specific meal I was going to make and then got as far as in my kitchen, open my fridge and went, I don't want to eat that meal. I want a creamy pasta thing instead. Started making that instead and got to the point where it was time to put the pasta in the water. I didn't have pasta. Oh Joanna, I'm sorry. But by this, you know what I'm like when I have in my head that I want a specific thing.

So I turned all the hops off. I ran down to the shop. I got my box of pasta. I step out of the shop. It begins to hail. Yay, I was driving when that happened. I know exactly the minute. It was that minute and I was very tired. I straight up couldn't see for a minute. You must have got soaked. And it's like, it's not far from the shop to my front door. But it was enough. So by the time I sat down to eat that pasta, it was the simultaneously like most gratifying and also, ugh, moment.

Amazing. But I watched a lovely episode of the X-Files while I ate it, which I regretted because it was the one where people's livers get torn out. Yeah, there's some really gruesome bits in that show, actually. Yeah, like generally anything that's like an hour long show, it tends to be like an, or something I want to pay attention to is an evening watch for me, which means while I'm eating dinner, I'm going to have to rethink that with the X-Files, I think. I don't think it's an eating dinner show.

Now's the time to get into Colombo, which is never gross. Yes, but there's no podcast about it. True. Well, actually, I'm sure that's not true. I'm sure there is. There probably is a Colombo podcast. Let's start with, no. I don't need there to be a podcast about a show for me to watch it, but I have got a list of shows I really want to watch at the moment. Okay, that's fair. I was trying to remember what would put me off my food the other day when I was watching. It was one of the Half-Life Meets Death episodes, that's right.

Oh, yeah. Oh, that's such a good show. It is. I thought there was more than one series. No, there's only been one so far. Oh, fuck me. I got to the end. I was like, what? Well, it came out in the States ages ago. It just took forever to air in the UK. Ironically, not a fan of piracy. It becomes harder and harder to watch things legally. Yeah, no, it's exhausting. There's so many shows in so many places.

I've had three or four different people tell me I need to watch Yellow Jackets. It's very me, apparently. It's got Melanie Linsky in who I'm obsessed with. And apparently, it's just a really good show that I would absolutely love. I need to set aside a month for binging and there's a lot on it. Like the new series of Succession is on at the moment. There has been a new series of Love is Blind, which I just watched the most recent episode and it was really fucking funny. Have I told you about this? It's the weird Netflix dating show and they like date in pods

and can't see each other and they get engaged, like sight on scene and then they live together for like a month and then they get have a wedding at the end and they have to decide whether to get married or not. It's unbelievably trashy and I hate it, but I like I hate myself for watching it. But I feel like this is something I can't watch without you. Like when we were living together, I'd have sat and watched it with you all day. I can't sit and watch that without you to bitch about it with though. No, that's fair. Yeah. But there was this one couple in this season who have been just like really sweet and lovely

together with absolutely zero drama since they first like had their first date in the pods. It's been very cute to watch. They seem very sweet. You can't imagine anything ever going wrong with them. But in all the previews for the wedding episode, there were loads of clips of the guy from this couple saying like that in his suit going, there should be no fucking surprises today looking like furious and lots of shots of her crying. And then I watched it and the her crying is just she fucking cries a lot. It's mostly happy crying. She's one of those people who cries a lot. His rage and no fucking surprises is because the trousers of his suit didn't fit properly. So an hour and a half before his wedding, he had to go to a tailor to get his trousers fitted.

Yeah, that's fair. But I love how they tried to build up that anything could go wrong with this clip. And it's like now trousers. But those people are quite sane apart from the fact they did the show. But in that case, they're the same kind of insane. So that's okay. Yeah. But yes, that's the final season of Succession is on at the moment. And that's very good. The last episode broke me and had me sobbing. Oh, and the final series of Marvelous Mrs. I think started like today or starts next Friday. I can't remember.

And I'm excited because all the ones you just said are on different platforms, I think. Yeah, I mean, I pretty much I pretty much only kept Netflix for so long because it had a lot of sitcoms that I was watching from my book. I've kept it because mum has my password. Oh, yeah. And I'm not the only person on my Netflix account. So at this point, I have Netflix in exchange for being on someone else's Amazon Prime account. That was nice. My Disney Plus account is a shared be I like the Star Wars shirt ish. And see, my nephew really likes the Star Wars shirt and it keeps him quiet when he's in my house.

I will pay that amount per year to keep my nephew quiet when he's at my house. Yeah, I'm tempted by month of it just to rewatch some Simpsons and Bob's Burgers and things. It is nice having Simpsons on there. Oh, oh, actual exciting thing. Well, for me, anyway, today is the anniversary of the first ever airing of the Simpsons episode 22 short films about Springfield, arguably the best Simpsons episode because it contains Steam Tams. How long ago? 27 years.

Reaching its rockstar death. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, it will die a sad death this year. At five in the town. Aurora Borealis. Upon my oath, I am not a Steam Tam. Shall we make a podcast? Yeah, let's make a podcast. Hello and welcome to The True Shall Make You Threat, a podcast in which we are reading and

recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one as time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part three of our discussion of Monstrous Regiment. The eventful climactic section. Yeah, a bit happens. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. My summary did not fit on a page.

I'm not surprised and that's OK. But before the summary, the spoiler warning. One of those, eh? Yeah, notes on spoilers. We are a spoiler light podcast, obviously heavy spoilers for the book Monstrous Regiment. But we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And we're saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there so you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us.

Being careful, of course, to put the white flag out of the door before we go out ourselves. Always good, always good plan. Follow up. We have things from people. People have told us things. We do. We do. What you got?

What you got in there? Little round world sack of mail. We have many misses from the round world. Pete on Twitter sent us a really cool article on the origins of pneumatic messaging systems and railways. That was a very cool article. Yes, I enjoyed that. Oh, and Stacey on Twitter, we were talking about like lost knowledge.

The Egyptian trade partner I was trying to remember was called Punt. Oh, cool. And she reminded me of one of my other favorite things from, she got it from Bill Bryson's book At Home, which I haven't read yet, but I want to. It sounds very good. I will lend you my coffee. Excellent.

The missing condiment, which is something I have heard of from other things and which fascinates me. What was it? What was it? What was it? There used to always be three pots on the table, one for salt, one for pepper, and one for question mark. I think the most common theory is that it was mustard powder, which I can see. Yeah, that makes sense.

That wouldn't have been like hugely expensive, would it? Yeah. Can we grow mustard here? Mustard seeds? I think so, yeah. Could be. Well, we've manufactured mustard, like Norwich is big for manufacturing mustard. That's where commons is based.

Yeah, cool. And we've got lots from Reddit. Batsuklad, of the many footnoted Reddit comment, has introduced us to something I didn't realize there was a word for when we were talking about Tamlin back in We Free Men. Filk music, which is essentially the music equivalent of fan fiction, and began at fan conventions. Attendees would sit around engaged and sing along.

So like the Winter Smith album, Still I Spend, that's a good example of filk music. Oh, or somebody coming up with like the whole hedgehog and then we'd be buggered. Yes. So yeah, Batsuklad mentioned some very cool filk music from Alexander James, one of which is a really cool song called The Fairy Queen, which is kind of tamlin through the lens of devil went down to Georgia. Oh, okay. Yeah, I'll link that in the show notes.

Also made a Spotify playlist of all the songs we talked about in part one on Monstrous Regiment. Oh, thank you. Cool. And also, what was the other comment? Had a really good point about we were talking about this book sometimes being seen as darker or grimmer. And I thought it was a really good comment. I think the reason people tend to see this book as darker is actually due to the amount of humor

in the book. It's the juxtaposition of the hilarity with the grim reality that shoves the darkness that's present into the light. And I hadn't thought about it like that. I thought that was a really good point. Yes, that is a good point. I think my main objection to the criticism online was when they just said he's lost his sense of humor. Oh, yeah.

Because it is funny. But there were a lot of people going on about the darkness. And yes, I think that's a good point. It's the end quoting Terry Pratchett to make it. Good job. Good job. And Sander Vogel mentioned, I had to laugh about some of the military slang, especially the sits down for a we.

That one was a very common insult in Germany in the 90s. Sitzbinkler. There's several others in that vein. And this is great. I need to practice my German pronunciation. So swims. Oh, God, you need to tell Sterling that tomorrow when we see him. He's kind of embarrassing because I need to see his face.

Several others in that vein. Swims at the side of the pool. Beck and Ranch Wimmer. Parks his car in the shadow. Shatten Parker. What? Takes warm showers. Wum Dusche.

Or forgets to bring his gym wear. Turn Bülsel Vergessa. All aimed at little boys to make them seem less manly. And they're not very common these days. I mean. Great joy. So much joy. So much joy.

Oh, I fucked my car in the shade. Well, it seems quite sensible to me, but clearly not to the Germans. Oh, yeah. And just quickly, a military slam again from Batziklad. Butterbars was a nickname for fresh lieutenants. Going to an incident in US military history when a group in officer candidate school would wear slabs of butter in order to signify their soon to be paid for ranks. What?

Citation needed. Oh, and lastly from Reddit, Craig posted I didn't realize there's actually a whole documentary Penguin have brought out about the creation of the new audiobooks. I literally just clicked on that. Yeah. And I'm saying that. Cool. And there was a quite cool article with it.

So I'll link that in the show notes as well. Yeah. If we'll give that a watch before we record next. Did you have anything? Yeah. I got a couple of messages on Tumblr from Luxar. My one Tumblr correspondent. Hello.

Or certainly the only one who uses the DMs. There might be some who use all the tags in the comments. I don't look at this. So we have a couple of ideas. So they always thought it was maledict as a pun on bad addict. Yeah. Well, I don't. That's quite cool.

But they also like the maledict pronunciation. So that's cool. Cool. Would Salasophalus. Is that how you say that? The horse? Thalasophalus. Thalasophalus.

Yes. Thank you. I've accidentally gone Freudian. Mean Bedhead, if Thala means bed. Oh, yeah. Well, possibly. It's just Messy Mane as I rolled out a bed this rolled out of the hay this way. And finally, I love how this book is just, it's about not judging a book by its cover,

but also not believing the first thing said to you either. You had to take it with a grain of salt and wait before making the judgment. The entire first section of the book, because a lot of blouses an idiot officer, was just enough to count to that on a first reading you don't notice, but on reread, once you've read the second section, to point and shout, there, see? He's so amazing. Which agreed.

And also, I like reading out comments in a kind of Tumblr cadence. Yep. I suppose it. Yeah, somehow I'm now following a few people on TikTok who read out Tumblr posts. Therefore, I think completing my brain rot cycle. Excellent. Well done. Good.

There's no hope for us anymore. Oh, yeah. What a shame. Oh, well, that's all the follow-up I can remember about. In that case, Francine, would you like to tell us what happened previously on Monstrous Regiment? I would, and you'll be thrilled to hear I didn't try and make it rhyme. Previously on Monstrous Regiment, our heroes go for a walk in the woods, though not a terribly restful one.

The squadron has met with evidence of their countryman's misdeeds before being attacked by a hostage, harried by a hack, and set back by lack of coffee. Jackram tells the ugly truth about a rat, spins a beautiful lie about a tiger, and deflates the elephant in the room. Blouse impresses the press, lies in the night sky, and rallies the squad for a spot-about-dram. It's time for Jackram's little lads to engage in some deception inception. All right, rhymes a bit.

I approve. Joanna, much more lengthily, would you like to tell us what happens in this section? All right, let's see how quickly I can get through this so we can get on with talking about the episode. Joanna's doing a physical run-up, isn't it, sir? Getting situated. Let me do a little inverted comma wiggle. In this section, which in case I didn't mention goes from page 100 and 300.

300. 331. And one of the things they hadn't known was that it had edges. And we're going to the end of the book, as promised. In this section, there's a city around the edge of the war and the squad pays a visit. Jackram meets the son of an old foe, swallows a glug of hangman, and takes the little lads to a tent of ill repute. In the true tradition of the in and outs, they grab the clothes and scarper.

Maladuct and Jade are staying behind, and Jackram's planning to visit the front lines, but the rest dress up and prepare to enter the keep. Alice makes a prediction, and Jackram tells the cheese munger story. The girls agree that it's a very silly song. They've no papers to hand, and they're accused of being soldiers until shifty proves otherwise. Blouse, as Daphne, leads an ironing demonstration and the laundry is on Borogravia's side. Alice is getting weird. She's been praying, but Nuggan is dead.

Unfortunately, the Duchess is weak. Polly gets the gossip and has a better plan. Anticipating Blouse's orders, she gets them trapped in the elevator with some unconscious guards. They climb into the crypts and blouse fanboys over the zombies until Alice lights up and calls the soldiers to attention. The ragtag bunch of misgendered misfits head into the keep proper, only to come up against some slobenians and find themselves kept in the kitchen. Slobenians!

Polly comes out to blouse and Ankh-Morpork soldiers enter to offer safe passage home. A cigar-smoking man watches as Polly and the others suggest Russ sticks it up his jumper. Alice is sleeping and freezing cold. The newly provided firewood gives Lofty a bright idea, and she gets the door opened permanently. With a wimp, the squad are free for a famous first stand, but as the cells are unlocked, the men quickly take over. The keeps being retaken and burrow-graviers back in the war,

but burrow-graviers aren't pleased that the squad aren't boys and they find themselves locked in a real cell. Major Clarkston sits down to get the details and Polly tells their story. It's tribunal time in the ballroom, and with Jude and Maladek to capture it as well, the army wants to send the girls home. Tribunal in the ballroom! Oh, my favourite band from my teenage years. Captain Strappy testifies, but he's in travel after investigating Jackram.

The women are offered excuses, but they won't give in until it appears that Alice might be ill. As suggestions from the Duchess fill the air, the ceiling collapses and Jackram makes an entrance. Jackram asks for a slightly more private audience and threatens to tell the world something about the generals in his famous last stand. The girls are allowed to be boy soldiers, but that's not good enough for Polly. She kissed the Duchess. Alice rises and channels the Duchess who remembers a kiss.

She promotes Jackram, reminds frock, and tells the troops to go home. Polly is to take the truce to the enemy and stands up to Strappy on the way. Jade flirts violently and Polly demands vimes as she waves the flag. Maladek finds time to come out before Polly sits down with vines to talk offers of food and gods. Everything is fine for a minute. Paul has his painted chalks. The day goes on, Shufti doesn't find a husband, frock patronises, the prince isn't happy, but Polly twitches a leg and shakes a hand.

She gives Jackram a tobacco pouch and talks about the town of Skritz and his plans for the future. Upon his oath, he is not a violent man, but he might visit his family. Six months later, after Waza finished things and they all went home, the school is burned down and Shufti's happy at the inn. There's room is abounding and war is returning. Polly gets one last gift from Jackram, makes notes, finds a uniform and sets off to grab the cheese. Maladek's joining and they're off to find the others. There's other ways to fight this time and new little lads joining up.

In a full circle moment, Polly promises to look after them. Nice. Yeah, a lot happened. It did. That's been edited. That was a much more than a page, I don't think, was it? I'm getting a feel for it as I listen. That was good.

I didn't cheat with the margins. If I had, I probably could have got it on a page. Who would you be deceiving? Literally myself and also slightly less scrolling. Helicopter and loincloth watch are still riding high off last week's helicopters, but for this week, we have laundry implements that spin in various ways. Okay. And the hint of the handle-driven kitchen implement, right?

Yes, that too. Yeah, sure. And for loincloths, I've chosen the bum roll on the girl's uniform. Yeah, very much so, yeah. Quotes. Do you want to go first? Yeah, sure. So basically just following on from last week because I just fucking in love with how

Jackram's described all through this book. Yeah. Jackram stood there, shining like the sunset. The light glinted off his shake-o-badge, polished to the point where it would blind the unconscious with its terrible gleam. His face was red, but his jacket was redder, and his sergeant's sash was the pure quill of redness, its very essence, the red of dying stars and dying soldiers.

Blood dripped off the cutlasses, thrust into his belt. Also, that quote started with Jackram stood there, shining like the sunset. Right near the end of the book, when we get the photograph, we have, and sitting on the chair in the middle, the focus of it all, was sergeant made to Jackram, shining like the sun. And a little parallel before that, which I'm not sure if it was on purpose or just because it worked really well, but the sun was setting before Polly found Jackram again, and blood-red light shone through the high windows of the Keeps Biggest Kitchen.

So it's the sunset imagery again, lots of red. Do you know, I'm just, this book has made me fall in love with the color red, that's such an odd thing to say. But yeah, I don't usually use red that much in my paintings and stuff, but I've been doing some monochrome drawings and just red and everything, like I'm just really into the color red now. I love it. Odd side effect of this book.

What's your quote, Joanna? My quote is from when the Duchess is speaking through Alice. I have edited this down a bit because otherwise, I'd be running out like a page and a half of the book. Oh, yeah, copyright. Copyright bedtimes, all of that. And now I demand you do what the ignorant might feel is the easier thing. You must refrain from dying in battle.

Revenge is not redress. Revenge is a wheel, and it turns backwards. The dead are not your masters. You must invade Borogravia. In the name of sanity, you must go home. The winter is coming. The trusting animals are not fed. Old men die of cold.

Women mourn. The country corrodes. Fight Nuggan because he has nothing now, nothing but the poisonous echo of all your ignorance and pettiness and malicious stupidity. Find yourself a worthy god and let me go. Go invade the one place you've never conquered. What a fucking speech.

Hell of a speech. Hell of a speech. Just a bit about like the, oh, the animals don't mean to fight the men. Not with, yeah. Yeah. Like genuine chills reading that. And I've read this before, like a lot.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Okay. Characters. Nice. Where are we starting with those then?

I want to start with Mrs. Enid and the Laundry one, my favorite new 60s girl band. Excellent. Tell me about them. There's a brilliant description of Mrs. Enid and it's explained because the Laundry is so loud, everyone effectively has to lip read. The most mobile mouth Polly had ever seen,

her lips and tongue drew out every word like a big shape in the air. Yeah. There's just this great mix, especially from Mrs. Enid, but the other Laundry woman as well of like anger mixed with loyalty. Yes. Like they have their, the motherhood medals that do bring them comfort that they're sent after their sons are lost in war. And they are incredibly proud to be Borograveian

and they are loyal to Borograveia and all of their sons and brothers and husbands that are locked up in this keep or stuck out on the front line. Yeah. But they're also kind of furious at Polly and her group of soldiers because what can you really do to help? The clinging to the bit of comfort you've got and not being, not wanting to be faced with any more of that

because once you scratch the surface of that medal, it's all corrosion. Yes. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, no, they are, yeah, I didn't really think about the characters that much, but yeah, they are a really good example of what must be like bones deep in the country. Yeah, very much so.

There's also just a really good line, it was women's work and therefore backbreaking monotonous and social. Yeah, for sure. Which I thought was quite perfect. Absolutely is. Yeah, weirdly, some of my favorite descriptions and books are of that kind of thing. Descriptions of like women sitting together and doing works like that, just shelling peas, sewing, I just love that stuff.

There's lots of bits in the, in the Robin Hob books, when once Ketrican becomes queen and there's lots of her sitting around and tapestrying and sort of trying to work out how to be social with women in a way she hasn't had to before. Yeah, that's cool. Then we've got, we've got Igarina. Igarina, I don't have tons for all these characters, but I want to at least check in with them one last time.

I love the, you know, you have like silly bits from the book that aren't an important bit but stick in your brain and one of them is the description of Igarina once she's gotten changed. She'd even restyled one of the dresses into a dandel and looked like a fresh young maid from the beer cellar, just to look at her was to mentally order a large pretzel, which is sort of so innocent. It's a nice thigh rubby.

Yeah. It's just the acknowledgement of the kind of people who serve you at BFS, doesn't it? It's, yeah. Like there's a hint of goals. Like I'd wear it. I wouldn't wear a dandel and look like I project the idea of a pretzel. Yeah, yeah. And I like that she eventually, you know,

she sets herself up in the city and sets up effectively like a hospital dealing with women's problems. That's a satisfying end for her. Yeah, definitely. And then Tonka slash Magda and a bit of lofty slash Tilda as well. So Tonka definitely very, well, she is through the whole thing but quite combative in this one. She butts heads with Polly especially for the first like real,

this could be like a point of time. Yeah, they get like a full shouting match. And I like that they talk each other down from it very quickly. Yeah, that Polly is mature enough to go, I'm not going to say the next thing. Yeah. And let's sort of stop before we go too far. Tonka also gets one of my favorite comedy trait moments when they're about to go in and Polly's asking if anyone's brought a weapon.

And specifically, have you brought a weapon Tonka? No item with a sort of weapon like quality, anything with an edge. This, yes. Well, a woman can carry a knife, it's a sabre. I'm only using it like a knife, it's three feet long. Which is like, it's the same flavor of comedy trope as when someone's made to divest themselves of all their weapons and it's like an improbable amount. And the sock knives.

There's always like one last tiny little knife at the end from somewhere unexpected. Like slightly grim up, but also did make me chuckle. Polly says, I'm told it's a very painful way to die. Who buy? And then scary in a different way. Lofty. We get her, like I won't go into the details of it because it's a really fucking just tough paragraph to read, but we get a bit more of what happened to Lofty

before they left the school and why she blew up the mill. Practice again, doing what he does very well when it comes to showing, I would say clearly, what has happened without being at all gratuitous or lingering on it. Yeah, yeah. It's like, this is what has happened and also done in a way that if you're reading it at an age before you can deal with that, you don't read it like that. Because I don't think I read it like that the first time. No, I think it took me a second.

Well, no, I mean, you were a bit older. You probably would have. Yeah, I would have been 18 when I read this one. But in that moment after Lofty, Tonka explains what happened with Lofty, she talks about how what the house did to all of them, you know, was it all to the Duchess, I don't have middle gears. And then she's until the frightens me when she gets her hands on a box of matches. But then she says, you should see her face then though, it lights up and she's,

I just ship it a lot in that specific moment. There's something like very sweetly romantic about like, she enjoys how much her girlfriend's face lights up when she gets fire, even though obviously it's dangerous and terrifying. Oh, look at her little face. She's got the fire extinguisher. Oh, she's having such a nice time. Oh, please drag her away.

Also likes a kind of, I think it was described maybe in the last section, actually, but how you can see the fire like coming from inside the eyes as well as reflected in the eyes. Yeah, and something to see it when there's fire in the eyes described in a non positive way. I mean, it's not a negative way, but it's like the fire of destruction in someone's eyes. And no, you don't often, you do get it, but usually with very aggressive villainous characters, you know, if I like the calm, let's watch the world burn fives. Yes. And of course, eventually the school does burn down and a bank gets robbed. And Polly is sort of pleased to hear it when it happens.

Can you explain this to me? Is it Tonka, not Tonka, sorry, lofty who burnt down the two buildings that they mentioned burning down as they were leaving? I assume that's what it was meant to imply. Okay. Yeah, I've always assumed that, but it's never really made clear. I feel like that's almost like a thread that it's a bit of a loose end. Yeah, slightly, although I feel like I might just miss the sentence. Entirely possible. And then we have Shafty, Betty. Yeah, fucking yeah.

And I love it. So right before they go into the keep, they've learned the cheese munger song and they have this conversation where Shafty is sort of, well, I don't get why she didn't tie her own garter and they all have to agree it's a silly song. It is a silly song. They all agree. But then they go in and they're accused of being men dressed up as women. So she lifts her skirt to prove otherwise. And then says to Polly, I may not be clever, but I'm not stupid. And I like that they do the silly song that really emphasizes her dizziness and then immediately

follows up with her getting being the one that gets them into the keep. Yeah, it's the difference between being unworldly and being stupid. Yeah, she's like, I have something that could prove that we are not. And then she gets to make this really great choice for herself at the end, where she's presented with a blonde Johnny with a carbuncle in the correct place. Correctly placed carbuncle. Very important. That's what I always say, you'll look for the correctly placed carbuncle. My favorite indie band.

And she makes a decision. She says, you know, that's definitely not him. And I don't want to widow his penchant either. And then still does the slapping. I want my sixpence back. Absolutely. And I like that we don't, you know, that could have been a lesser writer may have decided it was a misunderstanding after all, then he did get Shanghai and yeah. But it's like, no, he's a little dickhead young man who only showed enthusiasm once I've all mentioned it. Yeah.

And when she says she doesn't want to help positive looking defiant, since she was not naturally a defiant kind of person, it wasn't quite the look she thought it was an ought to have been having overtones of the hemorrhoid sufferer. But the effort was there. It's a game for shafty. Good job. But she gets a nice happy ending. She moves into the end. She effectively has a family now. Yeah. And she's named a little boy Jack. Yeah.

That pleases me. Yeah. And then it was a has a bit, a bit of a day. Yeah. So main character as it turns out, and I love that twist. Not really a twist just so much as a little reframing. Polly's realization that it wasn't really her story after all. She was a side character in someone else's very big story. And I like that we don't see, we hear about it after the fact, but we don't see the bit where Alice leads the army to the Dutch's home and what have you.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a really interesting choice. And I think absolutely the right one. I'm not sure it would have occurred to me to do that bit as a flashback at the end. No, but it fits because it's we're following Polly's story, even though it's not, even though there was a bigger story happening. Yeah. And it's, that's like the historical event. That's not the day to day personal relationship stuff that this is built on. Yeah. I also love, so obviously I mentioned the whole thing of Nuggan being dead. It was in my quote. But when she's talking about it earlier, when she's still in the laundry,

and she's trying to explain that these effects of belief and prayer on Nuggan and the Duchess and sort of Nuggan died because the belief became in the system and this like feedback loop of hatred rather than any worship of natural God. And so now all this prayer and belief has kind of abused the Duchess with power, but not enough. And what's great, I'm sorry, I'm going to get flayley. No, please don't. This was the entire plot of Small Gods was that people had stopped believing in arm and started believing in the system. And practically it's such an incredible writer

that something that was a plot that was a whole book can now be a B plot, a side thread. And we can understand it because it's just so handily delivered. And it's built into the world. Yeah. He's done his world building and the pieces are there to be used now. And now we can use the power of belief however we want. So I really need to say power of belief there. Absolutely. That's good. That's fine. We can get that at least twice more. We 100% can. And then, you know, Polly comes around and starts believing.

If you don't believe, who are you trusting to lead you out of the grip of dead men, which is a fucking chilling line? Absolutely. A lot of play on the theme of echoes as well, which is quite cool. That it's kind of the echo behind Vos's voice that starts to give Polly something's going on, the fact that Nuggin is just like a malicious echo now. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. After the sort of moment of transformation where she's been the Duchess when she sort of collapses,

folded up very gently, collapsing like a sigh, which I love as a line. The Duchess as a character is really interesting because we never know her as the woman she was, apart from this one recollection of her dancing stiffly with a young officer, because what she's become in death is something completely different. She says, I was a foolish woman and she speaks with divinity. Yeah. Because she's just been made a God against her will. And what a thing to be made a God against your will.

I think that's a horror. That's like a cosmic horror. Yeah. Yeah. To me, the cosmic horror version of that is part of American Gods, bit of a spoiler actually, even though it's quite an old bit, but there's a bit in that. I feel like we can spoil American Gods on this podcast. It's been out long enough. Yeah. Well, if you read it in the lake. Yes. Yes. Right? Yeah.

And yeah. Yeah. I never really read it that way before until this time, obviously, we're trying to pick apart characters. I'm like, yeah, that's such a sad plan. Obviously, like we're told explicitly she's crying and it hurts her to hear all these pleas that she can't hear, but it's just to be made to exist in this way. Yeah. And it was a really... You wonder whether she keeps existing in some way because she's kind of let go, isn't she? And Waz has had a moment, but does that mean she's now free from all the prayers,

won't stop? I would like to think she's hanging out and done manifesto now. She's been given nuggin spot. And she maybe gets to have a nice little sit down. Yeah. Maybe she can move some slightly bigger things around. Maybe blind IO is flirting with her a bit, but she's not going to have any of that nonsense. Yeah. And yes, possibly moving a goose. You know what they say, retire and move the goose. It sounds like they could.

So, Melodyte slash Melodyta love the absolute thud of her sort of after the fact gender reveal while Polly is mostly thinking about latrines. I felt really bad for her. Everyone else got their moment and Polly's like, I know she kind of backtracks a little bit there, but it's like, I feel like if somebody came out to me, even if I was like, I know, and it's not a big deal, I would be like, oh, like, make as much of a deal of it as they were. Does that make sense? I get that. But also, I think it took a second for Polly to register because she was thinking so much about soap. And I would be thinking about soap in that situation.

Yeah. I do like Melodyte going into her sort of wanting to get away from the vampire gender roles of underwired nightgowns, which I understand I wouldn't want an underwired nightgown. No, absolutely not. That sounds very uncomfortable. It certainly does. And there's a little bit of a not a call back, just a continuation of a theme in Carpe Giaculum, the lacrimosa. Lacrimosa. Lacrimosa was a bit like that, wasn't she? She was like, no, not wearing your stupid nightgown, whatever. I'm going to wear jeans and a t-shirt or whatever the discolour of Linus. Not an underwired nightgown. Forever 121.

But no, to your point, I do, I did feel bad for her in that moment, but I do like that Polly then acknowledges it and sort of says, like, I am happy for you, but also like really fucking tired. I can see both sides there. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think it's just because I love Melodyte so much. I do. So one other thing, people ship understandably Polly and Melodyte. We don't go into shipping stuff a lot in this book, but I 100% see it and support it in this very specific situation. Before we actually started talking about Monsterous Regiment, we got an email from someone who said, so Melodyte comes back at the end to join Polly on the boat and says,

this sort of looks a bit sheepish and said, I thought I'd try again. And it has been claimed that Melodyte was doing that out of romantic feelings for Polly in some way. And apparently that's been confirmed by Terry Bratchett himself. And the reason this listener was emailing us is to ask if we could find that confirmation because the only evidence so far we found on the internet is on the TV tropes page that says that that has been confirmed by word of God. I tried real hard. The investigation is ongoing, but so far we've not found confirmation. However, you know what? I like it. I'm going to say it's true. Yeah, I like it. Polly and Melodyte date. Yeah, the thing is, even if with this kind of ship, you don't need to ship

that they ended up together and feel weird, Bime's Veterinary about it. Like you can just say they had romantic feeling for each other. It either did or didn't go somewhere later. Like these things happen, you have a moment. And I think that that moment can definitely be read that way. Yep. And I really like Melodyte. Anyway, so Polly. Polly, I like that she's halfway down this list. That's good. That's relevant to her view of the whole thing. Very much. I also wanted to use her to transition from talking about the squad to talking about Jackram. That makes sense. Yes. I love when she is dealing with Blouse while they're in the keep and she is well on the way to graduating from the Sergeant Jackram School of Reput Management. Yeah.

She goes well into it, though, doesn't she? She's a natural. She is a natural sergeant if ever there was a sergeant. She's learned a lot very quickly. And yeah, it is a bit terrifying. I think it's very sweet when she sort of does her coming out moment with Blouse and explains they're all women and he sort of does this, are you sure? And she says, yes, I check every day, sir. So yeah, we talked about last week that she was still not quite ready to admit to herself that this had become about more than just finding Paul. Obviously, she very much does admit it to herself in this section. She was beyond plans now. She was seeing this all the way through to the end. When Vime's, after she's had this conversation with her, says like,

we've got Paul. That's what this was all really about, wasn't it? And she says like, no, it's just how it started. Yeah, that was a lovely line. Yeah. That was very, very tally. Oh, the moment when she walks in to Paul's cell and there's the buzzard, and then he's drawing the buzzard and Polly could forgive Ankh Morbog anything someone had found Paul a box of colored chalks. Like I got a little bit teary. Who are we going to head count and found the chalks? Park and Rage. Rage, yeah. Possibly with Bucky's help. I feel like maybe the two of them teamed up on that a little bit. I'm going to save talking a bit about Polly's gender identity specifically for later because I have just a lot of thoughts and feelings about Janna.

When she goes to shake hands with Heinrich and then does the little knee twitch, which is a very satisfying moment where he collapses into a crouch, protecting himself. I talked in the first section about how it felt like there were some similarities between Polly and Tiffany. After she does the knee twitch, you get the like, this was not a fairytale castle and there was no such thing as a fairytale ending, but sometimes you could threaten to kick the handsome prince in the hammered eggs. That felt very Tiffany-ish because Tiffany thinks so much about what her role would be in the fairytale. It reminded me of you a lot because, oh, long time ago, back when we were still living together, you were doing some of those inverted fairytale things.

I was like, obviously, Janna's just read this, so I don't need to screenshot it for her, but if I was reading this, normally I would have screen shot that and sent it to you. I forgot I did those. And yeah, with Jackram's help, she realises that she was really just a part of Buzz's story. What do you think about at the end, her doing the recruiting and becoming Sergeant Jackram like that and doing the whole from the yelling at people and everything? Do you think she's going to become, and not in the same way exactly, but a new Sergeant Jackram? Or do you think this is just a nice closing the circle bit and she'll become a bit less bombastic maybe? I don't know. What do you think? I feel like she'll be not a Sergeant Jackram because her whole idea of going back

to this specific war, putting her uniform on, she wants to go and find Blouse, is to figure out how to fight this war in a different way, to use the klax, to use the press. I feel like she'll probably end up in some kind of, like if we just head cannoning here, obviously, but I feel like she'd end up in more of a political position potentially. I do think within this war thing, she'll be a Jackram figure, but a very different kind of Jackram figure. So she's been given Jackram's toolkit, but it can use it like her own on top of her own skills. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, that makes sense because Jackram's whole thing was, I'm fighting for the army for the Duchess, but this, that, and Polly's like, I'm fighting for a bit of fucking common sense, please. Thank you.

Okay. Yeah. And kind of for the Duchess because the Duchess would like us all to have some common sense, please. Thank you. Yeah. Definitely. So Jackram. So Jackram. Really early on when they're going into this camp around the army, I loved his getting recognized by guys like, oh, you fought my dad in the bar after the battle, and he did this, and then you hit him like this, and he hit him like this. And you remembered the name and made the guys day. He thought you were dead, Sarge, but you were chilling. I'm not. I bet you were chilling. I'm not. Everybody says that when they met him. Did you notice that like in going into the court and that like, I heard you were dead and like, well, hi. Imagine people telling you that every time you walked into the room.

I'm going to start telling you that every time we see each other. We message each other eight times a day, but still. Yeah. It's mainly to upset other people around us, I should say. Yep. So yeah, when he has this moment where he has that hangman, and someone else who works called hangman and Polly knows one dropping your dad, Jackram beamed as a master to a keen people. We have these moments of pride, which comes to right at the end. I trust you like I trust myself, he says to Polly, which I think is her. That's when she gets promoted to sergeant. That might not be when she a major or whatever tells her she's a sergeant, but that's when she gets promoted to sergeant. Yeah. Oh, another little

closing circle bit. The last section, there was a quote about Jackram going and Polly, you'll be a sergeant and her going, I don't want to be and I'm going, yeah, right. And then in this bit, he's like being reluctant to do Polly's plan about going home and that. And she's like, yeah, right. Once she was already a sergeant. So he's like, your thing came through pretty quick. So I think we'll manage the chewing tobacco bit. Oh, it sits down with like the rooms wrapped attention. Yes. Yeah. That's it. Reminded me of granny playing cripple, Mr. Onion. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just doing an unpleasant habit to throw everybody off while you're doing something else. I quite like, I don't think that's what he's doing. It's more like a little ritual thing.

But just how much you can command a room that he can sit down and do chewing tobacco mid-tribunal. Also speaking of tobacco, I thought maybe him getting the tobacco pouch of Polly. It seems to me very cigar case parallel. It's another lovely smoking paraphernalia item. I kept finding myself drawing parallels and opposites between Vimes and Jack Rum and this one. Oh, I hadn't really even thought about putting the two up against each other. Oh, so my other thing about that is then. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm not too playly. It's just a couple of bits, just because they're next to each other so often is the contrast in the way they word their uniforms, in the way that Jack Rum, he is

very much the uniform. The comment I sent you earlier. Yeah. No, I was going to bring that up. I'll mention it quickly now. I think it was Transmarsion on Reddit commented that they were thinking about the way the boys are sort of the squad, like their gender is soldier and presenting a soldier and Jack Rum's identity is so soldier, he doesn't want to take it off. And there's a lot of gender feelings there. And even says, like, this is the place where I draw the line. And it's taking off as uniform. Yeah. And I think that's true for both of them. They just wear it in such a different way. So Jack Rum's is so polished, it's going to blind you with its terrible gleam.

And Vines is very deliberately not polished, but his badge is going to sink into his flesh before he lets it go. Yes. And we are talking about Vines's guard's uniform, not his tucall uniform, because that one can go as quickly as possible. Yes, exactly. As long as the badge, the badge is the thing. But yeah, no, I had a bit of fun comparing the two. Yeah. There's a line, Jack Rum put up with Blouse because you've got to have an officer. If you don't have an officer, some other officer will take you over. I thought I thought it was a really good line. And that goes into some more gender stuff I'm going to talk about later. But just as that, this idea of almost finding an officer for yourself, like Blouse will do, because the other officer that

may be thrust upon me might be much worse. Yes, definitely. Yeah, take one you can control a little. Yes. And then him getting his promotion and stuff. Oh, well done, Captain Blouse. Not a Captain, Sergeant. Oh, you're not sorry. We'll see what happens. A lot can happen in a day. That same section that's when Blouse, not Blouse, Jack Rum starts organising everything once the Duchess has appeared. He was a Sergeant Major in a room full of confused Ruperts, and he was happier than a terrier in a barrel of rats. Oh, yeah, I missed that bit. We brought back the terrier. We have. Oh, and again, finds a terrier. Parallel. That bit actually I did want to mention because what he's organising as a surrender is an end to the war. And he's doing

it with joy in his heart because the Duchess has told him to, and that to me just absolutely shiningly shows that his belief was in the Duchess, which is quite interesting if you think about it, because the rest of them didn't seem to react in quite the same way. They got it and they went along with it and they understood what had happened. But Jack Rum just with joy in his heart, like the Duchess was his. I think the others were quite shamed by it because the Duchess is pointing out like, you've been stupid. Stop fighting the stupid war and go and look after your country. Whereas because Jack Rum was a Sergeant, he was never the one in charge of the war. So he doesn't have to feel stupid about it. He can just joyously accept that is the

Duchess once and that is what he will engender to happen. And he is soldier. He did soldier well. Your sins were soldier sins and not the worst of them at that, the Duchess says to him, which I thought was a great line. Goes back to a bit about your war versus murder thing, doesn't it? Yeah, a little bit. And then afterwards, when he's in the kitchen and all of the kitchen women are kind of dancing attendance on him a little bit when Polly sits down with him and he's got his beer and he's got his dripping. Absolutely. Yes, for some international listeners, that is a real snack, although I don't think many people in the UK drink. Yeah, I think we must have had dripping on toast. I think so. And I think practically it must have enjoyed that as

a child or something because it's always written with such love. There's definitely a love of burnt crunchy bits. But this, let me get his whole story in the reminiscence about his son and the reveal of Skritz and the moment where he says, Blake showed me a sword, he got off him, didn't know the connection, but it was a proper nice order, the beautiful scroll work. The pride that he's got there is such a beautiful thing. Yeah, absolutely. I'm so happy for him. And then Blouse, Blouse, such Daphne. Excellent leadership. Much more competent to ironing than neck breaking. Yep, yep. Which, fair, has more experience in one than the other.

Yeah, I think, speaking of someone very bad at ironing, even I am better at ironing than neck breaking. Yeah, I'm not great at ironing, but I'd rather iron a skirt than break a neck. As they say. His reaction, though, when he learned that they're women, they share historical excitement. I like that. Careful, he's come over a bit historical. Polly apologizes. He says, good heavens, you don't have to be sorry. Do you understand what a fun story this is? I was like, this is so fucking cool. Have you not heard of all of these amazing, you haven't cut off any un-ers, have you? No, no, no un-ers. Thank you. But again, it's one of those, like, one of the specific places in which Blouse is competent.

He knows his history well. He has probably more context than a lot of the army for how effective women soldiers are as women soldiers, not as women pretending to be men soldiers. Yeah. Interesting that he allows himself to be sardin-ted by Polly more so than he did by Jackram. And I wonder if that's just because he was very much in his depth at the point where Jackram was overstepping, whereas now he's very much, this is a soldier thing. I think there was a combination of being out of his depth. And with Jackram, it was very obvious that he was being sardin-ted because Jackram is so sergeant, because Polly was just a corporal and an acting corporal at that. I think that there might have been a bit of naivety that he

wasn't noticing because it's not from someone who does that sort of thing. He'd expect that sort of thing from Jackram, but Polly's clearly just being very helpful. Yes, Pelx, well done. And I loved every time that he stood up for them. Yes. Like the yelling to get blank, it's some fire word and they, oh, I say when they said, well, make sure you don't talk to anybody and all of that. Stick it up your jumper, yes, which was named after. I'll just put jumper, shall I? Okay. And then we could not have the anti-blouse, as it were, the worst, strappy, Brackets Urgh. Brackets Urgh, that is his surname. However, did lead to one of my favourite lines in the section because it's so fucking funny, but it's just, and you ran away when you were told you were going

into combat, you little dog's pizzles, said Tonka. Polly said, you pissed your drawers. It's so schoolyard and so effected in front of all the offices. Just imagining that moment, I read that several times about that, fucking fantastic. So satisfying. I also like the kind of legal shit with strappies as he's a captain and he was a political and he had taken it upon himself to investigate Jackram and some paperwork discrepancies which frog her rumps over and eventually I suggest you blur what her rump means. And everybody looking away when Polly beats him off of it at the end. And he's trying to justify runging through their packs and Polly's like, right, so if you say

you suspect this being women, go on, go on, say you left us to the mercy of the... But even after all of it, like when just before Polly hits him, it's been revealed that they're all women, they've been accepted as women, the Duchess is fucking spoken. And when Polly confronts him, he says, we knew there were women getting in, we just didn't know how far the rot went. He is still referring to women as rot after all of that. Yeah. Did he see all of that though? Oh no, he wasn't in the room for that. He got excluded, yeah.

Yeah. But even so. Yeah, no, absolutely even so. He's such a prick. Do you think after all of this, he probably ended up being run off or either run out or he run off? He was not in the military after this. Yeah, yeah. I don't know, he had some horrible accident and no one's that sad about it, I've decided. Yeah, absolutely. Because that's a happy ending for me.

Happy head cannon. Perfect. Cool. And then Vimes. Vimes, yeah. Another great moment of seeing him from someone else's perspective. And this is in relation to guards being a bit rapey towards the laundry women. Apparently, some big milord from Aint Maupok was in charge of things and had ordered it stopped. Yeah. So good effort.

I think my little note next to that one was a heart emoji, the benefits of making notes on my phone. He was some kind of wizard. They said he could see things happening everywhere and lived on raw meat. Yeah, that sounds right. I like that, just the little joke through line. Yeah, just quickly on Lord Rust also being there. Also brackets, because he's not available. So it's Lord Rust, who is the one who goes to the kitchen and presents the offer for them all to go home.

While Vimes is laughing in the background, he looked like a man enjoying the show. And that's one of those things where the book itself has enough context clues that that guy laughing in the background is this guy Vimes, because this is like a really good standalone Discworld novel, although it's got these characters that we're familiar with. And reason I bring this up, this is one of the, I think probably one of the first Discworld books I read when I kind of got into it. Yes. I read it fairly early on, definitely before I'd read most of the watch books.

Yes. So that scene just totally works, is really funny, but it's so much better when you have all the context for who Lord Rust is and what Vimes thinks of him. Especially when we so recently read the Night Watch and yeah. And the book doesn't need to provide any context in it for the Lord Rust and Vimes relationship, but it's really fucking funny. Yeah. Speaking of the context actually, what I did note down was he was quite bad at ambassadors today.

Like the stuff, like what I would say is pretty obviously not great stuff to say to the one person you're negotiating with. So what are you proud of kind of stuff that just may probably say. And it's not just that it's Boro Gravia being weird about national pride or whatever. Sam Vimes knows that Ang Maupok is the same way in a way. He wouldn't like either, I guess, but the thing is that's realistic. He's not a great ambassador. That's not what he is.

He is a fantastic blunt instrument. Yes. And this is quickly what was needed. In that moment actually where he's having that conversation about what is Boro Gravia, what to be proud of, he says, from this desk here, the only thing your country has to be proud of right now is your women. And it's a really good callback to part one when they were all in the tent and Waza says the best bits of this country are in this tent right now.

Yeah. He does a nice callback with the shaving as well, doesn't it? Doesn't he? He says people seem to set a lot of store by shaving and that's an either, is that a US buying on us then or just a nice little internal callback? Or it doesn't matter, it was just a nice little line. And yeah, just getting to see him not only from another perspective, because it's a book that isn't a watch book, but another perspective that Polly doesn't realise who he is when he's like lounging about at the back of the crowd. And eventually he manages to claim them before they have to present this truce conversation

with, say, a Lord Rust. He's very mischief spirit, I feel, in the moment where he's like hanging out looking like a sergeant. He's having fun. Yeah. Like if it was a TV show or something, you can imagine he would be like the ghost that the character doesn't realise is a ghost for a minute until he talks to you afterwards. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like pulling faces behind them.

Yeah, no, I can very much picture that one. He also gets the, he says, I've completely improved that pronunciation. He's been Ein Berliner. Yeah. The JFK moment. What did he say? Do you know what he said? The JFK one. I forgot to look at that. He said something like Ich bin ein Berliner, but Berliner was a type of doughnut.

Oh, okay. Okay. So it's like direct. But he was trying to say, I am the citizen of Berlin. Oh, perfect. So yeah, so Vaim says I am a cherry pancake. And it's true. He is. He is a cherry pancake to all of us. And then finally, Angua. Angua.

And the excitement around the rest of the girls when they're like, she's a woman and a sergeant and she gets to be. And she spoke down to that captain. And she's got like really good hair, which I know isn't that important. But when you've like had to cut all your hair off and pretend to be a boy for a while, especially like Polly who had her ringlet stolen, I can imagine there's a bit of a moment of, I can do that. Yeah. You've got a choice.

Yeah. I think that's the envy as much as like the genuine hair envy, isn't it? The fact that she was allowed to talk to the captain, by the way, do you think that's because she was like part of the ambassador team? Yeah. Do you get like a special status? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I feel like in general, the Ang Moor pot clock just get ranked a little bit higher

in this military situation because they're the ones who kind of been sent to resolve it. Interesting that all of these countries seem to have the same signifiers of what ranks they are. Yeah. It's something, so in my trying to find that polyamelodite quote, I spent a lot, I read a lot of Reddit threads about this book. Oh yeah, I bet. And oh God, I hate people sometimes. I would have been much older forums. One thing people kept pointing out that was like a plot hole or a well-building fail is that it

doesn't really establish like, are they all speaking more porky and do they all somehow know that or are they speaking Barograveian to each other and is Barograveian and Slovenian? And I was like, I really like that the book doesn't bother to say who's speaking what language when. Yeah, they'll be very tedious. Yeah, you don't need it. Yeah, there's no plot hole. That's a decision. You can have a bit of suspension of disbelief that everyone understands each other. You don't need to babelfish it.

Yeah, absolutely. I also like Angwa's moment of after the Vimes meeting when Polly's sort of trying to figure it out and she's like, yes, I am. Yeah, but I didn't say it. Yes, there's a certain way people don't ask. Oh, poor Polly. But she means well, she's not prejudiced against Angwa for being a werewolf. She's sort of curious because she's not met a werewolf before.

Interesting that Angwa's moral code as well is I won't tell if I only found out through werewolf powers. Yeah, I like that. When she started that admittedly fairly small bit of explanation, I did think, oh, that's cool. She isn't telling because it's an agenda thing. I was like, no, it's a werewolf. Okay, fine. Yeah, also fine. Well, it's a bit like her paying for chickens, isn't it?

She wants to live as if she is human as much as she can. That's a fair point. Yeah, it's definitely some layers on that one. They are layers and layers and layers and she's only basically a cameo. Locations, I wanted to quickly talk about the edge of orbit. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's sort of a large portable city. It has only one employer and it manufactures dead people,

but like all cities, it attracts citizens. It was really weird because as I was like doing my notes for this section, I just picked up like a fantasy trilogy I quite like that I fancied rereading because I've read it so many times, it's quite like reading. But the first book has a big like battle in it. And one of the characters is temporarily a sex worker in this caravan of sex workers who are following the army and setting up by the side of the army. And it's very much like, oh, hey, there's that thing happening in both books at the same time.

So we have the solid doves, a house of good repute, which I think is meant to be the soiled doves. It is like a comedy brothel name that has been used in other things, I think. Like it's a tropey thing being referenced, not just Pratchett being gross. I'm not sure I'd sort of gross exactly just like, oh, yeah. I like that it points out the hypocrisy of Nugnism. Men have always found space in their religion for a little sinning here and there. I like Jackram playing the kind of big, spendy character.

It's quite fun to read. Yes, he knows the tropes of the big fat sergeant and he can play whichever one suits him best at that moment. Yes, especially the like phonetic spelling of Boudoir. I also don't love the obvious like the comedy of three thin ones and one fat one. Yeah, yeah. Of comfort being the armchair being mostly comfort and standing up. That was a lazy joke.

But yeah, I thought it was an interesting concept to talk about because yeah, if the army has dug in for that while you are going to end up with this city full of people because people are alive and need to cook and eat and live and apparently also shag. Of course. I feel like I've read about this in either another Pratchett book or another book where it wasn't the main event, if that makes sense. And I'm trying to remember what it is. But what like brothel tents on the edge of a war.

Yeah, yeah, it'll come back to me one day. Maybe it was one of the Robin Hood ones actually. Fuck, I don't know. It might have been brothel tents on the edge of the war is a great indie album title. It is. That's all. That's all the locations. We did the Keep last week, didn't we?

We did. The one thing I'll say is that the whatever they were using as a courtroom, I quite like that Pratchett said something about the circle of friendly fire. And then the next sentence talked about the semi-circle of tables that had set up in the courtroom. I thought it was a nice little, I don't want to say parallel because that seems geometrically wrong when we're just talking about shapes. But you know what I mean? Nice connection.

Actually, also one other thing as they walk into the ballroom and Polly's originally like, God, are all these people here for our thing? And then realizes that it's still an active war room and they're doing stuff at the back. Oh, yeah. That's another moment for Polly of not being the main character. Yes, definitely. Yeah.

Consent truck circles of friendly fire. That's what I should have said a minute ago. Marvelous. Little bits we liked. Little bits we liked. Would you like to start us off? Yeah, I've got just just a couple of sayings I liked that just sounded like they should have been adages forever.

Adages, adages. But are not there from this book. If the landslide is big enough, even square pebbles will roll. Okay, I like that. I like that. The pen might not be mightier than the sword, but maybe the printing press was heavier than the siege weapon. And kissing doesn't last.

I like that. Which is a nice little theme more than a added also love. It sounds like it's kind of a riddle as well. And it's like the court and saying it's like a kiss is like a gift you can return because she's returning the gift. But it's like, you know, I mean, yeah, it's good. What's your first one? What do we have here?

Something about singing again. Again, I'm not actually going to sing on the book. I was going to learn polyoliver and put it at the end, but then I got distracted learning German. Yeah. So obviously the song that inspires the in and out slash cheese munger's nickname is discussed. It involves a lady lying down to have her garter tied.

This came up on the podcast and I couldn't remember which episode it was. I think it was maybe the beginning of Reveal Man. That's a few, two ago, whatever. The idea of a folk song that begins with twizz a Monday in May or what have you came up and I said, no, we can't talk about that because it's a joke in a book we haven't done yet. Sure. And it was this one and it's Polly saying, yes, it starts in May.

It begins with twaz, QED. It's a song about sex. Yes. Which I like is a very specific like bullshit teenager know-it-all thing. Like, yeah, I know that's really about sex. Yeah. Also, a little throwback to Granny Weatherwax being very upset to learn about maypoles. Yes.

Oh, Granny Weatherwax. It's been an obscene month. I will always, I just wash bits as and when they become available. Not relevant, but remains one of my favorite disquelded sentences. Anyway, the actual origin of the song. Thank you to Annotated Pratchit for this. Before the 1881 reforms, there was a British Army regiment, the 69th foot, who were known as the Ups and Downs, mostly considered old veterans and raw recruits.

From Terry Pratchit himself, they, or in fact, one of them, is the subject of a folk song of a fairly generic kind in which, as an English folk singer once observed, a young lady is en route to Maidenhead when she loses her alesbury. So, Still I Span recorded a song called the Ups and Downs. And this does seem to be the inspiration is this flavor of folk song. As I was going to Ellsbury all on a market day, a pretty little alesbury girl. I met her on the way. Her business was to market with butter cheese and whey.

And we both jogged on to gather my boy's folder all dillow day. Oh, a folder all day. I know that kind of. There's some dillow day in there. Folder all in the hay. The Fair Maid's garter does come untied. And she has to have a little lie down to have it tied up for her. And while tying of her garter such sites, I never did see.

Possibly goped cheese. It is a particular flavor of sleaze that I. It's it's like with the mentally ordering a pretzel. It's it's an innocent flavor of sleaze that I find quite funny. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I like that. It's very wholesome. I rolly.

Yeah. We like a bit of wholesome sleaze. What do you like folkloric Britons? Anyway, sorry, where are we? I don't know. 2003. Somewhere like that. Garments.

Garments. Garment. If you were a military leader, what kind of garment would you want named after you? It would have to be a hat of some sort. If somebody was wearing a Joanna, they would be wearing a hat. Of course. A double hat. A miraculous, a double-hatted hat with a magnificent brim of some sort.

Possibly a plume. Nice. What about you? What garment would you like named after you? At least in outdoor gloves, I think. Yep. I respect that. Yeah.

Waterproof gloves. Highly underrated item for the outdoors. Having cold, wet hands is fucking miserable. It is the word. My I have a little travel coffee cup, but it leaks just slightly. And I like to take a cup of coffee to drink as I walk to work. But because it leaks slightly, I always have a slightly coffee damp hand by the time I'm at work. And it's very upsetting.

That was totally not needed. No, I just. As an aside. Sometimes I go to say things like maybe fix it or get a new one, but then I remember it to you. No, it's the apparently these cute cups are just like that. There's like a perfect amount of time to wait before you put the lid on. That makes things slightly less leaky. But I haven't found the sweet spot yet.

Get one that it doesn't have a sweet spot. Get one that just holds coffee. My sister bought it for me and she spent quite a lot of money on it and paid extra to get it, like my colors. It just seems like one of the major functions of a cup should be able to, you know, hold a normal range of coffee temperatures. I also don't use it that often. Sure. Yes, it's not settled.

Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I'm sorry. I don't mean to be a dick. It's one of those days. Be a dick to me. It's fine. Right. So garments named after people. Speaking of things named after people.

Blouse wants their names to go down in the history books, and he wants to win the highest accolade that a gallant officer may obtain, which is having either a foodstuff or an item of clothing named after one. Absolutely. So some historical precedent, both Raglan and Cardigan were big names from the Crimean War. I'm knitting a Raglan jumper at the moment, actually. I know. I'm not sure what it is.

So Raglan is when the sleeve connects to the neckline rather than the shoulder. So, you know, like a baseball tee, where the sleeve is this color coming. I like those jumpers. Yeah. Okay, cool. So obviously, the big obvious one that I think General Frock is referring to is Wellington, who had both a pair of boots and a beef dish named after him. Beef frock.

Who doesn't love? Beef skirt is the same, but it's a cut. Yeah, that's a cut and not named after a military hero or an item of clothing. No. And it's very sweet. And a frigid ear skirt. Blouse is trying to come up with these foodstuffs. I've got this idea for a sort of pastry, so I did rum or a dish.

Probably just being mean, though. Why can't you just go along? Again, sometimes Polly is just a bit of a dick. So I just go along with it. What harm's that going to do? But he's got a point that sometimes it's an existing dish just with a name. Like Tatatang is kind of a famous-ish one that is named after the sister's Tatang. But this idea of this kind of upside-down apple tart had existed for a very long

time before it was named the Tatatang after these sisters. Exactly. Yeah. And I very much doubt like nobody had put beef in pastry before Wellington. That's quite a long time ago. Originally, it was a very specific recipe created by a chef that involved truffles and mushrooms. Oh, okay.

Like the coronation trifle chicken. Yeah. Quickly, before we move on from foodstuffs, there's also a very good footnote about a mysterious thing with a handle and some screws. Every long-established kitchen has one of these. No one remembers why. It was generally for something that no one does anymore. And even when it was done, it wasn't done with any real enthusiasm,

such as celery basting, walnut shredding, or in the worst case, edible door mouse stuffing. Well, do you have a specialized funnel equipment? I suppose you would, wouldn't you? Yeah. I feel like you need one. Or maybe like an icing piper thing. Don't like that. Right, yeah.

Anyway, let's escape this topic of conversation, Francine. Oh, I like that. Although it's literally the same page, so I'm afraid we can't escape right yet. Right now, or quite yet. Just the whole bed trapped in the kitchen thing, and we're going back to this whole. It was ridiculous to expect that someone imprisoning people in some ad hoc cell would leave in all the ingredients to effect an escape. But nevertheless, she felt that some universal rule had been broken.

Again, going back to the last continent, the whole like, oh, I should leave my keys on a little hook for you to steal. Now, I'm not gonna really. Of course, I'm not always sat in the other. Yeah. Just fun. Love it. We're also right in the middle of a washerwoman trope,

which is the biggest gaping from Dale one. And there's a really good line somewhere about, I can't remember if it was this or the last section. It was like, dressing as washerwomen is for getting out of places. Military regulation, sir. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Okay.

One last little bit I liked, which is when Jackram's having his famous last stand, the sounds of battle were suddenly much louder. They poured into the room like water rushing to fill a hole in the ocean floor. But all the sound in the world could not have filled that sudden tremendous silence. And this is a really great callback to what we were talking about last week. The way the sounds of the birds made the silences louder. Yeah. Yeah.

This is like an almost developed version of it, isn't it? All right. Let's go on to the big stuff. Do you want to kick us off? Sure. One of the main underlying issues here and that Polly's kind of coming to terms with throughout is that she's fighting this pointless war, while at the same time, being in conflict for a much better reason with her own side,

which is such an interesting conflict put in the book, I think. From the beginning, the story that Polly's telling herself is always being referenced. And the fact that Polly starts to doubt it is always being referenced every step of the way. And I love that right up until the moment where in the theatre of her mind, the Duchess in burn to a cinder and her old life peeled away. And then she kind of comes to terms with the real motivations of it all, which is to change everything.

And she doesn't have a bullet pointed list, but everything, everything needs to change. Just the idea of having to fight these men who haven't actually done anything to you, when the ones in the cells right there or the ones at home hate you just as much and for probably much worse reasons than these ones do. And like Tonka's coming to terms with that. It really adds this like layer of hopelessness almost to it. Yeah, like every action has this like layer of futility. Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it's such a straightforward hero's journey in one sense. Whereas at the same time, always acknowledging that it's kind of pointless, yeah. And it still drives you along and makes you want to see the end of it and wants them to do what they're trying to do, even though, you know, they know what is there to go back to, what comes next. There's no shining holy grail at the end of this. There's no medals and home for tea pat on the head or there might be, but that's not great.

No, there's efforts to create systemic change and that's not the end to a journey. That's the next stage of the journey. Exactly. The journey. The journey. And then when we do get to the end, it's when it takes over this really sinister overtone, because when they've saved the day in the wrong way, yeah, suddenly there's this suggestion that they might be made to disappear, because the people in power, and this is before we find out that, you know,

the big twists and whatever, but even then at a certain point, because the people in power are so very in power and you are so unimportant and so nothing that you could just be disappeared. You are inconvenient. There is so much to change and you are just the easiest thing to change. Then the role of the international press comes in, and I really like that actually, even though it seems like such a small thing. The fact that William Deward, just by doing is usual.

No, we're going to keep asking questions, going to print this. What a great story. Oh my gosh, I think I'm going to get punched by this prince if I go and ask him, but I've got to. That's my job. Yes. Properly save their lives. Yeah, absolutely.

He's the one who inquires after them, and when Clarkson comes to them, he says, like, yeah, this William Deward guys wants to know what's happened to you lot specifically. And I think it's really cool that he gets to do this, because there's a lot of, not quite self-flagellation, but the sector flagellation in the truth, where Pratchett quite rightly interrogates, what's the point of this? Am I doing any good by telling the truth this way or the other? Is reporting this important? Am I doing more harm than good?

But here you get to see one of the things that is really important about the international press. And even though it's being presented as just this little dog skateboard story, yeah, at the end of the news, it's genuinely, it amplifies voices. I think that's it. Yeah. And then finally, the bit that always annoys me. This isn't the time to think about that.

We're at war. Yeah, very much so. This idea of we'll get to it later, dear. And then Polly's kind of acknowledgement that you have to start somewhere. Yeah. And there's a lot of talk about that on maintenance phase, is the theme I keep thinking of, just like when things change, there's this really frustrating period of this is better, but it's still not what it should be.

And yeah. And I mean, obviously, when I'm talking about this, I'm talking about the whole gender issue, which is the main theme. And I think what you've got a lot of thoughts on, which is where we save some room by only giving on two or three huge tendons today. Plus the other little ones. So gender, an unhinged rant. I've tried to at least organize my thoughts slightly and there's a few different.

There's two different gender flavors about this. There's the idea of womanhood and there's the idea of gender identity and starting with some of the ideas around womanhood, especially in the society. One thing I noticed that Polly thinks about a lot is this idea of needing some masculinity around to make your way in this world safely. And it starts with going to the brothel, their motivation for going into sex work is safety. Oh, that's it. Yes.

I said, well, what we're going to be, what, whether they say floating around loose or something. Yeah. I said, we're safe here. We don't get beaten. There's people looking out for us. I won't go into deeper sex work politics because I'm not educated enough to be nuanced about it. But Polly, in thinking about it, says, you know, a woman by herself is missing a man, while a man by himself is his own master, trousers.

I see these girls and I think idiots get yourself some trousers, which is, I don't love that from Polly, like thinking of them as stupid as if it just hasn't occurred to them to dress up as men. No, but like, you know, she's a teenager. Oh yeah, no, absolutely. It doesn't make me dislike the character, but you can also look at that and say, well, that's a bit comfortable on that. Actually, I will say, I like the fact that the odd bit of Polly being a dickhead is put in.

I know I complained about her being a bit of a dick, but it's like, that's good. I think it would have been really easy to make her this, like, also production. And he's managed not to do that. Yeah, we love it. We enjoy an imperfect hero. We do. Flawed hero, if you will. And you get the casual grossness of the guards when they're going up in the lift and it gets

stuck and there's this lucky what we have here. We've got to find some way to pass the time. And we know how it is for you ladies. But the squads, although they're all, they are women and they're dressed as women, they're not at risk from these men because they've had their trouser experience. So they know there's something they can do other than take whatever the guards are going to throw at them, which is to, you know, send Tonka to climb out the top and then hit them over the head with a stick.

Yeah. Yeah. Always the best case scenario, I would say. And before Blouse, when Polly comes out to Blouse, before Blouse can, you know, say, don't be sorry and have you heard of all these women warriors, blah, blah, blah. He does say a battlefield is no place for women and Polly's response is, well, the war isn't just on the battlefield. Yeah.

Yeah. We need trousers. And this runs alongside it as this sort of distinction of womanhood, women being weaker. And clearly that not being true, obviously. When the guards coming in bring the firewood are really nervous around Polly and the rest of the squad. And she's wondering why.

And Blouse says, perhaps they're sensible of the frailties of your sex. I didn't say I was. And when they finally admit to the newly rescued soldiers who were like, oh, don't you want to come and join the fun? And we're retaking the keep. Yeah. And then Polly's sort of like, well, no, we are women because they're referring to get them some trousers.

And I don't really want trousers because I'd be a woman dressed as a man, dressed as a woman, dressed as a mat. And I'd be so confused. I wouldn't know how to swear and I want to swear. And they're immediately locked up. And it was the point you were making. No one wants to know that a bunch of girls dressed up as soldiers and let out half an army because everyone knows girls don't can't do that.

Neither side wants them there. Yeah. And so you end up with this, when things do start to come out the other side, that patronizing side of it, it's better, but it's still not best. It's when you start getting for girls as a qualifier. The guard that brings the firewood says, very quite like, you're doing bloody well for girls. And they're told if they were men, they would have got medals. And they try to reframe it as well, don't they?

The general frock and that trying to say, all right, all right. Well, what if we say you were plucky young girls helping? Yes. Not soldiers. We need to make you fit into the existing narrative. And you have, when Polly presents the trees to a Slovenian captain and he says, aren't you these people and you did this and you're just women? And Polly lets the just go by.

But then he sort of says that at the corner is not like, good show, well done. And then when you get after the fact, DeWerd handles it brilliantly when he speaks to Polly. Because he can present things very, what comes off as very innocently and neutrally to try and get a response. And he says to Polly, frock said, you did wonderfully well for women. And as somebody who knows, Saccharisah. Again, I really want Saccharisah's take on all of this. Yeah, absolutely. Oh my gosh.

And what is it? Sorry. Polly sort of thinks somehow those words locked you away, patted you on the head and dismissed you with a sweetie. Oh, yeah. And it's absolutely right. Absolutely. He's got that fucking bang on.

And again, I think first section, I think we just said, you can tell this is written by a man who listens to women when they talk. Like the interview he did just after Monsters for a regiment, the one we linked to last week, he meant the interviewer asks him about writing women characters. I think it's phrased as and he says something I think I've attributed to George Martin before and he definitely did say, but I don't know who said it first. Let's find out one day, which is I just write them as people. I think that's being attributed to Neil Gaiman as well.

And I think they might have all just said it. Yeah, well, I've heard this one say it. But yeah, and then it was going on about how just like, I feel like women are actually more competent in most situations of things. And yeah, he's just I would find it hard to write an incompetent woman was the point. So you definitely get the idea that he has surrounded visibles and Tiffany's and from everything like I've read about his wife specifically and obviously everything we know about Rihanna, like I can very much see that.

Yeah, definitely. I think this book would have been before Rihanna started working in the games industry, but I can imagine there's a similar thing because it's such a male dominated industry that she was working in. Oh yeah, God. And I remember Pratchett's she was saying something like, oh yeah, Dad always said he imagined me like stomping down the corridors in very high heels, terrifying everyone. And that is what I've always like ascribe to do.

And I'm a big fan of like all of the games she's written on that I've played and everything, but also I am completely in awe of the fact that she can walk in those Christian Liberton heels. Oh yeah. Well, also not being at all tempted to try it myself. That's a very. Yeah, no, never. Well done you and I will stick to my boots. Thank you.

Anyway, so speaking of boots, Rihanna, I've heard they're made for walking and what I'll do is talk about the trial. Damn it. I thought we were going to go to uniform. Sorry, I tried. No, sorry. I will get to uniform, but I want to talk about the trial first. I love that frock is described as like a very handsome man with a full head of white hair.

I've still got so much hair to staff our eyes. Yes. There's a line that makes my skin crawl is when frock is immediately trying to dismiss the women and says you'll be placed in the charge of a responsible male. That makes me want to rip my own skin off. That's big Victorian phrasing, isn't it? Get in your asylum. The problem here is not that you're women, it's the persistent maintaining they are.

And what Polly and the rest of the squad are insisting on is being acknowledged for the work they've done while also being women and not just the work they've done while hiding parts of their identity. Yeah. They want to be soldiers and women, not soldiers who are secretly women or plucky women who helped them whenever soldiers. Yeah, yeah. And you can see what, apart from being horrible and patronizing in that, you can kind of see

a little bit of like frock's motivation and that if this is accepted, is mine coming out kind of thing. But yeah, there's a fear there. And Tonka's the one who calls it a gooey little lie to help with them. But Blouse is furious. Like Blouse is an ally here. He is not willing to have this. He wants them to be acknowledged for all the hard work they've done as exactly who they are.

Which is something I noticed. You have these men, these guards saying, actually, you do really well. This is quite cool. The male characters are often quite supportive of them, but it's the entrenched women who are trying to hold the girls back. So the frock and Janet and the other ones. Yes. Like Clarkston's supportive.

And I feel like Clarkston's kind of seeing a bit of her own potential there. She's younger, isn't she? She is younger. She's written as like young for a major, I think. Yeah. Yeah. She's maybe not spent 20 years trying to keep up the bit. And obviously, after Jackram forces this coming out in this conversation,

and it's when they all come out to each other. Like none of them knew that the others were women. They never worked together the way the squad did. And you know, Jackram's saying, oh, and I bet you kept an eye out and you helped some others up the ladder. And if they were as good as men, you promoted them. And frocks says, I promoted them if they were better than men. There's this higher standard, an expression of condescending benevolence,

and the use of the phrase, my dear. Young lady. And Polly says, like, actually, no, I'm a soldier. And frock's like, all right, we'll let that one slide because we've gone against quite a lot of protocol now, which is fair. I respect that. And Jackram eventually says that I expected better of them, but they were better than men at being men.

There's this idea of pulling up the ladder behind them. Yes, very that. Yeah, I've done this, but not quite pulling up the ladder. But yeah, making it so that this is the only place to be if you want to be one of them. You can't do your own thing. No, and you absolutely have to do it this way. And you've got to be better than everything else, which is another thing. Like, if you're a female or if you're a woman and you go into a distinctly male-dominated

industry, like, it's not enough to be good. Having worked as a chef, I've had a lot of, like, I have to not just prove I'm good, I have to prove I'm better. Yeah. Which I believe were. But still, shouldn't have had to. The bar was fucking low, to be fair. So I think that the way the book treats that womanhood and a lot of that really horrible

sinking shit is really fascinating. But to go into the gender identities, and I want to talk about Jackram, and I want to talk about Polybite, I want to talk about Jackram-verse. Yeah. Because it's a really great reveal. And I think almost anyone reading this, I kind of was like, Jackram is a trans man. Yeah, I can't see him any other way, really.

And if you notice the book at no point uses, whereas when, like, say, Tonka and everyone else comes out, it starts using female pronouns for them. Jackram is never referred to by female pronouns. Oh, yeah. Huh, not once, eh? So, no. Cool. I like the blatant lie that's been there the whole time.

While, obviously, I see Jackram as a man, also the kind of hints that upon my oath, I'm not a dishonest man. Well, yeah, especially as a trans man is not a term used at this point, and he's a mischief maker. So he's a little chaos spirit, putting little hints that no one will get, or that some people will get and be made very uncomfortable by, maybe. And I feel like his help of other women, of women coming up through the army, his little lads that he looked out for and helped, is almost a way to, like,

affirm himself and his own identity as a soldier above everything else. That's what we were talking about, this idea of, like, his gender is man, but it's also his gender is soldier. Yeah, and if there are other people who want their identity to be soldier, he will help them with their gender-affirming career. I don't want to say treatment, because it's all very thoughty. But it's also affirming to him in that, like, it proves that he's not the only one who could do it. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point.

The book that Practit recommended, there was quite a lot of stuff in there about how isolated these people were and how, because there was no language, even about lesbianism, there was no real word set. So there was quite a lot of stuff about people who maybe thought of themselves as a man because a woman being attracted to a woman wasn't a real thing. Yeah, so they must have been a man if they were attracted to a woman. Exactly, it's impossible because we're just working with a completely different context. Yeah, the language and ideas and stuff didn't exist then in the same way that they do now.

Yeah, Practit did mention in one of the forums that there was one or two recruiters who did, who were women dressed as men who were helping women join. Oh, cool. Although the one example I could find in that one book, it didn't sound like that friendly, it sounded like they were tricking them into doing it, like getting them drunk and things, but you know, it's still a thing. Still a thing, it's definitely still a thing. And so we have this theme of truths running, of big truths running through the book,

I think just because William's there and he brings truth with him. Yeah, helps. Threatful truth. Threatful truth. And you'll frequent it up. The line about the printing press being mightier than the siege engine, which is a really good setup, like just like about a four-poly's ending, when she's figuring out the different ways to fight the war,

is she now has that idea in her head? Oh, yes, of course, yes. Using things like the press and the clerks. But her suggestion to Jackram, One Last Lie, pays for all. But because Jackram is really, really directionless in this moment, like as much as he's relaxing with his dripping and his beer, he is also out of the army now. Like he's accepted, now he's had his One Last Stand, there's not much else he can really do.

Yeah. And so obviously he's got money and he's thinking about setting up a knocking shop or something. Polly is the one who says, you know, go home. Yeah. Go see your son, be, you know, glorious sergeant major covered in medals and a fancy coach. Says One Last Lie pays for all. But it's really like the biggest, most affirming moment of truth there is, is that Jackram gets to be a man out of the life of a soldier.

Yeah. And it's kind of a positive spin on that melancholy phrase about how, you know, you can go home, but you can't go back to the person you were. It's like, I can go home without going back to the person I was. Yeah. There's also kind of another layer that, whereas I don't think this is the case for Jackram, because as you say, I think he's very much written as a trans man. But in the, it's almost sad that his idea of going home as a woman would be as this inferior,

you know, it's an old biddy, spitting whatever, and an old woman is not as valued as an old man. Yeah. Which is, I think, a very fair assessment for Pratchett to put in that. But there's some progress, there's some. Yeah. So to Polly, which I think is a more interesting flavour of gender identity, or at least I see a ton of relatable shit in there. So I'm going to briefly have some feelings about my own gender in this, but.

Yeah, I think this is. Or lack thereof. Yeah. You haven't been a soldier for 30 years, so 50 years. Not that I know of. I check every day. When Polly is trying to stand up to all of the military and saying, like, I want to have both parts of my identity, I don't want to be a boy, and I still want to be a soldier.

Well, part of her justification is I kissed the Duchess and she knew what I was and she didn't turn me away. Which is great, that only works because Polly has started believing in the Duchess because of Alice. Yeah. Like Polly's affirmation of herself as who she is, is that she's a very, very, very, very selfless who she is, is partly because the Duchess didn't turn away. That only matters once she really believes in the Duchess.

Yeah. You can look at it as almost a metaphor for the military as well. Kind of like I kissed the Duchess. I became part of the military and I was good at it. Yeah. Why should it matter? Yeah. There's these brilliant little moments of affirmation and openness after things have

settled and Jackram's happier than a terrier calls her, you horrible little woman. I love that, yeah. Crap, you horrible little woman. But then you get this idea once things have settled and in that kind of, the girl soldiers become mascots. They were this lucky charm and they get their special uniform with a skirt and a bum roll and plumes and Polly's got the sergeant strikes and haha. Sergeant and women is a joke and she does have a very good thought process about it,

which is this lesson from gummy abens as well. They're laughing. They're not saying you're winding up to kick them. Yeah. Yeah. That it's okay to be a laughable mascot for now. And then in this interim before the next war starts, she tentatively starts exploring this freedom a bit more,

wearing a pair of Paul's old trousers and barely got a harump from anyone. And we know what a harump means. And then eventually she has to choose to dress up to go and get the ferry and go and be a sergeant again. And eventually makes the decision to wear the skirt over the trousers. She marries the femininity with the practicality and thinks to herself we need pockets, which I think is bigger proof than anything the Pratchett's listened to women. Yeah, especially it wasn't even a meme back then.

And there's a great line, she tried to put aside the nagging feeling that she was dressing up as a woman. And as a non-binary person, literally the symbolism of putting the skirt on over the trousers feels like a lot. This idea of dressing up as a woman, because for me, obviously I present Femme a lot because it's easier, but it very much feels like I'm doing drag when I do it. It's not like... I was going to say tell me about that because you dress very extravagantly, is that the word?

Peacockish in some of the Femme stuff. And does that feel uncomfortable for you? Is it like a some days it feels uncomfortable thing? Is it some mindsets it does? It's a some days and some mindsets thing to a certain extent, but it's also like because I figured out my non-binaryness like comparatively later in life, I didn't have the language for it when I was younger without going hugely deep into it. I feel like if I'd had that language at a younger age, I would have maybe been mentally

healthy in some other directions, like especially all the issues I have with disordered eating and stuff. If I'd got what it was I actually wanted to have and not have, maybe I would have dealt with some things differently. But with the Femme stuff, I started dressing extravagantly because I have lots of social anxieties and one of them is they're like, I don't know how to dress for a thing. So I think if I develop a reputation for being extravagantly dressed, then it never matters. Everyone knows who I am, it's going to turn out looking fabulous. It's fine, I'm showing up in a ball gown.

But sometimes it feels like, oh, that is just the clothes I'm wearing. And sometimes it feels like I'm in drag, like I'm wearing a costume. And then sometimes it feels very no, and that's when I don't wear it and I wear other stuff instead. Do you ever get a day where it feels like a uniform or it feels like a good thing? Sometimes it's nice to have it. I feel like not presenting Femme is a lot more work and it's more frustrating because the thing is, I'm really Femme looking and I can't really help that. I prefer how my face looks with makeup on. Also, I'm really curvy. We live in a society where those things read Femme.

Femme, yeah. Also, binding is not comfortable if you are shaped the way I am and fuck that. So yeah, so when I try and present more androgynously, I think that can be more disheartening because no matter how androgynously I present, I will be read as Femme first. So then it's a bit like... Ah, very poly. Yeah. And it's a bit frustrating because it's like, I don't want to have to come out repeatedly. And sometimes I would like someone to just not call me girl, lady,

Hershey, automatically. All right, girl, lady. Sorry. Girl, lady. Oh, wait, how am I meant to yell at you? You are a little being. Yeah, that one works. What do you think about not really as related? What do you think about the term like NB as well?

I don't mind it. Man, woman, NB. Is that a bit... I didn't want to use... Like it felt a little patronizing for me to use it just because it feels a bit young. Yeah, I don't mind it because it's literally... It's like a phonetic spelling of NB, which is short for non-binary. So that's...

I don't like it being used as like a third category. Like I don't know why it's used like that. But because there's so much more than just man, woman, and non-binary. It's like you have man, woman, and then everything in between, and then everything else around it and some stuff floating over there. So it feels like I understand why it's used. It doesn't offend me. Yeah, we're using CMYK when we should be on the Mantis Shrimp spectrum here. Yeah, very much so.

And I feel like my gender is somewhere very Mantis Shrimp-ish. The shrimp knows exactly what your gender is and the tragedy is he cannot tell you. Because he is a shrimp and has no vocal cords. Okay, go on, let me bring this back around to policy. So I think what I wanted to talk about actually, you've led me to it quite neatly, ignoring the shrimp, is this concept of gender euphoria, which is literally, it's the opposite of gender dysphoria.

It's feeling completely happy and comfortable in your gender. It is not feeling unique to a trans person who gets to completely be their true self. It is a cis woman or cis man can experience gender euphoria. It might be appearing a certain way, superfemme. It might be not appearing superfemme. It might be building up muscle or not appearing up. Like it's different for every person. I feel like Jackram's visit back to his family as this shining Sergeant Major

feels like a really gender euphoric moment. And I feel like looking at Polly, there's, see there's millions of different ways you can interpret her gender identity at the end of the book. One is obviously that there is something, something non-binary about it and that side of it I feel really relatable. But another feeling is she's found this sense of gender euphoria in finding a completely different way to be a woman than the expected way she had. She is very much a woman, but she gets to be this flavour of woman.

She gets to be the flavour of woman that wears trousers and shouts and is in charge of things. And it's completely comfortable in her womanhood within that, because now she gets to do those things while being a woman. Yeah. And of course, she's still so young. Exactly. She could feel this way, that way, or the other, or could just be feeling, I don't know, yeah. Regardless of, I will say, as my grand conclusion, I don't have a grand conclusion, I was just going to say that regardless of Polly's gender

identity, the relationship between her and Maladite is undoubtedly sapphic. Oh yeah, no, definitely. Yeah, 100%. Actually, I was going to say, is Maladite definitely reading female to you? Maladite also feels like a bit more non-binary to me. And I'm not saying like, I'm 100% right. All that Pratchett specifically intended, like this character is female, this character is non-binary.

I think Tonka and Lofty feel the most like, er, genders, whatever. It's over there. We're over here with matches and I'll score from the back. Whereas Jade, I think, interestingly enough, probably reads the most feminine. Jade and Shafty, I think, read the most feminine. Alice to a certain extent as well. Oh, that's true. Yeah.

By the way, yeah, with Alice, it's just like gender's the least important thing for her to work out right now. Yeah. Yeah. It's like she, yeah, she's got a whole thing to deal with first, yeah. First the possession by the deity and then the getting over the trauma and then, yeah. The gender euphoria thing, do you think it kind of ties into the whole, you can't see the light until it's dark and the, oh, what's the quote,

right near the end? It's not that everything's great is the bad things have stopped happening. Do you think that's why like trans and non-binary people kind of feel gender euphoria more strongly is the contrast and the... Yeah, I would say arguably so. I think it's also just having the language to talk about it. If you are trans, if you are non-binary, if you're in those sort of queer spaces, especially gender non-conforming or just gender queer spaces,

anything outside of majority cis spaces, there are going to be more people who talk about gender euphoria and experiencing it. And so you're going to discuss the concept more and maybe be more aware of it within yourself. Whereas cis listeners, you may be experiencing gender euphoria and not even knowing it, if you are, call this hotline. Watch out, the teens today are trying a new drug. It's called gender euphoria and it sounds great. Fuck that.

Right, but... I'm dead, I enjoy it. I think we should move on to the Obscure Reference video before this becomes an episode of Brasai. Oh yeah, sorry. Gender is a fake drug. Have you got an Obscure Reference video, Francine? Yeah, I do. Is it my gender?

Yes, no, it's not. You know perfectly well, I can't understand what that shrimp is saying. Sorry. So when Prince Heinrich is having a little yell, letting his feelings out, there goes some rather louder injections from Heinrich on the broad theme of what could be heard, followed by a Takata on the hell you say. A Takata, a Takata is a musical form for I think keyboards, possibly also... Organs.

Plucks, yes, organs and harps, I think, are characterized by full chords, rapid runs, high harmonies and other virtuoso elements designed to show off the performance touch. And so here I love that Heinrich is just going off on a particularly talented... The hell you say? Riff, say it. Yeah, also I love the phrase, the hell you say. Yeah, a very famous classical example of Takata is Takata in Fugue, the... Oh, I didn't know that.

And yay. Yeah. Good, now I get it better. Okay, yeah, and I think that really works for this as well. Yes. Good. Imagine the hell you say put to Takata in Fugue. Now I'm really hoping I got that name right.

I'm 99% sure I did. Nice. We'll go with that. Okay, I think that is, for now, everything we're going to say on Monstrous Regiment. And I have an idea and just put out a five-minute clip of me ranting about gender Samora at some point. Oh, that's cool, stick it in the Google Drive, I'll add it to the end. No, I think we've all had enough of that.

So, we're actually going to take two weeks off. Part of the reason for that is that I, at the end of the month, going to be at the Schwiebenfeldt Convention at Castle Lüdvigst... Schwiebenfeldt. You said it right, I was just saying a shit, I'm sorry. At Castle Lüdvigstein from the 28th of April to the 1st of May. So, listeners in or near Germany who are going to that, please come see me because I'm trying to learn fucking German for this.

Some German. Why is sausage feminine? How am I supposed to be non-binary in a language where sausage is feminine? I think you can see it as because everything has completely arbitrary genders. This just highlights your point. Thank you. Anyway, yeah, so we're going to take two weeks off. And we will be back in May.

Let me get my calendar out. We'll be back on the 8th of May with part one of our coverage of A Hat Full of Sky. Yeah. Going back to Tiffany so soon. Yeah, don't forget also that if you want to see Mark Burrow's one-man show, The Magical Terry Pratchett Live with a bit of us around the edges, that'll be on the 19th of May at the Hunts Club in Burrows and Edmonds. Ticket link in the show notes, please come and see us.

Yeah, do. It'll be fun. It will be a lot of fun and I'll probably drink a gin or three. Honestly, it is very amazing when Joanna has a drink all through and talks about media. I know we've talked about it on the podcast before, but I highly recommend it as a viewing experience. Let me have like three gins and then ask me about The End of Lost. Anyway, just in case you're not going to be at the Schuylenvelt

Convention or come and see us on the 19th of May. Inexplicably. If you want to get in touch with us between now and the 8th of May, when we talk about A Hat Full of Sky, you can follow us on Instagram at the TrueShownMakeyFret on Twitter at MakeyFretPod on Facebook at the TrueShownMakeyFret. Join our subreddit community, r slash t t s m y f. Email us your thoughts, queries, castles, snacks and siege weapons at the TrueShownMakeyFretPod at gmail.com.

If you want to support us financially, go to patreon.com forward slash the TrueShownMakeyFret where you can exchange your hard-earned pennies for all sorts of bonus nonsense. Joanna did a particularly enjoyable rabbit hole about the rules of fairytale and folklore. I did. There were many tangents. There were. Also, we are planning a little special bonus episode towards the end of May, so if you've got any thoughts, queries, questions specifically for that episode, if you want to talk about anything to do with Night Watch

or any of your hopes and dreams for series two of Good Omens, then get those into us. Or your hopes and dreams for anything, really. Yeah, yeah, just send us your general hopes and dreams, questions for us. We promise not to use them as some kind of weird metaphysical fuel. You promise not to. I make no such promise. Anything that will allow me to communicate with the shrimp. Jesus. Until next month, dear listener, the new day was a great big fish.

I think that went all right. Yeah, I wasn't expecting to talk quite so much about my own gender, but thank you for all the questions that helped.