The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 141: Nation Pt. 3 (The Final Form of the Haunted Sword)

Episode Date: April 14, 2024

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 “Nation”. Crabs! Red and Blue! Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretDiscord: https://discord.gg/29wMyuDHGP Want to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:'Fallout': How to Succeed in the Postapocalypse Without Really Trying - Rolling StoneConey Island’s Incubator Babies - JSTOR DailyAunt Sally Game - Cotswolds Info  THE IMPACT OF RED IN YOUR PAINTINGS Part 2 - Susan Harrison-Tustain Artist The World Turned Upside Down - Wikipedia Submillimeter Array - WikipediaJupiter in Daylight - The Planetary Society Music: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com 

If I'm on a topic that's on something you've got an example of, throw it at me. Excellent. I'll duck and be terrified. And started watching the Fall Out series. Oh, so I haven't started it yet because my partner wants to watch some of it with me and it's not come over yet since it came out. But how is it? What do you think?

I like it a lot so far. I've watched two thirds of the first, three quarters maybe of the first episode And I think it's very well done so far. I'm a big fan of the Fallout games and And I think they've captured it pretty well so far. We haven't had much of the wasteland yet. So I'm excited for that Yeah, it's I've seen the reviews I've seen so far Alan's up and walls review was interesting because he's got like no real knowledge of the game He was really open about that in the review and he kind of said like... He was that, sir? Alan Sapper-Mall, he's a TV critic for Rolling Stone.

He's one of my favorite like culture writers. Cool. And he was like, this has the potential to be a really good show. And I'm pretty sure if you do play the games, like you're going to love it. But for me, this is kind of just a mid TV show, which fair. And then I've seen some people who play the game say they really love it. I've seen some people play the games like pissed off about whatever people get pissed off about.

Yeah, I've deliberately avoided discussion of it. Because if someone points something out, and then I focus on it, I'll be annoyed. I'll wait till I finished it and then read all the Twitter arguments. Yeah, it was quite funny in that Alice,'s have more review where he brings up the music that gets used and it's this juxtaposing of this era of music against this like aesthetic and he sort of had this whole comment about it being a very tired thing that's overdone now and I was reading that comment like, you're gonna have a lot of people probably commenting on this piece and trying to explain to you that Fallout did it, if not

first, then but definitely before it was a trope. Yeah. And if the show didn't do that, it would be really fucking weird. Yeah, it's the Gerns Bakian feature, retro featureism. Yes. Very. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like before writing that article, you should probably find that out. Yeah, I feel like before writing that article, you should probably find that out. But again, he was really open like, I'm guessing this isn't here because it's a thing for the games, but watching it as someone who's not played the games, this was my reaction to it. It wasn't, it didn't have like an arrogant, this is bad because I don't know enough about it vibe.

Oh, no, I know I understood that. I just think it's silly not to at least Google something before writing about it, even in passing. Also, I think a lot of these media writers are very much say things like that, like, oh, if I'm picking up on it, then surely everyone will. It's like, no one watches as much TV as you guys do. It's weird to watch that much telly. I think most people will be fine. Speaking as someone who watches way too much telly, yes, no, it's weird. My brain is rot. Speaking of watching TV, the Pretty Little Liars video that we were talking about last week, I've now started planning something around season one of the OC based on that

and the ridiculous paragraph from my book I sent you earlier. I'm very glad that in some small way my insomnia habits have inspired you. I just think it would be really fun to try and explain like just how much fucking plot got burnt through in that first season because it is kind of ridiculous. I would like you to do that. That's good. Looking forward to that. Do you, you do have a cork board, do you?

I actually don't. I need to get like a big cork board. So yeah, this time next week, I'm going to be in New York. Yeah, you are. I'm really excited. Buffy prom buffering prom. So the Friday night is trivia night. Saturday night is prom. Yes. Saturday daytime. Is that some kind of like con thing? No, no, it's just you have the day to be in New York. Yeah, I have the whole Friday and Saturday to be in New York? Yeah, I have the whole Friday and Saturdays to be in New York plus like the Sunday after the watch thing and all of Monday before I fly home. It's not all of Monday.

New York plans. I have places I want to go but I am trying to be aware of like I cannot see the whole city in two days. I'm going to do some exploring in Brooklyn. I may try and go to Coney Island. That is the oh the little fun fair place right the little fun fair place that that had the whole beach and yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's where they had the the first incubators for babies. Did not know that. The babies were on display. Were they the first ones or the first ones of their kind or something like that. But basically the guy who ran the the fair

there paid for them in exchange for having the babies as like an attraction. That's what it was like. I like an attraction. That's fucked up. This is like, I don't know, it kind of is, but on the other hand, those babies would have died. Well, yeah, that is true. I think you can say it's fucked up, but also it's a good thing those babies didn't die. I think both things can be true. That's true. Yeah. I've been working on the dress throughout the week, but I've also been writing throughout the week. I finished this. I'm really bad at editing,

by the way. And I know this to be true already. So I finished the first draft of the OC chapter this week and then whenever I finished a draft, I take a day and then I rewrite it right away while it's all fresh in my mind and just make it here. And consistently, that second draft always ends up longer than the first. Today, 500 words longer than the first. Which means now that's a rewrite. That's different. But now this chapter's over 10,000, the word song francing. Well, yeah, now you need to leave it for a week and then go back and cut it.

Oh no, I'm leaving it. I'll come back to it when I've written the first and second draft for the rest of the book. Yeah, yeah. No, I don't think that's bad at editing. I think an edit for style can be very different from an edit for length. Yes, there will be an aggressive length edit. That's why despite my love of cutting bits out of writing, anything I publish on Substack is way too long because

I do the write, I do the rewrite, like done, I wrote something, off you go. No one's gonna tell me off. I've neglected my sub stack. I said that like every time I publish something. Three things in a year. I haven't published anything yet this year. I might do a review of Fallout once I've watched it. You're gonna start it with, I've never played the game, but I've been talked at interminably by my ex boss and one of my best friends.

I've like very briefly played the game. I just never got into it. Not that I think it's a bad game. It just didn't click the right buttons in my brain at the time. I think you need, because you played it on Alex's PlayStation, didn't you? Yeah, I didn't. Yeah, I think you need to be left alone for a few hours to get into Fallout. You need to go immersion mode. Yeah, that's why I have been struggling. I still haven't actually properly finished Baldur's Gate because to play it, I need to go full immersion for like a few hours at once.

I just haven't had that kind of gaming time recently. Yeah. So I've been playing a lot of Tomb Raider instead. Yeah. I just keep telling Jack off for shooting wildlife in the tombs. It is quite nice. Why are you shooting a gorilla? Why is there a gorilla in the Greek tomb? There was an alarming amount of tigers considering a little war. That's a dinosaur.

Oh yeah, there's a lot of dinosaurs. In the Pacific Islands in the third game, dinosaurs. I was in Area 51 before that, fucking aliens. Alien spaceship, got radiation poisoning there. There was a bit where there was a big dissected alien hanging on the wall looking a bit like Jesus next to a tank full of orcas. Sounds like one of my dreams. Really small orcas. Yeah. Smorkers.

Smorkers. Right, God. Let's make a podcast, Francine. Do you want to make a podcast? Yeah, let's make a podcast. Hello and welcome to The True Sharm of Kieffret, a podcast in which we are usually reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one this time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagan. And I'm Francine Carroll. And we're here. It's part three of Nation. The thrilling conclusion, the last five chapters. So much happens. So much happens.

And we'll cover it all. Sorry, I'm an announcer. And we'll cover it all, plus anything else that comes to mind. You sounded like a threat. Help is who I am as a person. Spoilers, no spoilers before we crack on. We're a spoiler-like podcast, obviously heavy spoilers for the book Nation, but we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series, past Unseen Academicals,

the book we're currently up to, 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. Sailing until we're so far from home, we're back again. One quick bit of follow up. Jed from our Discord informed us that he was captain of his local pub's Aunt Sally team for a couple of years. Now, so Aunt Sally came up when you were talking

about coconut shires last week. Yes. I know nothing about this game. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah, no, me neither. I got what I did say from a Wikipedia page that I think was painfully apparent. According to Jed, it's very little known outside of South Oxfordshire.

Oh, South Oxfordshire. Nah, we know nothing about South Oxfordshire. I just want to read out Jed's comment here. It's great fun if a little scary being the caller, brackets umpire who sees if the dolly has been knocked off the iron cleanly when you're at a venue which has a shed to throw into the bang and aunt Sally stick makes when someone misses by miles and it hits the shed next to your head is deafening. I am none the wiser about how this game is played based on that. I don't want to know please no listener feel like you need to explain further. I am delighted by that explanation with a lack of context. The dolly, the eye and the stick.

The shed. The shed. There's a grand old British traditions aren't there of getting a little bit drunk and throwing things at other things in pubs specifically. Yeah, we've got skittles and all of that sort of stuff. Welly throwing, horseshoes. Horseshoes, yeah. Of course, these days you can get drunk and for some god awful reason on a corporate event throw axes.

There's those axe throwing places. You're not meant to get drunk first, I don't think. No, I would quite like to go axe throwing though. It looks like fun to me. I'd be so bad at it, but I'd like to watch you throw an axe. I feel like I'd be good at it. I've got no evidence for that whatsoever, but I feel like I could throw an axe. Yeah, I feel like you could.

Yeah. All right, we'll do that one day. Right. Let's talk about the book Nation, shall we? Before we dive deeply into the episode, quick content warning, we are going to be discussing both implied threats of sexual violence today and we will be talking about the racial slurs used in the book. So proceed accordingly. Francine, do you want to tell us what happened previously on Nation? Yes, previously on Nation. Twinkle twinkle guiding star, Mal finds out what trousers are. Daphne wears a skirt of grass, they meet and well, you've got to laugh. That's as far as that's going, don't worry. Mal dives to retrieve the last god anchor and returns

with a faith-shaking announcement. The white Stone has company. Etaba almost dies in his attempts to destroy the demon anchors but is pulled from the waves by Mao, who shouts at a shark, swims to shore and then sleeps so deeply he has to be fetched from the Shadowlands by Daphne. Once everybody's finally conscious, the demon boy, the ghost girl and the increasingly irritable priest explore the cave of the grandfathers and find that the nation's history stretches back further than any of them could have imagined. After an Indiana coded escape from millennia's worth of disintegrating skeletons, they emerge into the light, only to face the danger they didn't see coming. And then from there? From there what happened? Now what happens?

This section, which begins in chapter 11 and goes all the way to the end. In chapter 11, Daphne tries to talk Foxlip and Polgrave and their loaded guns off the island. She takes them to her hut at the women's place and offers them a drink, but Foxlip won't sing. And she tells Polgrave to run. Daphne tells Mao she wants a trial and passes out. Mal unceremoniously disposes of Foxlip. The next day, Etabba is sent to the waves with great ceremony. The nation has its first court and P. Lu tells an old story. Daphne explains the mutiny on the sweet Judy and warns the island about first mate Cox and the trial agrees that she's done justice, not a murder. In chapter 12, it's likely that Cox has taken charge of the

cannibals and is on his way to nation. Daphne shows Mal just how important the history cave could be as she wants the Royal Society to see. First though, the island needs defending. Mal has a plan and it requires the sweet duties cannons. The islanders test their defences but nothing happens and it keeps happening. The last resort finds a shipwrecked passenger, while on the island everyone gets much better at shouting bang. In chapter 13 the raiders come, just before dawn. Cox is in charge and a parlay begins. A single cannon capsizes raider canoes.

Mao faces Cox and its guns versus spear in single combat. In chapter 14 Cox has sand in his eyes and Mao's in the water. Bullets sink and there's blood in the waves and an axe in a tree. The axe comes out of the water as Cox reloads and the sharks arrive as he starts to sink. Out of the water and with Lokohara at his side, Mao turns down a perfect world. In Chapter 15, Mao's awake and the island's at work. A ship comes. Daphne's father's found her. She shows in the cave and they discuss everything. Mao and the Loup's island council discuss everything. Daphne and her father get their time on the island but another ship Mal and the Loops Island Council discuss everything. Daphne and her father

get their time on the island but another ship comes and the cutty wren delivers a quick coronation. The King stands up to his mother and invites Mal to join the Empire. Mal counters with the Royal Society and gives up the Golden Door in exchange for necessities. Seven days later Daphne says her goodbyes. In the epilogue an old man tells a boy and a girl the story and they debate what could and should have been. He shows them Jupiter before the girl takes her watch, guarding the innation as the observatories wake for the night. Very nice. I love the observatories.

Yes, I love that idea, the rumbling observatories of the island. It's a beautiful image. Helicopter and loincloth watch. I know I said we were going for the obscure loincloths, but this line was too good to not give it loincloth for the episode. You say you walk in the shadow of Locaha, but they walked in his loincloth when he has not bathed for many months. That's very good. It is good. And for helicopter, grandmother's umbrella. Of course. Dangerous. Wearing. What's there for poking? helicopter grandmother's umbrella. Of course. Dangerous.

Worrying. What's there for poking? Incongruous in the island environment. Very much so. Quotes, do you want to go first? Yes. And with that, the dawn chorus exploded with every bird, frog, toad and insect screaming its head off. Golden light rolled in from the east, melting ragged holes in the mist. It was a beautiful picture apart from the black and red war canoes. Cool, cool scene setting. Very good. Very cool scene setting. Ragged holes in the mist. Love that.

How about you? I love that. Where you going? No. Honorable mention goes to... Look, I don't like having to use the bleep, but I will. Please bleep me saying **** every time I say it. For context, this is when Daphne asked Mao if he'd go back to a world where the wave never happened. How can I answer you? There is no language. There was a boy called Mao. I see him in my memory, so proud of himself because he was going to be a man. He cried for his family and turned the tears into rage and if he could he would say did not happen and the wave would roll backwards and

have never been. There is another boy and he is called Mao Tu and his head is on fire with new things. What does he say? He was born in the wave and he knows that the world is round and he met a ghost girl who's sorry she shot at him. He called himself the little blue hermit crab scuttling across the sand in search of a new shell. But now he looks at the sky and knows no shell will ever be big enough ever. Will you ask him not to be? Any answer will be the wrong one." And I love that idea of well, as well being asked the question, you know, if you could go back, if you could have this not happen to you. And that really honest answer of I can't answer that because yes, part of me would love that to have not happened, but I wouldn't be the person I was without that. Yes.

And it's the person I am who you're asking that question of. Let's talk about Mal. Okay. During characters. while we're on the subject. He comes into his own, in a not quite an avatar way, a reluctant avatar for a minute. Yeah, he's a quick go at avataring, doesn't he? I think it's very sweet near the beginning of this section when Ataba's funeral, I guess, maybe sweet is not the right word, but he sort of confronts the La Caja and says, can you, you should send him to the perfect world now. And says that he deserves it. Even if I think you're all dicks, he believed in you. And he gives

the line, he deserved better gods. Yes. And the La Caja is like, but you don't believe in me. And I was like, but he did. And I'm talking to you. So let's not have this metaphysical. And then later, of course, he gets the choice. He's offered the perfect world. Yeah. And he turns it down. He kind of understands this need for it to be a journey and not a place. Yes, the journey Joanna. The journey. I'm really hard not to do it.

We finally found the use of the journey that we can't dislike. We'll allow the journey in that very specific situation. But yeah, talking about him coming into his own, we see his relationship to being the chief grow more in this and the reason he's being considered the chief by everyone. There's a really great line when they're sitting in the circle and having their trial effectively. Everyone should make up their own mind. And there's this repeated, and there was Mao sitting in the circle, this refrain. He describes it as not big, not even tattooed, not shouting orders, but somehow being slightly more than everyone else. Yes. And I'd forgotten, we talked last week briefly about how they hadn't really had a

go about his age. And I'd forgotten there was a couple of lines here where it says, you know, there were some mumblings about his age, but that's very quickly again. Every time someone mumbles, Milo or Carlye turns up like an eclipse of the sun. Yeah, yeah. I really like, I think I'd forgotten this in previous reads as well. I haven't put Carly in as a character, but every time there's just so many bits referencing her being really hench and intimidating and I love that. Yes, I love that. The little mini trope of just, and here's my friend. And the idea of her and Milo as a couple and the idea that they're both these big

hench intimidating people is great. I do love it. But yeah, Mao coming into his own, I think the more people that turn up, the more he's chief, the bigger the nation gets. The more he needs to be in charge of it. And then he, I think Daphne pulls him quite definitely out of the micromanaging. Yeah, he says, I must organize people better. And she says, stop it, tell them to organize themselves. You've got to look at the big picture stuff for a minute. You are obviously right about the length of thorns, but...

More importantly, when the raiders are there and obviously they've underestimated him, they've assumed that Milo is the chief because he is this big intimidating guy. Then Milo declares Mao's chief and this calm, dramatic speech, he's risen from the country of La Caja, he set the dead men free. The gods hid from him in a cave, but he found them and they told him the secret of the world and he has no soul. Get you a hype man like Milo, seriously. Yeah, yeah. And you know, it's kind of, it is like a hype man stuff. But at the same time, Mao has these like real, he's going to be a great leader moments, like when he's seen everything in the cave and he gets this welling up of pride and then he sees it in Daimau has these like real, he's gonna be a great leader moments, like when he's seen

everything in the cave, and he gets this welling up of pride, and then he sees it in his head, like the city under the water kind of thing. And you get a real destined to bring the glory back. I don't like the word glory very much, but you know what I mean? Yeah. You definitely get an aura from him. Yeah, jumping back as well to that description of him being slightly more than everyone else, I felt like there was a lot of similarity between that and like somehow how Carrot is described.

It's just like more present, more there. Mm. Yeah. Like just a little bit extra solidity. Yes, definitely. And I think Prunchard describes kind of two character, two flavors of character like that. You've got your Mao and your Carrot.

And you've also got like the real fuckers like Cox and Casa. Yeah. Um, who just, they're almost like they're, if you're trying to do it visually, like they're superimposed onto the world. Yes. Yeah, it's almost like if existing was a spectrum and most people are in the middle of it, then they're at opposite ends that are so far apart, they've almost come back around to be next to each other. Yeah, great.

We're getting a bit metaphysical. Yeah, let's not do that. So actually speaking of metaphysical, Mal making himself a soul and Daphne being the one to point out to the cannibals and saying, look, this guy made himself a soul. It covers the whole island, every leaf and pebble. Yeah. And think about that as like part of Mal's healing journey, like taking responsibility for the island, not in the way the grandfathers wanted him to, but in his own way, and how that returns his soul to him, at least to him.

Yeah, we talked in the last two episodes about how just having someone, anyone to look out for is what saves him and what saves Daphne as well. And then yeah, when that extends to cover the island. And it's very much, yeah, it's avatar again, but not of Lukaha. He becomes almost the avatar of the island itself. To believe in the nation is to believe in Mao, to believe in Mao is to believe in the nation. And he gets his tattoos at the end. A sunrise wave. He's sort of taking the nation in a different direction. And a little blue hermit crab. Yes, perfect. I do like that idea. Did it say what kind of shell the hermit crab have on? I forgot to go back and look.

Well, I assume it's a blue shell. A blue shell, of course. But you know, there are types of shells. There's probably some shellfish that I'm not aware of because it's in this other universe. Yeah, I'm not familiar with the pelagic shellfish population. We would be if we were given the chance if somebody gave us a bestiary. Well, yes, absolutely. somebody gave us a bestiary. Well, yes, absolutely.

With dedication. So definitely. Definitely. Wait, no, slightly more mal for a second. Oh, sorry. The bits where he is thinking in facts, I thought you might find interesting as well. Oh, yeah, again, it's another refrain thing. This is a fact, and this is a fact. And then these are more facts when he's having the fight with Cox. He's like building his castle out of them. I think at some point, it said all falling carefully into

place like little grey blocks. Yes. And when he's got this, yeah, some, yeah, it's really extending the visual metaphor of like the walls inside your head kind of thing. I just thought it was really cool. Yeah, it was cool. And in that fight as well, where he realises he is thinking like Cox and that he needs to think like Cox to beat Fox, to beat Cox. Please take that out of context. And it gets him to think like him is not to be him. The hunter learns the ways of the hog, but he is not bacon. And I think that's something that isn't stated really, obviously, a lot of the time you get like a lot of these sort of stories of

are to be the villain, I must think like the villain and oh, now I've been corrupted because I thought like the villain. So I like males like, that doesn't make me a bad guy. That makes me good at thinking. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's always Yeah, that is always a bit squirky, isn't it? It's like to be the villain, I must sort of like the villain. And that implies that to think like the villain, you know, thinking this way is somehow more appealing. Whereas for most people, you'd think that way and be like, oh, rubbish. Yeah, brain shower.

Yuck. Can I hit that with an axe? Right, Daphne. Yes. When Foxlip and Polegrave make a swear on her mother and it creates a very specific brand of rage in her. But she gets to think for a second. It's an important swear. I'm going to think about it. That's a bit Tiffany, I thought. It is a bit Tiffany. I mean, she's thinking, you know, does he know? Of course, he doesn't

know. He doesn't know. Calm thoughts floating in a sea of fury. And then she thinks to herself, and that was a sin, asking us to make the oath is a sin, and she's thinking about that while she's thinking about what she's going to do with the beer. And she says, thinks to herself, what I'm going to do won't be murder. Murder is a sin. It won't be murder. Little aside, interesting that Daphne's second or third thoughts are in square brackets, we don't often see that one in the practice infinite ways of showing internal arguments. I quite like that they're different for each character. That makes sense. Everybody's internal conflicts are slightly differently formatted metaphorically. And in this case, literally.

conflicts are slightly differently formatted metaphorically. And in this case, literally. Yeah. Yes. Her whole internal struggle with doing this thing, killing Foxlip, sort of. And whether she's done a bad thing or not, and how premeditated and is it murder, because she just gives him the opportunity to live, but she also knows there's no way he's going to sing the song. Yes. So yeah, the square brackets, the third thoughts argument and it's really well written because she's kind of drunk while she's having the argument. She's had some of the beer and she's no out at the ball. Yeah, she did throw it up but not quick enough. Yeah.

She's just she's right with sobs while also having a very rational conversation with herself. Mm hmm. Yes. The whole thing about was it murder even though I made him do it to himself kind of thing because I knew he would. It's a little bit violence with the werewolf, isn't it? That was exactly what I was about to say. Oh, sorry. No, we're just very on the same wavelength. The way she thinks to herself about it, there should be a judge and a jury. If they were found guilty, they'd be hanged by the hangman

neatly and properly. And he'd have his breakfast first, very calmly and perhaps say a prayer and he would hang them calmly and without anger because at that moment he would be the law. And it's the he would be the law that made me think of the werewolf. But it's all an idea that Pratchett is really good at interrogating and he takes the route of it's definitely dealing with the choice to kill someone rather than doing it and then going, oh my god, I killed someone. Yes. Yeah. It's interesting that it didn't really explore the, again, I guess, because they're dealing with the fact this is what happened, this is what happened, but didn't really explore

the, I've got to kill him because otherwise he's going to go kill someone else here. Well, yeah, I mean, I think that's underlying is the reason she makes that choice is to save other people's lives, which is why it's not Oh my god, I killed someone is about her dealing with the choice. Yeah, it's not a reaction in the heat of the moment is a premeditated I am doing this. And even if I'm doing it for a good reason, does that mean I should be doing this? almost. And then we get again a defamiliarization thing, we get this idea of crime from the point of view who have a widely different concept of a justice system and crime in general. Yeah, I thought this was very your kind of thing, the description of how the justice system rolled around the different conversations. It rolled from tongue to tongue. That was nearly my quote. I thought that was such a great line.

Yeah, and just you can see it so well, Kanye and Pee-Loo going from conversation to conversation and just sitting down to listen and yeah. Yeah. She gets a lovely moment of politeness just quickly bringing back the, I love etiquette for etiquette sake. One of the cannibal sisters, I'd like to eat your brains one day and she sort of stops and says, it's very kind of you to say so. Yes, yes, and it was. It was very kind of him to say so. It was meant as a compliment. Something else I would just talk about with Daphne, as I said in the content morning, there are these threats or not threats, there's implied hints of there could be a risk of sexual violence towards her.

And I think Pratchett handles it really well here. We've both had rants before, I don't know if we've had them on the podcast or over coffee, of how much we hate sexual violence being used as a plot point and used to further a plot. And I think a lot of people share that opinion, it's not a rare opinion. But yeah, Pratchett handles it well here by acknowledging that it would at times be potentially a threat for Daphne while putting it in these possible impossible situations, the reader never feels at risk of seeing it. And it's done very subtly.

Yes. We have things like when the mutiny took place, she sat out in her cabin seated on a small barrel of gunpowder with a loaded pistol. And the captain told her of Cox's men one she should fire the pistol into the barrel to save her honor. Yes. And it's always worded in such a way that if you are old enough to get it, you will get it. And if you are not, you won't. Yeah. And I don't think it's just written like that to protect the young eyes of people who are reading it. It's also written like that because project doesn't need to be any more explicit than that. There's no glee, there's no glee in it. There's no, oh, look at this horrible thing.

Even as a potential, there's just a realistic this is it and this is how the captain thinks it should be dealt with. And this is how Daphne, who doesn't quite know what's implied by that, considers how much worth is a saved honor if it's falling out of the sky in pieces? I think Pratchett never really does the relishing in the tension up to something horrible happening, does he? I think that the two side effects of his kind of sudden bad things happening to people are the one, you do get this feeling that, oh, fuck, something just happened, which is important in a lot of these contexts. And two, you don't have this horrible sick tension building up to it. I don't know

if some people enjoy it, I hate. And that's maybe one of the reasons, like, one of the many reasons obviously I like these books so much is that I don't get that horrible feeling. Yeah, you don't want to spend ages dreading this horrible thing, you know what would happen. It's always a cousin to like how much you struggle with like secondhand embarrassment if you're watching something. Oh, yeah, I can't. Oh, God, I've started rewatching The Office. Painful. Why do I do it? And there's also like this moment of awkwardness when a father turns up and he sort of stutters out. Was anyone, did anyone try to be beastly to you about as much as he can say with it.

Yes, I definitely manages to portray that she doesn't know what he's talking about. She does. But reassure him at the same time. She's absolutely fine. And the only people who've been beastly are Foxlip and Bolgrove and Cox. And they're dead or gone. And they're wonderfully dead. I poisoned one, Mal hit the other in the chest with an axe and something fell out of the tree into the third one and he didn't enjoy it at all. And then Cox killed him.

Oh yeah. I want to talk about Mal and Daphne together before we move on to the other characters because I love them. Yep, quickly connected to what we were just talking about with the, perhaps not feeling the need to like go into what could could happen this out of the other. I like the way he handled like, maybe a couple kisses happened, who can say? When project writes romance, which he rarely does, but I do. I like the way he doesn't try and shoehorn another genre or style of writing or anything in and he doesn't do the whole teenage romance, oh first kiss this out of the other like it wouldn't feel... It wouldn't feel right reading that in a Pratchett book. This is probably my favourite romantic storyline that Pratchett's written because we rarely

get, as you say, we rarely get him writing romance. He's written a lot of couples that I love but we don't really get much of the couple getting together. The only other example I can really think of is Carrot and Ang romance. He's written a lot of couples that I love, but we don't really get much of the couple getting together. The only other example I can really think of is Carrot and Angua. What about literally the last book? Well, and we have the sort of crush and stuff with Tiffany and Roland in Wintersmith. And Sina in Academicals. Oh, wait, yeah. All right.

We talked about the romance aspect. Yeah, but they're like a B-pl plot. But yes, no, you are right. Yeah, but, but it doesn't come up much. It's really only come up a bit recently. And it's very sweet between Daphne and Mal. It's the rom-com stuff that I mentioned, you know, Rob Wilkin sort of thought of their relationships as very rom-com relationships. So I think I was had that in my mind when I was reading this time and noticing a bit more of it. Yeah. I also, I like the fact that it, I know Rob's thing was he wanted it to end. He wanted to practice to write him like a special ending, like just for him maybe, just so he can see them get together and practice like, oh.

Can't have that. This is how it happened. I quite like that. I think that more stories should be slightly unsatisfying in that way. That sounds very odd. No, I completely agree with you. I like romantic platonic. Yep. The relationship that could have been but wasn't but is still meaningful and impactful

through the rest of your life or stops there, but was still something that happened and made you you. Yeah, I like that. Obviously speaking as someone who's consuming lots of these teen dramas for the pre-prem rising and it's a very, very, very common thing that you'll have these two teenagers who meet in high school and the happy ending to the show will be those two together and getting married. Oh, fucking Parks and Rec. Sorry, I know that's not even a teen drama, but I will never forgive the Parks and Rec writers for doing this to Andy in April.

Oh, I didn't mind that so much because they threw in the wedding after they've been dating like a week and it was really early and random and then it kind of worked. No, no, the end, the epilogue, they made it have like kids and they had like, yeah, they just were like, oh, here's the bog standard happy ending for you guys as well. Yeah, no, that bit was cringe. I didn't like that. Anyway, yeah, sorry. So back to my own taffy. Sorry. The thing you mentioned, the first time I saved her life, I saved mine too. And the one person is nothing, two people are a nation, which ties into, you know, Mal's need to, the leadership thing, he needs to save the nation by leading it because he needs that to live. We have the

sort of lovely and it's brushed over quite quickly, Mal realizing that Daphne was trying to shoot him the first time they met. Yeah, I thought in my head that was a bigger deal than it was. Because there was the little moment where Daphne realised this and Miles realised. When I read that I was like, oh, is there that whole bit where he gets really angry about this? And no, he's very mature about it. He calmly says, I don't want to be short a second time, remember. But thinking about it in a rom-com context, there's always that misunderstanding and now we're annoyed at each other. And I felt like that's all the hints of that there.

Yeah, yeah, there are hints about that. But it's not done in because I hate that. The miscommunication one is another one. I can hate that and Fratchet never does it. Fratchet doesn't do miscommunication tropes apart from maybe like occasionally for humor. Yeah, literally just for humor, though not drawn out over 20 minute unrealistic episode because that would be weird because he's a writer of books. When they're talking about the cannibals, and Daphne's saying, oh, they won't want to beat me and their mouths says no, they'd feed you to their wives so that they become beautiful. And then silence and Daphne says, ahem. And all the other words escaped forever. Much later and many times she wondered about what might have been if she hadn't chosen a word

that clearly belonged to her grandmother. And that was that. For some people, there was only one right moment for the right word. And talking about the idea of wanting to see them together at the end and this idea of this one moment, the right word. We have this idea of this these parallel worlds happen somewhere happens. There is a world where they were together. There is a world where Daphne said, not a hem. And then she kind of almost repeats the mistake, but it's not a mistake anymore because the moment's gone already at the end when she says goodbye. Yes.

And she can't say goodbye in a narratively satisfying way. It's very, very witchy, very practical. These things need saying sorry. And also I cannot face saying anything else. Yeah. Oh, as it was really sweet when Mal was talking about how he knows when she's upset, he goes, I'm sorry, I've upset you. I know when you're upset, your face goes shiny. And then you try and act if nothing has happened. Felt that personal attack. Very personal attack. You don't need anyone noticing how shiny my face goes when I'm having an emotion.

And Peelu calls her the girl who ghost girl the six of the sky, it makes wonderful beer. Daphne blushed and tried to catch Mal's eye, but he looked away. There's this idea of them being worshipped together, the Judy being worshipped and so they're nailing up the fish there and then they're figuring in these stick drawings as if they're being deified, which makes more sense for Mal than it does for Daphne, but I can understand because she's so other why she's then being kind of lifted up. Yes. You're so alien, you might as well be a god.

And those were the two that were there when everyone else turned up as well, of course. Yeah, it was just those two on the island and the parrot. And the parrot. Oh, thank God for the parrot. Thank God for the parrot's okay. I was going to be very sad if the parrot was not okay. You know how I feel about these things. I do. I was glad for your sake that the parrot was okay. How far we've come since the annoying parrot of Eric.

What a good parrot this was. This is truly the final form of the haunted sword. Sorry, magic sword. pointed sword. Sorry, magic sword. Cring. Fucking cring. When the parrot turns up at the end a bit forlorn though and Daphne explains she's been trying to do something about its language. Show us your dander things. Poor sad parrot. Foxes of the brawn of Satan. Sorry, a couple of other Daphne and Malbets. More perving. People have paid good money just to see the muscles on his back move like they were doing now. She understood the maids

back home a lot more when the sun gleamed on his shoulders. Teenagers. I get it. I do get it. Oh, that is cute. There's cute moments and there's also like these bigger emotional moments, talking about the facts after the Raiders leave. When she held him as they watched the tragic cargos unloaded and did not move until the last walk and there was a dot on the never ending horizon.

That was a fact as big as the nation. The one real rom-com moment that I highlighted was holding each other and the moment where he turns around so she's looking at the sea to see the ship. Oh yeah. How cinematic is that? He gently turned around so that she was looking at the sea. The ship's coming, he said. And he sort of established what will happen when the ship comes with her before he shows her that the ship is there.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh. And yeah, as we were talking about at the end, no more words. We know them all. All the words that should not be said, for you have made my world more perfect. The Banadjom Mrs. We Are is like, she'll kill off tomorrow. You're crying.

All right. Well, let's not cry. Let's talk about dickheads who deserve to die. Let's talk about Foxlip and Polegrave. Okay. So yeah, dickheads deserve to die. Absolutely. Dickheads who deserve to die. Right. Well, that's done. No, there's something great about right at the beginning of this section, immediately after Ataba has been shot, then Foxlip committed suicide. He didn't know it at the time, but that's how it started. And it sets up almost like reassuringly that he's not long for this

world. And that that is absolutely justified with the next sentence. He pulled out his other pistol and growled, tell him not to move. First one who does, he's a dead darkie. You tell him that right now. Yeah. And at that point Daphne's like, well, you're gonna keep doing that. I want to talk a little bit about the choice to use darkie in this context, because it's very much it is a racial slur. Like it is not something you would say. But it's not arguably unprincipled, especially it's being used in this context. Using is not approval of that language, it is to show what a dickhead this guy is. But I think it was an interesting choice to use that and I think it was a clever choice

to use that particular slur because it is a gross thing to say, but especially from a British context, I do think it's a British slur. It's not something you would never hear. It's a pub slur. It's said by sad old racist men occasionally. So yeah, I just I think it was a it was an interesting writing choice. And I think it was a good writing choice. Because again, the fact that he's using this immediate slur, and also like Mao and the others pick up like, he thinks of us as that he's using that when he's using that word, he means savages, he means animals. Yeah, yeah, you can hear the tone of voice in something even if you don't know what the

word is. That's a slur. Yeah that's when Mal gives his perspective on them at the trial. These were men who'd shoot a brown man for no reason and would shoot dolphins which either trials of men respect and we're savages to them with this. Yeah, absolutely. And I think proving that they are definitely not the savage ones here. I mean, Mal gives him the same burial as he gave everybody else. But without the ceremony of it, it's a fuck it, you can go down there and get eaten by sharks. He's not expecting him to become a dolphin, but he is giving him the burial. He's not leaving him for the red crabs.

He's yeah. Yeah. I think he's a. It's just this is what we do and I'm going to think about it like people. Yeah. I've heard it, you know, first up towards then is thinking of people like things. Yes. Even if this one is technically enough of an animal to be, you know, shot when it goes rabid. Yes. The thing about Polgrove's manners that Daphne starts considering, he says, much obliged. It almost broke her heart once upon a time some woman had taught the man his manners,

but to thank her he'd grown up to be a weasel. And now when he was worried and ill at ease, natural bit of politeness drifted up from the depths like a pure clear bubble from a swamp. That almost is like the opposite of Paul Graves. But then he said then he committed suicide. Let's say. And then he committed suicide at Paul Graves. Saved his life for a little bit there. Stephanie's like, all right, you are a little too human. Stephanie's like, all right, you are a little too human. And it's his manners that save him because he does he joins him with the he considers joining him with the singing he doesn't drink the beer right away.

Because he's sort of politely going along with what she's doing. Whereas Foxlip obviously doesn't and that's what kills him. Yeah. Then Paul Grave gets his casual offscreen death and said I shot him yesterday because he was a pain in the arse, says Cox. Yeah. There was actually a Paul Grave, I think it was Paul Grave, but there couldn't be a single thing in this jungle that hadn't tried to bite, peck or stink him during the last dark soupy hour. Is that him?

Yeah. A dark soupy hour anyway, I think another of our food chronology metaphors for the folder. Yes, Dark Soupy Hour summed up everything. I hate about being anywhere even slightly too warm. Yeah. Oh no. So Cox, this is one of our good Pratchett villains. This is, I think, the cast of Flavor of Villain, as you said earlier.

Woke up every day and decided to be Mr. Cox. Where his shadow fell, old friendships snapped and little wars broke out, milk soured, weevils fled from every stale ship's biscuit and rats queued up to jump in the sea. Also they're cooking. the way he tried to shoot Captain Roberts in the faith wasn't just enough for him to be a dickhead and be mutinous. He had to go for this one very specific shot on this guy. Yeah. Yeah. He realized that shooting him isn't as cruel as he can be. Yes.

The idea of studying him like a rare beetle, I thought was a... Yeah. And the way he goes about it, you know, the asking puzzle questions and this insidious way of putting all the extra hallelujahs and amens and clapping loudly. Yeah, it's so off putting. Giving him too much of what he wants. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's like, it's so off putting. Giving him too much of what he wants. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's like it's like the very extreme version of when like, the dickhead popular girl at school would like for a laugh one class pretend to be your best mate. Yes.

You're like, this is gonna end poorly for me. Yeah, I can't just like, tell you to fuck off. It's very that but in a completely different flavour of way and also on a ship. Yeah, yeah. I never did find a middle school bully who tried to then, you know, shoot me with a cannon, which is nice. Yeah, I also was rarely shot by cannon in middle school. Not never. But you went to Catholic school. Yeah, no, a lot more cannons at Catholic school. A lot of cannons. Oh, God, sorry. Yeah, Mal's question about Cox, how can he rise up every

morning and decide to be him? You do worry about some people doing that. You do worry about some people doing that. But yeah, give it to the Raiders, you know, he shoots at the parrot and bows and looks around very proudly. He shoots at the parrot the way he shot at the brown man and the butterfly and the dolphins. He's shot at things for something to shot at. The Raiders, when he's showing off afterwards and bowing, the Raiders glanced at him as if he were a little boy who was proud of having wet himself. I love that so much. Just, yeah. Just, yeah, if I can. His smile as well, I thought was very Carsa. It wasn't the nasty little itchy little grin of polegrave that made you want

to wash your hands. It was the grin of a man who was happy in his work. Yeah. Just the vines looking into Kars's face just like, and there was no, you know, artifice in it. That was a genuinely happy grin. Like, I'm having a lovely day and we're having fun, aren't we? Like crocodiles and sharks. So yeah, really never smile at that crocodile. Oh, yeah, fucking Mao outsmarting him. Yes. It's just beautiful. That whole scene. I'll tell you what we were talking about, sick tension never building up. And it doesn't because again, you know, even though this isn't like a classic, oh, the third pull of the axe pulls the axe out. Although, you know, it is.

Check out, yeah. But you know, obviously, that Mao is not going to be killed by cocks. Yeah, that is not the sort of story that Pratchett is telling here. No. And so you get to feel a bit of tension without the sickness. Yes. And the sand in the eyes, when they're standing there still, waiting for the fight to start, who's going to pick up their weapon? And then the sand in the eyes and Mal's been holding his weapon the whole time. I think if Mal gets to be like a little god of an island, he's definitely a little bit of a trickster god.

Oh yeah, hints of tricks to god. You've got to have fun. He's touched by Lokaha, of course. I wish I'd looked up and seen how Fratric pronounced Locaja. I'm just going to do it differently every time. It's great fun. The Raiders. I like this reveal of them as they've made Cox this figurehead leader, hence they're judging him and side-eyeing him behind his back. This comparison to them as the gentry that Daphne's familiar with, they had the well fed, important, careful look of people who take care not to be at the top. Merle Wizards coded, I thought that bit.

Sarah Yeah, and there's also a bit of a comparison to the Gentleman of the Last Resort. It's the power behind the crown, which is much more important than whoever's bum might be on the throne at the moment. Yeah, that's a good point actually. Now I think about it, there is that direct line, isn't there? Because if the leader starts getting too mental, you quietly do something about it. Yes. So it's very that. So yeah, I think you get the really nice comparison there combined with the more obvious like, doesn't he look like the Archbishop of Canterbury? Yeah.

Yeah, the one moment you get to like Cox for a half second. And you canny, isn't it? And yeah, then Pee-loo. I just want to talk about Pee-loo because he gets a couple of really good dramatic speech moments again. He retells Daphne's story for the court and he acts it out and she can see the different characters he's being. And these characters shouted at one another all the time while Pilu's fingers popped like pistols.

it must be a very satisfying to be able to tell your story in the kind of you know, stuttering way I do and have it repeated back in PeeLoo. Yes, like I'm going to start doing that whenever you start telling me a story, I'm going to start dramatically reenacting it for you as you go. Yeah, please don't. I'm sure that won't even slightly be irritating. That won't make you hate me at all. No, I won't do that. I wouldn't do that to you. And then they have this this Council of War, they're finally discussing the threat of the Raiders. And people who talk so fast and hard, the words form pictures in front of her eyes. And what she saw was the Agincourt speech from Henry the

Fifth. Which is not the Once More Unto the Breach, dear friends one I always mix them up. Once More Unto the Breach, dear friends is from Henry the Fifth. But the Agincourt speech, the St. Crispin's Day speech is the, we few, we happy few, we band of brothers. Gentlemen in England now abedge, or think themselves a curse, they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap, while any speaks that fought with us upon St. Crispin's Day. Did you know that off the top of your head? No, I have it in front of me. Oh, okay. I can see what you're looking at, because I was looking at it on my screen. Okay. I can see what you're looking at because I was looking at it on my screen.

Yeah, I have odd Shakespeare speeches memorized, but this is not one of them. Yeah. And of course, it's Pelou's descendant. Yes, in the end, in the end of the book. Which is nice. The storyteller. Yeah. And it's always become a continued role. The storyteller and his, I forgot to put them in characters, but the storyteller and his elderly pet tree climbing octopus. Niamh Which is beautiful. Ange Which is beautiful. All I wanted was an elderly pet tree climbing octopus. Just to quickly jump back on last week's theme and talking

about this idea of belief and truth, and talking about how Pelous beat Shafi'a and convinces people he began with the truth and then he hammered it out until it was very thin, but gleamed like Mrs. Gergel's new teeth at noon. Yes, which is nice. And then you do seem like hammering stuff out later, like literal metal, which is a mirror. Could be a mirror. Yeah, no, he is great. I think he's exactly what you need in this book to be the, not even just the translator, but the amplifier, the megaphone. Yes. I like him a lot. What a fun little golden speaker.

What a wonderful golden speaker. And then we have the paper vine woman. Yes, not the unknown woman. Yes, not the unknown woman. Yes, the paper vine woman, Fee Ha El. And we kind of figure out why she's traumatized beyond the obvious and what she's been doing with all of this paper vine and she's been repairing the cannon. And wordless though she was, she begged to be allowed to fire it. And she gathered all the paper vine, woven it into ropes from dawn to dusk, tangling into it the inexhaustible hatred in her heart. And I think it's a really beautiful comparison after she fires the cannon. She goes back to the cradle, she took up her baby from his cradle made of paper vines. So the same thing she's used to create a weapon is holding her baby. And she kissed him and wept. And of course she gets a happy ending.

Emma Cunningham She does. And I love that, well, you get the two moments with Mal looking at her and seeing the vitriol and being scared by her almost for the first time, like realising just how much hatred was in her heart. And then when he wakes up and she's feeding him, which by the way, I love the line, when she saw his eyes open, she gave a little shriek, kissed him on the forehead and ran out of the hut. Exactly how I want to be woken up. But like literally didn't recognize her because the grief coming off of her made such a difference. Yeah. I think it was interesting with Mal kind of his terror at her reaction because he didn't really have any hatred for the Raiders.

There was something to be dealt with and they were something to be feared. They were a concern, but he wasn't afraid of them. He just had wanted to make sure that they were dealt with properly. Yeah. They hadn't affected him. Yeah. Like directly. Yeah. So yeah, it hadn't occurred to him to hate them the way she hated them. Yeah. And that was something for him to reckon with. And of course she gets a happy ending. Her husband was one of the raiders captive. She admittedly, you know, missing a leg. But yeah,

yeah. Luckily, luckily anesthesia is a thing as long as Mrs. Gurgles around. Yes. Handiwom and Dav. And then who else we got? Oh, Daphne's father, now King Henry the Ninth. Thoroughly daunted. My favorite description of being hectored by one's offspring. Yeah, being Dorted. A beautiful callback as well. And she's so excited to show him the island and the cave and tell him about it. And then she says to him, she sort of pauses and says, this is the place we might grant God absolution. is the place we might grant God absolution. Jess Yes, as a way to kind of cut through the

colonialism shield within his head, I think, cut into being a person. Hey, put the flag down. Jess Yeah, put it there. Jess But you're definitely immediately- Jess Rabid grief. Rabid grief. All right, now you're in the room. Come on. Jess Yeah, the way Daphne immediately starts telling the soldiers off if it looks like they're going to try and colonize here. Yes.

Do not put that fucking flag down. Put that thing back where it came from or so help me. Sorry. Also like, yeah, during that bit, we're just like, no one should call anyone delightful without written proof. And then as soon as he's crowned, the first thing he does is tell off his mother. Yes. She's like, not like this, Stephanie. Hang on. Hang on. Wait for the crown. Get the crown on. The very notion of nobility that you cling to like grim death means that you will not answer me back. It is quite funny that he did not feel himself capable of doing this until he had the crown.

Because after all, he was always capable of doing this physically. There's nothing stopping him stopping his mum being a prick. But now he's got the weight of you can't argue with me. Yeah, yeah. Because I am- A very conflict avoidant man. Well, it's also I don't think she would brook argument before, she would simply just refuse to accept the document that's happened but she can't refuse it from the king.

This is true, yeah. And after he does get his dramatic speech of telling him off, he turns to the gentleman of last resort, that was alright, wasn't it? Yes. Yeah, I thought that was all absolutely wonderful. Oh and last character, Cookie. Yes. Oh, what a fucking delight of a character.

Yeah, just a really like, properly introduced in the last third side character. I mean, he's been sort of mentioned as much as like Daphne thinks obliquely about what happened on the ship. She sometimes for instance, and there was this person Cookie I talked to, but properly introduced here. Yeah. Yeah. You get kind of the opposite of the sick tension, I think, because he gets properly introduced in this section. And immediately rescued. Yeah. Because as soon as he's introduced in like the last third of the book and his little boat is detailed, you're like, oh, good, we're gonna get him. And then like immediately they're like, is that a coffin?

Yeah, his survival coffin. Which is an absolutely genius idea, a tiny floating world. But I also, I'm completely charmed by the idea of his kitchen as a safe space on the ship, especially for Daphne, which means she has somewhere other than her room that she can be and she can have a talk to someone. Yeah, you know, never piss off a chef. CHARLEYY Oh, yeah, you do not piss off a chef, especially not on a ship. And he also serves as the narrator for Daphne during the shipboard life. He, expositor. Sarah. Expositor. Ooh! Sarah. With a handy dandy coffin. And yeah, we get the immediate payoff when he's rescued. And I really like the line, the captain tells the gents with last resort, they should change

course because he's seen someone. And they say, well, of course, you already have. And he says, yes, the sea has its own laws. That is a point of honor for the captain, he would not leave a ship for each person. Absolutely not. This is very much reflected in real life when the, was it Priti Patel or the one after her, was telling the Navy to stop fishing asylum seekers out of the sea. The Navy's like, obviously we're not not gonna do that. And the Home Secretary just very quickly shut up about that. It was like, you can't make sailors not rescue someone at sea. Yeah, don't be fucking ridiculous. And the whole bit about the dolphins as well. that's very much a, you know, through history superstition, isn't it? It crops up again and again. You don't fuck with dolphins. Yeah, don't fuck about with dolphins.

They're one of those species that are so clearly intelligent. Yes. You really have to be very, very odd to... To fuck with dolphins. And one last note, that Cookie figures out he can strain plankton through his beard because he's seen whales do it. Yep. Excellent choice. Good work Cookie. Well done Cookie.

If I could take a practical item to a desert island it would be Cookie. And his coffin. Beautiful. So we don't have locations, do we? Yeah, we've been to everywhere we were going. Little bits we liked. Little bits we liked. What did you like?

It's got a big bit, I suppose. The concept and the realization the mouse coming to is very big anyway. But I like the visualization very much of this idea of the stone globe with lines of gleaming gold emanating from the nation and throughout to where they explored. I just think that's lovely. Letting his fingers follow a line of gleaming gold across the stone. There were a lot of these lines and they all went to the same place or rather away from it as though some giant had thrown spears across the world. It's very cool. Related, I quite like the realization that the nation used to be much bigger and had been volcanoed. And flooded.

And flooded. And yeah, which is, you know, the geological history of quite a lot of that part of the world in our timeline. But yeah, I like that. What do you like Joanna? Joanna McAllister On the globe thing as well, just one detail because they talk about it being upside down, the world turned upside down and the maps in the book are one way up and one's the other way up. That was a really lovely detail. Jess I know. Yeah, it is just discombobulating enough to really drive the point home, isn't it? Joanna McAllister Yeah, and I don't know if I've actually ever clocked it before. I sort of went, Oh, I looked at the map at the beginning. I don't need to look at the map. Yeah, maybe.

Knowing what sort of person I am. Cricket is not actually something I like, but I like how it was discussed here. Especially as like a mini colonialism moment as well, obviously the father turns up and they're having a nice time but he does try and teach them this English pastime of cricket, he must pass on this English thing. And Carly, who I already talked about, I like the idea of her as intimidatingly hench. Second game, she was banned from bowling after she keeps injuring people. Daphne's father explained that women shouldn't really be allowed to play cricket because they fundamentally didn't understand it. It seemed to Daphne she understood it very well and therefore tried to get it over with as quickly as possible so they could get on with something more interesting. I really don't see the problem here. No, I absolutely support that and continued reminder to never explain cricket to me.

Also, much like Aunt Sally, I think it's more fun to just speculate. Yeah. And in the case of cricket, not understand it. And if you and I find ourselves forced to watch it together, narrating ourselves instead. Yeah. And if the worst comes to worst, throwing a cricket ball violently. Yeah, that bit I feel like I can do. Yes, again, going to pass throwing onto you. What else did you like? You like death, don't you?

Oh, I love death. You don't, me. Big fan of death. Famously not obsessed with immortality. Francine, that's what they call me. Look at her. Walking next to Mal. The imagery of walking or having death walk beside you or behind you or in front of you. Pops up a lot in literature and in poetry and things and I think it's lovely. I like when he says I will walk in

your steps for a while. Because that's very, you know, there's a sign of respect, obviously, but it's also like, oh, like, I'm not sure I want that. Yeah. Obviously, it's necessary for him at the time. But it is always it's a bit disturbing. For the reader and for I'm sure everybody watching him to see, you know, the grain is filling the air around him as he walked and the great wings of Logar beating gently felt like metal hard and sharp and cold. And I love this idea of just the Raiders being able to see exactly what's going on and everybody else just seeing him like, has this hardened for a minute, Chieftain? Yeah, I think there's something as well about the fact that it's I shall walk with you, I shall walk in your footsteps for a while. It's not, you're not given a mental image

of possession, apart from possibly with how the Raiders looking at him and they're seeing him and sort of the shadow of Loka'ah over him. It's not like he stepped into Mal's body and given him powers in that moment. It is a next to him adjacent. and Loca has footsteps, he is very much like, just allowing himself to be dragged along. Yes. Because that's what necessary at the time. Yeah. It is interesting, Loca as a character, still very interesting, just as like a, he is morally neither good nor bad,

much as death is in Discworld, but not really ambiguous thinking. Not even ambiguous, because I don't think there's any ambiguity. He's not good and he's not bad, he just is. In the same way that death is, but he's a very different character to death because he's got this, I don't even clear about it, he's got this trickster mischief. I think he takes a little more glee in what happens than death does, even if he, him as a force is not good or bad.

Yeah, and I think there's something as well about how, you know, potentially there's a lot of boredom for, like, how as much as someone could feel such a thing as boredom and he's fascinated and interested in Mal because Mal pushes back. Yes. And there's not a lot of pushback because a lot of people have had this just blind faith. Yeah. There's no deals to be made with him and there's no negotiation. I think he takes satisfaction in the fact that he's always picked the right people to make this choice

because they always make the same choice, which is to continue their journey. Yes. It's like, yes again, I have picked correctly. Well done me. Well done me, flap flap of the big gray wings. Do you have something slightly less morbid? Yeah, this idea of the right people. So this is when Daphne takes me out to look at the cave and she's talking about the importance of everything. And we touched on this earlier, she says, I want the right people to see this and his responses is, the right people are seeing it. And it's the validation he takes from the cave, he says, send them here, but I know what this place means. My ancestors wanted

to tell us that they were here, that's what it means. And he takes what he needs to take from the cave, even as there's this extra thing of, I want the Royal Society to see it, that's what I mean by the right people. Mao takes this internal validation of what it means as a member of the nation from the cave, whereas Daphne wants there to be some external validation of it. Mao teaches her to maybe think differently about that. Then she does the same thing when talking to her father because he has the attitude that she has. She takes him to the cave and he says, all this belongs in a museum. And she says, yes, I know. That's why it's in one. Yeah. Just because this doesn't look like our galleries does not mean this is not a

museum in its own right. And it should be here where people can come and see it. Not yeeted off to the fucking British Museum. Yes. Not that the British Museum has got any artifacts it shouldn't have. This goes on with this idea of the right people and his sort of stubborn colonialist Englishness about it over the picture of spectacles and he's trying to push her to prove her scientific hypothesis. He's doubtful at every turn. This is partly just me finding it's just have a tiny tiny ranted, if you will. significance is my bugbear. I talked about this on the Patreon, I did a rabbit hole about the history of board games and I had a little rant there. You look at these ancient board games, we found they're like 5,000 years old, the Royal Game of Air and Sanica and that

sort of thing. And the people writing about them now and the speculation about how they were played and there's always this line somewhere of, and it's possible that this was a divination tool for people and they use it to predict fate. Are you saying that's possible because you think based on the structure of the board game there's evidence? Are you saying that's possible because you're going, ha ha, people must have also had a mystical belief about it, they couldn't have just had this thing and played? Yes. I often see archaeologists make fun of their own profession by saying, oh, it's a ritual object. Ritual object just means we don't know what the fuck this is.

Ritual object. Yes. Probably has some ritual significance. That'll be what it is. Ritualistic significance of complaining about anus is bad copper. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, yeah, there's just a little bug there and I think Pratchett does it very well and challenges it very well. I was trying to look into the issues with depicting colonialism like this. Trying to

read it as critically as I could. A couple of the bits are in this very short section, I would say, which is the idea that, and I know it's meant to be skimmed over, but the idea that the British are, oh, they're fine, they just want you to wear trousers and worship their god. What I will say is that I quite like the idea that all it would take is 130 of the royalty to die and we could set the empire off on a less problematic. I just felt silly going past it without noting it. Yes, absolutely. Well, should we go on to the bigger stuff? Yeah. Yeah. I'm not sure if this is a good stuff as much really just as taking it back to some of our more

old school talking point things. I just really like some of the writing devices in this one, which is a big focus on color, I think. Yeah, that's what kept jumping out at me anyway. Gray being the obvious one from the start, gray being the color of death here. And it's very much gray, not black, not whatever. It's the desaturation of everything. And when you're in somewhere, which is as bright and as saturated as the nation clearly is, as that part of the world is, that is the huge contrast. But then I started kind of trying to pay attention to whenever death was in the air or something like that. And you get moments like the sun was too bright to look at, was already boiling all of the color out of the landscape. This is the morning of the duel. And then obviously you get all of the moments

with Lo Kaha and the gray wings and Daphne, yet again reiterating the no colors of the underworld and the silver fish and no colors and no birds and just the opposite of the nation. I think it's very interesting. You also get, I would say the red and the black and the white for war and bad things is like this recurring theme. And I always like the, I like splashes of red in, we've talked about red, a great like for monstrous regiment, but I like splashes of red in writing as well as in paintings. Generally speaking, if you've got a lot of the same color or the same kind of palette, then a splash of red in it makes it kind of come together and makes it a little just that little extra something, something. I believe it's the artistic term. No, I didn't go to art college can you tell?

As the French would say, I did. A little something something. A little something something. But yeah, so you get right at the beginning, obviously, you get all the the red disinfectant. We talked about this and it said like the red disinfectant part, like splashing at the beginning, obviously, you get the red disinfectant. We talked about this and it said like the red disinfectant part, like splashing at the feet. You get the red line of the horizon, the Mao and this is this sunrise, red skirt warning. This time it's volcano. Red skirt warning. Stacey- Vulcanists warning. Emma- Vulcanists warning, yeah. Why are you too late for a warning at that point? You also get

the red crabs and every time they're described, they are the little red crabs and you always get that. You get the splash of colour every time and you get to see it. And you have the contrast. You have the little red crab crabs and the little blue hermit crabs. Yes. Yeah, you get the red, blue. Yeah, that's a good point. And when you also get quite a lot of the like internal stuff described in colours. So Mao has like a strange, chilling thought dancing across his mind like a white thread against the terrible red background. This is the bit where he's

thinking like Cox. Then a little later, any thought in those little white thoughts scribbled their way along the redness of the pain in his lungs. Again, I love how you can get a mental image of what he's talking about, like an internal thought process just by little splashes of color. I just think it's really cleverly done. Yeah. And it's not just red, scribbles of red. I think there's something about the tone, the shape of that word. And the immediate image it evokes and then how quickly you can turn that mental image into the feeling of the pain. Yeah, definitely. It's very clever. Yeah,

it's almost synesthesia kind of. Yeah. Yeah, that's what it's trying to evoke. You also get the obvious ones. You get the raiders coming up with torchlight making red suns in the mist. As I talked about earlier, the black and red war canoes against this picturesque golden scene. Yeah. They're like a really this harsh clash in the middle of something that should be very calm and very beautiful. Exactly. And then right at the end, like I've been focusing on grays and reds or whatever,

you kind of get the blue for good things. Like you said, the blue hammock crab. And then right, right at the end, you have the old man crying after he's been telling the story. And why are you crying, sir? Ah, good one. I must answer, mustn't I? Because you liked my blue Jupiter. Because we keep going. Because there are stars and blue hermit crabs. And again, it's just, every time you can reiterate the color you do and it really just I don't know, I feel like it helped it's adding like washes of color onto the picture and I think I really helped I don't know, I should be able to describe this better but I cannot. I just really I've decided to start focusing more on colors in Fractured Books and I like it a lot.

I support this. Do you know what that just randomly has come back to me? I remember seeing a breakdown of some Lana Del Rey lyrics and how, how evocative she managed to make stuff just by saying things like, like the like the blue of the water or the splash of red lipstick or something like that. And just how it brings you into the moment just for the splash of color. And I just, I think it's really clever writing device. And I expect the proper word for it. Maybe I should have looked that up before I started talking, but I didn't. Okay. Let's not do that. Don't do that, Francine. I love it the way you described it. I don't

need a proper word for it. Thank you. Just as well, really. But yeah, I think probably that's all the blue. There is quite a lot of different blues. You've got the silver, red and the different things like that. But yeah, I think blue and red and grey are the three I wanted to talk about. Do you have something slightly more structured and less just splashing metaphorical paint onto a metaphorical canvas? I can't promise I won't splash any of this metaphorical paint. But speaking of Pratchett being a really good fucking writer. I can't promise I won't flash any of this for a complaint. But speaking of Pratchett being a really good fucking writer. Oh, always a segue we can rely on. Speaking of Pratchett being a genius and just the amount of shit he's set up that he pays off in these last few chapters. And we've done this before, we've talked about this before, but usually

it's in a very different context. Normally when we're talking about like the clever settlement payoff, we're talking about things like the watchbooks, we're talking about mysteries and red herrings. This is just establishing things and coming back and paying them off in a really clever way. It's just great writing. We have this running theme of knowledge becoming legend. When Daphne realizes, later in the section, that Saturn's rings and Jupiter's moons became these songs that we sing to children about the brothers of air being Jupiter's moons, about the paper vine woman and these vines tied around Saturn. Yeah.

And Daphne says that's how the knowledge gets passed down except she didn't know it was knowledge. We get hints of it earlier in the section, we get Daphne starting to understand the song of the four brothers and she's singing it over the beer and the explanation of the need for the beer song, which we've had hints at throughout as she does test it with Barbar Blacksheep. Spit neutralizes the paralyzing chemical and you have to give it a certain amount of time and singing a song is how you mark that time. And it's a fun, it was a little subversion that one wasn't it? Because when she started experimenting, the one thing she dismissed was spitting in it.

I'm sure that would be for a lot. And the thing is, there are two ways to interpret these moments. And I don't think they're exclusive of each other. I think you can see both things in it. One is that this is somewhat racist and colonialist writing, which you know, why should you need this white girl to come to the island to explain to you things that should be your history, and how that's challenging to read. But the other thing, and I'm not saying that's not entirely there and that it's not maybe a problematic element of the book, but I think the other thing and the thing that was it was

Pratchett's intention is this thing that's thematically stuff in the previous section, it's what I talked about. You need there to be fresh eyes. It doesn't have to be a sheer, perfect white girl, but there used to be someone with fresh eyes and new ideas to get out of this rut of tradition. Much as in Pyramids, it's Tepik who's had this experience elsewhere and has brought it back and that helps push the jelly Baby. It's so funny to dip back into especially early disc golf when you're trying to talk about this such serious book. Like back into Jelly Baby. I'm not even sure I've got the right name of Jelly Baby, it was the place next to it, but I think it was Jelly Baby. Anyway, yeah, so it's this idea of Daphne being the fresh

art is needed to break us out of this rut of tradition and remind us that the tradition is more than just tradition, it's knowledge. And you have, of course, the story of the two brothers that fought that helps tie things together. He lived for many lifetimes and saw many things, but one day he found a place that was best of all because it was the island of his childhood and he stepped on the shore and died happily because he was home again. Yes. And this idea of coming all the way around again. So you brought up in the first episode, you like this once upon a time idea and the once upon a time for this at the beginning of the book, the creation myth is in the time when things were otherwise and the moon was different. Yes.

And here we learn that things were otherwise and the moon was different because of these ice sheets melting. And the stars were different. And the stars were different. And we have this fishing dating that helps us date the star maps and the idea of the last wave, this point of contention between Mao and Ataba when they were going through the cave in the last section, that wave again, coming from the ice sheets melting, that was the wave that came again, it was there in history, if not in knowledge. And this beautiful line, the people of the nation had

sailed beyond the seas they knew under unfamiliar stars. Yes. Yes. It's, I also just the idea of the wave passing down in oral tradition as well. It wouldn't be us if we didn't then acknowledge the round world. Cool, maybe the fucking the flood in Noah's Ark story and all these other like myths and legends from ancient cultures and other cultures came from a real thing. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't, maybe it was, you know, the Bronze Age collapse was maybe some of this to the other. Yeah. Not just that, but First Nations and Aboriginal people having such an incredibly long tradition

of oral storytelling and oral history that they are some of the best resources we have for knowing what the world was like 10,000 years ago. Yes. Yeah. Because these stories have been so continually passed down, which I think I talked about a little bit in the last continent. Yes. You definitely did. You might have talked about it more at length in What Are the Rabbit Holds as well. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.

That's so cool. Like, what was it, tens of thousands of years, literally, that you could track back something that they'd... That's part of the storytelling tradition, part of the combined oral history. And you could track it because the eclipse that happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And just some other really great things where they're set up and they're paid off. The false teeth and the glass eyes were set up earlier in the book and then when Daphne realizes what the boy has found, A, she's delighted because they might help Mrs. Gergel, although they don't in the end. Tony Ford has mentioned grandmother chewing meat for

Mrs. Gergel. Great dynamic established there. Also Mrs. Gergel like grinning and the sun shining off her teeth like Cohen the barbarian. Yeah, great one. Fratrin just clearly got a thing about big bling teeth in scary old people. Like, I'll tell you what this very cool old character needs incredibly expensive and practical teeth. And Daphne summing up why they're so important, they were made by someone who did not just watch the skies and sail to new lands. He thought about small things that made life

better for people. Yes. And how this is a sign of civilization, of historical civilization, of there was more than, you know, we were sat around fires as cavemen, you were improving things. You weren't just traveling and finding things, you were improving things, you were thinking about things. Yeah, it's like the next step along from the first idea of civilization we glom onto is when somebody has a set broken leg. Yes.

Because that shows that they were cared for and that they were able to take the time to heal, they weren't left to die. But yeah, the I fucking like connected to that kind of the bit with the the world upside down the globe, like you're saying before, on the upside down maps. And then when the old man is showing the boy and the girl blue Jupiter. Yeah. And he goes, and it's a shock, wasn't it? A moment of uncertainty. The world turned upside down. Just a bit creepy as well. Yeah. It's like, a little bit back. I'd be remiss if not mentioning as well that the world turned upside down is the name of

an English folk song. Is it? And it's referenced in Monstrous Regiment. Oh, cool. Oh, did I miss? Yeah. It's just referenced in a list of like, and Polly knew all the songs. Oh, good, yeah, yeah, yeah. The World Turned Upside Down and Sweet Polly Oliver. Oh, that's right, and Sweet Polly Oliver

was the one we looked into, yeah. Okay. And The World Turned Upside Up is a song around the revolutionary war era, which is why there's a song in Hamilton called The World Turned Upside Down, although it's nothing like the original folk song. Oh, I see.

Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Cool. One kind of almost, yeah, payoff, I'd say as well. I really liked, we talked about the, Mao and Daphne were talking about Newton and standing on the shoulders of giants and things. And then when Daphne is talking about Mao making discoveries, she goes, yeah, I didn't discover this actually, Mao did. I looked over his shoulder and he had to walk past 100,000 ancestors and I just thought that was like a little, like a rhyming callback almost rather than an exact one because he got the shoulders and the 100,000s of people

in there. It was there. It made me think of the callback to noon. It was some other little payoff things as well. The cannons, I already jokingly said, they were Chekhov's cannons. They were introduced, they got used. You can't have a cannon and not do something with them. The raiders as well, the way they're slowly built up is a threat throughout the whole book, but every time they come up as a threat, a man might start worrying that there's something that changes the subject. It's more people coming to the island or it's the cave. changes the subject, it's more people coming to the island or it's the cave or it's... And then we get this echo, the raiders came just before dawn after we've had these tests, these that have lulled us into, like there's a reader into a false sense of security,

almost as the island has, the practicing for if the raiders come. And in the moment where they finally do come, we get a call back to Mal's silver threads. He'd always had that trick with the silver thread that pulled him towards the future he pictured, but this time it was the future that had been tugging at him, pulling him to this place at this time. And then the way the idea of Daphne being royalty and royalty in general being involved and paid off early in this section when Foxlip and Poulgrave are there. One of them calls her Princess and she thought it was just like the mutineers. They called her baby names all the time. Yeah, she hated it. It made her flesh crawl. It was probably meant

to and of course she is quite literally a princess. She just doesn't know. And you have Cox saying, I'm a king. You've got to be nice to me. She called me your majesty. When the Cassie Wren finally arrives, we get this call back to the ancestors when she realizes what's going on, that her father's king. In her mind's eye, ancestors toppled like dominoes. 138 of them. The way that echoes the grandfather's falling in the cave. And then you get the funny moment of, did my grandmother kill them all? Which is fair.

Like if I was her, I'd wonder about it. We have this scientific hypothesis idea with Daphne and her father and talking about how you find proof. And we have this early thing of Nahui with the shark that I brought up in the first episode, testing things three times to make sure they work, which is this intersection of science and fiction, science and fantasy. Rule of three. The rule of three, because three is a pattern and so it becomes a rule in stories but it

also becomes a rule in scientific testing. It's an early form of hypothesis and testing and proving. Of course, speaking of the rule of three, the axe comes back and it's the third pull that pulls the axe out of the tree. It didn't obey the storybook rules before and come out when Malm dramatically pulled it and it should have done. Because it wasn't time yet. Because it had to wait. It had to wait till it was needed. And a great Pilu moment again, the Pilu's description of the axe coming out of the water later on. It blocked the light of the sun. It made the stars come out. It caused thunderstorms and strange sunsets around the world.

That's what I heard. Absolutely. That's what I saw. I swear I remember five minutes ago. Thank you, Filou. And so then we get to something we've touched on the perfect world and the parallel worlds, you have Mao turning down like our Zoffer and then like how it explains everything that can happen must happen and everything that can happen must have a world to happen in and he pays off Mal's refrain with a new one there's no such thing as does not happen but there is always happen somewhere else and the way the book doesn't just it's not just paying off a specific moment, it's paying

off so much of what Terry Pratchett's right. It turns the trousers of time from something that's occasionally quite silly to this blossoming, beautiful thing. And as Mao learns this, he is almost like the world opens up for him. He knows all of these happen somewhere places exist. Yeah. And he's allowed to think to himself, no regrets. Like, the boy, the boy who is crying is happy somewhere. Daphne stays somewhere. We have this final, final payoff. I'm gonna, I tricked you. I said I was going to talk about setup and pay off. I'm going to bring us back around to the theme of belief.

Sorry, that wasn't very convincing. There we go. Thank you. Sorry, sorry. Francie, gasp! The fun thing is, if I do bleep that, it starts with a hard ca. Yeah, the final payoff. In this final moment, the old man talking to these two children, and they talk about belief. There's this quote from Mao that has been passed down, the old man remembers, I cursed Emo because he gave the birds and animals away to sense great waves and didn't give it to

smart beings like us, but I realized that he did. He made us smart and it was up to us to be good at it. The children ask the man what he believes and he says, everything I know makes me believe Emo is in the order which is inherent amazingly in all things. The way the universe opens up to our questioning. And this conversation takes place before this girl goes to guard the island for the night, holding a spear and her father will be watching because fathers watch. And the solution, the win, the completion of this idea of what it means to grieve and to believe or not believe in gods is not, we got clever so we didn't need gods anymore. It's I found gods in lose what made us the nation to become this.

Can I double-dutch twist it back for one second, which is right, right at the beginning. I mean, when we talk about practice, conceiving of the idea of the book, it said the first thing that popped into his head was Mao standing on a beach with the spear looking out into the ocean. So like the end of this really is like the full circle. Like he's gone around the world and come back again to the island. Yeah, yeah. Like this really is the very, very, very, very beginning. More so the real beginning than the pink disinfectant, I'd say. Yes. Matt Pratchett. Good writer.

Of course there were two dolphins, but no one noticed because they were crying too much to see them. Obviously there were two dolphins. Obviously there were two dolphins. Of course there were two dolphins. Oh, mate, that bit, oh fuck. Knowing that Daphne went back to the island at the end. Yeah. My face is going shiny and I don't know, I'm pretending there's nothing wrong. Francine, have you got an obscure reference finial for me? Not really, kind of, yeah. I didn't know that maroon could, because they talked about seeing

a maroon fired. I was like, what? Yes. I didn't know maroon could refer to a rocket that you fire. To get attention. If you are marooned. Yeah, but but there isn't any solid apparently connection from the et full of water. That was a real thing on ships. If it is, I wasn't able to find it in time. One of these seafaring superstitions I came across was that if a man's head is ringed in Elmo's fire, he'll be dead within the verse. I would also like to look further into the 7mm array radio telescopes which do appear to be built on an island chain in Hawaii. I assume there's some very good geographical reasons for this, but that occurred to me right at the end of the research process. I thought, do you know what? I'm not going

to learn about telescopes right now. I stand by that decision, but I'm going to look for it anyway because it's really interesting. I didn't know anything about it, even if the old man prefers his stand up for you on. Blue Jupiter. Quickly before I address, probably mention because I forgot to say in that section, I also am greatly delighted by how much this book becomes of its time by the list of modern scientists it uses coming to the island to say this is modern day now. Because I just I don't think Terry Pratchett even five years later would have called Dawkins

that nice Richard Dawkins. Well, he's probably perfectly pleasant in person. Yeah. I don't know what he's up to these days, do you? Transphobia. And being weird about bees. What? He was weird about honey or something.

No, he was weird about honey. Why? What? A couple years ago. I don't fucking know. Anyway, Patrick Moore was there who Patrick was friends with and used to go to observatory parties. Yes, that's the whole thing. That's a really nice chapter in Rob Wilkins' book. Yes.

All right. All right. All right. So this is literally because I copy pasted into my notes and I couldn't find anywhere to shoehorn it in. I love this line. There's a ship coming towards them and it's the largest one he had seen with so many sails it looked like a storm heading for them. How cool is that? Yes. Sorry, this is just us dragging it out because we don't want to stop talking about Nation. It's such a good book. I think for now, for now, this is everything we're going to say about the book Nation. It's 10 o'clock now.

Because it is 10 o'clock and I won't pass it. We will turn into pumpkins. Yeah. Nothing to do with the time, it just happens. So we are potentially going to have a couple of weeks off. We're back in May, we're back on the 6th of May with part one of I Shall Wear Midnight. Very excited for that. In the meantime, until then dear listener, you can join our Discord, link down below. You can follow us on Instagram at the TrueShall We Make You Fret. You can follow us on Twitter

and BlueSky at Make You Fret Pod. On Facebook at the TrueShall We Make You Fret. Join our subreddit rslash ttsmyf. Email us your thoughts, queries, castle snacks, famous scientists and tree climbing octopus, the true shall make you fret pod at gmail.com. And if you want to support us financially, you can go to patreon.com forward slash thetrue shall make ye fret where you can exchange your hard-earned pennies for all sorts of bonus nonsense. And until next month, dear listener, the old man smiled and believed. For maybe the first time, I'm going to deliberately put something after the outro music instead of just nicking. I was talking while I was...

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or nicking a clip from further on, which is I love the little scientific explanations at the end of this, at the end of Nation, the author's note. Oh, yeah. You're also, I enjoyed the five exclamation marks dropped into there. Nothing could be further from the truth that this is a book set in the Pacific Ocean. The drowning bullets was something he looked into and was talking about in one of the interviews I linked in the first episode. The idea is like, he was like, I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure that this would happen. I'm going to have to ask

some scientists about this very practically. Blue Jupiter, I'd never heard of until this. But I love the fact that it's also practice favorite thing. And he is showing it to us in the same way that the old man in the story is showing the kids just by showing us like through this story. I love that. And look at this. Look at this. Look at how good this is. But also don't look at the sun through a telescope, kids. Yes. That's his warning and it should also be ours at the end of every episode really. I can't

believe we've been this irresponsible. Never windsurf on a crocodile. Never look at the sun through a telescope. Don't put jam on a magnet. Don't put your granny in a bag. Cor blimey!