The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 17: Sourcery Pt.1 (Meg-a-lo-man-ia-cal)

Episode Date: April 6, 2020

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan-Young and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 1 of our recap of “Sourcery”. Bread! Bananas! Bilious Gets Blown Away! Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail] to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:Descript - audio editor/auto transcribingThe Color of Magic (TV Mini-Series 2008) - IMDbThe Lord of the Rings (1978) - IMDbFreytag’s PyramidDan Harmon’s Story StructureInside Bill's Brain: Decoding Bill GatesSam Sykes - A City Stained Red Bobby BerkSanta Claus (1959 film)Over The Hedge Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour, by Kate FoxMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

No, it's fine, I'm trying not to get distracted by the hordes of random shit around me. But you did get through the first bit of Souls 3 eventually, I take it? I did! I got through the whole work yesterday. General impressions? Like I said, I enjoyed it more than I was expecting to. I don't remember enjoying it in the past, but I think that's because I was put off by light, fantastic colour and magic and didn't really like rinse win stories. And it does bear a bit of similarity to

light, fantastic. It does, yeah, Justin, it's a general adventurey, magic-y theme. I think it is a good one, but it, because it falls between two very good ones, it sort of loses something. What's next? I was just checking, but because of the copy I've got, it doesn't actually say... Yeah, same.

Because this is... We've ended up with the same one this time. I think this is first edition paperback. Yeah, hang on, let me use the Google. This book does not contain the map, please feel free to draw your own. Right, can you see it slash hear me? Yep. Sorry, yeah, so Weird Sisters is next.

So this falls in between two that I really, really, really love, which might be why I've disliked it in the past, but just looking at it for its own matters. Get to the witches. And Lampooning Shakespeare. Yeah, I mean, just on its own merits, I mean, it is clever. It's cleverly written. It's, I've never, you know me, I've never quite understood why the wizarding books

aren't particularly popular. And there is slapstick humour in here and like easy digs and things, but it's, I don't know, I think character building is very vivid and the metaphors are very good and the... I think what I've disliked about the wizard books in the past is that the stories can, the structure of them can be a bit funny and it can make them a bit hard to follow. Like there's not always a clear villain in the beginning middle

and it can get very muddy, like especially with colour and magic and light, fantastic. But I think also because they were the first ones I read and I read them when I was a bit younger, because like I really enjoy the last continent out of the wizard films, that's probably my favourite. Yeah. But I think I enjoy the characters more when they're turning up in other books.

Yeah, that makes sense. Like moving... Little cameos. Or like say moving pictures is arguably a wizard book because there's sort of two storylines going on and one is very much focused on the wizards. And that's one of my favourites. Yeah, it's, that's a good point actually when they are a B plot.

Yeah. Or not really a B plot, even though it's like two A plots in moving pictures, isn't it? No, it's a B plot. And the science of the disc world is the same. I don't know how into those you are. There are four. Did you know that? There are four.

I'm aware. I don't have the... But I think I've only read the first one. We all do bonus science of disc world episodes at some point. That'll be fun. Cool. Right then. Okay, cool.

So what's your... Oh, sorry. You go. And I was going to say should we make a podcast if you were going to ask something else first? I was just going to say how's your routine going? Because you're saying this week you were going to have a return to reality kind of.

I'm slowly building back into it. But so I've managed to do yoga every day this week, which for me is a very big achievement because I've got completely out of the habit. I've been for a walk and a run. The plan was to run every other day, so I should have gone for a run today, but I couldn't make time and do this.

So I'll go for one tomorrow instead. I'm slowly starting to build more housework into my daily routine. Is that really what he's doing? I'm still not ricing though, probably because I'm playing PlayStation too much still. And my sleeping pattern is still a mess. Is your body clock like setting itself to something

or are you just randomly sleeping? I think it's the fact that I'm staying up too late, so my body clock is adjusted accordingly. I don't think that's my natural rhythm. I think that's playing too much PlayStation in the evening. I need to be stricter with myself about screen times and going to bed because I don't want to get into a habit of going to bed at 1am and getting up at 10

because eventually I will have to go back to work and have to go back to getting up at 6 o'clock in the morning. Yeah, so this is coincided with Jack doing the farm full time. So weirdly, these couple of unstructured weeks have been the first time in forever I've had a structured go to bed at 10.30, get up at 6.30. Although, while we start getting ready for bed at 10 however, I don't actually go to bed until quite a long time

after Jack. So I'm like, you've frozen, you've frozen again. Fuck, not a lot I can do about that. Now she's gone. Hi. Joanna's back. I'm just, I'm moving into the living room in the hope that the internet will work better.

So bear with me while I set up a new recording studio and move the vase of flowers out the way. Hello. Hi, I'm wearing really big trousers. I'm wearing really big, no, I'm wearing normal size knickers. I'm wearing like normal, normal clothes on the front and then, hey. Beautiful.

I think he's brought me back from, I want to say, Malaysia, but I might have been Indonesia. No, don't knock the microphone off the coffee table. I was wearing quite tight leather style jeans, but why the fuck would I do that to myself if I'm going to be indoors all day? I have found putting jeans on makes me like, feel like I'm up for the day and the day has begun.

Yeah, that's kind of lying to myself if I'm honest. I'm not up for the day. I'm not up to the day. Oh, where are we? Where should we make a podcast? Yeah, let's make a podcast. Hello and welcome to the Tree Shall Me Key Fract, a podcast in which we're reading and recapping

every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one at a time in chronological order, Spoiler Light. Today is our discussion of part one of Sorcery, the fifth Discworld novel. Yeah, we're doing it remotely again because of the ever-ongoing pandemic and the wish not to kill each other or each other's family. Yeah, well, you say that with who I live with, like...

I hope you enjoyed our bonus episode, which I bothered to get around to five days late, sorry Joanna. Which means it came out like three days before this one. Something like that. But anyway, that was our practice run it recording remotely and hopefully we will do a good job. But if not, apologies in advance because by the end of this I won't feel like apologizing.

Yeah, I'm going to do one blanket apology for the day now and then try not to apologize for the rest of the podcast because I'm working on myself. Now I've got that kind of automatic transcription thingy, the Descript tool, which, oh my God, that's going to make my life so much easier. They mentioned it on the Back to Work podcast and I'm just so pleased it exists.

But anyway, now I've got that, I can see just how much we are and sorry, which is not flattering. So let's try and avoid those filler words. Oh, I'm so sorry. Like, really? So? I mean, kind of, yeah. We are ever, ever, ever so millennial.

On the plus side. So sorcery, what? I know what you're saying. There's a plus side? Well, because I'm in lockdown and I'm not, you know, buying avocados in last days. I can now afford a five bedroom house, so. Yeah, on the downside, the disintegration of civilization

will mean that five bedroom houses are torn down by the mob. Oh, yeah. We're all going to have to live in five bedroom straw huts. Okay, cool. So sorcery is a wizardry book. It was published in 1988. It was the first Discworld book to be a number one bestseller in the UK.

I would have assumed it was mort. Yeah, I would have thought. It stayed in the top 20 for three months, which is pretty good for a sci-fi fantasy genre book for that time. And as you quite rightly pointed out, at one point it was being considered as the, what was it, fifth Discworld novel to be adapted,

which never happened and it doesn't look like it will. No, which is a shame because I know you didn't like colour and magic and light fantastic, but I think the Sky Adaptations are quite good entertaining TV films in their own right. And I think this would have been a good one. But if it had been adapted, it would have been David Jason and we've already talked about why that was bad casting.

I'm pleased it wasn't because as, yes, as I said at length, I fucking hate English fantasy TV stuff. With the one exception for the animated Lord of the Rings, which never got finished. So yeah, which is a shame. I don't mind that. It is, I used to watch that a lot. You don't mind watching.

The Lord of the Rings films. Well, no, because they were American high budget. Yeah, true. The less said about the Hobbit films, though, the better. We don't discuss the Hobbit films. We did. We weren't. We weren't nice.

So do you want to summarize? Do you want to tell us what happened? Well, before that, obviously, note on spoilers. This is a spoiler light podcast. So major, major spoilers for the book we're on, Sorcery, for the whole book. Although we'll try not to talk about the second, two thirds of it too much.

But we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. We're saving any and all discussion of the final book, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there. So you dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Yay.

All right. Where's Miss Anne-Marie? It's Rusley Foley. So. Rusley, Rusley. In the first section of Sorcery, we are introduced to the concept of a wizard cubed. Angry Ipslaw sneaks into the staff.

He's leaving his sorcerous son. The wizards are preparing for the election of a new archchamp slot. I don't know why I bothered with air quotes there, because this is audio. Is that right? I think you pronounced them quite well. In the university, the books are getting restless.

The rats and spedbugs and gargoyles are leaving. Rincewind and the luggage join them, dragging the librarian along for the ride. Mysterious. Rints and bedbugs and gargoyles. Oh, man. A mysterious figure sneaks into the university as Coyne the Sorcerer interrupts dinner.

Said mysterious figure, Nix the Hat. Rincewind makes it as far as the pub as Coyne wins a magical duel. The Hat thief finds Rincewind. After a temer fight, he discovers the Hat can talk, and the world is coming to an end. Also said Hat thief is rather pretty. The Hat announces that they need to run away to clatch.

The wizards start getting frisky as magic pours in and speltor and carding start plotting. Coyne, who believes archchancelorship is his destiny, redecorates the Great Hall. The patrician, Vettanari, gets teleported to the university and becomes a lizard as the wizards get megalomena. Oh, God, right. No.

Let me try that again. The patrician, Vettanari, gets teleported to the university and becomes a lizard as the wizards get megalomena. Becomes a wizard? No. Becomes a lizard as the wizards get megalomena. That's the one.

Yeah. They start thinking about taking over the world. Megalomena. Megalomena. My. The picanafragilistic. Excuse me. Sorry.

Barra, Cetan, Wuxa, Fruzzi, Benjrani, and Mycena. Rincewind, Coyne, the Hat thief, and the Hat head for the high seas. Slavers appear to interrupt their holiday to clatch. Unsurprisingly, Rincewind gets knocked out. The wizards redecorate the city and start throwing their weights around. Rincewind wakes to find himself and Coyne unkidnapped.

The same cannot be said for the Hat and Rincewind has little argument with his conscience. So that's part one. Not a lot happens, really. No, it's... In the first part. I'll probably talk more about this when we get onto the second and third parts,

but this is a very, very well-structured novel. Yeah. We talked about the Freitag's pyramid thing in way back, I think, in The Little Light. Fantastic. And I think this book is such a perfect example of the set-up, the rising action, the falling action, and the new one.

And this is almost all set-up, and we've ended the section just as we're getting into the rising action, which is everyone... So everyone's taken their places. Yeah. But it's set up with kind of enough action woven through that it's not interminable.

Yeah. If that makes sense. So there's just a brilliant kind of description of what's going on in the culture and the surroundings of the university, but also just little bits of the rats fleeing and the... Yeah, which is a really nice tension-builder, especially considering the, arguably, the antagonist.

I'd say the book has two antagonists. I'd say Coyne and the Hat are equally in that role. And they're both... Yes, for different... Yeah, like Coyne is the wizard's antagonist and the Hat is Rincewind's antagonist. Yeah. And then they sort of antagonise each other.

It's an interesting look, especially if you... The antagonist, if you're antagonist, is my protagonist. Brilliant. But it's a story that maps really well onto things like Freightag's Pyramid or The Hero's Journey or Dan Harmon's Story Circle, which I might try and map specifically this book and look at how the action fits in.

Yes, good idea. I think it's one of the more, like... Having said, I wasn't really looking forward to it. It's one of the more narratively satisfying ones. And that's enough of me sounding like a pretentious wanker. No helicopters or loincloths in this one. What a shame. So did you pick out a favourite quote?

I did. I did. Let me find it. Sorry, I'm somehow surrounded by even more crap in this room. So my quote is from the very first page. Summer thunder rolled around the sandy cliffs. Far below the sea sucked on the shingle as noisily as an old man with one tooth who'd been given a gold stopper. It's a short quote this time, rather than using that as an excuse

to read out an entire page of the book. Oh yeah, see, I've done that. But yeah, no, it's another beautiful non-poetic metaphor. Yep. I've been trying to not always have my quotes being an introduction or a scene introduction or a description of the weather or something because I was doing that a lot. Because he writes it beautifully

and then hits you with the non-poetic thing at the end. But I just really like the sea sucked on the shingle. Oh, the seashell, yeah. Oh, that's a difficult one as well. The sea sucked on the shingle by the seashore. I've been very much missing the seaside just because of the whole lockdown and the weather's getting nice

and I'd really like to be on a beach. You never went to the seaside. What do you mean I never went to the seaside? Well, it's not like you'd have been at the seaside this week. No, no, that wasn't... I just... Because I know it's not an option in say the next month or so. Oh, okay. Yeah, no, that makes sense, yeah.

It's like longing and I like the seaside when it's still slightly too cold to go to the seaside. Yeah, me too. There's no other people that's nice. I'm not really lounging around on the seaside person anymore because I hate getting sand everywhere and I burn so easily and I wish to tan these days and all of that.

So I love going for walks on the beach as my dating profile. But I... I've heard you also like Pina Coladas. Would prefer to lounge around on a patio a little bit further back from the beach where I can still see the sea. Yeah, that's fair.

Whereas I very much enjoy a lounge around on the beach because it's such a rare opportunity for me and I like being out in the sun. Yeah. Favorite quote from the scene. Oh yeah, I've got a super obnoxiously long one. Perfect. Let's do that.

It's kind of an example of what I briefly went on about. The beautiful atmospheric setups and character developments and just the intrigue, the political intrigue that is woven into this, frankly, ridiculous story. Yeah. That's when Hackadley, who's the lawyer, basically,

is talking about... Oh, this is all against the law and law, but there are all of that. And Coin says, well, I'm not a wizard, am I? But I am well aware of the need for wisdom, foresight and good advice. And I would be honored if you could see your way clear to providing those much-valued commodities.

For example, why is it that wizards do not rule the world? But, my child, we have domains beyond the ken of the temporal power. His eyes gleam. Magic can surely take the mind to inner landscape of arcane. You squabble for power, said Coin, sweetly. And yet, beyond these walls,

to the man who carts night soil or the average merchant, is there really so much difference between a high-level mage and a mere conjurer? Hackadley stared at him in complete and untrammeled astonishment. Child, it's obvious to the meanest citizen, he said. The robes and the trimmings themselves.

Ah, said Coin. The robes and trimmings, of course. Just fucking devastating. That whole lead-up just to that one bam, murdered-by-word sentence. The robes and trimmings. Of course. Of course.

Just... It's almost like he's a really good interviewer, leading the wizard to kind of suicide by words. It's not even murder by words. It's like, how do they tell the difference between these levels of incredibly important power that you all live your entire lives by? The trimmings.

Sequins. Sequins. Yeah, sequins, obviously. Obviously, the grade of sequins. Yeah. Yeah. But I thought that that is my favourite example of what's done throughout,

which is the building up and destruction of the pomposity. Yes, it's... Which, of course, does come back in force, but... But it is a fun theme for the book. I love a devastatingly placed, of course. Ah, yes. Yeah. There's something about putting an agreement somewhere

that's not quite sarcastic, but a little bit patronising around the edges that if you... Yeah. This is what I expected of you. Yeah. Yeah. And it can't absolutely destroy someone.

It's brilliant. Sorry. Apparently, I'm slightly megalomaniacal and vindictive myself today. So, characters. I'm mentioning this one first because the luggage is obviously present and gets a little origin story in the dedication,

which reads, Many years ago, I saw in Bath a very large American lady towing a huge tartan suitcase very fast on the whole rattley wheels, which caught in the pavement cracks and generally gave it a life of its own. At that moment, the luggage was born. Love it.

Certainly be very happy. I don't even have anything else to say about the luggage. I just like it. It's a little origin story. Yes. And I... Yeah. I kind of like how Rentswind...

Oh, the devastating agreement almost. Like when Koenina is saying, Oh, it's horrible. Rentswind's like, Yes, it is, isn't it? So we meet Ipslaw the Red, who cements my opinion that there is a certain type of wizard that is just a dick.

Is he a bit like the tree wizard? Yeah, Billet. That's the one who I'm going to say turns up when the answer flew in the university. I'm assuming he's one of the ants. And Ipslaw is an obnoxious... Well, staff, I suppose, he ends up in the staff.

But Ipslaw is the wizard who ran away from the wizards not being allowed to fall in love. And had eight children, seven of which he drove out because they argued with him. Yeah. And then there's had the eighth one. Of course, the eighth son of a wizard is a sorcerer, hence the entire book.

See, I feel more sympathy for Ipslaw, though, because he is an exceptional wizard. It's like when... It's like, oh, you know that Bill Gates documentary that's on Netflix, have you watched that? No, I haven't. There are some flashbacky bits which show him being quite arrogant

and obnoxious in various scenarios. And it's difficult not to sympathise with him because some people kind of deserve to be arrogant. Like, yeah, you are a genius and better than most people. I can see why you're arrogant. And that kind of applies to Ipslaw for me. That's fair. He's still a dick.

It's not that I think he's a good person because of it and he is a dick and would be horrible to be around, but it's like, yeah, now I get it. Yeah. It must be really annoying being in a world where everyone is stupid. Yeah, all right, fair point. I'll allow that.

But when we meet Ipslaw, we also get to hang out with death a little bit, which I didn't... Ah, yes. Considering... I've always said this is one I wasn't looking forward to. Two of my favourite death quotes that, like, people reference when they talk about discworld

are in this section. Yes. So you've got, what would humans be without love? Rare, said death. And the amazing one. I meant, said Ipslaw, bitterly, what is there in this world that makes living worthwhile?

Death thought about it. Cats, he said eventually. Cats are nice. Who else do we meet? We've got the hat, which I'm really conscious of saying now. Yeah. For fuck's sake.

Well, it's something we really should try now of ourselves, because, see, I've just done it now. If we were on radio or a live broadcast, we would sound like tits. So I think it is best that we try not to use filler words. When I used to do the occasional presentation for work, I was a bit better. I learned to pause instead of humming.

Excellent. Which seems a bit more authoritative. Bill Bailey said that a pipe helps, but audio wise probably doesn't. Also, I get to play with your pipe a bit, have a puff on it, which looks a bit more intelligent than going, I'm not quite enough of a hipster wanker

slash manic pixie dream girl to become a pipe smoker. I feel like that'd be the final nail in the coffin of me being a manic pixie dream girl. Oh, I'm eccentric. I have a ukulele and smoker pipe. Yeah. And pick care. No, we're not doing that.

Anyway, sorry. So we meet the hat. It was a good hat. It was a magnificent hat. Gold lace and pearls and bands of purest vermin. But yeah, so the hat we've learned as we get through this section of the book, has actually got all the knowledge and wisdom

of previous art chancellor sort of imbued into it and has become sentient in its own right, hence encouraging someone to steal it and run away to clatch. Yep. Which, like I said, the hat kind of becomes an antagonist by the end of the book. But right now it seems like it's just a sad little hat

that's poured of being on a shelf and wants to go on an adventure. And I have a lot of sympathy for it in the first section. I don't know. By the time we're at the end of this section, he's already like forced Rintzwin to put it on and made them go on a terrible journey. The hat is another arrogant dickhead we said.

But maybe I just have... But your sympathy lies with him because of the... Mostly the sequence. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say the current situation with being stuck indoors, but the sequence makes sense. Yeah, and I would tend to sympathise with particularly the sequined items.

I noticed no sequins on your person today, Joanna. I thought we self-isolated in sequence these days. Oh, you are showing that as a shite. Patriarchy smashing t-shirt. Also, I wasn't planning on taking any selfies today. I'm also not wearing makeup. Are you not? No makeup.

Your skin looks great. Yeah, well, it turns out lockdown is pretty good for my skin. I'm wearing an Alice band a lot of the time to keep my hair up my face because that stops me touching it so much. I found myself popping a bandana on every now and then, but I think, honestly, that's just because I'm still in kitchen withdrawal.

Missed my kitchen. Putting a bandana on, covering your hands in flour and leaving hand prints all over the place. Well, the covering my hands in flour is because I've actually been making bread. I haven't seen... Oh, yeah, that bread looked amazing. Oh, my God, it's so good.

Proper salad. Have you had it? Yeah, I've had a slice with whipped tahini butter. Like I said, I really missed the kitchen. Oh, I'm going to make bread later, I think. Fuck me, I haven't even planned dinner at all. Oh, I'm making burgers tonight. Terrible housewife.

Well, that's because you're not really a housewife, Francine. Yeah, I know. I am technically a housewife right now, but as my husband's also technically a bit unemployed around the years, we're both housewives. I realized part of why I missed the kitchen so much yesterday, because normally when I'm working in the kitchen, when I'm on my own and prepping, I listen to podcasts,

but then when I have other people in there, I have music on and we dance around and we sing. And I haven't been listening to music and dancing around and singing at all, because every time I've been cooking at home, I've been listening to podcasts and I suddenly went, oh, no, I just need a big dance break and to sing loudly to something.

So my plan is I have some more podcasts to catch up on, but then later tonight while I make burgers, I'm going to probably listen to the entire soundtrack of Cabaret or something. Anyway, yeah, sorry, that was a huge sidebar and not what we were talking about at all. Rincewind, we hang out with Rincewind in this book. Him and the librarian sort of get introduced in the library

as the books start panicking. It's nice to see the librarian. It's always nice to see the librarian. It is. And it's nice to see Rincewind and the librarian together. I like that. I'm pretty sure this does happen every book the librarian features. There's a footnote explaining why there's an orangutan

working in the library, because all the book's workers really stand alone. But I do like that in this particular one, it wasn't that he was unaware of the despair and nobility of the human condition. It was just that as far as he was concerned, we could stuff it. Yeah, well, quite.

I feel like orangutan philosophy is something we could all buy into. There's a brilliant line later on with Rincewind. I think he's arguing with Koenina or something, and he says something along the lines of, yes, I'm quite addicted to being alive. Yeah, yeah. I've got hooked on it in an early age. But because like we talked about,

when we talked about Color Magical Night, fantastic how Rincewind is sort of this bit of a nihilist. Yeah. It's quite nice to, although he's a nihilist, he knows things are all going to go tits up for him, and he's going to end up on this adventure, he doesn't want to go on, and what have you.

He's still very determined to survive through it. He's not completely resigned. He's resigned to this happening, but he's not resigned to, oh, this will happen, and it'll end horribly for me and I'll die. He's sort of, there's a bit of him that is still very survival instinct. Yes, yeah.

And yeah, he's a product of his environment, I think, and still has a human in that, I think. Yeah. I just found the bookmark I was looking for, which is the interaction between Rincewind and the librarian that I particularly liked when they're in the pub and already quite drunk. And Rincewind's telling him about the sorcerer in the book

he had when he was little, and he was standing on a mountaintop waving his arms and the waves were coming right up and flashes of lightning. Oop, I don't know why they didn't, perhaps he had rubber boots on, and then later on, just a half then, oop, how do you pay for this stuff? Every time anyone gives you money, you eat it.

Oop, amazing. Just the really good execution of the one-sided conversations while both of them are in the room. Like, it's that trope of the phone call usually, the one-sided conversation to shreds, you say, is that...? It's a really hard thing to write. So last year, the monologue I was in for the first crawl

we do every year, I was having to do one part of a conversation with these people I could see, but the audience couldn't. I was like a very posh woman at a wedding. And we had to build in this comedy of this mysterious Auntie Brenda that no one wanted to say hello to. And then the piece that I've mentioned on the podcast before that I was supposed to be performing this month,

I'm now hopefully doing in September, if we're allowed to have theatre again by then. Squish, squish. Sandface. So that another comedy, magic shot monologue thing, I've had to write this character having interactions with customers that aren't there, so it's been quite fun trying to put a,

well, yes, of course. Yes, no, you will be invisible. No, that's why you can't see it. It's invisible. Yes, yeah, yeah. Because you still have to write. That's good. You have to write or at least have a rough idea

of what the other half of the conversation needs to be able to react to it. It's got to be a natural force for someone to say something. It's really hard to act. Yeah, doesn't it? You'd think almost that the writer would put in the phantom lines. I honestly don't know if he thought about it that much. I did for the piece that I'm going to be performing later

in the year because even before I knew I'd be performing it, I know what it's like to have done that because I'm coming at it from out of this perspective as well as a writer, but Art, who wrote the piece I was in, isn't an actor. That is an interesting part of playwriting slash acting that I had not considered. Yes, it's good fun.

The phantom lines, there's probably one for it. Probably. And if it's not the phantom lines, it should be. Well, let's say that it is. I've decided to become a linguistic translator. Sorry. Yes, I thought in this book we met the Bersar proper, but it's not, is it?

Spelter is the university Bersar. Yeah, but he's not the Bersar we know later. Yeah. So my old spoiler for future books is that there is very much a Bersar character. Spelter is still one of the main characters of this book. Yes, who is pretty good. He's similar to, similar to, what's his jobs?

Played by Tim Curry, help me out. Trimon. Trimon, he's similar to Trimon in that he is the calculating calm. But he's similar to Trimon in the book, not in the fucking Kate's Welling shitty TV. Well, you've got him and Cardin kind of doing this double act of, I wouldn't say villain.

I'd say he's villainous in the same way that all the wizards are villainous in that he's calculating and murderous. But yes, you're right. He's the not very likeable protagonist of quite a lot of it. Yeah. And he's the kind of middle grade wizard

and you've got Cardin who's the, the large to his, who's a seventh level. And I think he's like a fifth level. He's eighth, isn't he? He's the eighth, I'm sure he's eighth. Oh, maybe he's eighth. I'm trying to find where Cardin gets introduced now. Maybe I'm thinking of what's his jobs

who got blown up, Billius. There's so many wizards. Yeah. By the way, this doesn't really go anywhere else, but the line, ye gods, he blew Billius away. It has stuck in my head since I first read this when I was like a kid and I don't know why. I just, ye gods, he blew Billius away.

It is a fun line. That is the line I think of whenever I think of the wizards. So Cardin's full title is Mammaric Cardin, Head of the Hoodwinkers, which I greatly enjoy. I will find the levels before we get to the end of this podcast because I was going to talk about their grading a bit more, but they're sort of wizardly cast and mouse that they play with each other.

Before coming to some sort of uneasy truth, it's quite entertaining. Yeah, the idea of kind of going through the entire conversation in your head before starting it, I really enjoyed. Yes, because I do that. Yeah, but not in such a calculated manner. No.

Like we, I know we both do it, but we do it in a, how could I end up looking stupid here? Why not in a, how can I come out on top of this indirection? So then how can I come out of this looking stupid or having arguments in my head to save me having the argument in real life? Yeah. Because I can kind of get to my final point quicker

when I then have the argument. Yeah. That's why I prefer interacting with people via text. Yeah. Not SMS, I just like text format in any way. Yeah, no, I much prefer that because I can, I have time to think and construct responses. Arguing over the finest of us.

Sorry, I'm on this page which is going to tell me which bloody level he's on. Yes, eight years. Okay. Bluntly carding was surprised. He shouldn't have been eight level whether it's seldom faced was challenging. So I'm guessing eight is the top.

It seems like it doesn't. Well, yeah, that may really make sense with those eight levels. Oh, eight. Eight is the magic number. That shall not save the number between seven. It's the magic number. Have you drawn any more roxograms?

No, I don't want to accidentally summon anything when it's difficult to get the brown bin taken out. Yeah, no, that's fair. So coin obviously is our main antagonistic type person for this bit, the sorcerer, which, so coin is a baby at the beginning of the book and his father, Ipslaw the Red, dies and puts himself into the staff

and the staff is watching over the baby. He's described as looking about 10 years old when he turns up in this. What was he doing? Because the staff can't change a baby and feed it and stuff. So who was looking after him? My guess is like psychic and dora cagada. I would assume something along those lines

and it could easily have not actually haven't looked at the L space for this book yet because I try not to in case I end up just plagiarizing it. But we get an actual definition for sorcery as well from Capslock's complete lexicon of magic with precepts for the wise. Sorcerer, a proto wizard a doorway through which new magic may enter the world.

A wizard not limited by the physical capabilities of his own body, not by destiny nor by death. It is written that they were once sorcerers in the youth of the world but not may there be by now and blessed be for sorcery is not for men and the return of sorcery would mean the end of the world. So that establishes the stakes fairly thoroughly,

I think on page 68. Yeah, so this seems like a good point to this. Pratchett spells it with a U and nobody else does. This isn't like a British spelling or anything. We spell it with an OR, I thought so because I kept writing it S-O-R. No, so we spell it S-O-R, it's source with a U because he's the source of magic.

Right, oh yeah, like if this is why it's like if it's spelled properly, it comes from source which is Latin for lot or fate and that's lot in like your Latin life or yeah, like drawing from a lottery or something like that. So something you don't have any control over. Yeah, so it's quite cool. But yeah, I think it's spelled with a U

because it's meant to be the word source. Okay, that does make sense but I honestly thought it might just be a weird old fashioned slash misspelling whatever thing because that is a pun, a pun in the title, a pun or a plain word. So next character we are introduced to is Conina. I didn't prepare like a whole PowerPoint presentation on feminism.

Let's just go and we'll start with an early description. Of course, Rinswin had been around a bit and had seen a thing or two and had thrown off his early training to such an extent that he was quite capable of spending hours at a time in a women's company without having to go off for a cold shower and a lie down. But that voice would have made even a statue

get down off its pedestal for a few brist laps of the playing field and 50 press-ups. It was a voice that could make good morning that sounded like an invitation to bed. The stranger threw back her hood and shook out her long hair. It was almost pure white. Since her skin was tan golden, the general effect was calculated

to hit the male libido like a lead pipe. So Conina's hot and... Yeah, yeah, in a very specific... If we look at the... I guess we know what practice it was into now. That's a... That's right. If we look at the one thing I'll say

for the not very feminist and incredibly cartoonish colour illustrations that we've talked about a lot before, Josh Kirby doing his... I love the Josh Kirby illustrations I do, but... And she's got great thighs. I'll give you that.

Yeah, I'm always up for a bit of muscular... I like a tree trunk, though. I'm just going to remind everyone of this quote from Perhaps It's Women by Tansy Rainer Roberts. I've read this out in the podcast before, but I think it's... It is particularly relevant here.

First repeating. In these early Discworld books, we find Pratchett mocking the semi-clad, bosomy fantasy woman who traditionally reward the handsome hero with their sexy selves. He did this at first by creating semi-clad, bosomy fantasy women who,

A, say bitchy things to the not-handsome hero in the hopes that no one would notice there's still a cliché of the genre and or B, amusingly failed to fall in love with the protagonist, but instead she's for a reward of less obvious male character with their sexy selves. But I think that quote is definitely relevant

here with Koenina, who is... Yes, yeah, absolutely. But the thing is, I... Does she fall in love with someone in there? Yes, we'll get there in part two and three. Nice. The thing is, I don't dislike Koenina that much as a character, because like in the one hand,

less the blonde and beachball bosomist, but she's a woman who's very competent with weapons. And as I've said before, this is, you know, my type. Yeah, but... But it is still a very not well-rounded female character who is to an extent there for eye candy. And I feel like there's even less of an excuse for her here than there was in colour of magic.

In colour of magic, it was such a parody of the genre that Liesa kind of did work, arguably, is it? It's kind of, to me, relying on the... Isn't it funny that this beautiful woman is also good at fighting? Yeah. And I think that joke is quite funny. The first time it happens, and by the end of the book,

is overdone. Yeah, I think that's it. Yeah, it's repeated in every scene with her in kind of thing. Yeah, and she... Like, oh, she pirouettes in her pretty dress and kicks somebody in the... Unmentionables. Like, yeah, we get it at the contrast, doesn't she?

But also, the whole... Give her a personality. The joke of, like, her entire personality is, I don't want to be a barbarian, I want to be a hairdresser. And there's something in... God, how do I say this? There's something in mocking a stereotypically female profession. Like, isn't it funny that she can do all this fighting,

but she just wants to do pretty hairstyles? Yeah, I feel like hairdressers were picked because of the blades thing. Yeah, no, I can see the logic. I would have gone with Chef. Chef would be much better, because it's still... It's not the stereotypical, yeah. It's not a stereotypical girly thing,

and we won't get into misogyny and the fucking kicking industry. It's a whole other powerpoint presentation. Look at there, another day. Yeah, I've run out of purple posts at Night's Drawner. I'm sorry, I can't... I did actually put in the show notes purple post at Time's. I noticed, I like it. But I do quite like the nature versus nurture argument

it brings up of, you know, she wants to be feminine. She wants to be stereotypically feminine in a hairdresser. And some of that is, to an extent, I think, that she's sort of written as wanting to find a boyfriend, and men aren't really into... Women with sinews, like tree trunks, or however she describes herself. I like... Yeah, I definitely sympathise with some of it,

because there's a lot of stereotypically feminine things I would have liked to be, certainly when I was younger, but just my general lack of coordination, the fact I was very tall, very young, and all of that stuff kind of made me feel not feminine in ways. And I kind of get that feeling through it. Yeah, and as someone with a... I mean, I'm not a woman,

yeah, and as someone with a barely passing relationship to gender at this point, I like her grappling with... But we can remember when we can. I like her grappling with traditional gender roles, and then wanting to be more girly than she can be, because she's got this hereditary barbarian hero-ness. Yeah, yeah. And I think it raises interesting questions

about nature versus nurture. Yeah. I don't have answers for them. And I think it's a shame that more time was spent on tropes than on that part of her personality. Yeah, I think if it had investigated her relationship to having the barbarian hero father a bit more... Partly because I just love Cohen.

Yeah, yeah. Basically, we just want more barbarian in everything, don't we? I would like this to always be a couple more barbarians, just in life. If only so, you could justify the existence of the loincloth segment. We'll get there. We will get there.

I know, I know. We'll get a bit loincloth-y. And then the other main character is Veteran Ari, of course. Yes, who's not... Enter Veteran Ari. Enter Veteran Ari, which I'm excited about. He's not really a main character in this book, because he spends almost the entire book as a lizard.

Well, that's true, but he's a main character in the series. This is something you've sort of danced around every time a Pratrician character has featured, although so far not been named, because we were excited to actually get to meeting this character. So I'm glad he's finally here and named and is Veteran Ari, because... Yes, it's the Petrician underlying. Veteran Ari.

He's one of my favourite characters in the entire disc world. Not so much a rain of terror as a shower, the occasional shower. Yes. Sorry, I'm trying to find the description. He's thin, tall, and apparently as cold-blooded as a dead penguin. And he's great, because everything about how he's described and the way he's introduced, he should be a villain. He looks like he's striking a white fluffy cat, and he's...

Yes, he's a tyrant, but he's a benevolent tyrant, and he's not particularly villainous, apart from having the scorpion. Looks like he might use the word exquisite. Yes. Ankmore pork is the one location. Yeah, well... It's the main location of the first section,

and as always, we get some lovely descriptions of the murky Ank River. And of course, by the end of this section, Ankmore pork gets cleaned up, and the river is bright and sparkling, and the market square gets a bit of magic attacking it. Which actually, joking about Ankmore pork characters in isolation, once the wizards start kind of throwing their waste around

and redecorating the city, it's really quiet and everyone takes to their homes. It is very much like isolation town right now. Unseen University kind of becomes part of the city in a way. It wasn't as like they were two separate locations to start with, and now they're not by the end of this section. Yes, it sort of flows itself out into the city.

Yeah, because Unseen University, as I believe we covered in, I want to say like fantastic, is its own entity. So it's not even a location so much as a character in ways, and yet it's been very rudely disrupted in this section. Yeah, it's equal rights where Granny discovers that she can actually borrow the building, and it's almost like a large friendly puppy,

which involves wizards cutting the building stones and saying, there, there. Right, little things we liked, Francine. Yeah, you go. You've got a thing. I have got one. I promise I'll stop talking about the kitchen, but there's a food description that made me smile.

In the vaulted maze of the kitchens, while the imagination should need no assistant, it should include lots of grease and heat and shouting, vats of caviar, whole roast oxen, strings of sausages, like paper chains strung from wall to wall, and it just made me smile. I like the thought of the bustle and everyone pulling this giant feast together,

and the head chef inexplicably carving a swan out of butter. I know I did love that, as I had nobody had the heart to tell him to stop. It was the university, a scale model of the university out of butter. Oh, yes, it was. But it meant it was like a sausage one. Whole rancid, greasy, yellow menageries.

Yeah. It's very evocative. It is incredibly evocative. I can see it melt. Not just sculptures are a thing, aren't they? Like, and clearly he is disgusted by the thought of that. I always thought it was kind of taking the piss out of ice sculptures, which, again, why?

Why would you bother with an ice sculpture? I think it's probably one of those terrible rich people saying, look how much money I can afford to waste on something so transient and pointless. Yeah, like, it's just, you've just spent a lot of money on water and someone's time. Well, I mean, if you're going to say that,

you can say, oh, you just spent a lot of money on a bunch of pigments splashed around a bit of paper. All right, fine. I still, I feel like ice sculptures are the epitome of why everything is bad about late-stage capitalism. Yeah, I'll go with that. Cool.

So we also get a reference to the necro telecomnicon. Yes. Which just made me smile, because I kind of assumed this must have been written around the same time as Good Omens, just because there are a couple of similarities, especially with how some characters are written. And then it had the necro telecomnicon as well, which isn't the first time that's been mentioned

in a Pratchett book, as well as being in Good Omens. We also have, as all the animals start running away from the university, the rats are described as wearing clothes, but that wasn't unusual for the university. And we'll come back to that in about 30 books time. Yay. Jesus.

Oh, there's so many books. What have we done? There's so many books. So many books. But yeah, so that made me smile. Yeah, the next thing I noticed was when I was talking about the mage wars, yeah, I thought it's kind of getting a little bit

Tolkien around the years here. Like we know Pratchett's a massive fan of Tolkien, and it just reminds me of reading the Lord of the Rings specifically, and it's kind of vague, ominous mentions about the earlier ages and the huge walls that shaped the landscape and that kind of thing. And I know that it goes into detail

about it in the Silmarillion, but it shouldn't have. And I like the vague... It felt like a lot happening in the Silmarillion, but... Yeah, well, pretend it didn't have... Well, pretend it did not get published, because frankly, it shouldn't have, and I believe Tolkien would not have done.

So... Yes. Anyway, sorry. But yeah, I remember loving the kind of vague... Hints to what's it gone before. Hints, yeah. Of huge cataclysmic events that... There is.

It's the part of me that just fucking loves post-apocalyptic literature, and that is the before times, the event. I do like books like that where they just hint to this huge rich history that's come before and don't deeply go into it, so they don't need to. One that I think sort of does it quite well, not quite in the same way, but Sam Sykes,

who's a really good American fantasy writer, who I like a lot, because his book's always a bit violent and a bit sweary and a bit funny. And his book, The City Stained Red, sort of comes in. All the characters have already met and are a merry band of misfits. And their whole backstory...

Oh, that's nice. That's kind of unusual, isn't it? Yeah, and their whole backstory and how they've got to where they are and everything about them. Hints a bit are real revealed throughout the book, but the history is... A lot of the history has already taken place,

and the book doesn't assume you need to know that much more of it, so it just gets on with the story, and it's a very fun story. He's a really good writer. I highly recommend his books. I think I've mentioned them on the podcast before. Yeah, I'm going to slightly disagree with myself

a second ago, and that's saying I do like a little bit of explanation as well towards the end of something. It's nice to have a bit of... Did you ever play the Horizon Zero Dawn game? No, I didn't get around to it. That's kind of a post-apocalyptic thing, which does a nice reveal explanation

of what happened near the end. But the detail of Sir Silmarillion was just fucking horrible. Post-apocalyptic... I like stuff being explained to me, but I also like the lead-up and the hints and the vagaries. I think the problem with post-apocalyptic fiction

is something has to have happened for the world to get like that, and a lot of those books do end with a big... And this is how, and that can be a very, very good plot twist, or it can be a very handy... It was Earth all along. Yeah, yeah.

So I think when it's done well, it's great, but when it's not done well, it's painfully bad. Yep, agreed. The next one's me as well. So this is when Coyne is like, this is all weird and old and does a little bit of a makeover back to the Queer Eye, guys, I think. Are you saying Coyne is basically like Bobby Burke?

Yes. Okay. You disagree? No. Does Bobby Burke not also have the golden-eyed stare that fixes six inches below the back of your brain? Oh, yeah, good point. Or am I imagining that?

No, I think he kind of does. Out of the Queer Eye, guys, he's... Sorry, he's just the one I would at least want to disappoint. I reckon I could create with Karamo being kind of annoyed at me, because he's just intense all the time. He's just intense all the time anyway, whereas I think if I let Bobby Burke down,

I'd never quite be able to kick himself. Yeah, he's very easy going, but yeah, imagine disappointing him. That's a really good point. Anyway, raw sunlight streamed into the hall for the first time, and it is very unforgiving, and it shows everything has been thread-fair and nicked and stained, and this reminds me of two things, mainly.

The first being, today, I noticed that we are now at the point of spring where the sunlight starts hitting things in the house at odd angles, and you realise there are some objects you have not cleaned and far too long. So today, I cleaned the doors, for instance, and second reminds me of pubs, old tatty English pubs that you hang around in the evening, and then if you work in one,

or if you know people who work in one, you go in in the morning in the bright, unforgiving sunlight, and it is all thread-fair velvet and grease and everything, and I feel like that's what perhaps has been inspired by here. I can definitely see that. You know, the boots and the... Yeah. Beer stains on everything.

Yeah, I just thought that was a nice clever... Again, it's been one paragraph, but it just threw out a fucking... Such a really good setup, really. It takes... It's time with describing all of these tiny little moments, and it's... Considering there's quite a lot to set up,

this is almost a set up of pins, and so the second act is the bowling ball going down, and the third act is the pins being knocked over. Ha, metaphor. Get me. Yeah, and there are loads of little moments about coin as well that just kind of set him up as superhuman. Like, when they say... Like, his eyes were like the...

He didn't say lizard, but he said something like reptile basking on a stone, and he said his smile was like the smile in the face of a moon, and everything, and it's just... It's all very... Ooh! Especially can...

Not chilling exactly, but it's like he's almost a deity figure. Yeah, because he's more... But he's not just a straight villain, like the way he... Yeah, no, he's not. I wouldn't say he's a villain at all. He's a... He's a child with incredible power.

Yeah. It's like when you let... Which, yeah, I guess, villain, but... At the same time, he's got that kind of childlike innocence to him. This is more stuff I'll talk about in the last section, though. One thing I really enjoyed is the patrician's ban on street theatre and mime artists,

because I... Did you? Because I feel like this is going to be your ticket to a scorpion pit. I don't like... I don't really like street theatre. It's awkward. But I feel like you would be probably persuaded to do it. Oh, I probably would.

We've talked about doing it with my this company, but I don't like being around it. I don't... A... Forced participation. Forced participation. Or even just being shivvy into participation is very unpleasant. Yeah, even if there's no audience participation,

it's just watching. There's something about the moment of walking past and not engaging, and you can see the disappointment in someone's eye, because I've had to do street canvassing and stuff, and there's, you know, they bear relationships. But also, ah, there's something about the forced jollity of it all and the distraction, and it being...

It can be so aggressive, because it's so stressful for the performer as well, that you feel obligated to be a part of it, and I don't like a sense of obligation, especially for something I've not, you know, bought a ticket for. And like, have you ever tried walking through a Covent Garden on a busy day with an easily distracted teenager? No, I was one, but...

An easily distracted teenager and a 39-year-old magician. Oh, God. Oh, God. You stop and watch a lot, and to be fair, it's generally very good and very entertaining, and he is, I've got started doing street theatre and doing escapology on a eight-foot unicycle. Of course he'd fucking do it, Jesus.

God, I love it, he is art. Like, I'm not saying that it's... It sounds like something ridiculous he would say to demonstrate something else, but that was literally his origin story. Yeah. Amazing. Very much so. There's something about street theatre as well that kind of...

Part of the magic of theatre, I think, is its separation from the real world. You're going into this special place for it, and everything is contained in this magic little stage, which is somehow also an entire world in itself. Yes. And it's sticking it out at the unforgiving sunlight. Yeah.

And you can see the patch... Making it all weird. Yeah. Which is kind of how it all... It's almost how I feel about this kind of, like, the low-budget TV fantasy stuff. It's like, oh, no, don't. No, because he can't do it well.

Like, have a high enough budget to make it all nice and smooth, don't bother, because... See, whereas I have a bit of a soft spot for it, I like bad low-budget things. Yeah. Which is good. Jack does, like, with his B-movies as well. And I get some of the charm of it, I suppose,

but not a lot. Did I send you the link? Oh, the recommendation for the weirdest fucking movie I've ever watched, part of the Mexican Santa Claus movie. No, but I need this in my life. Oh, I must have told Callum and Becky. It's called The Devil vs. Santa Claus. The Santa Claus vs. The Devil.

And it's, like, a 50s Mexican film, and it is the creepiest fucking thing, and it's so weird and awful, and you and Ben will love it, so fine. Okay, beautiful. I will look that up. Well... And I'll link it in the show notes. I'll wait till you link it in the show notes.

Sorry, everybody. I'm so excited for this. The other thing I really liked was the concept of anti-noise, the idea that silence isn't the opposite sound, it's its absence, but this is the sound that lies on the far side of silence. Ah, yes, the same theme of... Coming out of the opposite extreme.

It's shadowy decibels throttling the market cries, like a fall of velvet, which is a beautiful sentence. But I like it. Perhaps it plays with that theme a lot. It's something I was saying to you. I can't remember if this was during a recording or not, about how for a while I was really stressed out about the pandemic and work and everything,

and then I kind of came through the other side of stress. Yeah. Which is still kind of where I'm at. It's like the thing I was talking about, I think in one of the more episodes where I was saying, like, there's a moment of zen I get in the kitchen, where there's tickets spewing out the rack, and I'm trying to do a million things at once,

and it's like everything kind of stops because it becomes, you can only do one thing at a time. It's like that bit in Over the Hedge, where they're really hyperactive squirrel, drinks the energy drink, and then everything's in slow motion around them. I know what you mean, I know what you mean. It's like when people say like near death experiences,

and then time slows down, and you suddenly got time to react to all these things. It is like the bodily reaction to incredible amounts of stresses to put you into this weird zone. Yes, but so I like the concept of anti-silence being more than the absence of sound. Dead Odds, Chancellors, Francine?

Oh yeah, so the hat's full of them. 200 to be precise. That may be a wandering, briefly, because as we found out last week, there's about 2,000 years since the founding of the university, which means that with 200 Arch-Chancellors in the hat, the average reign of an Arch-Chancellor is 10 years,

which is, depending on how you look at it, quite long or quite short. Considering the pointy shoes tradition. Quite, so I think it must have probably been like dragged upwards by a few long-standing ones. Quite like the British monarchy, which the average British monarch reign from 1702 to 2019 is around 26 years.

Well, I'm assuming Liz has kind of dragged that up a bit. Liz, Victoria, and George the, I want to say the third. George the third was, yeah, he was the mad one. Like 50 audios, yeah, and then Victoria, and now Queen Elizabeth broke the record. Over 16 now, over 60 years. I like that you did maths for the podcast. Only a bit.

Well, actually I did write down and find out the average of those ones, but the, yeah, the 200 into 2000 didn't challenge even me. It was having fun with percentages the other day, rather as for bread making. Oh, yeah, yeah, ratios. But say, yes, 75% hydration for my dough, et cetera, et cetera.

Oh, fuck, yeah, no. This is why I stopped sourdough before I started. Everyone was like, oh, you've got to have 93% fucking hydration. What does that mean? Fuck off, no. So my start is 100% hydration, and the recipe I've been using for the actual bread

is 75% hydration. But with a long, I still don't know what that means. Basically the amount of water you use is 75% of the amount of flour you use, roughly. So how is your start of possibly 100% hydration? 100% hydration means it's 50, 50 flour and water. So there is the same amount of flour as there is water. Oh, okay, got it.

I still don't want to do it because the one time I've tried to play with very, very wet dough, it just went awfully wrong and messy and I... I'm still having trouble with... I don't have a machine. The mixing of my hands, not so bad. I'm having trouble with, once it's proved, getting it out of what it's proved in to bake,

because it's so wet, it just kind of flops. I can't shape it nicely. So I think I'm going to get some rice flour and a proper proofing basket. Yeah, in the meantime, if you kind of... You can get grease paper and make kind of little walls to put next to it. Yeah, I might try that.

I proved... I just saw that on Reddit. Yeah. Rice flour is the thing that's been recommended because the dough won't absorb it, whereas if I line something with normal flour, it sticks. Oh, smart. So you got a little skim. Yeah, yeah.

I can't call. Anyway, sorry, moving on from bread. How do we keep going on to bread? Because it's like I'm in isolation and that's everyone is doing sourdough right now. Like... Yeah, it's like that whole... It's the current hot.

If your friend starts getting really into bread, they're depressed. It's like, yeah, that's true and everyone is depressed and... Yeah, the current hot isolation trend is sourdough. I think the next one is going to be either banana bread or head shaving or both. Oh, I'm really good at banana bread. Okay.

I'm thinking about shaving my head. I don't think I can pull off a shave yet though. So I'll go with the banana bread. You can do the head shaving. I can't. I'll bring the banana. I can't pull off a shaved head anymore, but I want to get rid of all the bleached stuff.

And I figure if I shave it while I'm in lockdown, then I've got plenty of time for it to grow back before I have to leave the house and deal with people again. So it's tempting. Anyway, on to the bigger talking points. Ipslaw's absolute fury at mortality. You're not a dick like Ipslaw, but it did sort of make me think of you a bit.

In that you're constantly looking for ways to, you know, get out of the meat prison and make sure you have immortality. And Ipslaw is... You not go gently into that good night. Yeah, and Ipslaw does not go gently and eventually manages to put himself into the staff. Good lad.

But I just thought it was... Maybe this is why I liked him. Considering this is within the first 15 pages of a comedy fantasy book, it is such a deep and dark conversation of Ipslaw being absolutely furious at death, furious that he was punished for feeling love, furious at losing his wife,

and the way he says it to death is in you took his mother. And of course, death doesn't take him one. Yeah, I mean, it's a very good set up for much later. It explains the anger behind everything later and why coin has been pushed the way he has. And it's very clever, I think. And the way Ipslaw's death is... The one positive Ipslaw has is children are our hope

for the future and death kills us. Now there's no hope, it's just me. Cherry, cherry death. But Ipslaw is a guy who has had so much power, it's like you're saying there's something likable in the fact that he's allowed his arrogance because he's so much more... He's kind of deserving of it

because he is so much more powerful and it is this guy who's had this power, had this love and managed to have eight kids with her. He loved her enough to run away from all tradition and tradition is hard to run away from. The fact that he is so powerful and he's so passionate to get to the end of his life and to be so bitter at the loss of his wife

and being sort of left holding the baby. And it's an interesting motivation for him because he's partly motivated by this desperation for immortality and to show the world how great magic can be. He's talking about Coyne, his son who is obviously a baby in arms at this point. He shall show them what lies in their deepest hearts,

their craven and greedy hearts. He will show the world it's true destiny and there will be no magic greater than his. Yeah. To have all of them... It's like I'll fucking show them except... It's like the ultimate living vicariously, isn't it? Yeah.

Well, he blames the wizards so much for the death of his wife because he's saying, you know, part of what killed her was the fact that they were almost hunted. And it's like, mate, it might have been the eight kids because I'm assuming that... Depending on where you're hanging out, the protections for childbirth aren't great

unless you've gone to the roundtops and checked in with like Granny Weatherwax or someone. Yeah, but I think he also has a fair point. He does also have a fair point. I think it's a really interesting character considering he spends most of the book as a stick. As much as I called him a dickhead, and I still maintain that he is a total dickhead,

I don't dislike him as much as I just like Drum Billet who, for some reason, just irrationally just... As they say, a great man aren't always good men. Yes. And he is a very interesting, powerful, good character. A good character, not a good man. He's a well-risen character. Yes.

But he just puts me... Goes back to the constantly being in awe of Terry Pratchett managing to put this amazing philosophizing about mortality and destiny at the beginning of a parody fantasy novel. And cats are nice. And cats are nice. Which just hits at the perfect...

That's such a good comedy moment because it just hits at the perfect part of the ranting. Yeah. Speaking of the end of the world, Francine, animals. Animals fleeing it, a bit less serious than yours. So there's, as you referenced earlier, a whole bit where the various vermin of the unseen university are fleeing because some shit is going to go down.

And this is referencing a very common... Phenomenon. Phenomenon. Do, do, do, do. A commonly cited phenomenon. It's not so much as a common one. Do, do, do, do. As you quite rightly say.

Bada, bada. So the obvious one is kind of the rats fleeing the sinking ship, which is referenced, as I'm sure you know, in the Tempest. It is. I knew that. Shakespeare is the Tempest. Act one, scene two. In few, they hurried us aboard a bark

bore us some leagues to see, where they prepared a rotten cucks of a boat, not rigged nor tackled, sail nor mast. The very rats instinctively had quit it. Which betrays a certain lack of understanding of what actually happens with rats leaving a ship. Unsurprisingly, the rats leaving a sinking ship phenomenon is indeed a real phenomenon.

You get hordes of rats leaving ships before the people know it's sinking quite a lot. And none is often the arm. But that's because the rats live in the buildings and in the very bottom most parts of the boat that aren't often reached even by the crew. And so they get wet first. So the other kind of part of this is the idea

that animals have this sixth sense that they can tell when something's about to get down. So like the lead up to the Sri Lanka tsunami, the boxing day tsunami, there were a lot of eyewitness accounts of, for instance, elephants screaming and fleeing to higher ground. And it's quite often portrayed as animals having a sixth sense that we don't have,

which is pretty pseudo-scientific. There's not a lot of, like it doesn't make a lot of sense that humans, the only species that have lost this ability kind of thing. However, what does make sense is the idea that some animals might have a bit more warning than we do. So I mentioned elephants and rats getting their feet wet first. And I mentioned elephants and tsunami because elephants can hear a lot.

Elephants and whales hear lower sounds than we do. Oh, right. So like rumbling and that might reach them first. The same is like dogs hear higher sounds than we do. And there might be some kind of ultrasonic things in various disasters that set dogs off parking before we notice what's going on, like storms and things. And I don't know if there are any disasters

that affect the magnetic fields of Earth, but if there are, that would fuck with birds. Yeah, I mean, I'm assuming in particularly in the case of the Unseen University, there is a lot of low level background magic and everything's probably just a bit psychic. Like the Gargoyles needed the sorcerers coming. Yeah, yeah, I'm using this as an excuse to talk

about something related. No, I know. I'm not trying to. You're quite yelling at Terry Padgett soon. Yeah, I know. Yeah, but actually in the case of the Unseen University, the fact that the rats and mice are going in that, like if there's some weird vibrations

magically through the buildings, probably a bit scared, isn't it? Yeah. Well, yeah, Rincewind says... And they are living in the foundations of the building and they'd be like the first ones to be unsettled by the mood of the building changing. Rincewind says at one point

that he can feel the building shaking. And I think that's almost like a shiver of fear going through it. That's interesting, yeah. Ah, that's interesting. Thank you. That's okay. Anyway, elephants.

Elephants. I like them. I like excuses to talk about them. I think they're really neat. I did like shoehorn elephants back in again. Did you know elephants can smell like the amount of something in a closed container? What?

So, like, you or I could tell that this container has garlic in it by sniffing it. Yeah. An elephant could tell if it was full of garlic or, like, had a bit of garlic in it. That's... Had one clove of garlic or, like, five. Cool. Elephants are awesome.

Elephants are really good at smelling. I was... Elephants are awesome though. They are. I'm starting to get a bit concerned because I think, like, by the time you're 30, you have to, like, have an animal that you're into and people by...

And, like, everyone has that. Yours is, obviously, elephants. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend it, to be honest, because you get nothing else but elephants and... But I think everyone... It gives people the excuse to buy you things for your shelves, which I can see are full. Everyone has it, though.

And if you don't, like, make it known that you like a particular animal, it becomes, like, another friend of ours has owls as their thing. But I feel like if you don't pick one for yourself, one gets randomly assigned to you. And I'm 27 and people keep buying the unicorn-themed stuff. And I love me unicorn slippers,

but I also never thought of myself as particularly unicorn-y. And I'm worried that my assigned animal that people see me guess around has become unicorn against my will. Do you have a favourite animal? I like a lot of animals. I really like wolves.

I'm always very excited about wolves. But I don't like wolves... Yeah, it's kind of wonky to have a lot of wolf stuff. Yeah, no, that's, like, sad for you. Get your fleece with a wolf on it. Do you want that? Do you want that? No, no. I don't like people that like wolves.

I like osses, but they were kind of my mum's thing. So that's more of, like, a family. Yeah. Oh, you ought to follow in her. Oh, Francine. So, yeah, so I'm slightly worried that my assigned animal has become a unicorn. And I don't know what that says about me.

Oh, well, it could be worse. It could be worse. At least they're pretty things, usually. Unicorn-y things, shimmery and a bit extra. I think probably what it says about you, Dorana, is that you are a practical worker type who is also incredibly flamboyant. I mean, my husband has the same problem.

Like, his thing is dragons, but he is actually genuinely really into it. And there's a lot of dragon statues in my house now. Crows, corvids. That needs to be my thing. Corvids, yes, yes, yes. Get in there. Sorry.

Crows. Yeah, no, I just like it to be known that, like, my thing is crows by me. Crows stuff. Although, you know, if anyone who's bought my unicorn-themed things are listening, I do like those as well. That's fine.

Maybe. Yeah, I'll take out the bit where I call them all one. Yeah, that's cool. Thanks. Multiple times a show. I have to take out bits where I call people one. That's fair. I cannot segue from that to this.

I'm not even going to try. The idea of the- What's the next bit? The fierce middle. The fierce middle. Oh, come on. You can do it. You can do it.

I believe in you. So I need to find some middle ground. Oh, a unicorn has a fierce head. What I want to talk about is the fierce middle. The thorax of the unicorn, if you will. Unicorns don't have thoraxes, Francine. They're not insects. Wait, is the thorax the tail?

No. It's the- It is the middle bit, yeah. Yeah, but not insects. Shut up. Don't argue with my entomology. Finally, I get to use that word. Loving that the past few weeks,

Mina finally know how to say epidemiology. Your lifelong dream, finally. Have an excuse to use epidemiologist in a sentence. Anyway, the fierce middle. So we were talking about what level wizards people are. Carding is an 8th level wizard, and spelter is like 5th level. Yep, yep, yep, yep.

And there's- The idea that carding has become quite complacent because he's been on the top for so long, whereas spelter is in the middle. By then, all the no-hopers, the lazy, the silly, and the downright, are lucky it'd been weeded out, the fields cleared, and every wizard stands alone,

surrounded by morsel enemies on every side. Pushy falls below, waiting to trip him up. There's the arrogant sixes above, anxious to stamp out all ambition. And the idea of when you're halfway up the ladder, it's the hardest place. Yeah. Especially when you look at the concept of class

and middle class being comparatively quite a new concept. Yeah. So we've talked about this a little bit before on the podcast, I think, where like it's the kind of middle class levels where people get very obsessive over things like manners and propriety. Because once you're up a class,

it's sort of rich enough to do what you want. And if you're working class, it's almost not worth a bother. This is a huge simplification of a very, very over-complicated class system, especially in England, which is weird. I'll take this chance again to recommend the book, Watching the English by, I want to say, Kate Vox,

because it has a fantastic in-depth explanation of all of that. But it's really fascinating across cultures, watching a middle class emerge. Obviously, it's fairly entrenched into British culture now, where maybe it wouldn't have been 300, 400 years ago. It's more recent in, say, Chinese culture, which had this huge economic impact of,

as the emerging middle class became a bit of a thing. This is a huge, again, huge simplification. Meat became more consumed, and beef consumption shot up massively, all due to an emerging concept of a middle class that hadn't really been there 100 years before. So I liked the idea of it. Obviously, it's not class here,

but it is wizard class. Yeah, yeah. The idea of... Bit more matters. The middle section being the hardest and most ambitious place to be, because it's always used to be conflicting at the top,

and you're just sort of trying to survive at the bottom. I thought it was really interesting, and I like that it's the basis of Spelter's character. Yeah. And that makes how he progresses in the book quite interesting compared to Carding, who is a complacent top-level wizard who basically looks for ways to maintain

a status quo that benefits him. It's a bit political. I mean, I see Pratchett's thinking behind it was politics, rather than class, although I like your class comparison. That's a good one. I mean, it did also make me think a bit of the thick of it. Anyway, Celebrity Francine.

Yes. I'm not segueing into Celebrity. Good. I think Ben would be upset. So, Wizards and Celebrity is something that was covered in earlier books, and usually in fantasy, as in the earlier Discord books,

it's kind of explained away as sex-drained power, or women corrupt powerful things. Yeah, we are evil. But it makes exist undertones, the usual. So, I quite like the fact that Pratchett has introduced a practical reason why Celebrity is so encouraged. Is that the way you might get sorcerers? Yeah, basically.

Don't breed, because you might accidentally have eight kids twice, and now look what's happened. But I like that it also mirrors some other religious beliefs. And by that, I mean, it was kind of, it was put into place for a good reason in the time period, but then kind of folk-believed into having another reason. So, like, you took massively over some providers,

like, let's go, the Bible was shellfish. Yeah. Don't eat shellfish, because, like, and it's been theorized that that's in there, because people kept fucking dying of shellfish, and kept up with and kind of retconned by followers, because they don't want to admit that this is no longer relevant or needed,

or whatever, or they're actually shellfish. People don't seem to care so much as they do about gays, so. Oh, that's good. What about that is, it's almost like it's just, and it's used to be shit to people. Yeah, entirely possible. I'm also enjoying crab cakes.

Yeah, the last talking point on there is yours, and it's yours talking about, you've, like, picked the two that really I should have picked up on and didn't, which is Rincewind's character development, and it's lost your mortality. Well, I'm interested in Rincewind's character development because I sort of had in my head,

I don't really enjoy Rincewind books, and you talked me round to him in Color of Magic and Light, fantastic, but it means I'm more in- Relentlessly. I'm more interested in him as a character now, and, you know, we've talked a lot about enjoying his casual nihilism.

He decides he's not going to help. This is right at the end of this section, which just in case we didn't say ends up top of page 95 in our copies, with Rincewind stared at the smudge and the horizon inside, just talking to myself, he said. So we end with him arguing with his conscience. But this is, the hat's been kidnapped from the boat.

He is still on the boat, and he says, no, I'm not helping. I'm letting it go. And it's, he was making a decision. It was his, it belonged to him. No one was forcing him to make it. Sometimes it's seen that his entire life consisted of getting into trouble because of what

other people wanted, but this time he'd made the decision and that was that. And of course this doesn't hold true. He gets into an argument with his conscience by the end of the book. He's agreed to go to Alcali, by the end of the section, which is a page later. He's agreed to go to Alcali and look for the hat.

But Rincewind has so little agency in his own story. Yeah. Yeah, always. Yeah, that's kind of his thing, isn't it? He's buffeted about on the winds of fate. But to have attempted to claim a bit of agency here and to lose it immediately because of his conscience, to get to, and I'm going to come,

I'm mostly making a point at this now because I want to come back to it in part two and part three as his character develops. He's claiming agency here and he eventually does get to claim agency in a really different way by the end of the book. And he gets to make a decision and it is a decision he makes for himself.

Yeah. Admittedly because of his conscience and centuries of tradition piling down on him. I do remember that. I thought it was interesting to, yes. I thought it was interesting to point him out here because of what's going to happen to him in the long run. Yes, very good.

And it is always nice to see Rincewind have an internal crisis to go along with his external crisis. I do enjoy him arguing with his conscience. It makes me laugh. Right. Do you have an obscure reference, Finial Francie? Oh, I do. Yeah, just a brief one.

There weren't really many references as such. So I've done a few times now. I've just picked up on a word I didn't know the meaning of. When they're describing the library, they mentioned the tomes and ink in Cunabala is an early printed book, especially if printed before 1501. Ah. So it is a very, very old book.

It's one of them. Cool. I learned something new. I'm excited by this. You did. Every day's a school day. Brilliant. So that is that section one of Sorcery.

We'll be back next week with section two, which is running in my copy from page 95 and starts with cardings, surveyed the hat critically, walked around the table and stared at it from a new angle. At last, he said, it's pretty good. Where did you get the auctories? And we're going from there to page 180. You've been heights, said Koenina, and stop being silly.

I know what I mean. It's the grounds that kill you. Yes. So thank you for listening. Do we have anything else to say before I do an outro? No. Cool. That was that was a lot of build up for it.

Yeah. I was thinking I wasn't trying to be suspenseful. I got very excited there. That's just how I breathe. Thank you for listening to The True Shell Make You Threat. You can follow us on Instagram at The True Shell Make You Threat. Find us on Facebook at The True Shell Make You Threat. Follow us on Twitter at Make You Threat pod.

Email us your thoughts, castles, albatrosses and snacks at The True Shell Make You Threat pod at gmail.com. If you're struggling with lockdown for any reason and want support, feel free to reach out to your lovely hosts on Twitter. I'm at Joanna Hagan and Francine is at Francie Bambi. Yay. And in the meantime, I will actually make make time to respond to you if if I see it.

So I could probably install Twitter back on my phone and everything. I might. I could do that. I could do that. Yeah. I guess until next time, Joanna. Don't let us detain you. I'm hoping he gets squished.

Man, he really held a grudge. I know. Well, he was just such an obnoxious tree.