The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 19: Sourcery Pt.3 (I Don't Want To Eat a Human Person)

Episode Date: April 20, 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 3 of our recap of “Sourcery”. Horses! Geraniums! Strawberries! Lambs!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:Joanne HarrisDragon Age: InquisitionBlazonHorse OutsideThe Lies of Locke LamoraProboscidea Mysteries of elephant sleep revealedAladdin The Knowledge: Spectacular Special EffectsYou’re Dead to Me/ No Such Thing as a Fish crossoverDead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from Bronze Age to Silver ScreenAndrew O’NeillEtiquette Rules at Versailles Gentleman RankerWe're poor little lambs, who've lost our way, baa baa baaGame of Groans - What Is Dead May Never Die w/ Joanna Hagan-YoungMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

I see your buffy mug. I see it. Still jealous of that bureau. I do love that bureau. I don't use it as nicely as I should. I saw a massive one of those green top desks. Someone was selling on Facebook for like 50 quid. I've nowhere to put it but I was still very tempted. I don't I don't like cluster and things but I do like big gorgeous pieces of furniture. We were meant to live in massive houses Johanna. I was looking at ridiculous houses that are currently for sale for no good reason today and there's a million pound housing culture stir that's like an old tower Victorian tower. Well I think one thing we've learned from all of this is we need to get rich and have a big enough house to quarantine all the people we like in. Yes. When it happens again.

I would quite like to live in a massive house in a sort of a commune type thing but where we all have our own little kitchens. Yeah or even like one of those rambling country estates that everyone has a little cottage in. Perfect. My problem is that I want to live on a massive rambling country estate but also be five minutes walk away from the town centre and the pub. Yes and also class guilt. Oh yeah that. Well if it's a commune it's not so bad. If we eat the rich inhabitants. Yes. And that's correct yes. That doesn't make us class traitors just cannibals. I love the whole love the whole eat the rich thing except I don't actually want to eat a human person and I'm not even the vegetarian out. I'm assuming if we have a large

commune we're going to have like bees and goats and not chickens. Bees. Bees and goats. Yeah so so so so things we've achieved. Things we've achieved yeah this comes from this comes from the well basically on Twitter some asshole what lots of ourselves let's be honest I've been tweeting stuff like like this one who I won't mention who he is because there are so many identical ones there's no point in putting this dude on blast. In the past four weeks I've wait do I have like a bro voice for this do you think he's American. No let's not try that. Just bro voice but not American bro voice. Lost 11 pounds 2.5 percent body fat. Increased revenue 23 percent home gym build out offers renovation installed blind slash flooring

and flooring I hope he means red six books completed my new book outline secured seven killer podcast guests appeared on 12 podcasts hit 100,000 YouTube subscribers you down pointing emoji which to me always looks vaguely threatening like those people who point guns with me like ugh. So yeah um and then Joanne Harris bless her everlasting soul. God I love her so much. Retweeted it with oh so much retweeted it with some beautiful literature references do you want to read that one because you've got a nicer reading voice. So Joanne Harris tweeted in the last four weeks I've seen a tax ship some fire off the shoulder of Orion sip champagne from the skulls of my enemies visited 19 alternate realities dance naked in

the light of twin moons raged raged against the dying of the light straddled the world like a colossus tea. Perfect. Which once again. A little scratchy desk with all the grandeur pros and then tea. Yes it's actually itself the shoulder of a lion's Orion is from Blade Runner anyway so what have you done with your I wrote a list you did oh good did I wrote a proper list I'm very proud of this list so in the last in it I'm going to do this in the form of the tweet in the last four weeks I've broken from the chantry formed an inquisition and closed up a breach in the sky grown my nails out slain ten high dragons gave life to a beautiful sourdough starter named Susan got betrayed and reconciled with my beardy gray warden lover cried about having too many ornaments

defeated Corypheus and his dragon shaved my head got betrayed by an egg and lost my arm in the process and much betrayal and then watched all of the extended Lord of the Rings in one day I'm finding it hard to pick out which are real some of those achievements may in fact involve dragon age inquisition which I've now completed so I'm always see okay so my my things were planted the word fuck in negative space amongst water colored leaves beautiful so yeah I've been learning to watercolor that's the thing frowned at a sheep brackets she started it greeted magpies split my knuckles on water matched my father coffee for coffee dreamt vividly and forgotten nearly all of them marvelous pretty much what I've achieved um

I'm gonna say it's a pretty solid four weeks yeah I mean my paintings got much better I'm gonna repaint your chicken now I've got better at it um I'm excited if you cook another chicken please take more photos for me I will do oh I might do a roast chicken oh my roast whenever I can buy and waitrose on a Saturday cool cool which I have taken to dressing up for the supermarket which is good fun yeah I thought about that today but I only got in it 10 to two as it was so it's just as well I didn't because I was like yeah what's in my cupboard that I haven't gotten out in a while for fun my prom dress uh if I remember on Sunday I might do that is the distance but make it fashion things still the thing I haven't really been joining in with it but I just did

Saturday for fun cool that's why that was good yeah did you get looks I did I got looks I got compliments ooh my big next week plan is reorganizing my bookshelves because they're a bit full I've got the massive to read pile that hasn't been shelved yet because I'm not shelving them until I've read them and then I've got an entire massive shelf full of waitrose magazines that I'm going to pull off and go through and pull out all the ingredients all the recipes I actually want and put them in a folder wow and get rid of the magazines which has been something I've been meaning to do forever yes that sounds like something I would mean to do forever then give up and destroy the magazines away to be honest I feel like this is this is what the lockdown time is for if I can't

come up with any decent writing then I'll at least organize my waitrose magazines yeah for sure god I'm middle class yeah sourdough and waitrose magazines we finished today remind me I need to go and add the raising agent to my bread okay I probably won't remember to remind you but no but now I've said that I might remember I'm just going to write it at the end of this notes amazing okay okay okay should we make a podcast yes let's make a podcast right hello and welcome to the true shall make you fret a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series one at a time in chronological order I'm Joanna Hagen Young and I'm Francine Carroll and today is the final part of our discussion of

sorcery the fifth Discworld novel quick note on spoilers this is a spoiler light podcast so obviously major spoilers for the book we're on sorcery but we will try and avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld books and 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 yeah um and that goes no matter how excited we get about the fact we're doing wittisters next time I'm so excited about wittisters I know you it's the witches and it's thespian throughout oh you know I'm going to get really Shakespearean for this all right I might try to record the entire podcast in iambic pent I'm not going to do that if you don't turn

out in like a doublet for the next episode I'm going to be severely disappointed I mean we're still in lockdown so I'm going to have to work off what's in my wardrobe so yeah now I can probably do that yeah um and I think later today we're expecting an announcement that the lockdown's going to go on for another three weeks which is probably sensible anyway yeah uh so we're to follow up follow up follow up yes we had homework from last week and we did it we both did it we did our homework I'm so proud of us so the homework was to write a poem in the style of what is it a brazen blazin blazin yeah so basically uh attaching metaphor to the various body parts of one's object of desire yeah I didn't really stick to the brief that so cool do you want to go first

okay sure yeah because I did um you know me I like a structured structured uh poem yes so mine's quite disc-themed okay I'm going to start with the excellent your lips are dancers that enthrall treacherously magnetized your hair coom valley waterfalls two octarenes blaze from your eyes your body is the rolling hills and gentle valleys of the chalk your soul the wild and changing thrills of lanker storms and jagged rock though your disdain in day might vex me in dreams you are xx x xy couldn't keep it serious for three standards that is amazing uh so I um because we were talking last week that uh Shakespeare's sonnet 130 the one about uh if snowy white then her breast be done

was kind of a piss take of the blazin thing I have now written a piss take of that sonnet called ode to a chimera my mistress's eye is a stubborn like a goat and if I approach I shall end up dead her tentacles do rip through fish's boats and hair like tortoise shells grows from her head I have seen serpent's wings that do take flight and sadly say her poisonous breath does wreak I love to hear her speak or screech and bite with her contradicting vicious chicken's teeth a lion-faced lover is strange I know and her goatliness and mandibles eldritch sound but I do so love to watch my mistress go though tentacles and fishtail means she moves not on the ground yet by hell I know I found a love so rare though so horrific that approach I do not dare

that is fantastic and goatliness is my new favorite word I'm just really proud of myself for getting the word mandibles into a sonnet goatliness and mandibles the new hot comedy pair coming soon to a netflix new you oh god do you want to tell us what happened previously on and then we'll dive into the book yeah before we launch into the new bit previously on sorcery coid in the sorcerer and his rather rigid father figure decide to take over the disc part of their plan in the style of all good fascist dictators is to burn some books the last straw for speltor who warns the librarian at the cost of his own life

meanwhile rincewind and conina are delivered to a rich poet slash layabout and a gratifyingly grim grand vizier who gets possessed by the arch chancellor's hat but not before throwing rincewind in a pit with nidall the destroyer a well-read and poorly practiced barbarian warrior who's inexplicably attractive to conina the hat's tactics are revealed to our trio who decide they want none of it they bugger off to find an escape carpet before wizardry versus sorcery really ramps up under those conditions a whole new world is not as appealing as it might sound disney fun points for a lad in reference not the best song in a lad in the one down the head probably could have worked but it's not as gratingly obvious yeah no a whole new world

definitely uh definitely makes that happen how are we so in this section of sensory summarize section uh as wild magic reaps havoc across clatch the lonely luggage is still wandering lost rincewind and the gang make it to the sarah's treasuries find it ransacked creosote is rather unruffled by this they had passed a selection of hilarious booby traps to the secret treasury as the roof takes off the gang take flight on an upside down carpet the magic wizards start building their own tower and rincewind wallows in an impending sense of doom and gloom as the carpet takes the gang to the beach a sleepwalking build rincewind tries to build his own tower and the gang gets hit by a mild spell backwash luggage continues to wander through the magical maelstrom

and makes it to the magic tower rincewind steals the carpet and flies to a city that's not quite the one who calls home and comes across a burned library the gang convinced the genie in the lamp to take them to ankmore park rincewind heads to the tower of art and discovers that the librarian has managed to rescue the books the patrician and waffles the gang after some metaphysical confusion get dropped off at the pub and adopt a few interesting horses at the tower of sorcery coin picks up cardings concerns carding attacks of brine wearing the arch chances hat from a distance as the luggage rages through the magic tower all eventually implodes the four horse people of the apocalypse get slightly pissed carding realizes sorcery has made an avenue for the

things from the dungeon dimensions and the staff attacks him death refuses to let the other horse people ride pilly and after their horses go mysteriously missing coin decides to imprison the gods and rincewind heads for the tower of sorcery with a half brick in a sock rincewind fights the coin staff and eventually coin casts it away rincewind chooses to be brave and falls into the magical event horizon leaving his hat behind konina nigel and creosote witness the ice giants rising as rincewind finds coin in the dungeon dimensions death claims ips law and back in clutch the luggage bursts out of a pile of rubble creosote buggers off in the face of danger coin escapes the dungeon dimensions rincewind doesn't but the luggage succeeds in joining him

coin releases the gods taking down the ice giants and coin steps into his own world after reassuring nigel and konina and finally creosote finds a lovely lady knows many many stories that is a lot of happenings for 100 pages it was a really long summary but yeah a lot happens in this book yeah i can't really think of a way to summarize it more quickly so uh it's action packed satisfying end to a book i'd say it's got a lot of narrative satisfaction to it this book it does and i like that it's not 100 happy ending because obviously we're five books into the disc world now and it's it's continuing on so where the other ones have had barely everything wrapped up in a neat little package at the end endings apart from obviously color of magic which was literally a cliffhanger

yeah uh it's now kind of okay the series is continuing and i know it works coming back to the characters so i can leave it a bit open-ended because i know eventually oh yeah and actually it comes around again pretty soon through some more bollocks bless rinse wind was it interesting times this next rinse wind doesn't it well eric oh of course yes yes yes so helicopter slash loincloth watch uh i'm going to say nigel's still representing cool cool uh just a spiritual loincloth going on yes he's definitely mentally loincloth wearing quotes quotes we like quote are you not you're not going to try and count the magic carpet as a helicopter i thought about it but you can probably make a significant argument about pushing down to go up

i could if i understood more about how helicopters work okay let's move swiftly past that but there's nothing wearing and going to le 12 so i'm not going to all right so okay but we are going to try and use woolly underwear as a loincloth yeah okay it's more it's you know barbarian vibes i appreciate your arbitrary but strongly held opinions on this they change regularly by the end of the episode the magic carpet may in fact be a helicopter oh good all right quotes sorry you yeah do ana i know you do yeah we've met we have oh i missed that uh where are we speaking as a poet said canina carefully what would you say about the situation creosote shifted uneasily funny old thing life he said something up yeah so he might be a good

poet if he allowed himself to use normal words yes if everything wasn't jewelled melons of the buttercumto fourth so many jewelled melons which just does it just raise the interesting questions about the shape of some of these breasts doesn't it not just shape but the mental image of a melon like melons themselves aren't particularly glowing or shiny they tend to be quite dull and then if you stuck jewels on it i mean just of all the things you could bedazzle it's just a round sparkly lump i'm just saying if that's not what i would want my breasts compared to tit trinket all right new lockdown business tit bedazzling yeah nothing else to do my quote is nearer the end there's right near the end um doesn't have tits in it he doesn't sorry

i didn't know it was meant to be a theme uh yeah the librarian turned around slowly he was entirely alone except for the towering column of burning blackness and the steadily falling flakes the ravaged campus was empty there were a few other pointy hats that had been trampled by terrified feet and no other sign that people have been there all the wizards were wizards amazing wizards that's possibly my favorite quiet somber narrative tension going to terrible pun that we've had so far that's amazing i'm glad this could bring you so much joy yeah that kind of moves smoothly ish onto the characters because the first one's rincewin yes i'm checking back in with characters we've met already first uh where is the little line

there's a i just really like this line i think it's actually a good summary of rincewin's character um many people who have got to know rincewin to come to treat him as a sort of two-legged minors canary all right but you've got the general idea and tended to assume that rincewin if rincewin was still upright and not actually running then some hope remained yeah like we're too far i said something similar didn't they like this is the only thing i've not seen him scared of so i assume everything's going to be all right yeah but it's lovely because you know we were talking so much about how his sort of nihilism and acceptance of what the world is going to do to him yeah is quite lovable especially combined with his sort of ongoing determination to keep living

yeah i must say we saw some some pretty intense character development from rincewin i bet that was one of the talking points we can come back to it later because i will ramble at length he does have a hell of a time in it in this one he does i'm so proud of him i love him um going on to creosote he gets a big character shift almost for the sake of plot yeah i get he's had a very stressful time and he's not used to sobriety and not being in his lovely palace and what have you yeah my my my feel was it was being put down to withdrawal but but he sort of goes from old bejeweled melons and it'll all be all right and okay fine people

have ransacked my treachery to whatever to everything is wizards fault and wizards are good at guessing you out of the sort of trouble that only wizards can get you into then they expect you to thank them yeah i did that that quote to stand out to me is like the oh that is a complete shift in tone immediately yeah and it feels like it was more that needed to happen in the plot for rincewin to get pissed off to have his character development but i it felt like one of this it's not conina who said it yeah i would make i feel like it would work better if it was conina or even nigel yeah i think nigel's a bit too nice like he's got be quite like rincewin still but to have the most easygoing character get that bitchy that

quickly for the sake of motivating rincewin did feel a bit clunk i suppose you could say it's like it shows that his niceness and laidbackness was very dependent on him having him having everything he needed yeah it's easy to be laid back if everything is taking care of for you which would have been fine if we hadn't had him not minding his treachery getting blown up and not being that about that yeah do one or the other not both mm-hmm what did you think of the happy ending for nigel and conina uh it's neat it's neat it is a nice wrap up i do like uh as they're facing off against the ice giants and they're sort of expecting to die and this is a bit where they need to confess their love to each other obviously but it's quite sweet she said

i think i should and added you know i thought maybe you know if we could just get to know one another better mr and mrs haribut was that what you had in mind he said bluntly well which one did you intend to be he said and i think it's you liked that line did you i like it in that i think it's a nice accomplishment like from nigel but she's not really the settling down and marrying kind and that while they are sort of confessing their love to each other in a bit as they face it and death against the ice giants he's sort of quite calmly pointing out like you're not really the yeah mrs haribut married to a grosser type are you yeah that's true but yes coin sort of erasing their memories and telling them right you're happy you can wander off now is quite a

nice little it's nice and it's neat i think this is probably a good point for me to put in one of the little bits actually uh just the fact that the horse gets an ending war's horse gets an ending i just thought it was so nice that because i'm one of these people who's always like reading books or watching movies like all right yeah but like what happened to the what happens to the horse or what what happened to the dog yeah they are but they kindly found a livery stable for war's horse which wisely decided not to fly again was never claimed and lived out the rest of its days as a big carriage horse of an elderly lady oh that's nice for the horse yeah i'm glad the horse gets a nice happy landing it's just very practical to go actually no this gives a horse a he didn't

leave the horse standing in the street yes no one wants an extraneous horse at the end of then full oh no extraneous horse excellent indie band name yes our new single what the f*** there was going to be more of a joke in that sentence but i'm my brain is can we get through a single episode without bursting it just no we can't absolutely not we get to meet this genie which yuppie yuppie genie yuppie genie i love the genie he's like the consensual yuppie as well because it's the right time period isn't it late 80s yeah so this is yeah 1988 is full yuppie including uh him having he's diversified out into a lot of lamps a set of derelict lamps in the docks area of ankmore port that had great potential once the

smart crowd got there to become the occult equivalent of a suite of offices in the wine bar which is so yuppie full of myths which is a pistachio the phylofax oh oh right that makes sense very good phylo myth is a phylofax which uh i did check when this came out compared to when neverwear came out says a line about uh it's there's a version that has the london underground with three stations they never dare show on public maps so yeah neverwear didn't come out till 96 the genie definitely has something of crowley about him the uh cool very cool on his phone not as self-aware yeah it's a less self-aware crow i feel like there's some of this became crowley because skidowman's was after this but there are hints of it in there and he's sort of doing oh was the other really good

line i liked about him he looked hurriedly at kanina's angry face and contrived to suggest by waggling his eyebrows and waving his free found urgently that he was currently an inconveniently tied up by irks and matters which regretfully prevented him giving her his full attention as of now but as soon as he had disentangled himself from this an importunate person she can rest assure that her wish which was certainly a wish of tone and brilliance would be his command i do also love because uh it he's described as holding something curved and shiny to his ear so i did have to look up what mobile phones look like in 1988 i did they were the big blocky things so horses no horse people horse people the four horse people of the apocalypse

again this is pretty good omen so i like the fact that it's almost like some ideas are getting worked out here that will develop which and they're very different um so the four horse people are drinking uh war has a bloody mary pestilence has got a small eggnog with a cherry in it uh deaths on the port obviously is the same death as the very good death lied a small port wine for him and then obviously famine is just picking out in the kitchen yeah excellent yes they are a fun fun little cameo i think we can say a nice little cameo it's nice to see them in the pub uh i like the apocryphal apocalypse being the apocalypse yes absolutely i do also like when death rides off because you see the rest of the horses have been nicked

yeah um they all sort of stop and have a little bitch of he really gets on my nerves why does he always get the last word they get drunk forget to go to the apocalypse and when they realize that's what they're missing this will go oh you know what i reckon we're well out of it it's relatable it is relatable according this is one we've met before but we uh so he eventually comes around to where spells are got to yeah so basically he kills a brim and in a very dramatic way and then realizes the massive portal to the dungeon dimensions is opening and it kind of i don't know if hits him all at once or whether it's been building up or what and it goes oh fuck this is terrible all of this is terrible and there's like a wide mad smile

and then goes to try and take the staff off the boy and then grabs it and just is a beautifully written bit of terror and just yeah so carding has uh really cool turns a corner character wise and then dies immediately yeah that's what happened with carding well then carding did i spell to regas well no spell to had more of a sensible yeah he did at least try to save the library first yeah and then and then died so locations yeah it's just a little mention we don't go there but um obviously because all these wizards are buying building towers and fighting with each other and querm gets taken out and we were speculating about cherm and querm in uh way back in colour of magic yeah a long time ago

and see querm eventually we will actually get to visit querm as a city but i do like the that it is mentioned and described as a pleasant little city overlooking the rim ocean yes so it's Mediterranean France i think querm isn't it it's yes it's geraniums in the wall as carding remembers as he watches it get blown up it had wild geraniums filling the sloping cobbled streets with their musky fragrance god i love the smell of geraniums pink mist geraniums and then location wise honorary mention goes to the tower of art which i think gets a more thorough while at the same time incredibly vague history and we now know it's older than the university and older than anybody knows and may have been there before the

disc but rinse wind doesn't like to think about that because that implies all kinds of things which i do like just a little hint of extra eldritch in the background yeah absolutely i also remind you a bit of um you've not read the lies of lotland morrow have you i have not you need to read it i'm told you i'm not reading anything more that you've recommended until people start finishing their fucking series is i know but it's really good um but lies a lot more it's obviously a fancy book in a fictional setting but there are all these weird structures made up stuff that the people living there just don't know what to do with this stuff called that they call elder glass and there's this whole thing of there was this there was another race or species that lived

inhabited these lands before we did and we don't know what happened to them but it's way way way before our history but all these amazing ridiculous physics defying glass structures are all that's left of them cool and it's not a major plot point it's just in the background of the books like yeah these weird structures exist and there was definitely a race here before us i've decided to introduce my own ridiculous corner Joanna yes um called irrelevant elephant excellent any time Pratchett randomly mentions an elephant i won't do it for the the four important elephants i'm going to tell you an elephant fact because i like elephants and it's apparently so did Pratchett uh this was going to be called a pachyderm passage but apparently that's now an obsolete order of mammals

which is a great title for our first album yes indie band whatever i've forgotten the name but already now i don't mind extraneous horse well done extraneous horse and obsolete order of mammals that's perfect yeah fuck yes but yeah that means elephants are now actually in an order of their own no probosch idea which i can't pronounce but you know it's proboscis but anyway elephant fact this is relevant because the little pink elephants are nesting in this book oh of course yeah this is in the aftermath of the weird magic obviously elephants only sleep about two to four hours a day african elephants in the wild really yeah it's more like four to six in captivity but and they only sleep properly like going to dream state every three to four days i didn't know this but

apparently the smaller the mammal the more sleep it has generally and the other way around oh they're bigger mammals sleepless uh which is just another part of the complete mystery that is sleep sleep is so weird sleep is weird as fuck scientists agree nine out of ten scientists recommend go the fuck to sleep but we don't know why i'm still so annoyed that after watching all of the extended lord of the reins in one day i didn't have any ridiculously cool dreams i just dreamt about eating strawberries outside i was wearing a game dress in the dream oh that's so nice i know it was so basic it was literally just i'm outside in a game dress eating strawberries like there wasn't even bigger more

tense than that feeding where were you outside and i know it's just like a random field nice were you with anyone no i was on my own eating strawberries in a game dress that's really nice it was but like i watched 12 hours a lord of the rings aragon could have fucking fed me the strawberries yeah your brain was probably like you know what no you've had enough of this you can have something simple wholesome and without any sexual overtones for once which is so weird for my subconscious no i'm even sexual undertones no i don't know eating strawberries there's probably something there isn't there oh yeah i'm sure that means i want to i don't know all right no no elephant checking

um yeah right sorry where are we um when they're going into the secret treasury and there's a lamp they talk about the fact that there's a lamp in a ring and creuset says oh my grandfather built up the family fortunes with them his wicked uncle locked him in a cave he had to set himself up with what came to handy and nothing in the whole world but a magic carpet a magic lamp a magic ring and a gross open of assorted jewels so yeah really coming up the hard way then yeah yeah well this is last week i was talking about shezharad in a thousand one nights and that was the framing so i always assumed Aladdin was one of the thousand one nights tales uh but i looked it up and apparently Aladdin wasn't actually part

of the original arabic text despite being one of the best known stories from the collection it was added by a frenchman Antoine Galand who acquired the tale from a syrian mananite storyteller Hannah Daib i see which i thought was quite interesting i like the idea of acquiring a story yes and then that's a really nice way to phrase it yes he acquired the story from a storyteller and then when he did a translation of a thousand one nights he added this story in cool which as it's one of the most well-known ones i thought was rather interesting so that happened obviously years after the original arabic text of it but the whole thing about the lamp and the ring is closer to the original because the original the story is a bit more

complex than the disney version and there's yeah there's a grand vizier as well as an evil wizard and yeah there's a sorcerer underground vizier and the sorcerer was meant to marry the princess but because Aladdin doesn't said it's the sorcerer who pretends to be uh someone exchanging new lamps for old and it's all very messy i like it though also it was written as being set in china that then the entire depiction of it is very arabic not is very arabic so sorry i was trying to think of the word arabic and it was like arabianish i mean arabian is better than arabianish yeah so Aladdin cool story not originally one of the thousand one nights and also the origin story of creosate's grandfather which is nice great grandfather great grandfather sorry i believe

which but i like that it tied back into creosate wanting to be told stories yeah uh so yeah the whole this whole section where they're getting the carpet yeah and the i just i thought it was really cool as a visual and made me think about how well this particular book would work as a film if it was done well and had a big budget the idea of them standing in this underground treasury and the roof flies off and the blocks are all sort of flying up and away from them yeah to go and build this tower yeah uh where's the actual passage the wall beside him shook itself like a dog and drifted apart i thought was such a really perfect line and i just thought this whole book really worked like a the story structure is well done with the way it builds

up and then comes to this big climax there's enough action in this final act and then there's moments like that that you could just see on screen being this amazing visual yeah whoever did it would really need to ignore the temptation to try and split it into a couple of films so like i know fucking fantasy filmmakers love dragging things out into trilogies but this would be a one don't talk about the hobbit films yeah the reason i think this would be a good film is because of that whole story and how well that would work in one film on screen yeah um yeah we don't talk about the hobbit films we don't talk about the fucking hobbit films we talk about how we don't talk about the hobbit films quite often yeah it really enjoyed rewatching Lord of the Rings though

they held up really well because they use loads and loads and loads of practical effects as opposed to CGI and practical effects hold up better over time than CGI does CGI will always look dated five years from so why Jurassic Park still looks good i love practical effects this is completely irrelevant i had a really good um horrible science book like the horrible history series but horrible yeah about practical effects ah cool i was a kid i wonder if that's still around anywhere because i reckon those books probably hold up pretty well as as an adult for like subjects you know fuck all about yeah no i think i've still got some of them somewhere that is probably a bit basic for you but for me it would be good yeah but yeah practical effects and prosthetics and puppetry i love

puppetry like good puppetry like Jim Hansen dark crystal-y type stuff yeah yo uh relevantly i just saw a tweet sorry i was trying to close Twitter but uh dead famous Greg Jenner yeah fucking crossover with no such thing as a fish two of our favorite podcasts crossover awesome which looks like it's gonna be released a week tomorrow i need to get Greg Jenner's new book actually what is it the book's dead famous the podcast he does is you're dead to me um and it's oh you're dead to me yeah sorry sorry yeah it's just he's dead famous in his twitter name at the moment yes that's yeah which is all about the history of celebrity culture which i'm very excited to read it sounds fascinating yeah um oh yeah another little bit i

really liked is uh when the luggage shows up at the tower and starts knocking on the door there is a mantra to be said on these occasions it doesn't matter if the door is a tent flat the scrapper fired on a windblown yurt three inches of solid oak with great iron nails in or a rectangle of chipboard with mahogany veneer the small light over it made of horrible bits of colored glass and a bell push that plays a choice of 20 popular melodies that no music level will want to listen to even after five years sensory deprivation what's your tune again do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do pizza's here yes but it doesn't stop for minutes pizza hello yes i do like i'm very very like pavlovian i must say the amount of because

generally no one came to the house unless it was takeaway so yeah you hear that you do think takeaway in my case takeaway oh god not another builder but yes the mantra stated kind of mysterious uh banging on a door is i wonder who that can be at this time of night yes something i've never actually said because the answer is always pizza yes so yeah answer talking points good i answer the talking points i really like the discussion of how magic works oh yeah tell me well because i i said way back in color of magic i like the fact that the magic sit there aren't really strict rules around how the magic works and it changes but to book and it changes between witches and wizards as much as i also like books with really really strict magic systems you just can't see books do

i know well no i want it to be one way the other i either want it to work like it does in say i don't know the fits in the four books where like yeah it has rules and it has systems and it has limitations or i want it to be like in this where it doesn't really have any rules and it changes but to book and consistency is overrated let's just have fun sure yeah i don't like the in the middle thing of say like the harry posse books where it appears to have rules but there's no actual logic to them and if you poke it with a very blunt objects it falls apart yeah for sure and also it's important that even if the rules are fairly arbitrary but they are limiting yes i think so in this book even though the sorcery power is kind of unlimited and weird there is this hard border and that you

can't just use use and use and use magic because dungeon dimensions yeah um and that's what happens in this book rince when sort of saying you think magic is something you can pick up and use like a parsnip wine bottle i get the news like a parsnip that was nearly my favourite quite it was very nearly mine that's why i snuck it in here um and rince wouldn't explain magic uses people it affects you as much as you affect it you can't mess around things without things affecting you it's like a wine bottle that drinks you back and considering like that's really early on in this section and considering how the ending happens like that's a bit of foreshadowing as well yeah for sure it is very good

and the structure of the wizarding orders oh yeah yeah that's it another set of rules it's probably not a direct reference but it mentions in the book that the the kind of stuffy old structure of the unseen university and the politics and the levels and the whatever's had kind of stopped the wizards from all this infighting had stopped all this ridiculousness from happening because they were too consumed with that which reminded me of Versailles largely because i just listened to what you're wrong about i've said about Murray and Twinett ah spoilers misogyny uh no way what no way fuck but for once not capitalism being a villain have you seen uh the mary and twinett movie with kirsten dunce playing her i haven't but i want

to because apparently it's very realistic in that that's what Versailles was like it's so good it's one of my favorite films okay it's um so fearford coppola i think directed it yes yeah that's the one i remember watching it for the first time is insanely weird but go on it was oh god do you remember like oh i'm gonna say like 10 years ago i'd briefly i briefly dated a very very sweet boy yes and it like for a couple of weeks obviously i dumped him because he was really lovely and sweet yeah yeah and told told me he was in love with me after like a week which there you know how i feel about people loving me literally novice right there was one time anyway and uh so we watched that maybe while really hungover and he had the dvd but had never seen it and picked it up

thinking like oh this will be like just cute and fluffy and we won't have to pay much attention to it and then i just ignored him for two hours instead at this film being really obsessed with kirsten dunce and the shoes and the hair and uh that was where we learned we may not be particularly i really want to watch that now i want to watch that with you or we could do maybe one of those like house party yeah Netflix party things yeah let's do that okay cool we'll try and work that out for like i don't know whenever we're both free all the time which somehow makes it harder to schedule things like tonight i'm kind of double booked because i've got to decide whether to watch whatever national theatre live is streaming on youtube this week or andro neils like at home

comedy gig that he's live streaming oh god we're so busy and important i know i mean andro neils probably gonna win because i love him yeah that does sound pretty good what's why do i go to see that i will send you a link when this is over thanks when all this is over this damn war can't get milk jam on your eyebrows gravy seams gravy seams instead of tides joanna that's what we're reduced to i've actually got tights but i'm just painting gravy on my legs anyway run out of gravy the dog loves it so i imagine painting gravy on ron's legs was frowned upon so louis the 14th uh and what was a very grand hunting grand hunting lodge into uh

uh the site as we know and love it uh massive palace and he required that all nobles of a certain rank and above kind of lived there for a certain part of the year and that was to basically stop any regional power from solidifying so they couldn't effectively run any kind of regional government when they were there all the time and that's because louis the 14th was trying to very much centralize the government he also imposed kind of a strict court etiquette and weird politics and kind of in encouraged these petty hierarchies and everything was the logic that being consumed by all of this these people aren't going to bother plotting against the king or whatever because they their lives are going to become all these petty gossips

and it's like it's like upper school it's like high school yeah it is that is your life when you are part of it and it matters and when you're at work it matters if x person is it yeah like office politics yeah um which i must say my new job is like blissfully for me at least pre-op i don't know if it goes on when i'm not paying attention but it's like uh i was joking way back in the soft open um about the fact that i've been playing dragon age in position a whole bunch which is like a really rich well realized fantasy world and one of the countries or lay is based on that era of france so you just spend your time trying to shag the elves not all no i was playing a grumpy elf i didn't shag an elf this time i shagged the beady guy

oh good sorry the point i was trying to make is that or lay which is based on like the sire and that era of france in this game there is there are all these politics that you can choose to engage in however you want which is really fun because you can go in as a very noble human and really play the political game or you can go in as a bitchy sarcastic elf who's already treated like a second class citizen and just fuck shit up and it's great i like that yeah i found um i found a blog with a bunch of examples of the etica um my favorite isn't even that like out there like there's this whole stuff about uh like you can knock on the king's door you have a scratch on it with a fingernail which is the whole thing but um my favorite just because how it was worded on the

blog and was a lady never held hands or linked arms with a gentleman it was in very bad taste and nearly impossible because women's skirts were so wide marvelous it's a conference i've been thinking about seeing if i can make a hoop skirt for uh the social distancing while grocery shopping enforced social distancing with hoop skirts or at least some panniers now how realistic would it be to sew some kind of blade onto one's hoop skirt in the style of a buddhist's chariot or a cockney gangsters hat i feel like it's rather possible are you thinking sort of blades around the base rim so yeah so when you twirled it would be very dangerous for everybody shins i feel like it would be incredibly possible that i wouldn't because i just end up cutting off my own feet

or walking down the aisles at waitrose and like splitting open bags of sugar as you went great visual though please listen to your next creative fiction i've been thinking about switching back to right actually you know what i'm gonna write this down because i want to try and write some prose at some point and this is really good yeah i know you write some more prose because it's been ages since you wrote prose and your writing is like amazing now and i want to read your new prose yeah because i've been on the theatre stuff but i'm kind of feeling really blocked uh writing theatre so i feel like maybe i need a little bit of time with some prose anyway a little time alone with some prose darling and some strawberries in a gingham dress do you

have a gingham dress no but i've got some gingham fabric to make a dress out of um yes a Versailles that was that that's the end of Versailles so the structure the considerate revolted metaphorically we have imprisoned marianne twinnet for not a lot Versailles um speaking of this is a bit of a toxic masculinity thing actually i think when this happens and this is really that's when i didn't i'm not making a feminist point i'm just trying to link to what we were talking about okay cool uh purple segue in segue purple segue well no we were saying misogyny but i'm talking about uh when rinse wind gets very angry and

storms off on a carpet and then has that moment of calm afterwards where you realize maybe you shouldn't have got that angry you say toxic masculinity i'm pretty sure both of us do that oh yeah no okay i was just trying to find a segue this isn't really this isn't really a guy thing but yeah i i just really like that it gives time to talk about this feeling or you've um you rush out to have a go at a driver who's run into the back of you and then it turns out they're fucking huge or you're trying to have a mutiny and someone says yeah you and what lads and you realize that you're standing there on your own yeah so i really like that moment um and i like that the it goes into again the whole idea of wizards can never go home

yeah the like he's taken the piss of like that phrase in general isn't it um and then like wizards not being able to deal with metaphorical phrases the phrase you can never go home again what do you think about that phrase because that's one i've actually never managed to really grasp well it's like that you can't cross the same river twice and the idea is that a place will never remain exactly the same and you will never remain exactly the same so the place you back to um especially in this because it sort of brings up thoughts of childhood homes and places you grow up and those places won't be the same when you go back to them sure so i could go back to the house i lived in when i was five but it's going to be different and i'm not going to

see it through the same lens and it's going to be a disappointing thing yeah yeah like i remember a really weird moment uh so the street we used to live on the house i grew up in it's in this little village and my sister's now husband lived across the road they were like teen sweethearts it was all sickening they are like appallingly wholesome they are they're lovely people i love them i miss my sister and my nephew so we moved out of that place when i was like a teenager and obviously my sister's partner moved in with her and blah blah blah but his parents still lived there for quite a while and i remember someone's birthday party or something they don't live there now but they did still live there for a while and it was the first time i had gone back to this street since

i've moved out of it and it was so surreal not pulling into the driveway we'd pull into but going up and around and parking on the other side of the road and seeing these old houses and seeing my old house and it not being the house that it was yeah and it was it was just a very strange surreal feeling of oh this is not so coming home because this is not home hmm well not quite as bad as getting back to the town you lived in and find it's now all white marble and terrifying raw magic and fountains that actually work which is in ankmore book where the river doesn't the river doesn't so much run as gloop threateningly what a nice word gloop Augustus gloop while dull as another man with the talent for uh on a matter of pay

ex sounding names yeah this is the problem i'm having with writing praise i'm so bad at names even just naming characters oh if i can tell you what write your prayers if you get stuck on a name tell me i love coming up with character names um i haven't got the patience to write prose so excellent okay well team up you can name the characters i'll do everything else perfect having been playing a lot of dragon age i feel like if i'm going to write fantasy the protagonist is going to be a bitchy sarcastic elf who is a hundred percent done with this shit because why change the habits of a lifetime i mean we're talking about rinsewin rinsewin's character development in general yeah i just oh i fucking love rinsewin in this

and i kind of forgot that i would i love him in a different on a different level than what i've been going on about which is just you know i was going on about i like the simplicity and integrity and his lack of integrity if that makes sense um but this one just there were a couple of really touching moments and i didn't expect this book to give me a weepy moment but like he's he's digging through the library like frantically is you looking for the librarian and he's sobbing and cutting his fingers on glass and everything and like that is a level of care that i would not expect from him yeah he's he's generally so very very always passive yeah and like i would expect if he had no character development one would expect him

to see this and then just run away going well whatever that was could get me um but he goes through and tries to find his friend and and that was very nice and then just like the little moments of empathy that give him a very brief friendship with coin but when he's already hit no no he hasn't just before he hits the staff with the half brick in a sock which by the way best breath and ever um so ankle ball uh it's because the staff says something to coin like you know what happens to bad boys or whatever and it starts hurting coin and rinsewin just goes here hang on a minute just in just that moment as well i was like oh rinsewin that's so nice and then later on down in the dungeon dimensions and he you know then he does a more obvious helping coin and

making him escape and like to the point of doing the whole of doing the whole go back into the wild random pet here's a nasty thing to make you go yeah he literally kicks coin out of the dungeon dimensions which was the thing i was talking about where he makes his really noble sacrifice but he is still rinsewin enough to say could you tell them yeah can i i mean i didn't want to statue necessarily you know just people know i wasn't a complete twid uh if a tree falls in the forest and there's no one around to hear it does it make a sound if a wizard sacrifices himself in the dungeon dimensions and no there's no one to tell the tale because he really had a noble sacrifice yeah i also liked the kind of uh dichotomy in their brief relationship which is that

while rinsewind is kind of the more worldly wise of the two and set you know saying stuff like you have to remember remember who you are don't let anyone else do that for you kind of thing and like kicking him out and defending him and everything at the same time he is possibly the least powerful wizard in the world while coin is the most powerful in the world and there's just this kind of backwards power imbalance balance which i like very much but we've also we talked about this in equal rights when you're in the dungeon dimensions it's a bad idea to use magic because that's how they get you ah yes but also we've been all about going through anxiety and coming out the other side and the whole idea of nerd going through sprite incoming at the other side

is almost like rinsewind is the other side of power which is uh like with esc and simon he's powerful enough to know when not to use magic and to use a half brick in a sock instead yeah but just in a way but in a way it almost makes him a much more powerful wizard yeah because he's not going in there with like if he was a bit better he might have gone in there with a shitty fireball and been immediately killed as he is just incapable of any kind of magic he went in with a half brick in a sock and did quite well thank you if you had a statue built of you what kind of oh when i should say what kind of pose are you going to be in i like the very noble one fit up on something uh you're going to dramatic read

yeah yeah yeah nice shakespearean wanker then yeah yeah very much so classic i mean my plan for after i pass away is to be taxidermied and turn into a hat stand so yes yeah but obviously we'll need a bigger gold statue somewhere as well oh the public can appreciate is it marble yeah no marble okay that seems fair going a bit old days um look i'm not like mighty in despair quite uh i don't think i would like statue i don't think that would be a large fluttering portrait of you and dear no i think a plaque a plaque a tasteful plaques and my really impractical is what i've always wanted or a bench like a bench dedicated to me but like stuck halfway up a cliff so that an abseiler goes past it one day and it's like and the plaque says something like

oh to dear francine who love to sit here and admire the view and the abseiler's like what that's what i was impractical bench plaque this is the only time i've ever hoped i will outlive you and that is so i can make the arrangements for your bench i can just do it before you die much obliged well now it's on record so if if any of our listeners remember this and hear of my death please sort that out for me did you have any other thoughts on rinspins character development before we are around the bend towards the end of the show francine no let's go around the bend do you have an obscure reference finial for us i do which i'd like to say in my new uh my new my my show notes my show notes my notes um is nowadays abbreviated to orph

which i thought you might find beautiful pleasing for my orph your or comes from when the four horsemen people of the apocalypse are in the pub and are already drunk and are trying to sing and they are talking about a farm animal they can't quite remember and so it goes with poor little shape i'm sure it's cheap no it's not shape it's it's a heifer or something like that um poor little unidentified domestic animal is what they settle on um what it actually is they were quite close it's paul's lambs is the correct lyric how marvelous um and it is a drinking song but as far as i can tell it comes from america it is the wiffenpuff song or wiffenpuff i'm not sure from yale yeah from yale's acapella group which is called the wiffenpuffs i know that how do you

pronounce it the wiffenpuffs wiffenpuffs thanks which i'm guessing doesn't have quite the same weird connotation as it does here um uh the song itself was adapted from Rudyard Kipling's Gentleman Rankers uh yeah it's a poem um which itself is a term for a posh chap who ends up as a squatty usually because they're disgraced and they go in in list uh but i found a little british recording of it as i imagine that's how pratchit would have imagined or heard it yes would have heard it and it goes we're poor little lambs who've lost our way you need a base hair really we're little black sheep who've gone astray so you just need to imagine a bunch of fucking posh americans trying to sound all mournful and

cute and then it's irritating but i'll link the nice cornish pub and then it's fun i have heard it and that like i said is entirely because of the gilmore girls ha yes i remember uh rory's grandfather singing it oh yes at the harvard yale game i believe back yeah anyway yeah so it's like uh very posh song in origin but it appears to have been nicked by some british drinkers which is nice that fills me with joy yeah it's pleasing so yeah that's all i have to say about everything well i think that brings us to the end of sorcery which has been a particularly lovely book it has i've enjoyed it very much i have i enjoyed it a lot more than i thought it would so we're going to take a week off now unless we get bored and decide to record some bonus content

because you might need to be honest i kind of need this weekly socialization right now well it's up to you we can either just go on zoom and chat or we can go on zoom and chat and record it okay i will see you um you ever feel like before we uh abandon you for the week dear listener i meant to mention this last week and totally forgot i did have a little holiday from the disc this week and popped over to westeros so if you want to hear me talk about game of thrones i guested on the game of groans podcast which is a really fun podcast emily the host is working through all of game of thrones having somehow never seen it or been spoiled for it yeah weird uh so yes we'll link to that in the show notes and if you want to hear me talk about

west uh game of thrones rather than discworld i do manage to talk about other things than just my overwhelming love for natalie dorma but it does feature heavily because i have an overwhelming love for natalie dorma you do have an overwhelming love for natalie dorma and you can find it dear listeners at uh game of groans pod dot com excellent bit like so we'll link in the show notes yeah proper link proper link in the show notes and it's very good i listened to quite a lot of it even though i have not seen any of the show and do not intend to excellent but i will explain it to you thank you yeah we recorded quite uh late at night because the time difference between me and emily the host so i forgot a lot of what i said by the end of it i was quite sleepy

slash full of coffee anyway thank you for listening to the tree shall make you fret you can find us on instagram at the tree shall make you fret on twitter at make you fret pod on facebook at the tree shall make you fret and you can email us your thoughts queries castles snacks and albatrosses at the tree shall make you fret pod at gmail dot com and please do actually dear listeners do email us email us some questions email us some thoughts i want to read out some things and feel like a real podcaster and do that because we're all very starved of any kind of interaction right now reach out metaphorically don't really don't reach out physically because that's very dangerous yeah social distancing listening the virus yes email us and we might

do a little mailbag or something that'd be fun and in the meantime dear listener i'd like to leave you at the end of the book but there would be a morning there would always be another morning oh mate i need to watch that movie kirsten dunst is a treasure is she in anything recently uh i don't know i really watched bring it on for the first time in ages so that was fun i still remember all the words to the opening chair so that's something i'm proud of i'm sexy i'm cute i'm popular i'm bitching great hair the boys will love to stare i'm wanted i'm hot i'm everything you're not and then yeah it goes on i'm not doing the whole thing okay no i'm pretty i'm cool we dominate this school who am i just guess i want it guys want to

touch my chest oh cute yeah which i didn't realize the timeline because obviously a lot of dishkins in that who played faith in bupky and you're going to be in right at the end