The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 20: Wyrd Sisters Pt.1 (Bloody Hands)

Episode Date: May 4, 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 “Wyrd Sisters”. Witches! Weather! Wishes! 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:Narrativia strikes deal to bring Pratchett's Discworld to TVTerry Pratchett's The Watch Series by BBC Studios - When? What? How? Huh?Tales from Earthsea (2006) - IMDbWhiffenpoofs Have I Got News for YouThe Mash ReportThe Guilty Feminist “The New Normal”How Humans Lost Our Chance at a Third EyeHow Does Human Echolocation Work?The Unadulterated Cat by Terry Pratchett - GoodreadsMaxine Peake in Hamlet: Critics deliver their verdictsHanglid - Eddie Izzard First Knight (Droit Du Seigneur) - SnopesI Am Very Culinary Countless stonesThe Rollright StonesAudio Thunder: Josh74000MCWind: craigsmithRain: jmbphilmesMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

When shall we do meet again? Well, I can do next Tuesday. So what, this narrativier thing? Explain it, because I skim read the article, realised that it was Rhianna and Rob in charge of some Discworld stuff, and retreated happy that it was in good hands, but I expect you've done a bit more. Well, so narrativier is the production company

that is effectively in the hands of Rhianna and Rob, and theoretically, like all Discworld content was going to come from that, the reason the watch isn't narrativier, there was some weird thing that happened with the rights there, because Rhianna and Rob haven't actually out and out said, we're not happy with what they've done with this, but they have definitely, like, when all the casting announcements and photos came out,

they both tweeted an article Ursula Le Guin wrote about really hating certain TV adaptations of her work. Cool, cool, yeah. Which is a very good article, although I actually really like the Studio Ghibli version of The Wizard of Earthsea. I am not familiar enough with any of that to comment, but I'm pleased that Rhianna and Rob found a passive aggressive way to disapprove of stuff. So they, as narrativier, have signed a deal with this TV production company,

and everything apart from the watch, I think, there is a screen adaptation of Discworld will come from this company going forward. Does that mean that they can't do their own version of watch stuff? I don't know, because the BBC America one is inspired by, rather than based on, I don't see why they couldn't. I don't know enough of the ins and outs of what the legal stuff is. I just don't understand why the BBC America one even bothered using the names. Well, this is what I keep saying, is, like, just as a TV show that has been announced,

like, it looks pretty cool. It looks like a cyberpunk fantasy police procedural. Like, that's very much my back. I think they could have said, inspired by Terry Pratchett's The Watch, and if they hadn't used all the character names and stuff, they wouldn't have had the kind of fan backlash. Yeah, but then I think if they weren't going to even use the character names, there's no point saying it's inspired by...

No, that's true. It almost seems like what's happened there is someone who is involved in this is admittedly a fan of the books, but also just had this very cool idea they wanted to do. And it's so cool for completely original things to get commissioned that by saying it's based on a book series, it could be commissioned and made, and then they've gone ahead and made what they wanted to make. Is it as difficult in the States as it is here? Yeah, there isn't...

Because... And it's going to get worse over the next... Like, creative stuff is really going to go downhill, I think, over the next few years. Because... Oh, yeah, there's just going to be some shit not made in the next couple of years. Yeah, no one can film at the moment. So everything that was on the slate for later this year and next year, like, there's already been series that weren't quite done filming before lockdown started.

So they should have had their finales airing, and instead they've done, like, a truncated finale, and said we'll do a real finale when we can, including actors who were signed off to leave at the end of a series who've now had to agree to come back and do a one-off film session. Yeah. But, yeah, even before all of this stuff, like, places don't like taking risks because remakes and based-ons and sequels

are a safe bet because half the advertising's done, people already have an attachment to the property. Yes, okay, that does make sense. I expect there's enough people who enjoy disc worlds who aren't as finicky as the hardcore fans. Well, at the end of the day, even the people who are finicky are going to watch it, if only so they can bitch about it. I will let you watch it and then tell me whether I'm going to watch it or not. You're going to have to watch it so we can use them episodes on it.

Oh, fuck yeah. All right, fine. Oh, side note. Have you been watching? Have I got news for you, the remote Zoom meeting versions? Yes, I have. They're brilliant. Oh, they're so good. I'm so proud of them.

I love that the BBC did that. The MASH report as well. I think it was really well done. Yeah, which, by the way, now I'm going to bitch about the BBC having just praised them. iPlayer's UI is fucking atrocious. Oh, God, it's awful. The MASH report, there was no way to get to the MASH report without searching for it. And this is something I've watched in the past.

I must, as a viewer, show every sign of wanting to watch the next season. And I didn't know it was on until it popped up in a trailer. I only knew because I followed Nish Kumar and Rachel Parris on Twitter. Like, I haven't seen the BBC tweeting about it. So I missed the first three. Yeah. It's been really good. I've really enjoyed it.

Yeah. No, the UI on BBC iPlayer, especially which, how are you accessing it? Are you doing it on PS4? Yeah. No, the PS4 app is the worst. It's slightly better on browser, but... Yes, it is. Yeah.

Because I do watch the odd thing on the computer. The app on Apple stuff, like... Does it work on Apple TV? No. I don't think you can even get it on Apple TV. Do you have Apple TV? No, but I'm considering it for the future. If you want...

We're debating getting the new one at some point, especially because with my phone, I've now got, like, six months free of the Apple streaming service, which is also called Apple TV. That's it. Yeah. Ah, yes, it's Apple TV and Apple TV something, isn't it? The one that actually has... Apple TV Plus is the streaming service.

Content Plus. That's it, yeah. Which I want... I was debating paying for and then thought I can't justify paying for another streaming service, especially not having just got Disney Plus. But if I've got a year free, I really want to watch the Emily Dickinson. Series they did, because apparently they made it very gay. What about the eyebrows?

I'm assuming there's good eyebrows. Okay, good. In an Emily Dickinson series, there's been made very gay. I can't imagine the eyebrows or anything less than magnificent. I was listening to an odd episode of Do By Friday yesterday. I'm not listening to the new one still because I'm getting behind on all my podcasts, but I am still occasionally listening to the old ones to try and get caught up.

And they were talking about seeing other people use their iPhones and how much they hate seeing them do certain things and not do the most efficient way. And it's like, no, I know how to do what I'm doing, even if it's not the most efficient. There is only so much time I will spend configuring widgets to make it easy a long term. Yeah, with the podcast thing, actually, I found that I don't really want to listen to old episodes of anything right now because I want...

My podcast playlist is so heavily conversation oriented that I kind of want to listen to people in the same boat as us right now. I think most of the... I'm finding it quite difficult to listen to conversations about normal life. It's so weird. I think because, again, a lot of the ones I listen to are conversational and have gotten heavily about this. So even the TV recap ones, like the Lost podcast, they obviously...

It's coming up as a running joke because they're talking about people isolated on an island and there's a whole quarantine plot line coming up. The most jarring thing is with the Guilty Feminists, they're alternating episodes that they've recorded in lockdown with episodes they have left over from their live pile. Oh, sure, sure. Yeah, that's weird. Listening to the live ones is so trippy, like hearing a ring full of people.

Especially because, like, we're looking at the future of theatre, especially within the company I work for and kind of going, right? We had this thing planned for April, obviously. We postponed it and said we'd do it in September. It now doesn't really... It's starting to not feel realistic to do it in September. September seems quite close, doesn't it now? Sainsbury's, I know, we're saying they're intending to keep all their social

distancing cues and stuff up to September at least. Yeah, I feel like lockdown is going to ease before it ends and I feel like pubs and this isn't things are going to be probably some of the last to reopen. Podcast? Yeah, let's make a podcast. Sweet. Hello and welcome to the True Shall Make He 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. I'm Joanna Hagan Young. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part one of our discussion of Weird Sisters, the sixth book in the Discworld series. Yeah, it's the first one I'd say in the Canon Witches arc, is that fair to say? I mean, I know Equal Rights had Granny Weatherworks in it, but this is the team of witches as we will grow to know, love and fear them.

Yes, I think this is the first Witches proper. Yeah. Before we go into it, no spoilers. This is a spoiler-like podcast. Obviously, heavy spoilers for the book we're on, Weird Sisters, but we will so many, all of the spoilers. And for Macbeth. Yeah, if you haven't read or seen Macbeth, a play that was written 500 years ago,

no, 400. Maths. Well, 400 years, you should probably give people a bit more time to see it before we spoil it, but... Yeah, OK. OK, so's about the Macbeth spoilers. Everyone dies. There's a walking forest.

So yeah, heavy spoilers for Weird Sisters, but we will try and avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series, and we're saving any and all discussion of the final book, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there. So if you haven't read it, you can come on the journey with us. Speaking of, Russ on Facebook asked, I'm almost through reading the series for the first time, just started listening to the podcast from the start.

You mentioned some people were putting off reading Shepherd's Crown. Is there a specific reason or do people just not want the series to end? Yeah, that's a good point. We actually haven't talked about that still, have we? Like, it's hard for us because both of us went and got it and started reading it on the day it came out. Like, together in the pub. There is a phenomenon, a phenomenon where people do...

Do, do, do, do. Phenomenon. This is serious and about death, Joanna. Because Terry Pratchett is not going to write any more books to our immense sadness. A lot of people don't want to read the last one, so they know they've got one more left. And it's something I can't... I can see where they're coming from.

I can't really relate, and I feel like Terry Pratchett would call them all a bunch of silly buggers. Probably. Probably. Probably. However, if that's something that brings them joy and comfort, then fill your boots or don't. But we're hoping that if some people are reading along with the podcast

and haven't read that final one yet, then maybe they will want to come to that last bit with us because then you feel like you're reading it as part of a community. Yeah, yeah. And you're not going through that alone, which is a lovely thing. Giving us a lot of credit. We're not very supportive people. Well, we try.

Sometimes. So I just went through the... And we're getting the mention in early, but the Buffy podcast I listened to. All right, go on. Well, no, so they just covered a really... Is that a buffering? Yeah.

Yeah, okay. They just covered a particularly rough episode of Buffy where a beloved character passes away, and the episode deals very heavily with grief, and it's a very tough episode to watch. It's also one of the greatest episodes of television ever made. Watching the episode to listen to the podcast episode, knowing that I was doing it around the same time,

it's a lot of other people who have the same experience, and being in a Facebook group where we could all kind of share feelings together, and knowing that the sort of hosts are there for people, and reading emails, and made it a lot easier to deal with watching a very rough episode of television. Mm-hmm. So there is something to be said for knowing that when you're going through a sad thing, like watching that very sad episode of Buffy,

or reading the last ever Discworld novel, or not going through it alone, a quick follow-up from our sorcery episodes. Oh. If anyone remembers Francine's obscure reference finial about the whiff and poofs. Oh yeah. And the poor little dance. Such a stupid name.

If anyone would like to hear a really lovely version of that song, then lovely friend, friend of the pod listener, Helen. Lovely friend. Just sent me a link to her SoundCloud, in which she's got a really nice recording of her singing that particular piece. Yeah. Doubly relevant, because Helen is someone I befriended through acting, and theatre, when she played the crone in a monologue,

of the same name that was heavily inspired by Terry Pratchett, and especially The Witch's Books. It's a very good monologue. It is actually one of the best things I've ever written. And Helen is a very good actor. So Francine, would you like to introduce Weird Sisters? Yeah. Six Disworld novel.

First in The Witch's Boree Arc. The first obvious straight-up parody of another work. Yeah. Being work better than the case. I'd say Masquerade is as heavy-handed a parody of something. I would say Masquerade is more heavy-handed, as a parody of one specific thing, as opposed to like a genre parody,

like moving pictures or song music. Yeah, definitely. And it's the three witches, Magrat, Granny Weatherwax, and Nanny Og, who are just a fantastic trio, and I love so much. And I'm really excited to do this one, and I'll just do the blurb, and then we can do it. Yeah.

Cool. Witches are not by nature gregarious, and they certainly don't have leaders. Granny Weatherwax was the most highly regarded of the leaders they didn't have. But even she found that meddling in royal politics was a lot more difficult than certain playwrights would have you believe.

Bloody playwrights. If I summarise what happens in this section. Yeah, I think that's a good idea. We begin with Eldritch Voices on dark, rain-lashed hills. We're in the magic-soaked, round-top mountains with a storm brewing. A hurtling coach and hooded risers, a coven meeting. King Verrance meets his untimely end

at the hands of Duke Phelmet, and becomes a spectral, glandless being who cannot leave the stones of the castle. The hurtling coach interrupts the coven meeting, handing over a baby before succumbing to an untimely end, and some king's men attempt to steal the baby till Granny gives them what for. They find a crown in the wreckage of the coach.

We meet Duke Phelmet, wishing he was a tree and trying not to think about the horrific murder what he'd just done, as his wife, ransom raves. The fool and the cook receive the message that witches are abroad. It's a lovely time of year for it. The witches ponder what to do with the baby on a trip to the theatre, one of them's style of things.

The Chamberlain explains local witches to the Duke and Duchess, Duke never king, who aren't happy about the witches' helpful slash tax evading ways. The witches head to the pub with the travelling players from the theatre and offer them the child, hiding the crown in the prop bucket. Is it tax evasion if the tax man evades you?

I mean, taxes have been evaded in that case. So, yes. OK, OK. Where am I? The witches head home and Godmother-style bestow gifts on the child, Tom John. The following morning, an attempt to arrest the witches goes badly and the Duke gets in a strop

at the guards' decision to eat a current bun. Two months later, the coven meets at Nanny's cottage and have a moan about the new king, Phelmet. Phelmet receives news that the tax gatherer has failed with the witches. After a quick chat with the fool and some incomprehensible humor, we jump to one year later and look in on Vittola, the head of the strolling players,

the boy Tom John, and Hwell, the playwright. Portentous winter arrives as is proper, then it stops portenting and everyone gets very confused. Granny and Margaret crash Nanny's Hogswatch Night Party to invoke a demon and ask about the huge unhappy animal mind that Granny consents. The witches realise it's the kingdom itself that's unhappy and that they really oughtn't meddle.

Tom John shows his prowess at recitation and Griebo wanders up to the castle and the ghost of the former king locks him up. Portenting, very nice. Portenting is definitely a real word that I didn't make up. Helicopters, loincloths, did you find any? Not yet, but I have hopes for the rest of the book. Is that because you've read the book?

No, they're awesome. Well, again, we're going for very loose interpretations. OK. But I'm going to make it work. Do you have us your favourite quote, Francine? Yeah, I think mine came first this time, didn't it? So let's flick along. I'm sorry.

I'm so sorry. So let's just go to page 25. In a nice PG manner. Here it is. Yeah, they're talking about how the crown will find itself or will make itself found because of narrative destiny, which is a theme that's kind of picked up in a lot of these desk world books.

Basically, it's going to happen because that's how narrative it works. And in this case, the crown, no matter where you hide it, will be found because that's just how stories go. I'm saying it's true. Is that, said Nani Og, earnestly, how many times have you thrown a magic ring into the deepest depths of the ocean? And then when you get home and have a nice bit of turbot

fiatty, there it is. They considered this in silence. Never sit granny irritably, nor have you. Oh, that makes me happy. Also, that's a little thing that, not a spoiler, but that will come up again in another book, and it will be quite entertaining. You should remember this when that comes up again in another book.

Remember the turbot, dear listeners. Never forget the turbot. I can't remember what, where's, oh yeah, my quote is very short and only a couple of pages later, but they're still talking about the crown. Oh, good. Things that try to look like things often do look more like things than things.

Well-known fact. Yes, and a true one. Very true one. Sorry, you, you. Well, I was, I'm going to end up nerding out about how cool theatre is a lot throughout this podcast, but they're talking about theatre there. Yeah.

There's a lovely little line later in the thing, but I don't really understand what theatre is of, come on, let's go. It's about time since I saw a theatre played properly, which I do love. But yeah, the idea of, it's something that comes up a lot, especially in like drag, which obviously I love drag.

Yeah. I'm as close to a drag queen as I can be without being a drag queen on the day-to-day. Mostly because I don't have any wigs. I gave all my wigs to the theatre company. Oh, no. And then you shaved your head. Terrible order to do things.

I might buy some new wigs. That's not relevant to what we're talking about at all. Drag queens. Drag, drag and drag queens, and not just drag queens, but like drag performs all times. But the whole idea is that it is this hyped up version of gender and it treats gender as a thing to play with. And it's fun.

It's trying to look more like a thing than the thing itself. So this book has a helpful little starring, not quite a full dramatic persona at the beginning, starring three witches, also kings, daggers, crowns, storms, dwarfs, cats, ghosts, spectres, apes, bandits, demons, forests, heirs, gestures, torches, trolls, turntables, general adjoicing, and diverse allurems. Which I meant to look up the diverse allurem thing,

because I'm assuming there's a joke I'm not quite getting, but I forgot. You're muted. There we go. Sorry. Yeah. So that passed me by actually. Diverse allurems.

You say how's that spell? D I V E R S and then A L A R U M S. Alarm. Divers. Is something to do with the word. That's that comes up again. Maybe a masquerade. It comes up later in this book as well.

All right. All right. We'll look it up for next time. We will do. So characters that we meet. One of my favourites. I'm not joking. Is the storm. Yes.

It's an up and coming performer. So I think it's very relevant. I like I did. I didn't really tweak quite how relevant his description of it was to the general theme of the book until this read through. Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah.

I guess I liked it and I remembered it as one of the passages I liked. But then I read it this time. Yeah. Like a like an actor. Yes. If you want to read that out. So I'm not talking nonsense.

The storm was really giving it everything it had. This was its big chance. It spent years hanging around the provinces, putting in some useful workers of school, building up experience, making contacts, occasionally leaping out on unsuspecting shepherds or blasting quite small loach dreams. Now an opening in the weather had given it an opportunity to

strut its hour and it was building up its role in the hope of being spotted by one of the big climates. Critics agreed that if it would only learn to control its thunder, it would be in use to come a storm to watch. I like the idea of a little amateur storm not being able to control its thunder. And it's like rolling thunder out of excitement. It brings me much joy.

And then on the following page, obviously we meet the big, the big three. The big three. Nanny Og and Margaret Garlic. Oh, wonderful little coven. Yes. We've met Granny before, obviously. Yes.

But she was doing other things and not hanging around her. The wind very much. So this is a. Granny on home turf. And being bloody good at it. And she doesn't live in badass anymore. She should have seen when she did. Well, so this is the confusing thing when we sort of get to

location. So the kingdom is Lanka. Lankra. In the ram top mountains, but then they all live quite scattered about. Maybe she does. So she, yeah, badass, I think is one of the villages that surrounds.

Sort of a village within the kingdom, as it were. I see. I was like just the big town center. Yes. All right. I'm wanting to believe this. I will. I would consult.

I could have looked at the atlas. But I think I left that. Oh no, it's there. It's within my, it's within my grasp. So yeah, Lanktown is the main center of population and is surrounded by smaller villages, including badass, mad stout and slice. Excellent.

They look at you funny over in slice way. I do. I like the idea of a squint so good you can look up your own nostril by the way. That made me chuckle. That's like doing eyeball yoga. But I really like in this just initial scene with the witches where they're talking around the fire,

there are three lines that perfectly sum up all three characters. They're granite. The most highly regarded of the leaders, the witches didn't have a nanny or Magret is talking about a coven. Like, and talking about how she wants to establish these coven

meetings. And a knees up said nanny or hopefully. Yes. And then the last bit is a Magret has baked these scones shaped like bats with little lines made of currents. Oh, Oh, Micro.

And I think just like to establish these three characters and the dynamic between them in a page. It's done so well. And I think nanny odd talks about babysitting on the same page and. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. That's it. We don't actually, I think meet Jason in this book. He's a future character. We meet Sean.

Yeah. And then King parents as the next one. Yep. King parents on the following page. As he is introduced as a child. Yep. King parents on the following page. He is introduced as dead.

Yep. Has just died. So we meet him during a lovely little chat with death. He pisses off, which is always a good move. Yep. And finds out he's becoming a ghost, which it turns out is something that happens. It's not really optional.

You do. Yeah. Don't. Then a few pages later we meet like we pretty much the full character set up is established in this first session. Yes. It's, it follows a very nice theatrical structure because partly

because it's parodying a play. Yeah. It doesn't feel crowded or anything there, does it? Like a lot happens in the intro in kind of contrast to sorcery, maybe, but it doesn't feel like it's overwhelming. I think part of that is because it's got a couple of time jumps in. We get like two months later in a year later and what have you.

Sure. Yeah. So it's sort of nicely spread out. Yeah. That makes sense. But it is a nice kind of getting all the actors on and off stage. And yes, we've got Duke Filmut and the Duchess.

Is she ever referred to as anything like she, she doesn't get a first name, does she? She's just, No, I think she's the Duchess or Duchess Filmut. Yeah. Obviously the Duke Filmut becomes King having stabbed his cousin. Yes. And he's described as some sort of lizard,

the type that lives on volcanic islands, moves once a day, has a vestigial third eye and blinks on a monthly basis. Vestigial third eyes are a thing, by the way. He didn't make that up. Really? Yeah. The lizards have a vestigial third eye that helps them with navigation.

Ah, cool. And apparently so do humans, although it's under our skull, so it's not much good for navigation so much the sense of space. Did you know humans can learn to echolocate? No. Yeah. Like not to the level that bats can,

but humans can learn to, especially visually impaired people can learn to, effectively echolocate and you sound to work out their position to other physical objects and things. Awesome. Yeah. So if lockdown goes on much longer, I'm going to put on a blindfold and learn to echolocate.

That's one way to procrastinate the ironing, I suppose. Why do you ironing? When have I got to ironing? We're in lockdown. Yes. And yet somehow you are still in full formal there. So. Well, I would have to do the grocery shopping.

Of course, darling. Of course. Anyway. Discworld. Discworld. Discworld. Yeah. Spellman's quite an interesting character, isn't he?

He's incredibly poised and together, right up until he's not. Until he really fucking isn't. There's a really great line. The eye twitch was a lovely bit of foreboding. The first eye twitch. Yes. There's a lovely line.

I think it's in the next section about how his madness manifests into like a cold, hard sanity. And the Duchess. I mean, I really like the whole dynamic between the Duke and the Duchess that kind of does a role reversal thing from Macbeth in which. So. Yes.

The, the, the hand washing thing, especially and the. The Duchess having very little remorse. Yeah. Although obviously in Macbeth, like Lady Macbeth pushes him to it, but then feels all the remorse. But it's a nice shift of roles. And I, I mean,

I think the Duchess is a really not a good character as in, I like her or empathize with her, but she's a brilliant, well written character in that she's just pure villainy. She's a very good villain, but it doesn't seem hammy villain. It seems very realistic. This is just a power hungry bastard of a person.

And to have like a very, very powerful female villain who's not. Weirdly sexualized and never devolves into any kind of silly screaming. There's a brilliant bit in her description. She was a large and impressive woman who gave people confronting her for the first time, the impression that they were seeing a Galleon under full sale. I love that.

I love that. And that line has stuck with me ever since I first read this. And I've always tried to slightly give the impression of being a Galleon under full sale, especially when I'm wearing a corset. The rigging does get tangled in things though. Yeah. It's really awkward.

I should probably not have the sales up, especially when it's windy. But I love the idea of kind of moving very, in a very stately appearing sedate manner that if it actually ball down on you is going to sort of actually cutting through the water very quickly and would definitely kill you. Absolutely. It's another lady,

lady civil I think was described similarly at some point. Yes. I can't wait to get to her. Yeah. So soon. It's a much nicer way of saying, oh, battleship, isn't it? Yeah.

Which I don't take in the same way because it's usually used in just a different tone, I suppose. Which also I like that the Duchess is a woman and she is a very large woman and her complexion is made fun of. Yeah. And that, you know, red doesn't... She's bright red.

Yeah. Red doesn't set off her complexion. It matches it. But the book doesn't mock her size? No. I thought, like, my thought process as I read her description was, oh, that's a shame.

He's going to make fun of the fact that there's a fat woman wearing a lot of red velvet. That's like, oh, no, just making fun of the fact she's ruddy faced. Great. Okay, cool. She probably would be given her lifestyle, but it would be very easy to very punch down

on this large woman with a lot of self-confidence. Yeah. And as much as she's not overly sexualized, the book never talks about her being undesirable, apart from the fact that she's very irritating. Yes. Yeah. No, it's very good.

I like it a lot. I like... I like how conniving she is on a very simple level, though. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, there's not this whole, ooh, she's so scheming and clever and subtle and everything. It's like, nope, this is straight up.

I want this. Murder this. Yay. I want power, stab to leg at it, which is what we were talking about back in Sorcery, where I was talking about, like, the inherent ridiculousness of power for power's sake. Yeah.

And this is... And that... That's something that would come up in a conversation about which is what this is based on. Yeah. Especially as it's kind of played up to all the other kings who murdered people who were like, yeah, yeah, I murdered everyone and just put their heads on a pole,

and now I'm king. Whereas these guys are like, ooh, no, we didn't murder him. We didn't murder him. Don't say we did. We'll burn you. And I was like, everyone knows you didn't.

Nobody cares. What's the problem? I don't... There's so much about the, like, steady matter of fatness of the people of Lanka in general. Yeah. But it's also the fact, you know, they want power.

She wants the Duke to be king. She doesn't fucking like the kingdom. Yeah. Like it postmarchs rather be down on the plains. Yeah. Yeah, it's like... Oh, it's like buying a mansion for the sake of wanting a mansion, but actually really hating large spaces.

So anyway, the fool. The fool. I love the fool. I love the fool. He's a... He's a classic Shakespearean fool, as I've unnecessarily noted here. But I had to double check,

and there isn't a fool in Macbeth. So it's fun that they've given him this classic role, and it's not one of the... Well, the parody's Macbeth, but it kind of parodies all Shakespeare, a lot of other Shakespeare at the same time. Like, it's not a straight up Macbeth parody. No.

We don't get Byrne and Wood coming to Dunstanane. We don't get Macduff. And it's... Well, you do have the Wood turning up on Granny's doorstep. Yeah, you do. But that's the animals from... Yeah, but it's got to be a hint towards it, isn't it? Yeah.

There is a great reference about a Wood moving to disguise Nami in a later Terry Pratchett bit. A monster stretcher bit? Yeah. Yeah. But this parody's fairy tale and classic stories as much as it parodies Macbeth.

Like, the idea of the young... Young heir to the throne coming to claim his destiny is like a fun... Yeah. So it's kind of parodying all stories at the same time. And, like, Pratchett plays with the power of stories a lot, and it's really fun. But the fool, yeah, the fool from Shakespeare,

like, Lear is a big, classic one, where the fool is as much a voice of reason as he is ridiculous. Yeah, it's meant to be, like, an underhanded... Not underhanded, exactly, but a kind of hidden intelligence. Yeah. As, like, I'm really smart,

but I'm going to hide it underneath all this tomfoolery. Am I right in saying that, in that case, Robin Hobbs' fool was probably slightly Shakespearean? There's definitely a hint of Shakespearean. If you look... Like, his devotion to the king really echoes the fool and King Lear and his devotion to Lear,

following him out into the rain alone and lost. Yeah. Yeah, the devoted fool is... I'm not sure it's quite a trope. I think it might just be coincidental from the stuff I've read. But the idea of the devoted fool is something that's very in my brain. It's definitely come up in more...

Like, I think it is something in the trope. It's come up in more things. But the fool, like, the idea of jesters and the fool has this weird, mad history, because you've got the idea of sort of these medieval court jesters, but then you've also got the whole thing of the Harlequin in the Comedienne de l'arte, which is another form of this kind of full jester thing.

And that's where, like, the diamond pattern... Right. So the kind of... The stereotypical gesture, such as it is, is kind of an amalgamation. I would say so, yeah. I don't know enough about it. I just sound really clever when I talk about it.

So you've ruined it now. Soz. The ridiculous joke. Do you get it? Which one? The one where... Oh, the Hyran candle. Cow.

Yeah. Hang on. I had something on this. This came up in one of the Terry Pratchett Facebook groups the other day. Someone was asking if there's more to the joke and they'd kind of missed something. Uh-huh. So...

Why Sarah? Why may a caudal fill horse be deemed the brother to a Hyran candle in the night? With them, because a candle may be grease, yet a fill horse may be without a fat argyre. And there was a whole forum discussion on what it means, but I think... Sorry, it's really loud outside.

Oh, I think there's a storm. Hey, atmospheric. Oh, yeah. Huh. Well, we've got a very similar tune for the episode. Excellent. Anyway, there's a whole forum thread on this joke. And basically it isn't really referencing anything specific.

But what does it mean? Is it funny? I couldn't even get through the language. From what I understand... Which sounds like it might not be a lot. It's something to... I think it's somehow a dick joke or something to do with a harlot of some sort. Basically,

if any of our dear listeners know what that joke actually means, I don't think it's meant to mean anything. The point is that it's incomprehensible nonsense. That's what I kind of thought, but that seemed unsatisfying, because quite often when I think that about practice, it is an obscure reference. So let's move on then to Vitola, who has a rich and wonderful voice with every diphthong

gliding beautifully into place. The fat man who had been badly savaged by a moustache. That made me chuckle. I like Vitola. I think he's a very good character. Cool. And then Gribo. Gribo, yes.

The best cat. Gribo. Gribo is Nanny Og's cat, and he has a face like a... No, what is he? A fist with fur on it. He's the tough cat. He is something that Terry Pratchett loves very much,

which is the unadulterated cat. And I have a copy of that book with me. I was trying to find Gribo's category, and I think he is a boot-faced cat. Very much so. They have fangs, crossed eyes, enough scars to play noughts and cross his championship on, and ears like old bus tickets.

That sounds about right, doesn't it? I mean, he probably might have had to. Yeah, I feel like the eye he does have doesn't really look in the right direction. And he has a plot device in this bit, because he's been right at the end of the section trapped in a room in the hope of tempting a witch up to talk to Varence.

Ghost Varence. And then right near... Well, very briefly, we don't spend a lot of time with him, but we meet Hwell. I don't know how that's meant to be pronounced. Hwell. Hwell. Hwell, well, well.

Hwell, well, well. What have we here? We have a Bourbon playwright. Yes, who doesn't like dwarfishness, because he doesn't really like being underground, singing about gold, and he has a tendency to daydream. He's a bloody good writer. Yes.

Because of inspiration particles. Yes, another reference to this rather charming theme of ideas coming from the sky in a sort of sleep. So locations, we've already talked really about where we are and what we're doing. We're in the Kingdom of Lankra. Yeah, in the Kingdom of Lankra. In the Round Top Mountains.

Round Top Mountains, which I didn't realise were quite so extensive. We go from all the way to the hub, right out in a little archipelago, which I can never say. Archipelago. Thank you. Archipelago. We only really see little bits of them, don't we? But I like the fact that they're kind of some kind of magic conduit

and make all of the witches and wizards, and they're just generally quite, I don't want to say Eldritch again. Yes, there's a higher magical density in the Round Top Mountains. So they've produced a lot of witches and wizards. Yeah, and I think it was Duke Filmer who was talking about just how much geography the place had. It had depth, which I think kind of harks back

to what we were saying a very long time ago about how places like Suffolk that are just flat just don't seem to have much room for magic in them. There's barely any folklore compared to somewhere like, say, Shropshire, which is all depth and geography. That's the little bits we liked. Why don't you give us a word from our sponsor?

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Page 25. Granny and Nanny sort of paying attention to Margaret and how she's doing witchcraft, because Margaret is the young one. If we're doing maiden mother crone cycle, and I'll get into that a lot more when we get onto some of the later ones. But they're complaining about the modern ways

in which Margaret's doing sigils and magic and flowers and silly things on the walls. And there's this lovely modern, says Granny Weatherworks for the Smiths. When I was a girl, we had lumps of wax and a couple of pins and had to be content. We had to make our own enchantment in those days. Yeah, it's throwback and throw forward, et cetera,

to the kind of wizards being able to do the righty-bush kent with a couple of matchsticks. And it seemed throughout the witch's books, I think it's fair to say that Matt Grapp really wants witchcraft to be this, you know, the thing we thought it was when we were teenagers with the cool runes and the, you know, the really cool carved wand.

And you've got, like, you know, it's stylish. It's the aesthetic of the whole thing. And you're ruining it by being able to do it in that bloody copper pan. But what I really like is that Margaret doesn't really let this get in her way too much. No, she's got a bit more willpower than some of the other younger witches we meet later, doesn't she?

She's just kind of like, this is how I'm doing it. Yep, but also she'll, she'll, she's flexible enough to sometimes go, all right, fine, bread knife. Yes, yeah. And I like the fact that kind of Pratchett specifies that her way of doing things does work. It doesn't really matter which is remedies always work. It just, the delivery is fairly relevant.

There is. As long as the witch believes in it. Yes, yes, that's it, isn't it? But it's the nice thing, like, when I, I was excited about all three characters and especially like, I love Nanny Ogg so much. Oh yeah. But where I like Margaret because of who she becomes,

I've appreciated a lot more, her a lot more in this book. She's a lot better than I remember. She gets a lot more to do. And she's not as wet as I remember either. Like, as you say, the fact that she's just like, I like doing it this way, but okay, I can see we're doing it that way now. Fine, let's carry on.

And it's nice that she brought scones with bats on them. And, you know, let's not, we all like the, we all like the cool witchy aesthetic as well. And yeah, no, I definitely like her a lot more than I did as a teenager. And I feel like maybe that's because I related too much as a teenager. But I think it's very easy when you're a teenager

to read a character that's quite similar to you and dislike them, whereas now you look back on it. And like, we'd all love hair that streams and would look great with flowers braided into it. Yeah, I definitely relate to like, spending a long time on your hair in the morning. Oh, here we go. I've curled it and I've styled it perfectly.

And then by lunchtime looking in there, like, oh no, oh no. I love granny not understanding what theater is. Oh, it's so fucking good. Because think about like, it's a really ridiculous thing to... I remember that. I remember as a kid not getting it.

Like, I remember pantomimes. I know you yell at pantomimes anyway, but I remember as a very young kid, a villain, like one of the comedy villains sent really a villain on stage going, oh, I don't know how many friends. And I yelled, I'll be your friend because I was really sad for him.

That's very sweet. That's a beautiful story. It can happen sometimes, like I found I've been watching a play and especially if it's not great. Yeah. I mean, not to like be a dick about it. Like sometimes just people have off days or whatever.

Yeah. Not to be a dick about it, but some plays aren't great. That's true. Don't worry. I know. But sometimes you're watching it and then your brain suddenly goes,

hang on. Like, that's not real because these are also people who have entire lives out of this and you get very swept up in a story and something can enjoy you. Especially because like a lot of theater I see I'm mates with some of the cast.

Yeah. I find it very difficult to get sucked into theater in the same way that I do films and stuff because of that, because I can see they are people right there and there's not all the cinematic tricks and the score so often. Yeah.

There's nothing separate. I mean, when it's done well, you do get totally absorbed in it. And I've seen good friends of mine play like these very different parts and being like completely able to believe it for the moment. Weirdly enough,

I found it easier to get absorbed into things like the monologues. And so I can watch you even do a monologue and get very absorbed into it. And I say you even, not because you're a bad actor, but because you're my best mate and it's very hard to see you as not that for a bit.

But I get swept up into your monologues. But then I think with the theater it's because there's so much that can enjoy you out of it, like a set change or a step out of place because there's several actors on stage at once or whatever. Whereas in monologues it's just... It definitely depends on the show

and the actors and how it's done. Yeah. Which is why I'm not a huge fan of the like ridiculously stripped back minimalist theater. It can be very good when done well, but it's so easy for it not... I mean, I work for a company... Don't get me wrong,

the company I work for is fairly stripped back and minimalist because we have like a super tight budget. Yeah, but it's not like... We do a lot with a little. Yeah, it's not all we're using as little stuff as possible on purpose. It's a, this is what we have. Let's do it.

Yeah, it does. I've never seen one of the really stark ones you're on about. I know what you mean because I've seen like clips of videos of them or whatever, but I've never gone to watch a show that was really minimalist like that. I don't think. There's a version of Hamlet with Maxine Peek playing Hamlet

that everyone raves about and it's very stripped back and minimalist. And Maxine Peek is very good in it. She's an incredibly talented actor, but I just didn't enjoy watching it because it felt more look how clever we are for representing a grave with a pile of old clothes than something I could just get absorbed in and watch.

It would almost be better if the grave wasn't there. Yeah. Like if you're going to be minimalist about it, just don't have the grave. I can imagine enjoying certainly large parts of a Shakespeare play with no props at all. Yeah. But if you're going to distract me by having like a dining table

be a matchbox or something, then I'm going to be thinking about that. Yeah. So sometimes this is too clever for its own good, but it's really fun. And in this case, Granny Weatherwax is too clever for theatre's good. Yes.

I saw you. I saw you. We all saw him. He done it. Him. That one over there. He's fantastically understanding with them as well afterwards. Like he is the perfect charming gent.

Yes. Because you would be wouldn't. Yeah. Yeah. Now I figured. Yeah. The next thing I really like is that we get our early mention of the hedgehog song.

Yay. Hedgehog can never be bothered by good. Has anybody written out this whole thing? We never get. I don't. The books never have the full lyrics of it. So I don't think there is a full official version. Okay.

We just get odd lines and, you know, you infer the rest for yourself or see the. Yeah. The theme is how animals managed to shag effectively. Yeah. We get little snippets of it in this. And I think we do get more in definitely in which is broad. Yeah.

Yeah. I wonder if anybody's written a really good version of the whole thing. We'll have to look it up. I've seen a couple of fan written versions of it that are very funny. And if any of our dear listeners want to send us. Yeah, I do.

Because being the hedgehog can never be buggered at all. Being a massive proof that I am. I'm not going to write that parody poem. So. I might. And I would much, I'd much rather someone just sent me one. I'd much rather someone do it for me.

I mean, if anyone fancies doing the next episode for us and sending it in, that'll give us a free afternoon. I mean, we've been doing bonus episodes because of lockdown boredom. No, I don't want someone else to do it. Yeah.

Fine. We are both also control freak. So that wouldn't work too well. I don't know what you're talking about. Right. Next thing you're thinking. See, I'm glad you're the control freak.

I'm glad you are also a control freak because it means I don't have to be on this thing. So next one is bloody hands. And I wasn't sure whether this was a talking point. I guess it was blood sugar. I feel energy again. Eating a double deck of our in three seconds flat made me feel amazing.

Top tip listeners. Disclaimer, anybody who chokes to death may not sue me. Bloody hands. That should be like safe word. By the time it gets to that point, it's too late for a safe word. Um,

Christ. Um, it's interesting that they've got the Duke having the hand washing instead of the Dutchess because obviously this is a reference to Lady Macbeth's enduring hand washing scenes during the, the play. That's, um, that's what I was talking about earlier with the kind of role

reversal with the Duke and Duchess and the Duke. Yeah. Yeah. But guilty afterwards. I really like it. I do too. Because it makes more sense to be honest. It does.

Because he's the one. Macbeth just comes across a bit of an idiot in Macbeth, which is fine because that's the character he is there. But then in Macbeth, Macbeth isn't easily led idiot. Yeah. And, um, he,

again, it's never really explained why he wants to be king so badly, apart from some people said he was going to be, and then his wife encouraged him. And she's the one who really pushes the drive for power, which means it's more, it is very interesting that she is the one that then has the guilt. And there's,

because she was the driving force, it's the bigger turnaround from her. And there's also, I would say, uh, some misogyny in there somewhere of how Shakespeare's women are treated. And once she's pushed him to do it, she sort of loses her use since there's not much to do with her

other than have her go mad and die. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm not saying necessarily that perhaps it's better than Shakespeare, although I am. Yeah, it's fine. I agree.

Um, but yeah, I just think that this way round does make more sense. I agree with you. I feel like the bloody hands bit is a fantastic bit of creepy addition to the general story. So like, it's a really gruesome in your face way of showing his madness,

although he's barely cracking at this point apart from this. Yeah. It's like, he is perfectly calm composed. You're seeing a slight twitch in his face and sit, you know, you're getting an idea of what's going to happen. But at the same time, he's using a fucking armorous file on his hands. Yes.

And it's absolutely gross. It's such a good, but it's, it's not horror. What is it? It's like, I don't know what to call it. It's just a bit of gruesome demonstration of what's going on. It's just this really nice subtle, you know, just in case you weren't sure this guy is like super fucking batshit

guys. Yeah. And it just, God, it makes you cringe. I guess it, it also helps you feel like a visceral repulsion whenever he's mentioned, which obviously helps when you're meant to be seeing him as villain. Yeah.

You can't not think of the fact that he's got this kind of bloody oozing bandage on because, Like you said, yeah, I put a soiled bandage on the full shoulder. I was like, because he's, because he's making it worse and he's making it so that there is literal

blood on his hands that he can see and it's his own. Yeah. Yeah. It's like this fucking vicious circle, isn't it? He washed the blood off his hands so hard that he got blood in his hands and it's just got worse and worse since then. I think eventually he had some fucking horrible remains by the end of the book.

Tell me about granny. Tell me about your grandmother child. I'm going to read the quote out. Is it times like this that the mind finds the oddest jobs to do in order to avoid its primary purpose, e.g., thinking about things. If anyone had been watching,

there would have been amazed at the sheer dedication with which granny tackled such tassels, cleaning the teapot stand, rooting ancient nuts out of the fruit bowl on the dresser and levering fossilized bread crust out of the cracks in the flagstones with the back of a teaspoon. God, we've all been there, haven't we? Especially now,

it feels so relatable because like we are locked in our houses with our own thoughts and I have done, my house is really clean right now, like for me, which is still probably not that clean for most people. Yeah, same. But yeah, it's, and I like, I really liked the description of how weird everything felt as well.

Just that everything felt too loud. Yes. Just that uneasy feeling when, when something big is happening either personally or, or in this case globally. And yeah, everything just feels odd and echoey and wrong. And you're like,

okay, well, I suppose I've never cleaned under this before. Oh God, there was a reason to brush. Yeah. It's the, if we're in lockdown for like another month, I'm going to end up pulling out the sofa and cleaning up, cleaning underneath it.

I already tried to reorganize. Yeah. I'm close to it. It feels much heavier. Yeah. Mine is heavier and in an awkward position. I used to have to do it daily for a while. Cause we have like that sofa that came with fleas and then we had to get them out.

Oh sure. Yeah. Grace. Sorry. You tried to organize what? I tried to reorganize my bookshelves, but realized that it literally is not space for the amount of books I have. And I cannot make more space.

And I was sort of a, I can probably make this work a bit better if I take all the books off, reorganize them and put them back up and start again. But I'm planning on moving house before the end of the year. So I'm not going to do that because I'll only have to redo it. Um, carrot, carrot,

carrot, bloody hands, bloody hands, carrot and fossilized toast. Um, Hey, Jati, uh,

changelings when Tom is just about Tom, John is just about to speak for the first time, but well, mentions that my great, great grandmother said the changelings was done to us once the fairies swapped a human and a dwarf. We never realized until he started banging his head on things. Uh, carrot,

carrot. Yes. We will make a note of this dear listeners, and we will come back to this in a couple of weeks time. Cause we're really close. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I don't know.

Um, obviously like it wasn't referencing support forward throw, throw forward, throw forward, foreshadowing, foreshadowing. Thank you. I like throw forward.

Um, for something that didn't exist yet, but uh, yes, carrot was, but a gleam in Terry Pratchett's eye at this point. Quite a tall gleam. Yeah.

I feel like that's, that's that. Into the biggest stuff. Let's talk about the dynamic of the witches. Oh, and they fucking fantastic. Obviously they passed the Bechdel test was flying colors and like it's, I know when I'm really looking at that,

but it is sad to think how many just like books and movies I read and watch on a regular basis that just. Don't do it anywhere near this. Well, it's, it's, it's three women with a really complex relationship that is built around their kind of careers,

just mutual respect can disdain. And they're allowed to be these complex, bickering friends. Yes. And then, and they're sort of not particularly close friends at the beginning of this Margaret has just sort of started meeting thing. And the fact that it's sort of the young one trying to bring them together.

And there's this narrative of like, career women supporting each other. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, just the constant bickering from nanny or can cry any weather wax. It never really stops, even though they are,

you know, together a lot throughout the books. And. I just, they're so fucking funny. It's like an understated dry version of how the wizards interact. Yes. It's a combination of.

How the wizards interact and a certain way older women interact with each other. Yeah. It is a joy to see and to be around. I really love, you know, we were talking about when they're introduced, how quickly their characters are established. And I mentioned being really into this idea of the cycle of made a mother in Crone.

Yeah. And the books themselves interrogate that really thoroughly. Especially lords and ladies goes into it in great depth. With the fact that. So, which is abroad, I'd say. Yeah. Yeah.

Magra is the maiden. Nanny is obviously the mother because she's got these broods and broods. She's been married three times. And then that makes granny the other one. I'd say she hasn't even arguably the maiden at this point, because she doesn't really know anything about. Yes, we do get a lovely more the birthing.

We have a lovely moment of Magra and I over to her. Granny sort of says, you should probably talk to Nanny at some point. Not now. Because she's drunk in the front garden and trying to remember the words to the hedgehog can never be bothered at all. Soon. That's soon.

I just fucking love them. But also the sort of role reversal of quite often you'd get that the mother would be the sort of severe and possibly rather fretful one. And the one who's got a bit more room for fun. And certainly when I was writing the crone, and that's going to be part of the cycle of monologues. Yeah, you took the normal fairy tale.

Yeah. And so I've got her on stage, just working from a hip flask and reminiscing about her glory days and the other piece I've written. She is very fretful because I've written a fairy tale mother whose children have been kidnapped and putting haunted castles and put to sleep for a hundred years. Oh, I want to see that.

Yeah, I might finish writing it at some point. Yeah, maybe one day. Yeah. And Magra's kind of got that role, hasn't she? And whether that's got the new entity all of her own, I think, but yeah, but Magra's got the maideness in that, you know,

that literal naivety that makes it mean she's definitely retained her maiden head so far. Yeah. But also the fact that she's not been knocked down my life a lot and she still believes in her sigils and flowers in her hair and meadows and we don't really get it in this section. We'll start getting into the next section. Magra's getting some romance into her life.

Yeah. But underneath all of that, she has still got that really solid pragmatism. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely get the feeling that the witches, the witches are based off women rather than a lot of men who write women,

write women. There's just a plot device almost. It's like a really low key. It's not even low key. It is like objectification almost. Just a, this is what I need. Yeah. Not point.

And so this is what this woman is. Yeah. Not sexually. Just straight up right. You are this. You could be replaced by evil lamp instead of sexy lamp. But, but yes.

Whereas these, these women are women. They are older women in granny and Nanny's case who I think we both know one of each probably at least Nanny's just built up this family, not because she's this kind of broody clacking mother hen, but she is a bit, but also she's kind of turned it into an empire. And now she doesn't have to do anything ever again.

She's got 15 children and so many doors and laws. And she's also just got this full willingness to completely embrace any joy that life can bring her as opposed to, she's the ultimate head in this, isn't she? Yeah. She's so hedonistic and she, you know, she can't go out on hogs watch night, which is don't. So she's brought the entire town to her.

Yeah. She's hedonistic, but also like very accepting. So she's, she's somebody who could be a hedonist in like a fucking cave with nothing in it. Probably she would find a way to be a hedonist. Yes. Right.

Yeah. I think that granny is quite aesthetic, aesthetic, aesthetic, not as in aesthetic. God, those are two words that sound very similar. Aesthetic. It's still aesthetic though, isn't it? A-S-C-E-T-I-C.

Oh yeah. Yeah. Aesthetic. Yeah. But anyway, Monk like in the kind of. Yeah. She's very stoic.

Yeah. Stoic. I don't even mean that. I mean, having nothing. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I mean by stoic is in stoicism and this idea of not having a

lot of frivery and. Oh yeah. Yeah. Sure. Sure. Yeah. And yeah, just, but a deliberate,

deliberately depriving herself of things because she feels like that's the morally correct thing to do somehow. Yeah. It's sort of a deliberate choice to be very within her means, means and not expect anymore. And I'm one of the great things we get with granny sort of character development as we go on is her wrestling with what that means within her self.

Yeah. So you see her sort of cowed and accepting, maybe there's nothing we can do for a moment in this whole situation with the land being unhappy in this evil due. Yeah. Because it should be within her means to have a say in it. And then you see her eventually cast that off and fixing things because that's what she does.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She's like the whole point of it that we don't meddle, but then really. She's someone who has very, very strict rules for herself and is almost completely willing to break those rules all the time.

Yeah. Like we already talked in equal rights about her amazing confidence where she will not accept that she doesn't know something. You know, of course, she knows what this is despite not getting it at all. Yeah. And there's a lot of kind of like, oh, I don't expect anything more than what I have,

what I have, but then you're like, but because it always happens to me anyway, I'm going to be outraged from, I don't have it suddenly. Like, it's like, oh, I don't expect recognition and parcels being delivered to me of old clothes and food. And,

but I'm sorry it's not happening now. What is this fucking outrage? And I love the dynamic of witches within like the places they live and work and what they do for other people and the way they help people and fix their backs and their problems. Partly because it, you know, it harkens back to all traditions and village wise women who were very much a thing.

And obviously a lot of them got burned at the stake as witches. Yeah. It's cool that although the main place that we have the witches stories is very respectful of witches, which is nice because then the story doesn't have to revolve around being persecuted being witches. There is a lot of acknowledgement of that persecution outside of this nice area. Oh yeah.

And also, you know, it gets to a bit persecuted at some points and also the losing people taking them seriously, which is the important thing to them is that they are respected and taken seriously. Yeah. Yeah. And the status quo in Lanker is that the,

the witches are respected, which is nice. Yeah. Yeah. So witches, fucking excellent story. I'm looking forward to all of the witches that I think, I think although I do oscillate between which book is my favorite, I would at this point dare to say that the witches are the best written

characters of practice. You're going to disagree with yourself in two weeks time, but okay. No, I'm not sure I am. I'm not sure I am because although I like, I know who you're going to say, although I like those other characters, I'm not sure that they are as unique to practice as these witches are.

They don't start off quite as well written. That's a growing curve. Whereas this starts off on a high and never really drops. Yeah. Anywho. So yeah. That's not discussing future books. No.

Yeah. I will stop vaguely. Alluding. Portending. Portending. Portending. I portent. You portent.

He she. Portent. They can glitch. They can do it. You can do it. The way that you did it. And. Hang on.

Wanda senior needs a bit of exercise. We missed one temporal blur. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes. Well, it was such a temporal blow that I missed it entirely. Francine marvelous. This is King Varence.

Mm hmm. Who has never really been frightened anything. Of anything. This is really early in his description. animation but he's also one of those rare individuals that are totally focused in time. Most people aren't, they live their lives as sort of temporal blur around the point where their body is anticipating the future or holding on to the past and they learn fear because they can sort of almost or

subconsciously tell what's always going to happen to them and in this case obviously it's fictional and it's fantasy but I thought it was a really interesting concept. It is, I mean he has achieved Zen going back to what the fool was on about. Zen is literally accepting yourself within your present moment and not dwelling on the past or future so I thought it was a really fascinating thing to acknowledge that this guy has achieved that ability to not be dwelling on his past or constantly anticipating the next thing while being kind of just a big stupid king going rarer and hunting. Yeah and

now he's been forced into this situation where he needs to plan and think and yeah and might even have time to regret things. I was like oh no. But yes I feel like we could all do with being a little bit more like Ghost King Varence. Do you ever find out what happened to the boy's mother? No I think I had that noted at some point in the book but yeah we don't because the boys too at this point when Varence gets killed he obviously and at the end. Is he too? Yes of course because a year later he's three. Yes. Good maths Francine. It's been 15 years later he's 18. Yeah. Obviously with all the events of the end

of the book and I won't talk about them too much too other that relies very heavily on the boy having a mother but yeah she's no longer around and I don't think it's ever explained what's happened to her. I'll keep an eye out just in case you meant you've been flitted over it somewhere although I can't imagine you did. No because I was I was looking for it. I was very curious. Yeah oh you were. Okay yeah. I mean my guess would be died in childhood or something like that. Yes women do do that. I'll have a look on the forums to see if Patrick ever mentioned it. Yeah Dratis and yeah I don't know if I'm saying that right. Yeah why not.

The film is saying is thinking about how if he didn't have the Dutch's ambition he'd be just another local lord with nothing much to do but hunt drink and exercise his Dratis and yeah which he imagines is some sort of large hairy dog. It was nearly my orph. I wasn't quite obscure enough. There's another reference to it later in this section I think as well where they talk about the the king's Dratis and yeah. Ah yes yes yes. Big awful hairy thing and how many a couple got their start in life due to that which it just I get why it's been joked about and it is kind of a funny joke but it is also so the Dratis and yeah is also known as in Latin as prima nocte and is this idea of the right for a feudal lord to have

sex with a new bride slash any woman and quite often compensating them for for it afterwards but obviously there's a definite consent problem there what with the lack of what with the power and violence. Yes definitely. There's very little evidence this was actually everything. Not in the way it's usually referenced in medieval Europe anyway like I think there is some evidence some more direct evidence that it was a thing in various other civilizations that lot longer ago. Yeah one of the oldest references to it is in Herodotus's histories in one of those stories. Most of the references to it. Oh okay so that's quite indirect as well isn't it yeah. Most of the references to it are in some form of fiction but then if you look at kind of older

history older history the line between fact and fiction is very blurred especially when you start looking at ancient roman stuff because history was a form of entertainment rather than fully factual. Yes most of the stuff people believe is true about Boudicca is based on something written 50 years later that's based on the story of the rape of Lucretia. Sorry that was the segue. Yeah bloody hands. I go into what bloody hands. I meant tangent. But it's just it's a slightly gross kind of I'm not saying it shouldn't be there and it does make sense and it's a bit funny. It is but it's kind of fit into the same attitude they've got about his hunting people which is equally as gross and oh yeah like and the whole thing is just

they're weirdly accepting of the rapey man hunting. Yeah yeah because he was a proper king. Yeah uh and he was quite honest about his terribleness and then he you know he'd give someone a bit of cash let them go um give him some nice silverware. Rebuild the house if you're embed. Yeah yeah it's interesting. Yeah it is. It fits a lot more there than there's a horrible there's a really really weird out-of-character pointless use of that joke in a what's the like the second Avengers film. There's a whole thing where they're all having a go at lifting Thor's hammer and Tony Stark Iron Man goes to lift the hammer and says if this works I'm re-instituting the right of Prima Nocturne. Right. And it's like weird like doesn't work isn't

if you think about that. Yeah especially as Tony Stark has never liked that. Yeah he's a for a very very toxic male character he's weirdly not rapey. Oh our bar sometimes is quite low. Well anyway you know that toxic male is he? He's a bit of a like I've only really seen the first. Maybe it won't know I mean it's implied that before the whole Iron Man he's definitely a bit of a playboy character he doesn't really take his action seriously. Yeah and I think that's that has. Nanny Og had millions of dollars I think she'd be the same. He's saying Nanny Og could be an iron man. It's a toxic male stereotype yes. I'll take. I feel like we've gone too far Francine. All right yeah fair enough um are you done talking

about the big hairy thing? Yes did I mention I've got Nanny Og's cookbook by the way? You didn't and I would like to hear more about that at some point. I'm going to try and make some rest I know we can't be. That'll be a fun bonus thing one day. I'll do some I'll do a cooking we could cook one together one day. Yes that'll be fun right. Which three gifts if you were having to sort a kid out. Sort a kid out. Sorry I'm not very maternal um if you were to bless a child with gifts to carry it carefree carry it carry them carefree through life what would you give this charming little impling? Jesus Francine. It doesn't suit me does it? I saw that you'd put this in but like just as I printed it before we started recording so I've not thought about this at all.

Yeah okay cool. Well do you want to hear mine first then? Yes do yours and then I'll think of something. Because it sent me off thinking about like a conversation we've had before possibly not on the podcast was about um like the three things we find either attractive or interesting in people and how they were quite different um and then I thought right three things that would I think set somebody up and there's I think the tendency at this point is always to think about what you're lacking that would have made life easier and so I imagine there's a lot of things we take for granted that perhaps without we would not do as well. Yes um but so the three I came up with were financial security not wealth because wealth can bring its own problems but financial security

because while money lots and lots and lots of it doesn't necessarily bring happiness the lack of poverty stress is definitely gonna you know shiver you on a little bit in life. Um the second is motivation which is a much rarer trait than discipline and those who are genuinely motivated to get up and go and do whatever I think have a much easier life than the majority of people who do well in life who actually train discipline into themselves. I have neither of course partly connected to my lack of number one and then number three I wasn't quite sure so I thought curiosity because that's one we both had on like things we find attractive in people but then curiosity can be dangerous if we're not giving a few caveats and I feel like

these magic things are a little bit monkey poor aren't they and then ditto empathy is a bit difficult it's like um empathy's good but could be pretty like it's not necessarily going to set you up well in life um so I think I'd just take magratz one I'm nicking magratz one and saying making friends easily yeah it's just a really nice one and that's what made me love magrat a lot actually in this section was her going I hope he makes friends easily that was just the sweetest thing because because part of what she's looking for with nanny and granny is friendship as much as it is and she's gone to these sort of older women who she can learn from but she's not some kind of exactly yeah it's not some kind of consolidation of power is it it's like she's imagining this

lovely fucking knitting grieve or whatever it's like uh she yeah she wants support not she wants uh she wants peers yeah peers yeah let's get away putting it um okay I'm still thinking because being peerless is not as impressive as it sounds no it is a very lonely thing speaking is too peerless people god he's so lonely here at the top the fucking top we might be at the top who knows we haven't seen anyone else in weeks maybe everyone else is doing really shit oh god I hope see you're in pals and lipstick which I'm gonna go and scrub off my hair's got long enough to put in a ponytail now look at this bullshit I haven't had a haircut three weeks ago well as you put a lot of uh sincere and

intense thought into yours and I'm just coming up with these off the cuff yeah off your beautifully tailored cuff may I say Joanna I can't see your cuffs oh you've got bare wrists all right fuck it go on okay the ability to breathe underwater excellent because I've always wanted to be a mammoth I mean not like actually because like your hair would go to shit but I just quite like the idea sex is a lot less fun well yeah you just like okay I want to be able I want to be able to just walk on the seafloor and look at fish cool cool yeah so the ability to breathe underwater uh sorry I'm still thinking even coming up with bullshit once is hard I just want to say you want to stick to the shallows because we've all seen deep water fish oh that's a lot about deep

sea fish well yeah that's why I'm giving them the ability to breathe underwater but not the ability to withstand 10 000 leagues of pressure I see yes okay the ability to breathe underwater a good sense of humor yes because I feel that's greatly underrated and I know I joked about it but the ability to laugh and find the humor and joy in things I was going to say do you mean as in you're a very funny person or you can find the funny side of things finding the funny side of things I feel like life calms down a lot when you can look at something that could be incredibly stressful see the inherent ridiculous of it and laugh speaking of two joyless feminists speaking as a joyless feminist socialist sticking a purple post-it note on that wish Joanna

very problematic carry on okay so a sense of humor the ability to breathe underwater um you're not allowed to say tongs for arms damn it the ability to do really cool backflips uh yeah it's pretty cool all right just because I really want to but I don't want to put the work in that would make me the kind of person who could do backflips so I'd like it if they can just like automatically like fuck it do a backflip look cool you know the dreadful thing about the chaotic nature of the universe is I'm not sure whose blessed child is going to end up better off here my motivated uh what oh fuck me what's the word for when you get on with people well

not agricultural um gregarious my motivated gregarious farmer apparently well my giggling dickhead backflipping into the sea what I've basically created is a child that will point and laugh at you and then give you the finger while backflipping into the ocean which is all I want to be I know Joanna I know well when we're working in my cybernetic enhancements we'll see if we can't get you some gills excellent like the ability to breathe underwater but not gills because I want to be able to be on land as well like sealable gills like you know those freezer bags you can like oh yeah that'd be good all right cool uh unappreciable people sorry sealable gills name of my new indie brand nice unappreciable people Joanna can you oppress them you cannot

tell me why so this is the jeep again wishing he was on the planes rather than the things and it goes back down to our idea I think of geography and how it affects the people if you back down on the planes if you kicked people they kicked back up here when you kicked people they moved away and just waited patiently for your leg to fall off how could a king go down in history ruling a people like that you couldn't oppress them anymore than you could oppress a mattress and the same thing with these people being very accepting of this dickhead king who used to hunt people yeah yeah yeah I see that yep I think if you live in like a ridiculous area with lots of geography like the remtops as opposed to somewhere flat like Suffolk yeah you're so used to like oh I'm possibly gonna

have to climb a massive hill and then get beaten up by a sheep today that you don't have time to kick back and you will just sort of go well it's gonna come around in the fullness of things yeah it's kind of yes while you don't have time for stuff you've kind of got a sense of of the of history in a way and the fear likes the a sense of how much time there is like okay this too shall pass kind of thing yeah which also I think is in it like when people compare America and England like it was Neil Gaiman he said like England has history America has geography yes yeah and Lanka has both yeah because England has such a long long history um it is sometimes kind of possible to look at something and go in the grand scheme of things this shall come around again

yeah yeah I wonder if that's even more so the case in places was even much longer histories like I obviously have just never lived in places like India or the Middle East which have thousands of years of history more than we do oh yeah I mean we were still scribbling around in the dirt whilst in African cultures we're developing yeah but you know you know superior imperial dirt good British dirt none of that foreign muck little muck like it nice um yeah so that's a yeah that's a good start to pick out actually I didn't stop on that for too long but now you've said it I like it very much but I enjoyed it and I enjoyed the the Lord Felmer's frustration yeah at not being able to do anything to oppress people and we were talking before about

his motivation being power for power's sake and once you get beyond that there's very little motivation but there is some of it there he wants to go down in history as a king as a ruler but he's sort of struggling to find any way to do it when these people just don't really care who's king yeah yeah yeah how do you take the satisfaction in beating someone if they don't care that they've been beaten exactly it's like uh oh it's a very silly thing in a um book I really like about uh that's about people writing letters to each other and someone does something awful and then this person is writing letters to them and not getting any back and it's like at first I wanted to get the last word but now it feels like I'm just swinging a ball and nothing's bouncing back and

it's making my arm feel funny oh yeah that's nice yeah anyway so I thought that was an interesting thing to pick up on and then the next page we have the ridiculous hiring candle we see we did miss when we were talking about the hiring candle joke that part of the joke involves patting someone with a balloon on the stick and twanging your mandolin uh yes do you have a mandolin a mandolin to twang or indeed a balloon stick to don't have a balloon on the stick I mean I can grab a ukulele and twang it if you like but it's the other side of the room um speaking of gestures people do not go to the theater to laugh did you know um yes yes depends on the theater I don't know the place the place we go to usually laugh one laughs this is we see laughs it's a line from

Vittolo and you're sort of arguing with the quail about what they're going to write and what they're going to stage and well it's trying to say that people want a bit of a chuckle and Vittolo saying my boy people do not come to the theater to laugh they come to experience to learn to wonder and well yeah they came to laugh yes and part of the reason I point out is because in preparing for this I wanted to watch a production of Macbeth and I was talking about this Patrick Stewart one that was on let's just come up on Amazon Prime sure and oh fuck me it was so dull I was it oh tell me about it what did they do with it it was not nice is it it's sort of semi-modern they're in military uniforms I think it's meant to be kind of World War one World War two

ah do you know I hate more than stuff set in the world wars and stuff that wasn't meant to be set in the world wars changed to be set in the world wars it was definitely set in some sort of war though like I didn't watch the whole thing I'm trying to get better at if I'm not enjoying something I don't have to sit through the whole thing and I couldn't once you master it can you teach Jack he's been reading the same shit book for months because he can't bring himself to read the last 85 pages I can't do it I can't do it quite as well with books to be fair look at how long and it wasn't even a bad book because it was stressful to read how long it took me to read Wanderers I used to not be able to do that but the Simerillian broke me and since then I've been

all right so it's one good thing that book did the Simerillian has broken a lot of people um it was just all the lighting was really like it was lit to be dark yeah all the colours were very muted even the blood was muted that's very in still isn't it it is very in I don't know how recent it was I mean doing it wrong obviously the acting is amazing I mean it's Patrick Stewart Patrick Stewart's great I can't remember who was playing Lady Macbeth but she was fucking brilliant as well like it was well done it was just muted colours Macbeth has been done so I know I know it's a tragedy I know it's a depressing play where a woman kills herself after killing someone else it's like I know it's a tragedy Romeo and Juliet's a tragedy and look at what Baz Manman did with it

literally in glorious Technicolor it runs around like mad it's a beautiful film and it's still one of my favorite like screen Shakespeare adaptations and there are there is room for lightness and maybe not lightness levity yeah there is room for levity there is room for humor there is room to look at Macbeth and go this insane power struggle is ridiculous and let people relax while they're watching it people do come to the theatre to laugh and I'm not saying every play should be funny yeah I'm saying yes every play should have some energy that you can kind of engage in yeah you shouldn't feel obliged to sit there and frown through the three hours of talking yeah well it's like we um did you come see that really good production of

Twelfth Night where a friend of ours got drunk and was a bit of a dick they did it in one act and they it was fun they were handing out pizzas to the audience and okay so Twelfth Night is meant to be a comedy like it's a funny play yeah um and they had the audience up on stage doing a conga line and people up doing a tequila drinking contest during one of the past seasons I don't think I actually did go to that I just think you told me about it in such depth I can see it there was a guy now I'm remembering you telling me about it yeah it was a great play yeah yeah sorry yeah healer but we had a we had a friend who came to see the show with us and he left like 45 minutes in he was like I didn't come I came to see Shakespeare not Laura Lanardi does

Shakespeare and it's like mate it's a fucking comedy stop putting it on a pedestal yes it's overdone yes Shakespeare and classic plays are commissioned a lot more than new writing and that's going to happen more in theatre after the lockdown because was it Marco or Paul who stormed out? Marco yeah because he came back afterwards for the Q&A and was really rude to the actors to the point where we went and apologized to them it was really I saw you in the pub afterwards yeah I was not happy anyway anyway it's just these things and that's why I like you know parodies I mean and Weird Sisters is great because it does not hold stuff as a sacred text it parodies it sure um it's a bit like you know we were joking about getting a negative regu oh my god negative

regu lovely we're talking negative regu look Joanna I know that Italian food is serious business but there has to be room for levity this is enough negative regu have you seen like angry Italians in comments on recipes though because that's beautiful yeah but I'm pretty sure they're all Americans yeah yeah the Iron Mary culinary subreddit is one of my very favorites and I'm glad you show me that and this is a much longer tangent than it needs to be I'm just saying theatre does not need to be a bit theatre is entertainment the point is to entertain not going and frowning at a stage for three hours correct and then saying afterwards well wasn't that's been reaching cool speaking of three hours yeah I'll get to my final point quickly then which is just

and we'll come back to this a bit more in the next couple of books but the power of words and propaganda as brought up by the fool saying rather than you know burn the witches stab the witches kill the witches torture them yeah saying fight them with words uh yeah yeah and I think it's really interesting that Terry Pratchett interrogates that so well yes and I think as you said we shall get to that as we get to it yes it starts here in this section yeah yeah so let's do let's do a little foreshadow because I think this is this is something we'll definitely talk about definitely something I don't I don't want to rush through I don't want to rush through this yeah we'll talk about that a lot more in the next episode cool cool so yes the power of

words power of propaganda they're the idea that sticks and stones may break your bones but words can fuck you over proper I think yes the correct phrase is that right yeah that sounds about right that's what we were talking primary school yeah got a nice rhythm to it right and with that Francine do you have an obscure reference finial I do uh on page 68 they're talking about the solitary standing stone who still cannot be counted despite there only being one of them which is quite a sweet little yes geographic landmark but um that is again I'm never sure how obscure things are and I feel like this is probably one of those things that's obscure if you don't live in certain parts of the world and otherwise quite commonly known which is in the various megalithic

monuments around England and Wales um there are a lot of places with standing stones or some of the long barrows have a lot of stones around them and a very common myth bit of folklore that pops up around these things is that they can't be counted you can count these stones as many times as you like and you always come up with a different number everybody will come up with a different number and obviously the the implication that are being elves fairies whatever the things behind you all the stones get up and dance and general eldritchery um it portents a bit okay if portenting is a word then so is eldritchery Joanna uh so yeah stonehenge is obviously the famous one um 93 if you're curious but that's including the broken bit so you might come up with a different number altogether

continuing that lovely bit of myth but the rollwright stones on the oxo-chair-warwick-share border seem to be the ones who are really holding on to that as part of their mystery I'll link to it in the thingy uh show notes thank you I can remember the word eldritchery which does not exist but I cannot remember the google docs it is in front of my face face sorry you seem like you've forgotten the word again there I had I had forgotten my face so yeah that was it um beautiful that big the uncountable stone I love it and on that note I think that uh that's bringing us towards the end of the podcast outro me outro play me out maestro thank you for listening to the true shall make ye fret uh you can follow us on instagram at the true shall make ye fret on twitter at make

ye fret pod on facebook at the true shall make ye fret and you can see our wednesday headcanon threads there which we're having yeah we got really good at twitter yeah we like that oh well really good is is a push people have engaged with it I'm told engagement is what we wanted so we're enjoying it it's fun follow along if you like that sort of thing you can email us the true shall make ye fret pod at gmail.com please send us your lyrics for the headshot can never be buggered at all yes that was hard to get out in one breath and until next time dear listener don't let us detain you let me move slightly further back from the mic

I'm not used to ah fuck bollocks one second I just built a can of diet coke on my own ass you keeping diet coke on the sofa it was behind me but that doesn't make it better does it I use that part of the sofa as a drink shelf you fucking savage