The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 27: Guards! Guards! Pt.2 (Coming Out With A Dragon Under His Arm)

Episode Date: July 13, 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 2 of our recap of “Guards! Guards!”. Guards! Dragons! Books! Metaphysics! Bunting! Guards! 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:@hammard_1987 (Twitter user doing the Pratchett Word Cup polls)HERE BE SPOILERS: The Discworld Timelinehttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/42653524-happy-fatNeil Patrick Harris - 2013 - Tony Awards OpeningHappy Fat: Taking Up Space in a World That Wants to Shrink You, by Sofie HagenShrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, by Lindy WestBringing Up Baby (1938) - IMDbThe Darkest Timeline: The '1' Timeline | CommunityDirty Harry (1971) - IMDbDiana, princess of Wales 

I didn't realise how, like, creepy and ghostly I look. Oh, that's okay. I hide myself for you. That'll fix it. I mean, it won't make it brighter, but I don't have to look at it. Okay, cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Right.

What's the status with the Twitter World Cup? Practical World Cup. I haven't actually checked on it today. No, let's have a look. What's your biggest or most difficult choice been so far? I've got to say I did tweet about this one, but the amazing Morris versus feet of clay was really difficult because.

Oh, yeah, yeah, that's your favourite, isn't it? Yeah, I have to be really, yeah, objectively, feet of clay is one of the best ones, but Morris is very much my favourite. Oh, there's a round I haven't voted on yet. So let's have a look. We can vote. We can vote live on air. This is fun.

OK, so live on air like two days. Before we finish on it, this won't actually go out until Monday, so all of this will be settled. Yeah, the thread for today. No, the thread for yesterday I haven't voted on. So the ninth. I've got yeah, the ninth. OK, cool.

So Group A match five diggers versus interesting times. Interesting times. Yeah, like the Brimelia trilogy, but it's not this girl. I'm more hyped to reread the Brimelia trilogy because I am reading a book about Terry Pratchett right now. And I'm not going to say any more about that because spoilers, sweetie, for our podcast. This one's easy.

Djingo versus Dodger. Djingo, baby. Oh, more versus making money. Hmm, hmm, making money. I'm going with more. That's nearly 50 50. Yeah, making money is not as good as going postal. It's not, but I do like some of the stuff

they did for the economics. Yeah, that's fair. Truckers versus Unseen Academicals. I'm a go truckers. Me too, actually. I was not that big of a fan of Unseen Academicals. I like I feel like, frankly, I just hate football that much. It even puts a pole on this.

Yeah, that's fair. I'm not really a football person. Oh, monstrous versus regiment versus long miles is easy for me. Hmm, hmm, hmm. Monstrous regiment. I can't not fight monstrous regiment. It's just too good of a book. Monstrous regiment is one of my absolute favorites.

But the long miles is probably my favorite out of the Long Earth series. It's very epic. And I mean, it's epic sense, not an epic man sense. Dark side of the sun versus long war because I'm an awful person. I've not read the dark side of the sun. So one more. I have, but the long war wins out there.

Eric versus dragons. I actually haven't read dragons at Cumberland Castle in other tales yet, but I also don't. As you know, I am going to go with Eric. I feel like I'm going to find more in it that I like when I read it this time around. I'm going to pick Eric because I've read that one, but. I like it.

Small God's or wings or small gods. Obviously. OK. Yeah, I think everyone made that choice since it's 97 percent to 3 percent. So obviously, Jingos, well-beating Dodger, monstrous regiments, well-beating long miles. So the only really down to the. The only really contentious ones in that

Morton making money, a fairly 50-50 there. Yeah, Truckers has got 30 percent against Duncey and Academicals and I thought. Yeah, Long. Yes, yes. Other Discworld adjacent stuff. We now are in possession of. Hagstone, Slash, Addis Stone Slash, literally.

We call them and I'm being genuinely literal here. I don't mean figuratively. We are in this time. I mean it. We have the best listeners. We have the best listeners. Our listeners are the coolest. I know, I know.

So considering it's like such a small pool to draw from every interaction we've had has been so nice. Yes, which speaking of, if you could all tell your friends about this, so it's a slightly wider pool, we'd appreciate it. And I'm sure your friends would, too. Sorry.

Well, well, upgrade from paddling pool to like one of those canvas atrocities, you know. Yeah, we're not looking for like Olympics swimming pool here. We're just looking at who's got the energy. I have no energy. I do have a mug with unicorns on because I was given this as a gift today

and the theme continues of people giving me unicorn related gifts and I'm quite perplexed by it. Anyway, listeners, good ones. Lily, thank you for our Hagstones, Lily. That is ridiculously thoughtful and. Prompt is possibly the wrong word, but like within days of releasing an episode saying, oh, I don't have any Hagstones, suddenly we have them.

Yeah, it's amazing. And now we have luck and can see fairies. Yeah, I mean, we shouldn't. We shouldn't look through to peek at the fairies. I hope you haven't been doing that. No, God, no. Again, he's got the energy. He's got the energy.

Also prancing around being energetic and sprightly, literally sprightly. Just got pulled out. Oh, I forgot that like sprites were a type of fairy for a second. And I was like, what do you mean? They taste of lemon and lime and have bubbles. Maybe, I mean, if they were going to taste of anything,

I bet they would taste of sprite. I'm vegetarian, so you're going to have to try this out. Right, sorry, I'll go and lick a fairy. I'll add it to the to do list. Maybe this is why people buy me unicorn mugs. Yeah, yeah. Also, shout out. I was just going to shout out our listener, Harry,

who sent us the most adorable email. I think I'm only adorable. He's 12. He's too old for adorable. OK, he sent us the most brilliant email. Because apparently in an early episode, we were wondering if we had any younger listeners and he wanted to let us know that he is, in fact, a very big Discworld fan and a fan of the podcast.

And he is 12. And we're very sorry for all the bad words. Not sorry enough that we're going to stop. But he's only on episode 13 right now. So shout out to Harry for when you get here. Hurry up. But that genuinely brought me so much joy. So, yeah, we have the best listeners in the world.

We love you. Thank you. Yes, we do. Also, just all the lovely, like, comments and people joining in when we're doing headcanons and things. The internet is like a horrible, rubbish, scary place most of the time and the little corners of internet we have based around the podcast. Always cheer me up and bring me joy.

Yeah, just in case there's anyone who's, like, not part of that overlap on Wednesdays when we remember we do like a weekly Twitter thread of things Discworld characters would do in X situation. And it's quite fun. So come join us and give us suggestions and such. Yes, please suggest ideas for the headcanon threads because we're running out of them.

Join it. Follow us on Twitter at Vicky Prepod. It's too early for the outro for unseen. Oh, OK. Yeah. We haven't done the episode. All right. Well, do you want to make a podcast then? Yeah, let's make a podcast. I wasn't going to say this because I was about to shout out a 12 year old, but the mug does say back the fuck up.

Sprinkle tits today is not the day. I will shank you with my horn. Well, it's pretty fucking amazing. It's out from Cara. Yeah. She also gave me real Vermont maple syrup and a Lily plant that she actually got me for my birthday, but I forgot to pick up from her house.

Oh, I want pancakes. I need some American pancake mix. I keep forgetting to ask Americans when I talk to them. And now I don't know why don't you just why don't you just make? Why do you need the mix? Because I really like that. It's like, why do you need to make X from scratch? Sometimes you just want the instant one.

Yeah, right. I really like I can make pancakes. I just really like the like the American one that has the shitty powdered egg we're not allowed by in this country. Yeah, I know. OK, that is some chemical in there that's clearly illegal over here, and I like it a lot. Yeah, I know. I'll accept that. That's allowable. What was I going to say?

Go on. Yeah, no, I am now considering making pancakes for dinner instead of making dinner. Do it. Blueberries. Blueberries. I want an American breakfast right this minute at 4.30 in the afternoon in England. Shall we have a shall we have a break in each go and quickly make some American breakfast?

I don't have the ingredients. I've been putting off going to the shops for three days now, and I've just been able to put it off for a further day because Jack got some broad beans from the farm. Excellent. Which means we have green things to go with the beige things I have in the freezer. Excellent. I have actually got the ingredients for blueberry muffins in the house. You just have blueberries lying around here.

Yeah, well, I've got a keeper bag in the freezer and I've got some fresh ones in the fridge because they go on my breakfast. Can you get some blueberries from Iceland? I don't know. I don't shop in Iceland. Got them. I'll let you come to your own realisation of our tone. I know it's just because you're tired, but that sounded funny. I'm disparaging of everything.

Do I sound all right, by the way? Yeah, you sound good. Just annoyed. Yeah, OK, I will try not to spend the whole podcast sounding like I think my life. All right, intro. Breakfast tangent aside. Breakfast tangent. Branjant. Branjant.

Who eats bran flakes? Like, there are people that still buy bran flakes and I think there's something wrong with them. I just want to talk. I need, if I'm going to eat cereal, which is not a lot, I eat cinnamon, grams or something equally horrendously sugary. I actually still have a bit of a soft spot for special K for really toxic reasons of doing the special K diet when I was in.

That's also just sugar in a bowl. Yeah, no, I know. I know it says it's healthy, but it's literally just sugar. Yeah, I like country crisps for the same kind of reason. Oh, healthy. Actually, just sugar. But yeah. Yeah, it's like when I buy wanky granola,

I am literally still just buying a super sugary cereal, but I can pretend I'm a grown up. Anyway, fuck. In podcast, I promise I will be more focused. I don't promise that. Right. Hello and welcome to the truth of fuck's sake. I managed to derail you at ages.

It was the eyebrows. I have very expressive eyebrows now that there's a mask covering my face so often. Yeah, my eye makeup has improved a lot. My lipstick is tragically underused. Right. Hello and welcome to the true shall make you fret, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from Terry Bratchett's Discworld series, one at a time in chronological order.

I believe you're looking away from this guy. Fuck you, I nearly managed to get through it. I'm addressing the microphone. That's where the listeners live. OK, OK. The microphone. I've seen now I can't look at the microphone either because it says blue and I'm thinking of your eyebrows.

Oh, I'm trying to get an intro out. Hang on. You got as far as I'm. I know I'm going to go from the beginning again. Oh, God, sorry. I need to flow, Francine. I need to flow, otherwise I forget to spoil a warning. Hello and welcome to the true show.

Fuck, I'm not doing anything. No, now it's me. This is what we call in the industry, corpsing. Wonder where that comes from? OK, not doing that now. I'm ill because like corpses giggling when they're meant to be dead. Oh, yeah, no. Oh, well, that was a fun tangent.

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 Higgin Young and I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part two of our discussion of gods, gods, gods, gods. Seize him. And you were right.

I don't think that was in this part. What did I just draw? Oh, so that was just my other. Yes, seize him indeed. Seize him. They say. Quick note on spoilers. This is a spoiler light podcast.

Obviously, heavy spoilers for the book. We're on guards, guards, sorry, guards, guards. Thank you. But we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series, and we are saving absolutely any and all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there. So you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us.

And this is actually a bit harder than you might imagine, considering our topic brings us into our space. And so all time is one, every place is here. And it's a real metaphysical effort to make sure we don't keep spoilers in. And I I hope you appreciate that, listeners. Can we not do metaphysics? Because I am like that kind of tired

where I will definitely have an existential crisis. Oh, shit. That's like half my talking point. But fine. Yeah, yeah. Cool. I just. OK, we get the existential crisis board out and assume we're wiping it to zero by the end of the episode. Do we have anything to follow up on?

Yeah, you read Gorman Gust. I feel like, yes, we've got. Oh, I've written it down. Yes, follow up. I think last week, I can't even remember, I probably cut this out because I had nothing to say on it. But I was wondering whether there was a Discworld timeline anywhere because I was like, how long ago were all these kings about?

And was this like a law law and all? Yeah, I know we did talk about that last week. Yeah, because I mean, I assume there might have been some sort of renaissance and wizards did it. Yeah, the rule of the patricians started in 1689 and the events of guards guards were in 1985 because they've kind of matched it up to around 12 years

and reference all the different books and the companions. And that's very cool. People are committed because we will in a later book. I want to say the next watch type book, which is Men at Arms, find out what happened to Sorry, I'm just trying to find what happened to the last king. I think it is Men at Arms, yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, I mentioned it only because there's a cool timeline that I'm going to link to. But does it contain any spoilers? Yes, multiples, so I'll put a big spoiler warning next to it. Good thinking. Good. I know what I'm talking about.

What a joy. Don't get used to it. Yeah, no, that's fair. What happened last time in Guards, Guards, Francine? Previously on Guards, Guards. Dragons, drunks and dread portals. Oh, my. The elucidated brethren talk themselves into trees

and vines groan in the gutter. And a strapping young lad enters into the watch voluntarily. Yes, really. Lance Corporal Cabaret is too good at his job. A fact soon overshadowed by the aforementioned hooded weirdos, summoning a dragon who's admittedly well time-framing fronts the blazes out of the night watch. Enter the dragon breeder, an incensed ape and a patrician

who isn't sure about this whole dragon theory until the bloody flying alligator is openly burning the city. Well, parts of it, mainly a vegetable shop. But still, it's quite a confusing timeline this entire book, isn't it? It is somewhat confusing because... ...major events are skipped over very quickly. It's a cool technique, Terry Pratchett does.

It reminds me a bit of the end of Weird Sisters, where he doesn't show an actual major event. He talks about it and allows the reader to pick up the pieces, especially because it's like a procedural thriller quite thing. Yeah. It plays with suspense in quite a nice way. Yeah. I think that the event that stuck out to me in this part,

as that, was Bertonari's deposition. Yeah. That is very, very swept over to the point where you could almost miss it and it becomes part of the next section. Yeah. Speaking of, summary of this section before we launch into discussion. Yes, in this section of Guards! Guards! Guards! Guards! Sorry.

We begin with the elucidated brethren celebrating their victory over oppressive vegetable sellers everywhere. They discuss the next stage of their plan, making a king. Luckily, the supreme grandmaster has a handy sword and a stupid cousin. They learn the tragic news that Brother Dunnekin has been eaten by a crocodile. It's a shame he didn't have an anti-crocodile amulet. Vimes checks out the hordes at the palace and Dibbler offers to sell him some genuine anti-dragon cream.

Barbarians and heroes have arrived to slay the dragon, but many are disappointed in Vettanari's paltry offered reward of $50,000, well below the average rate, not even a daughter's hand in marriage offered. What is the world coming to? Vettanari calls a meeting of the city's civic leaders to discuss the dragon problem. He invites Vimes to apprehend the dragon. Inquiries are being pursued.

Vimes goes to the university library to continue his investigations and learns that the missing book would have known its thief. As night comes, the citizens of Ancmoork or wake the arrival of the dragon, shooting at a few unfortunate clowns in their excitement, the dragon eventually unfolds itself from the Tower of Art and sweeps in, flaming the watch house. Sweeping is bad. Vimes wakes up in Sibble's bed in no small amount of agony.

She brings him an artery-clanging fry up. Remember that. Lady Sibble donates the watch a new headquarters in Pseudophilus Yard. An angry anti-dragon mob appears on Lady Sibble's doorstep. Vimes sees them off with the aid of a loaded swamp dragon after a quick whip round for the sunshine sanctuary. Sibble also donates good boy Bindle Featherstone to the watch, now known as Errol,

and Vimes wonders if he could set a dragon to catch a dragon. Carrot writes another letter home. As Colum frets about a future of command, the librarian is sworn in as a special constable, and Vimes and Sibble attend their willing watchman. The brotherhood starts to get cold feet over the flaming dragon. Colum recovers from a slip of the tongue and the resulting non-Simean violence,

and Vimes takes Errol to sniff out a dragon. In the shade, the big flaming dragon is irked by an itchy mind and stares Vimes down. The rightful heir to the throne of Ancmoork rise into the city to nobly slay the dragon. The newly monochistic Ancmoorkian celebrate the dragon slaying and Vimes muses on a flame-free fight. The dragon... good effort.

The dragon finds a path back to the world after its untimely death. Lady Sibble arrives home from a celebratory ball and the rank head out for a drink. Vimes visits the scene of the heroic dragon slaughter. Sibble, a vision in damp tulle and leather gauntlets, arrives in a screaming rush and a coach. As a lightning visits the university

and a noble dragon rears its ugly head. We learn that the dragon is a thomavore and that Vimes did not in fact receive a classical education. Errol faces off against the bloody big dragon as Vimes rescues Sibble. Death and a big dragon visit the elucidated brethren minus the supreme grand master and brother fingers. The watch collector shocked brother fingers and his pizzas.

They realise he works at the university and that he's in fact responsible for the theft of how to summon dragons. Vimes sees another mysterious member of the brotherhood but the sneaky supreme grand master runs away. At the palace, Carrot attempts to arrest the palace guard. The librarian travels through well space to a week ago. Vimes visits once and informs him that the dragon has returned

much to everyone's surprise. Consciousness swiftly abandons poor overworked Vimes. We learn that Nobbs performs horrific actions on his night off. Folk dancing. In El Space, the librarian reads the soon-to-be-stolen summoning tome. Errol gets poorly. Vimes attends the coronation, gets a bad seat.

The rest of the watch gets somewhere high. Dragon, Vimes gets fired and Errol eats everything. So this point to my correct in saying that Vimes has visited once, twice. Oh, I hate you. I know, I know. In the most loving way possible. I'm a fucking delight.

Very good summary. Very action-packed middle third there. There's quite a large middle third, isn't it? Well, it's 100 pages exactly. Oh, yes, that's quite right. It seems like more happens here than anywhere else. Even though the last third actually is a tad longer. Well, this is the action.

It's rising action and falling action. I've got to stop trying to apply the pyramid to things, especially because I keep assuming it's Fermat, so it's not its free tags. As long as you give it room to flare, we should be OK. Maybe not in the blanket fort. Side note, a vision in tool and leather gauntlets, I imagine, is your most desired description of yourself ever.

So I'll try and get you some gauntlets, as I'm sure you've got enough tool to wrap a dragon. I've got enough tool. I had an organiser of my spare fabric the other day, and I've got a lot of fucking fabric. Oh, good. Now I just need to learn to sew with it. Yeah, quick helicopter slash loincloth watch.

I'm calling dragons helicopters for the rest of this book, so there are plenty of them. Did you come up with any better justification of that than they're in the air? No, it's pretty much the fact that they're in the air. Cool, cool. OK, cool. I mean, I feel like helicopters would breathe fire if they could. Yes.

Like, if I was a helicopter, I'd want to breathe fire. Sure, if you were a helicopter. All right. You sound a little bit Ralph Wiggum, but OK. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to say helicopter because Hepticopter is how I would say it as a young child. And that is still how we say it in my family. How has that not come up in twenty six

after the fucking helicopter watch? Hepticopter watch is now what it's called. I'm very tired. I have a red pen, which means any corrections I make are official. There we go. Well, they're not appearing on my navy blue copy of the show plan. So. Well, that's because I haven't worked out how to sink physical paper yet.

But you wait, Frank Francine. This is very stonage stuff. Anyway, quotes, quotes, quotes, quotes. Are you sure there weren't any loincloths? There's an awful lot of adventurers. I yeah, they're probably worse than loincloths around the barbarians. I don't know if you were implied. Yeah, implied loincloths,

which to me continues to justify the bit. Sure. At this point, I should like people to argue, especially now it's called Hepticopter watch. OK, we're not actually keeping that, though. Well, we'll see. Oh, we are. Quotes.

Shall I go first? Yes, yours is first. OK, this is from when Vimes is waking up in Lady Sybil's bed after the watchhouse gets flamed. Traditionally, upon waking from blissfully uneventful insensibility, you ask, where am I? It's probably part of the racial consciousness or something. Vimes said it.

Tradition allows a choice of second lines. A key point in the selection process is an audit to see that the body has all the bits it remembers having yesterday. Vimes checked. Then comes the tantalising bit. Now that the snowball of consciousness is starting to roll, is it going to find that it's waking up inside a body

lying in a gutter with something multiple? The noun doesn't matter after an adjective like multiple. Nothing good ever follows multiple. I'm trying to think of one that might. Oh, actually, I did, but we're sharing all that. Yep. I was thinking exactly the same thing. Or is it going to be a case of crisp sheets,

a soothing hand, and a business-like figure in white pulling open the curtains on a new day? Why not buy for my rape? Is it all over with nothing worse to look forward to now than weak teen nourishing ghouls, short strengthening walks in the garden, and possibly a brief platonic love affair with a ministering angel?

Or was this all just a moment's blackout and some looming bastard is now about to get down to real business with the thick end of a pickaxe health? Are there, the consciousness wants to know, going to be grapes? Well, I think we've all had those mornings. I have absolutely 100% had those mornings and I'm not going to tell the story of the worst one.

Now I know we have younger listeners. My quote. Yes, give me your quote because mine was a bit long. Mine is a bit as well, but it's more Vimes. It's more of a concept slash quote. I just like Sam Vimes writing down his sleuthing process as he sleuths. Yes, yes.

I sleuth, you sleuth, they sleuth. He, she, it sleuths, sleuthers. I tin, heavy dragon, but yet it can fly, right? Well, I tin, the fire be main hot, yet issuous from an living thing. I tin, the swamp dragons be right poor things, yet this monstrous form waxes full mightily. I tin, from whence it cometh, none known,

nor whither it goes, nor where it viedeth between times. I tin, why for did it burneth so neatly? And carries on in that kind of tone. I like that it's all written down, not just with the old-fashioned spelling, but with language that you'd never hear Vimes speak aloud, which makes me think perhaps there's some forgotten, half-forgotten school days at work here.

Yeah, I do quite like the fact that all the writing is in oldish English. It's not proper old English. It's old English in the same way that his Latin is Latin. Yeah, but yeah, the sort of, the card old English compared to how they actually speak really makes me giggle. And also, I just like Vimes writing

to think things through because this sort of born-in-the-gutter type character, you wouldn't necessarily think has a big grip on reading and writing, but Vimes is very, very clever. He is very clever. Obviously, we learn about school days existing for Vimes, eventually.

Yeah, so I was trying to think what I could get away with saying, and I think we'll just leave it there, but do you do this as well when you're trying to puzzle something out, have to write down each step of your thinking process so you don't lose track of it? Absolutely.

I have to, I really like visual aids when I'm working things through, especially with writing when I'm working on a play, or like obviously now I'm working on novel type things. So do you like keeping track of where your characters are kind of thing or? Yeah, kind of keeping track of where my characters are, just thinking like how would a character

cope with the problem. It tends to be less lists and more like big sprawling, an entire page thing. I don't like letting, I don't like saying mind maps, because... Wasn't there like a thing we used to refer to them as, and then that became offensive and we had to start calling them brain showers,

or something? It was brainstorm. Oh yeah, no, brainstorm. And I don't think it was offensive, I think it was just suggested a level of violence that hippy-dippy types weren't comfortable with. Yeah. And then yeah, it was a brain shower,

which just sounds, well, wet. Stupid. Yeah, sources. Wet and stupid. But yeah, I don't like letting other people see the contents of my notebooks for this exact reason, because my method of working things out with a pen and paper shows an insight

into how my brain works that is very scary and chaotic. Yeah. No one needs to know about that. When I come across an old notebook sometimes, like there seems to be a kind of year or so cycle when my ciphers change, and I'm not aware of it happening, but if I look at a notebook that I finished over a year ago,

it makes absolutely zero fucking sense. Just like sentence fragments that mean nothing, lists that start and list completely unrelated things as far as I can tell and then trail off. I was, as long as I know roughly when it was written, I can usually translate notes and writing and stuff. Like, I've occasionally, small amounts of my note taking

have ended up on our podcast, Twitter and Instagram pages and things where I've taken photos of my notes as I've gone along, but the absolute ridiculous chaos of them is something I should never want to expose our listeners to, which is why it takes me five hours to take the book full of post-its and the adjoining notes and turn them into an episode plan,

because believe it or not, we do plan this. Yeah, amazing, isn't it? I think they can believe it, because we rustle it quite close to the microphone. Yeah, there's nothing in the actual... You think we're doing it by accident, but really we're just proving that we did try. At no point have we ever actually stuck to these plans.

Anyway. Characters. Characters. I am gonna start with one I have talked about on the podcast before. We've met proto versions of, but I think this is the first time we meet the final polished product.

And that is Cut My Own Throat Dibbler. C-M-O-T. This is C-M-O-T Dibbler. Page 111 in my copy, obviously I know these page numbers will vary for different people, who is, just to read his introduction, Vimes looked into the grinning cadaverous face

of Cut My Own Throat Dibbler, purveyor of absolutely anything that could be sold hurriedly from an open suitcase in a busy street and was guaranteed to have fallen off the back of an ox cart. I love this character. He's the Discworld's prime entrepreneur. He crops up, he's a lovely bit of the world building where he crops up in this book

that's fully set in Angkor Porc and he's as much like a fixture of the city as the university is. Yeah. Absolutely. I just really like that he turns up and that he's selling genuine anti-dragon cream and then selling commemorative dragons later on in the book.

He's one of those characters, like, almost like Only Falls and Horses, where if they put the kind of cleverness and effort that they put into scams into an actual enterprise, they would be millionaires by now, but that's just not appealing and they'll have much more fun failing with small-scale badness over and over again

and it's much more fun for us, of course. Selling his genuine pig sausages. You want the named meat? Ooh, that's a cool name you'll be after. Honest. Yes, he's extra. We, I guess we kind of met him in the last section, but I love him, so I'm going to talk about him.

Good boy, Bindle Featherston. Slash Errol. Slash Errol. His naming is absolutely marvellous, which is, he's brought to the watch house and is described as good boy Bindle Featherston bore up stoically under the weight of the name and sniffed a table leg.

He looks more like my brother Errol, said not be, playing the cheeky, loveable, cheeky, chirpy, loveable city sparrow card for all it would wear. But I like that Vimes looked at the creature and knew that it was now irrevocably an Errol. Is this an Oscar reference? Oscar?

The Oscars, somebody said about the statue, that looks like my uncle Oscar. I mean, they're called Academy Awards technically, aren't they? Oh, I actually didn't know that. Weirdly, for a film, media and TV nerd, I very much ignore award stuff. Yeah, that makes sense. They are annoying and boring.

I like Tony Awards opening numbers, specifically Neil Patrick Harris's 2013 Tony Awards opening number, which is still... Make it bigger to make it bigger. Yeah, that is... That is still my go-to video when I'm sad. Yeah, I'm not surprised. Great, we'll link to that.

Yeah. Enjoy listeners. And occasionally there are Oscars things I like. Olivia Coleman's Oscar acceptance speech for Best Actress is one of my favourite things I've ever watched, partly because every British person watching it going is, that's our Sophie. That's our Sophie from Peepshow and she's got an Oscar. Before we move on from Errol,

I just want to acknowledge that Carrot bought him a little toy and then Vines hoped that Carrot hadn't noticed the fluffy tall ball touched into the back of the box because it had been quite expensive. That's adorable. The fact that they both buy Errol little toys. One of the bits I put down in little bits, actually I'll put now,

because it's Vines reassuring Errol when he's all like, Errol's noticed the invisible dragon and Vines doesn't think it's there. Oh, yeah. Where are they? Page 169. There it is. Errol started to tremble. It's just the rain said Vines.

Go on, finish your bottle. Nice bottle. Sin, worry, keening, noise, broke from the dragon's mouth. I'll show you said Vines through a sausage up in there. It just reminds me of the fucking process I have to go through when Dia starts barking at the sky. I can't say it.

Oh, no, look, Dia, it's fine. It's fine. Look, there's nothing there. Pick her up. Look, show her around because she's short. She can't really see it over anything, which I think is the source for a lot of the problem. So I have to pick her up and go, look, everything's okay. And she does little Vines.

Anyway, so basically my dog is Errol. I wouldn't be that surprised if she started flying around backwards. I definitely wouldn't be surprised, but she would be in the look on her face. It'd be great. We haven't tweeted a picture of your puppy in too long, so we will tweet, Dia.

Errol, I'll send you a good one. She's such a lovely, stupid little fucker. I love her so much. I miss her. Right, Gaskin, we learn what happened to Gaskin, whose funeral Vines had just come from at the beginning of the book. This is a bit depressing,

but I did want to talk about it. And this is this idea of the watch of land not to run too quickly, because you don't actually want to catch the thief. But Gaskin forgot and did actually try and chase the thief. And obviously it didn't end well for him because the book opens with his funeral. And it says so much about what the watch is

at the beginning of the book and kind of why it's lost pride in it. Because Vines obviously does have a lot of pride. And you can tell he wants to sort of do good and actually catch criminals. Yeah, but he's learned that that is a life-ending move. Yeah, and he just wants to survive more than he wants to catch a criminal.

Just. And it's quite interesting considering the changes they all go through and how much sort of more they care about the policing by the end of the book. And it's a carrot has that beautiful line where they're talking about Gaskin where he just says it did not be like that.

So yeah, onto a more entertaining note. We also meet the chief of the beggars guild briefly. This is near the end of this section. You couldn't by any chance spare about 300,000 for a 12-course civic banquet, could you? And I like the idea is you get higher-ranking beggars. They have to ask for more and more to be lent to them. I want to check back in with characters

that we have already met as well. And I want to start with Lady Sibyl Deidre Olga Varna fucking Ramkin to give her absolutely full names. I think you added in a middle name there. I did not make up Olga Varna. Olga Varna doesn't exist. It is, we do learn her middle name.

I'm going to start with the description of her room that Vimes wakes up in. He talks about the fact that it's Shabby which considering she's meant to be very wealthy, doesn't make a lot of sense. Amateurous watercolours of dragons. It's all in all, it had the look about it of a room that has only ever occupied by one person

and has been absentmindedly moulded around them over the years, like a suit of clothes with a ceiling. Yeah. But it also describes it as the room of a woman who had been getting on with her life while all that soppy romance had been happening to someone else and was jolly grateful she had her health. Yes.

And I think that's such a sort of sweet thing about Sibyl's character almost. Yes, I don't know if we ever find out what she really thought about kind of the years of not doing that bit that was expected of her. I think the thing is, Sibyl is so... We do get bits of Sibyl's in a monologue, more in later books.

But I think what you get on the surface with her genuinely is a loss of what her innerness is. I don't think she's someone who's really seething or angry underneath and I do think that is actually jolly pleased that she's got her health. She's probably something very true of Sibyl. I didn't mean to be angry so much as sad or wishful. I don't think she would be maybe somewhat wistful

and she's obviously, you know, she's a bit of a flirt. She starts flirting with vines as soon as she meets him talking about how dashing captains are. But I think genuinely the whole thing about when she's jolly pleased to have her health is probably how she thinks, but because she's been raised to be very pleased with what she's got and at the end of the day

what she has is quite a lot because, you know, mansion and fortune and all that. All that. Onto the thing I said I'd keep checking back in with her though, the descriptions of her size. I do enjoy the description of her drawing herself up quarterly as like watching continental drift in reverse as various subcontinents and islands pull themselves

together to form one massive angry proto woman. Because that one's not so much just about her size but that's like personality. That is someone minuscule but with the right amount of indignant fury could pull off that appearance. Absolutely. But when Vimes rescues her from the dragon later and sort of grabs her and swings her onto his shoulder

and then collapses because he can't carry her, feels like a moment where her size is very much played for comedy in almost kind of a mean way. It's just things I want to point out because I like looking at how the treatment of it changes as the books go on. Yeah. It's just not really mentioned much as the books go on, is it?

Yeah. I mean, it says the Remkins hadn't bred for beauty, they've bred for solidity and big bones. And it's like, well, why is one mutually exclusive of the other? I'd say the focus had been on that, not the other. Yeah. But I would say the implication is

that she's not beautiful, she's big. Going with the fact that there are lots of other jokes that she's wealthy and she's got a great personality, but she's pretty. I'll talk about this more. There's another fat woman we will meet in a later book. And again, I think it's interesting how the fatness is dealt with.

Yeah. Yeah. Possibly because I've become more aware of this in media in general since I've realized that fatness isn't inherently bad, which is a fun thing we all have to unlearn as we grow up. Oh, yes.

Thank you, Sophie Hagen, for helping me quite a lot with that. Sophie Hagen is a treasure. I was about to say a national treasure, but she's not our national treasure. Have you read Happy Fat? I have not. It's a very good book, I recommend it.

My favorite book on the topic is Lindy West's Shrill. Have you read that one? No, I will keep many, because it had a TV series adaptation recently, didn't it? Yeah. I didn't know that. I'm not sure, I haven't seen yet. Anyway, yeah.

So I just want to kind of call out, like I don't really like the fact that her size gets used for a comedy moment there, because it feels a bit... There would be other ways to put comedy into that moment that wouldn't be using her size as an easy punchline. Yeah. But at the same time,

I'm still very much having a fat heroine in a book. Yeah. And I do like the description of her pulling herself together as reverse continental drift, because I like the sheer force of her indignance. I love that whole scene. I also really love about her, the way she uses her privilege to put other people at ease.

She's very aware that she is privileged and in a position of power, and that people feel like they need to defer to her. Yeah. And the way she deals with that is, when they go and inspect the watch, she's bringing vimes to a pseudopolis yard, and they sort of all line up for her.

Yeah. She's a very fine body of men, and she's not doing putting them at ease the way Tepik was in the last book. She seems to be taking like a genuine interest, and it's something that makes them comfortable, you know, she talks about. She's good at it.

She's very good at it. We can all sleep safer in our beds, knowing these brave men are watching over us, walking sedately along the rank like a treasure galleon, running ahead of a mild breeze. And even when she meets the librarian who's been sworn, who's in plain clothes and been sworn in as special aid services

and maintaining the kind of complex salute you can only achieve with a four foot arm. She sort of just does a, well, how long have you been an eight my man? She says, boo, well done. But I think it's interesting, if you compare her character to Vettanari, who very much is in a similar position

of power and privilege, and uses that to not, very much not to put people at ease, but to keep them on their toes. And how much of that is, for a quick purple post-it moment, how much of that is a gender thing, similar as a powerful and privileged woman uses that power and privilege to put people at ease around her,

whereas a man with that same power and privilege very much uses it to make people uncomfortable. And it's not just a gender thing, it's what their characters are, how they need to serve the plot. So Vimes, I wanna check back in with Vimes and his anger, because I did say that was like a three line I wanted to keep looking at.

And it kind of follows on the bit you're talking about where he's looking after Errol and he's very sweet about him. And he's sort of furious around the swamp dragons, the fact that it was a race of whittles born to die-wide, who lived on their nerves, and the fact that people would hunt them for some sort of glory.

And you can tell he's kind of really thinking about the watch there. Yeah. Because they're this sort of whittle of an institution. And he gets angry at the city. And it was what we were talking last week about how he almost acts betrayed when the people of the city don't act

the way he wants him to. Yeah, he leaves himself vulnerable by personifying the city as a whole. Yeah. And he sort of takes the populace into account and he ends up later on in the book when everyone's suddenly becoming monarchist. He's furious.

And I like his sort of righteous anti-monarchy heart. Yeah. Even though he hadn't thought of himself as anti-monarchy until this point, suddenly it's in his bones. Yeah. And he sort of starts shouting, you're all you thieving bugger throat. You were flogging cuddly dragon dolls yesterday

when they were all very excited at the dragon. And his absolute fury and frustration at people being fucking stupid is great. It is. One last thing on Vine's Ansible. When they're facing off against the dragon. Let me just find the page. I'm so professional.

And Sibyl's amazed by how ridiculously pretty and impressive it is. And Vime's is not. Yeah. The dynamic between them really reminded me of something. And then eventually I realized it was, it comes up a lot in like screwball comedies type things, but reminded me of my favorite one,

which is kind of the archaic one, which is have you seen the film Bringing Up Baby? No. If not, you need to. It's a 1938 movie. It's Catherine Hepburn and Carrie Grant. And Catherine Hepburn is like a wacky heiress with a pet leopard.

And Carrie Grant is playing this very straight man. He's like a mild-mannered paleontologist trying to get a grant for his museum. And the dynamic between Vime's Ansible just very much reminded me of Sibyl as Catherine Hepburn and Bringing Up Baby. He's saying, don't worry, it's just a leopard. He's not gonna eat your face.

Okay, well that seems like something exactly what she watched with me, so I'll try. Oh, it's great, genuinely. It's one of my favorite films. Oh, Catherine Hepburn's amazing. Yes, and Carrot. We spend some time with Carrot. We love Carrot.

I really enjoy his complete lack of an imagination because he's a dwarf and they're not raised to have imaginations, which means he doesn't get nervous. Yes. And his method of performing an arrest when Vime's orders him to arrest the palace guard. And Carrot's method is to pot round the corner, grab a couple of axes,

and then come running, screaming around the corner, making a siren noise, which I assume- I think that's because he said, charge. Yes. As an arrest, didn't he? To march these men. Yes, I'm assuming the dida-dada-dada is meant to be like a police siren noise.

Yeah, yeah. Something caught in a trap at the bottom of a two-tone echo canyon. And I like the fact that he proper terrifies them and Vime sort of sits and watches and rolls himself a cigarette, it's a really lovely image. I have things to say about that, I'll wait until we're in the more serious part of the podcast.

But yeah, so that's the characters unless you had anything else. Well, obviously, when veterinary gets deposed, that's kind of a big thing that we don't see. It's a big thing and it's half sentence. So yeah, no, I have a lot on veterinary next week, but I'll save it. I feel like the entirety of next week's episode is just talking about that one really good two pages, those two really good pages of the book. Right. Sudopolis Yard is our first location, obviously a reference Scotland yard.

Yes, the watch are given the new headquarters of Sudopolis Yard, but I like the name is literally fake police. Oh, yeah, pseudo police. Anyway, Harga's House of Ribs. I just wanted to point out because we've been there before. Death used to work there. They've sponsored our podcast in the past, which is very nice of them. We haven't had a note from our sponsors in a while.

No, you know, you're meant to be selling the advertising space. Yeah, that would be why we haven't had anything. I've not done my job. Well, the line through the multi-divensional telegraph has been difficult recently, and that's our excuse. Oh, yeah, about to be interrupted. I just heard a door. I feel 30 seconds.

So tell me about Harga's. I am appalled that Sham Harga is getting rid of the fat and scraping the coffee. Is this the equivalent of people getting mad about cast iron seasoning down wrong? Oh, God, thank you. Hello, dear. Oh, come here. Come here, puppy. Oh, yes, come here, come here, come here.

Hello, hello. Oh, puppy bump. Hello. Oh, hello, puppy. Oh, hi. Oh, dear. OK, bye, bye. Bye, bye. OK, right. I can't see the person who is opening your office door, so I'm assuming your puppy just opened the office door by herself.

Oh, yes, absolutely. In fact, she's growing thumbs 12 inches tall, this minor detail. We measure her in thumbs as well. She's definitely a swamp dragon. Smells like a too. She's just got back from the farm. Yeah, your dogs are swamp dragon. Little bits we liked.

Hang on. Yeah, I don't really have anything else on her, because it has ribs. Yeah, little bits we liked. There was a reference here that I had to double check, which is probably something I should have known, but Vimes was wondering about the curious incident of the orangutan in the nighttime. Well, I know there's a book called

the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. Well, that was the thing. I know. And that book came out way after this. And I should have realised it is actually, it's a Sherlock Holmes reference. Oh, is it? Yeah, yeah. I stupidly didn't note down which book, but when the Scotland Yard detective says,

is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention and Holmes says to the curious incident of the dog in the nighttime? The dog did nothing in the night time. No, it wasn't. OK. As the dog did nothing in the night time, that was the curious incident. I see.

So, yes, that was what that was a reference to. And I looked it up. Footnotes. I like the way because because some people don't read footnotes. Those people are sociopaths. Yeah, what the fuck? Who doesn't read footnotes? What kind of bullshit policy is that?

Like, oh, I'm going to sit here and read a fantasy book that like centres around nonsense, but I'm not going to read the footnotes. That's a waste of time. Move them or don't pay attention to them. Well, I read it then, aren't I? I read a little bit. I don't care if you're listening to this.

If you're listening to this and you don't read footnotes, you've got an even more skewed sense of time management. Fucking read them. I read an interesting thing about footnotes, especially as they used in Terry Pratchett about how they used a bit like comedians, use pauses and they make you read things in a certain way and taking a joke in a certain way.

Yeah, definitely. Yes, and I'm not going to say where I read that because special surprise for our listeners, hopefully. But there's a footnote on page 140 about how the phrase set a thief to catch a thief had replaced an older and more porky and profurb, which was set a deep hole with spring-loaded sized tripwires, whirling knife blades driven by water,

power, broken glass and scorpions to catch a thief. So that was the original saying. The one I read. Yeah, that's a footnote and it's just a silly little line. But then a few pages later, Vines talks about using Errol to catch a dragon and Colen responds with, oh, you mean set a deep hole with spring-loaded sized

tripwires, whirling knife blades driven by water, power, broken glass and scorpions to catch a thief, captain. It's clever because not only is it like a great callback, it's also like Colon being old-fashioned and... Yeah, it would be Colon who uses the old-fashioned saying. And yeah, it brought me joy. Many scorpions. Oh, can't hear what was that.

I'm going to say pen, it's probably fine. I like the regular references to scorpion pits, to be honest. I feel like there aren't enough scorpions in literature. Do you feel like it's a good thing that Lady Sibyl gets the same treatment as all the other women, e.g. not a very good dress? I'm glad she gets equal treatment to the others and isn't dressed matronly, especially because

as she's depicted on the cover, it is in the part of the book from the next section where she's the virgin to be sacrificed. Sorry, spoilers for the next section. Sorry, my voice sounds weird because I'm on the floor with my pen. Of course you're on the floor. Why wouldn't you be on the floor, Francine? That's where you should record our podcast from.

I mean, maybe. It's probably giving my back or something. If I start lying horizontally on the floor to record the podcast like I'm a middle-aged man with a back problem, that'd be quite fun. Maybe I'd have that kind of confidence, then. The confidence of a middle-aged man. A middle-aged floor lying on the man. Hi, I'm sleep deprived.

Hi, I'm Francine. Dad jokes. Oh, there were implied finger guns in that joke. We get a call back to the last book. And this is what I mean when I talked about it last week, that Pratchett's starting to, like, world-build and play in the world. And also that he took a lot of the themes from pyramids and brought them through into this, especially about monarchy and things.

But call back to the hippos of Angkor Porc, who are the noble, as of yesterday, the noble heritage of Angkor Porc. So got hippos on the flags, hippos on the bunting. Fucking bunting. Why is it that when suddenly we're all meant to have some sort of national pride or something, bunting comes out? Isn't it terrible? I don't know if I'll do it in other countries, but as far as I can tell,

it's a peculiarly English conceit that somehow these triangles of poorly cray on paper equal festivity. Yeah. And it's very specific, especially to national events, things like the Olympics and street parties and coronations. It ties in with the blitz spirit bollocks, doesn't it? Sorry. For our international listeners, bunting is a piece of string with brightly coloured triangles on it, often with fucking Union Jacks when everyone's being particularly jingo-ish.

Do you know I had bunting at my wedding, didn't I? So I should probably. Oh, you had so much bunting. That was hilarious, watching that get strung up. I did not help. No, you did not. Nor did I. Becky is a fucking treasure. But it was white bunting. It didn't have the flag on it, so it's fine.

No, and it all looked very pretty. But yeah, fabric bunting is the traditional one. But when you have a hastily thrown together celebration like this coronation, I imagine it's all the kind of terrible. Or like when our government. Yeah, or like when our government suddenly decided VE Day was a big thing that we should all celebrate in lockdown. Four calendar manufacturers.

Poor calendar manufacturers. Anyway, so yes, but I like the call back to the hippos of Angkor, pork, I'm pleased to see them again. And I hope that they do, in fact, nobly run away whenever the city is threatened. So like the idea of a noble running hippo. Oh, yes. Speaking as a noble running hippo.

A vision and tool and leather gauntlets. Yeah, that's how I jog. Oh, my ex is a terrible, terrible person. But I did enjoy the fact that he used to go for drugs and still toe cap books. Steal toe capped boots with a fag hanging out of his mouth. That did make me laugh. Yeah, he was an odd man.

He was an odd man. Pizza fire. Pete, what? Is that me? That is mine. Yeah, yeah. I'm very cryptic with my notes at the moment. I'm sorry, I don't mean to. I just couldn't think of a more sensible way to put this.

So paid 183, if it matters, after the dragon has flamed the elucidated brethren's headquarters, Vimes finds brother fingers left standing outside the burning wreckage with a pile of pizzas. It just reminded me of like that now famous scene in community when Troy returns from getting pizzas and everything's on fire. So that's what I'm imagining, except like in a robe.

It's a very skippable moment. Yeah, that is, I think, probably the most used community gif. Yeah. The darkest timeline one for anyone who's struggling to remember. Which is like the greatest episode of community. It's so good. I fucking loved it because right at the end, it turns out Jeff's the problem, surprising nobody.

Anyway, that's all I had to say on that. That was just something that made me chuckle. So let's talk about hero tropes in our talking points section. Yeah, I said this would be an ongoing one. No, definitely it exists, the show plan. Oh, don't make me have another existential crisis for us in. I'm tired. It's in front of me.

We promise we're not just making this up as we go along. Yeah, this is, I said we'd keep checking back in on this because like the two, this book is a combination parody of hero stories and police procedural. It's funny. And I realized what I was talking about with what it was parodying was basically Conan the barbarian. So we're going back to what we talked about with color of magic

and the barbarian tropes in that, especially this scene where all the barbarians turn up at the palace and then they're appalled that he hasn't got a daughter, veterinary doesn't have a daughter to offer their hand in marriage for killing the dragon. They're talking about medical expenses, buying a main 10-year-old gear, wearing tear on virgins, especially at these unicorns.

They really made me giggle. And then further down that page, this is on 114, they're talking about monsters they've dealt with. One of them saying he killed this monster in a lake and then it's mum came down and complained, which is a reference to one of my absolute favorite hero stories, which is Beowulf. I can't believe we've not talked about Beowulf yet.

Have we? I think this is the first like direct Beowulf reference we've had. Yeah, I've got to love Beowulf. Beowulf is amazing, but enjoying Beowulf makes me wish I could really properly learn old, old English. That's it. I've never actually got time management issue right there, Joe.

Yeah, no, I'm not actually going to. I do recommend the Seamus Heaney translation for those who have been thinking about reading it. The dragon as well, that's a fun reference thing. Yeah, this hero section is really just all the fun references trying to point them out in one go. Yeah, I mean, is the dragon even a reference at this point or is it just a...

The dragon sleeping on a horde of gold, and the way they're talking about how it's cunning and it can talk, it's very particularly smorg. Is it? Was smorg the first dragon to be that smorg? I don't know if it was the first... I always read it as smorg, but then my audience... Lots of people say smorg.

I'm going to keep saying smorg. Yeah. Because, oh, now I'm thinking of smorgasbord. Sorry, food. Anyway. This fucking podcast, like, oh, not just this episode, is just us reminding ourselves that we're hungry over and over again with, like, nerd references in just first.

How do we have any listeners? Thank you so much to our listeners. Well, that's my life, I'd say, because I'm listening to it. There it is. Oh, beautiful. I assume it is specifically a Lord of the Rings reference, the way it sleeps, the gold and what have you, but I'm sure references to Dragon and Sleeping on Gold existed.

Tolkien in general. Yes, yes. Yeah, I don't know if that was a kind of dragon that was around before Hobbit, if it was, I don't know it, so. Yeah, I don't like directly referencing the Hobbit because then I remember that those films exist and I have to... We don't talk about those films. They don't exist.

The films we talk about, not talking about all the time. There is no war in passing, say. There's always been a war with East Asia. No, fuck, that's a cold. And Merry. Oh, I need to reread some more, well. I really don't right now. I was referencing Avatar the last airbender, so.

Oh, good, OK, I'm glad we're on the same page. The King has invited you to Lake Logo. I know we have... That's the Monarchist. Oh, we know, I was still talking about the references. There's one other reference I wanted to point out, which is a cop-movie reference, and that is when Vimes interrupts the angry mob

by coming out with a dragon under his eye. Yeah, that would interrupt, sorry. Yeah. Interrupting Monarchists. This is your fan fiction. This isn't fan fiction. Well, Vimes distracts the crowd by coming out, isn't this what you were talking about?

Oh, no, the next episode is where I have the 20-minute presentation of the sexual tension between Vimes and Veterinary. That's right, great. My blood should be read by then. OK, Vimes exits the building and appears in front of the crowd. Vimes comes out with a dragon under his eye,

Vimes comes out with a dragon under his arm. Now there's a hell of a way to come out. Right back in my way, we used to tie an onion to our belt. That was the fashion in these days. And the same at the time. OK, can I do this bit now? I don't know, can you?

Vimes comes... Vimes appears with the dragon under his arm when he's trying to defuse the angry mob. And he brings out, he says, this is Lord Mount Joe Quick Bang, winter fourth to fourth, the hottest dragon in the city. It could burn your head clean off.

Alice, the riots is what she says. Now I know what you're thinking. You're wondering after all this excitement, has it gotten a flame left? And you know, I ain't so sure myself. What you've got to ask yourself is, am I feeling lucky? And this is...

What is the reference to? To... Dirty Harry. Ah, yes. And I think it is the first one. I didn't go deep enough into Google. Because I haven't seen that. It made me think of Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

Which is also referencing Clint Eastwood. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. He's got such an amazing face. I really want to re-watch all the old Clint Eastwood films. I have seen them, but not for a very long time. But this is often misquoted as, Do You Feel Lucky Punk?

Because it's mixed up with, Go Ahead Punk, Make My Day, which is from a different... Clint Eastwood film. But that's what the Fabricate DM, PVNC, Ah! motto is making fun of,

It's Make My Day Punk. Nice. But yeah, I enjoyed that Dirty Harry thing because it was like very directly translating that scene from the film into this book. Yeah. And it's rare. Like this, but dragon.

Yeah. It's rare that Pratchett does like the very, very direct... There's a lot of those in this one. But yeah. There's a lot in this one. There's tons in Moving Pictures, obviously, because that's the whole point of moving pictures. Yeah.

So yes, I enjoyed that. Right, Suddenly Monarchists. Interrupting Monarchists. Name of your indie band. Monarchists. Tell me about them. And I mentioned this earlier when Vimes gets really furious,

is that everyone suddenly becomes a monarchist now that it looks like there's going to be a king because he's killed a dragon. Yeah. And they're sort of saying, oh, he's going to fix everything. And Vimes is saying, right, well, what wrongs he's going to...

What wrongs is he going to write? And Throat tries to sort of say, taxes in a, I know I don't really pay them way. Yeah. And people start saying, later on my house leaks something dreadful, and the landlord won't do anything about it. The king will fix that premature boldness.

Kings can cure that. They can't answer back. They don't carry money. That's how you can always tell us the king, which is the fun things it follows thematically from pyramids. Yes. They're talking about like real kings don't ever have any money on them.

Oh, yeah. But it's really fun then when you get to later on when colon suddenly gets very into the rights of man. We're all born equal. And then when Nobby calls him Frederick, he's like, well, no, it's Sergeant Colon to you. Yeah. So what colon means is I am very equal.

I like that line very much. I greatly enjoy that. And I like that colon sort of, because he's just such a natural contrarian. Yes. That if it's very popular suddenly for everyone to be a monarchist, he will suddenly discover his relationship

to the rights of man. And I think the fact he's a contrarian is what makes him a, I'm not going to say good, a passable police officer. Yes. He's an entertaining police officer. I like, but I like the idea of everyone in the city slowly becoming a monarchist for ships and giggles

because they think it might fix things. Did he find like any parallels with real life as in when royal weddings and things suddenly everyone gives a ship. Well, I was kind of interested as to what, like, so this is 1989. I had a look at what the, what state the British monarchy was in. Obviously, I know who was Queen because it's been the same forever.

It's Queen. Who's Queen? It's Queen. Is her nose as pretty as mine? Sorry. Okay. We're not doing black adequate. I was reading about Diana earlier unrelated to this,

but that's, Well, that was what I found when I was looking at sort of what of the British monarchy was in the press in 1989. Yeah, because I was reading about her because I'd found in the old school cool subreddit, a picture of her fuck you dress basically that she wore on the day that Charles publicly admitted his infidelity. Yeah, the black one.

The black one. I used to have a dress a bit like that. I have a dress a bit like that. So Charles and Diana were still together publicly. Diana was very much in the public eye, visiting people suffering from AIDS. The Hillsborough disaster took place in 1989 and she was visiting victims of the Hillsborough disaster.

So she was very much in the public eye. And the monarchy was very popular in the late 80s as a result, especially as the leadership of the country wasn't very popular. You're talking 1989 is when that to hit 10 years as prime minister. And also when the conservative party really started falling out of favor. It's when, when the leading political parties stops being particularly popular, people do turn to monarchy.

Same way like recently with COVID and the lockdown. People have lost a lot of faith in the Tory government for how they've handled it, but become very monochistic and very big on the day in Queen Elizabeth's birthday and. Yeah, that's a bit far fly over for the day. It's very sad that Vera Lynn has passed away, but, you know, she had a pretty good run. Yeah, yeah, it is actually passed away.

But if we weren't in this odd collaging of pretend Britishness at the moment, we wouldn't have made such a thing of it. Not to the point of a fucking spitfire fly. Exactly. Yeah. It's all very odd. Sorry. So the round world equivalent around the time this is being written. Yes.

It wasn't, it wasn't being written in 1989. It was published in 1989. Was very much of Britain becoming more monochistic. Talk to me about L space. Well, first of all, how about you tell me the three things that you want to talk about? Talk to me about L space. Well, first of all, how about you tell me the three rules that we

must remember before we delve into L space? Let me find three rules. If I was professional, I would have already turned to this page, but no one's paying me to do this. So fuck it. You can just be planning pages. The rules of the experience. We've got to sell it as a feature, not a bug.

Foley. The three rules of the librarians of time and space. One, silence. Two, books must be returned no later than the last eight shown. And three, do not interfere with the nature of causality. It's like a backwards version of the thing we keep bringing up the beautiful noble description and then like custard or something that's like mundane, mundane, metaphysical.

This is the whole rule of three thing in comedies. It's that third beat that makes it the joke. And I did genuinely snort laugh at that footnote. Yeah. I found in the Discworld companion a declaration that new readers of the unseen university library have to make, which I thought you would enjoy. It doesn't appear in any of the other books.

So I thought this would be a nice place to put it because it combines fun library bullshit with your favorite thing, which is fast talking terms and conditions. So I thought I'd read that to you. Declaration to be read loud when asked. I speak your name. Hereby undertake not to remove without permission from the library, auto mark, deface or injure in any way,

any volume, document or other object belonging to it or use inappropriate force in fighting back any such volumes as may from time to time attack me, not to bring into the library or kindle there in any fire or flame, be it magical or otherwise and not to smoke or expectorate or explode or levitate above two foot in the library, to refrain to the best of my abilities from spontaneously combusting in the library.

And I promise to obey all rules of the library and any which may from time to time be added by the librarian whose judgment on all matters relating to the operation of the library is final and if necessary terminal. I promise to read and inwardly digest any documents that are drawn to my attention, attesting to the difference between those creatures commonly referred to as monkeys

and the higher apes accepting further that being allowed to do so is a concession on the part of the librarian that holding my head two inches from the page facilitates reading and that repeatedly banging it on the table is a valuable aid to memory. That's brilliant. That was very you. That is very me.

But Elspace, seriously folks, here's a pretend physics lesson. Where's my actual notes? Sorry about me. So libraries were clearly pretty sacred spaces to Pratchett. Yeah, they come up all the time in the books and in his interviews and essays. He just makes it clear you spend a lot of time in libraries. He thinks they're incredibly important.

Which I do as well, actually, although it's been a long time since I was a regular user of one. Did you use what much the kid libraries like the town library? I used the school libraries voraciously because I just got through books too quickly for my parents to keep up with buying them for me. And so our school, my primary school had this reading system. You had to go through all these levels of books

and you'd be given one a week and you'd sign one out and you'd work your way up to level 14. Normally by the time you're in year four, certain kids, when advanced enough, were allowed to skip them. And once you got past level 14, you could go straight to taking the library back home once a week. Certain kids would get skipped through and in year two, I got skipped ahead to library books.

And so from that, it was pretty much game over. I would use them a lot. And like, you know, I'm a big lover of libraries. The point I did a whole fundraising tour for local libraries last year, we toured a play around. It's a play called Talking the Library by the amazing Jackie Carrara, who happened to work with a bit.

And it's something about it. It's set in a library. We toured it around local libraries, performing it just in the spaces. No fancy set or lighting. And all the money we raised touring it went to those libraries because Suffolk is the only county that hasn't had any library closures because the library is run as a charity. Yeah.

I like our library. Love libraries. Yes. Did you accidentally strain to L's base at all while you were doing this tour? Usually done. Came close to it. I got to see the inner workings of some of the libraries.

I got to see backstage in the libraries. That was always very cool. Tell me something about that. Ipswich Library has a lot of space that you don't see. Ipswich Library is massive anyway. You get to see lots of things. Also, technically Norfolk, not Suffolk, but Thetford Library, we got to use as our room, the Thomas Paine Room,

which brought me great joy because I have a copy of Common Sense by Thomas Paine, which is a known text for a lot of reason, but including because of the song from Hamilton where Angelica Schuyler announces, I've been reading Common Sense by Thomas Paine, so men say that I'm intense or I'm insane. They do say that about you. Yeah.

I also want to point out that I got this far into the episode without referencing Hamilton, and you should be really proud of me. Two hours, four minutes, 32 seconds. I am very proud of you. I love it. I still haven't watched it. Ah, you need to watch it. I know, I know, I know.

But it's one of those things, right? So, you know, certain things you just really experienced differently depending on who you're watching it with. Yeah, and Jack would hate it. Yeah, Jack wouldn't hate it, but he definitely wouldn't be into it. It's like way too fast talking for Dad without putting the volume up too far for me to enjoy. So I don't know, either I'm going to watch it on my own,

which seems almost odd, or wait until I can like watch it with you or someone. Yeah, when we're allowed in each other's houses, we will watch it together. Okay. I'll allow that. I'll do that then. Yeah, so I don't want to, yeah, I really want to enjoy it,

and I know I will under the right circumstances, but yeah. Anyway, we were talking about L space and libraries and how great libraries are. Yeah. Anyway, so the L space as a concept is knowledge equals power. We know that power equals energy.

We know that energy equals matter. Yeah, so far so good. Matter equals mass and mass distorts space. And therefore lots of knowledge in one place distorts space and therefore libraries are basically, how to put it, gentile black holes. I'm just finding a very specific quote from something that goes very well with that.

Oh, do please, yeah. But yeah. Sorry. Oh, you found it quickly. Yeah. Just an alternative to knowledge is power, et cetera, is that time is money. Money is power.

Power is pizza. Pizza is knowledge. What's that from? That is April Ludgate in Parks and Recreation. Very good. Very good. We're getting all our favorite sitcoms in today. What have we got?

Brooklyn Nine-Nine Community Parks and Rec. Right. Sorry. I've lost myself again. Oh, sorry. My fault for interrupting you. I was looking at the wrong page. So L space obviously just means library space,

but I looked it up just in case and it is a topological term. And I found this on Wikipedia. So if anyone knows what it means, fill your boots, but it's fucking sorting into me. And L space is a hereditarily Lindelof space, which is not hereditarily separable. A Susslin line would be in L space. Mathematicians, feel free to email Joanna about that.

Yeah. Please explain this to me in very short sentences. I'm mostly distracted by this. I actually just said it was a Lindelof space. And does that mean that Damon Lindelof created L space as well as the TV series lost? I don't know. See now we're in two areas.

I know nothing about media and mathematics. Excellent. Fun to metamology. Oh, God. But yeah, perhaps it seems to do physics in like the same way he does. Blast in. So like it's apparently clumsy, but obviously he has to

as a decent bit of background knowledge to make it funny. It's like you have to know the rules to break them. Or it just, you know, wouldn't be funny. So I quite like that he might have to do the false equivalent stuff all the way through. Cause I just like that. I like that kind of silly tangent joke. I had a good analogy for this specifically referenced

comedy, which is you have to know the shape of the bucket to accurately fill it with something funny. Yes. I like that. That's a good analogy. Yeah. Yeah. I should probably say like what else base actually is from the

science that did this world puts it more comprehensively. It says it is by L space that all books are collected are connected, quoting the ones for them, influencing the ones that come after, but there is no time in L space, nor strictly speaking any space. However, it's infinitely large, connects all libraries everywhere and every when it is never further than the other side of the bookshelf, yet only the most senior and respected librarians

know the way in. And so I think that's made it perfectly clear. Basically in this context, a librarian is able to go in with a ball of string, find his way to last week and read the books that got nicked. And considers making sure the book can't get nicked, but it decides not to interfere with the nature of causality. And why?

Why is that? Cause things go boom. Trousers of time. Yeah. Reference to the trousers of time. It is our first reference to the trousers of time. I'm sorry. I did miss that.

That's all right. I also like the word bifurcate. I don't get to use that often enough. Bifurcate doesn't come up in conversation. Bifurcate sounds better. I think it's bifurcate. But I like bifurcate. Bifurcate sounds like an old word for Bob Rill or something,

doesn't it? I like that it also uses L space to justify why those little rambly, pokey, secondhand bookshops are particularly unearthly. I feel like they're almost a cousin to the travelling shops that always have exactly what a hero needs. Yeah. The travelling shops travel through the multiverse,

whereas the little secondhand bookshops are static, but all connected through the multiverse. Yes. Back channels. They can be wandered into from any dimension. Which if you ever go to Wales and the town of Hay on Why, which is the home of the very famous Hay Festival, but is also a very small town with sort of 20 or 30 tiny

little pokey secondhand bookshops, the entire town feels somewhat like time is bending in on itself. I hope they're all right. I feel like if there's one that's going to be safe after this, it's probably there because so much tourism comes from those bookshops in the festival. Yeah.

It's weird, isn't it? Like we talked about this briefly last week, but one of the things I particularly miss is the kind of casual, fun aspect of book shopping where you could pick up a book and put it down and wander backwards and forwards, and all of that is just not part of shopping anymore at the moment, certainly. No.

You can't pick stuff up and put it back. You can't wander backwards and forwards, take your time. All of that is now incredibly rude. Yeah. But one day. Pollux to reality. Well, like I said, I'd like to have no part of that. Anyway, that's all I'd say about those.

Sorry, I've depressed myself just in time for the depressing talking point. Yeah. Let's talk about bad policing. Yeah. See, I did say last week that I touch on this and I, reading this was either badly or very well timed depending on how you frame it because all this came up in the wake of the

Black Lives Matter movement of 2020. It's very difficult to talk about policing with nuance, especially a book like this where the police are very much the underdogs. It is. And that's the thing. So in this context, and it makes sense in this context, and I can see exactly why it's done and how it's done,

but we are made to root for bad policing and bad policing in its specific harmful way. So I'm talking about page 189 specifically, which you quoted with Carrot charging them, which is funny. It's a funny scene. But the joke... You actually think about it in the context of... And it's not even the charge of it.

The joke about what are they accused of, sir? So Carrot holding up one limp body in either hand, assaulting an officer and resisting arrest. Oh, but they didn't resist while attempting to resist arrest. It's exactly the kind of bullshit police use to shoot people. Yeah. So it was jarring to read this scene in particular. It's easier to separate than I'd watch than it might have been

just because it's such a tiny, rag-tag organization at this point in the story. Yeah, I mean, it's for people. Yeah. But that particular scene didn't make me go, I see why that's funny because... And I see why it's used to make vimes likeable because it's the old cutting through red tape Maverick cop trope,

which is... Also, if you look at what it's parodying, it's parodying Clint Eastwood and the Dessie Harry movies. And that's the thing, it's the Maverick cutting through red cape, Dessie cop with a heart of gold. Exactly. And the thing is,

although the vimes elbow becomes a running joke, I think in following books, they're not so heavily referencing movies. I don't think this is the kind of thing that vimes would do. Certainly not the kind of thing that carrot would do. But I think vimes would be very against saying something like this. But this is... The later books are a lot more nuanced about

what role the watch has within this society. I think it's less nuanced here because they're an underdog organization, they have no political power. So it's very hard to compare it to modern day policing in the same way because they do not have the power that modern day police have. What do you reckon? It's hard to talk about. I find it really difficult in this book.

A part of me, because one part of me wants to just go full cognitive dissonance and go... Exactly, yeah. This is a thing I really love, so I don't really want to think about it with the hard modern context. To briefly circle back to Hamilton, as it's come out on Disney Plus in 2020, the discourse around how it's actually very problematic

has been renewed from five years ago when it was first at its height of popularity. And that's another thing where I'd really like to stick my fingers in my ears and go, la la la, because I love the show. But realistically, even its creator has said, yeah, I would do things differently if I wrote it even five years now with different ideas. The thing is, to me, that doesn't mean stop enjoying it.

It means acknowledge that this is something that we would change now. And also, it's very much a privileged thing to be able to do that cognitive dissonance because I am not seeing my lived experience. At the end of the day, I'm not the one who is going to suffer at the hands of an institutionally racist police force. So it's easier for me to have that cognitive dissonance and switch off from it because it's not going to affect me directly. This doesn't talk about racism in any particular way.

No, no. We're specifically talking about bad policing. Police brutality in general, yeah. But yeah. It is hard. And like I said, I think in later books, Terry Pratchett does interrogate it and it's very nuanced. And in a particular book that deals with these characters, there is an incredible amount of nuance that looks at

what the police can and should be able to do and what they can't. And a lot of people are quoting that particular book on social media at the moment saying, you know, this is how a policeman, a good policeman reacts to a protest slash riot. Yeah, exactly. And basically, I think it's a heavy-handed spoof joke and it's funny and it's jarring because it's quite so obvious and parallel right now. Yeah. And this is the thing. Like literally six months ago and this isn't a good thing,

but six months ago I wouldn't have noticed it. But we are much more aware of it right now because it's so much in the news cycle and longer term we need to look at remaining aware of it even when it's not heavily in the news cycle. Yes. Yeah. That's a learning thing. But it is. It is very weird reading the context of the current political state.

Yeah. And it's the Black Lives Matter thing. And it's also the populist focus on cutting away red tape and doing what needs to be done despite the bureaucracy. Yeah. The whole which is going to lead to a no-deal Brexit and probably a huge economic crash for the UK. Exactly.

It's great fun and it's great fun when you're reading it from a protagonist point of view and this point of view because, yeah, frankly, who the fuck wants to read 10 pages on due process? Also, well, in a later book, there will be like 10 pages on due process. Exactly. Very good. I mean, the answer is us. We like reading 10 pages on due process, but you can see why this ended up this way.

Yeah. Also, the red tape that is being cut through is bloody stupid because the red tape at this point is the king. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Trusted advisor. Yeah. I think it's literally the exchange that was the resisting arrest thing.

Yeah. Raise the red flag for me. And had it not been for those three sentences or whatever, I don't think I'd have flagged this at all, which is, you know, something I should keep learning myself. Yes. This is us learning and growing live on air. I'm not like recording this like this before we go out.

Watch us become slightly less shitty live this Saturday night. It's literally just us reading something and going, huh? Yeah. Not very interesting to watch. Anyway, yeah. So that was a nice cheerful note to finish our talking points on. Say something nice. Isn't Sibyl great?

She is. Isn't she fucking amazing? Don't you just love Sibyl? My absolute favorite scene is when she has the little interaction with the librarian. And I know I already talked about it, but I'm going to talk about it again. It's her absolute confidence and calmness.

And this is what I mean about her being genuinely good as opposed to it just being a surface thing is she makes the assumption that everyone else knows their business and knows that it makes perfect sense to swear in an orangutan who works at the university as a special constable. And that's why she doesn't not question it because she's trying to seem calm. She doesn't question it because she's assumed the best of

Vimes and his team and assume they know what they're doing. Is your obscure reference finial depressing? No. It's not depressing at all. I think I know what your reference is to reading the notes, but I'll let you. Yeah. Well, this is a bad joke.

Obscure reference finial. This is one of my favorite jokes. Is it? So Vimes drinking Harga's new brew from a clean pot, page 200 says this is love in a canoe coffee if ever I tasted it. And so Joanna, what does weak coffee and making love in a canoe have in common?

It's fucking close to water. Yay. So clearly it's not that obscure reference finial, but hopefully anyone who hasn't heard that terrible joke will now be able to impress their friends. Well, I first heard it as a Kevin Bloody Wilson joke of why is American beer like making love in a canoe? Because it's fucking close to water.

I promise never to try an Australian accent on this podcast again. I don't promise that. Next week we're doing page three. Next week we're going all the way to page three. Section three, which starts on 207. Yep. And takes us to the end of the book funnily enough.

Good. Good. I thought that might make sense. I'm fucking starving. Thank you for listening to the two show make you fret. You can follow us on Instagram at the two show make you fret. You can tweet us at make you fret pod. You can find us on Facebook at the two show make you fret.

Please email us your thoughts, queries, albatrosses, castles and snacks at the two show make you fret pod at gmail.com. Please rate and review us wherever you get your podcast because it helps other people find us. And as we've said, we'd like to expand from bubbling ball to shit canvas pool. And in the meantime, dear listener,

don't let me detain you. I'm just going to open this can. Cool. Cool. You know there's a mute button, right? Oh, fuck. Yeah. Why did that one?

I can make more editing work for you. I'll just leave it in. That's fine. It makes it seem more real down to earth. Yeah. Not like the overly polished product we usually put out.