The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 39: Witches Abroad Pt.2 (Inverted Zombie)

Episode Date: December 14, 2020

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, Part 2  of our recap of “Witches Abroad”. Stories! Myths! Hats!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 Get in touch in time for Hogswatch!Things we blathered on about:[Video Games] That time a Dragon Age voice actor illegally role-played his character to justify being a bigot - /r/HobbyDrama threadOldest albatross - FacebookJumboErzulieFrom Haitian Slavery to “The Walking Dead” - The AtlanticLEGBA - Guardian of the Crossroads - NPSBaron Samedi - WikipediaInto the Woods - Hello, Little Girl - YouTubeMeryl Streep - Last Midnight - YouTubeCrystal of Storms by Rhianna Pratchett - GoodreadsTurnspit dog - WikipediaMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

I forgot to put coffee in my coffee again. Good, good. So nice, nice hot water you got. Look, I put coffee in it now. OK. I am such a functioning human being. That's what I always says about, yeah. Joanna, functioning human being, hey again. I've had an entertaining morning on the internet. Oh, yeah, do tell.

This is this is fun. This is like a hobby drama type thing. So, you know, the Dragon Age games I like. Yes. So yesterday was Dragon Age Day, which is a really lovely like fandom day where people share art and there's loads of fundraising and generally the creators and people who work on the games get involved and do like interviews and Twitch screens.

They raise loads of money for the NAACP or NACCP. I can't remember what the acronym is for. No, not the NSPCC, the American Legal Fund one. Oh, OK, cool. Yeah, in support of like Black Lives Matter protesters. So it's a cool thing. It's lovely. The day before, Mark Dara, who's like basically the head of Dragon Age at Bioware,

announced that he was leaving the company but made it clear like it was very amicable. He was still really happy with the team that was left behind to work on the new game. He was looking forward to what he was doing next. He just couldn't do it any longer. And he's worked for the company for a really long time. However, however, a voice actor who has worked on the previous games

and voices a character who is a bit of a fan favourite and like one of the favourite love interests from the third game. It turns out said voice actor is, I mean, this has been known for a while now, homophobic, transphobic, a very all lives matter, a bit white nationalist and not in like a someone found out. Can you be a bit white nationalist? But not even in like a someone found

like a secret Twitter account he had where he spewed all this hate, like just very publicly like Trump supporting engross. Oh, and so when people really started to realise this a while ago, they were sort of tweeting people like Mark Dara and saying like, hey, why are you still employing this guy? And he was like, can't say anything. I work for the company, but the cast for the next game hasn't been announced yet.

So don't assume that he works for us. We can't really say anything more. And obviously now Mark Dara has left him and this guy just got into a massive Twitter beef where he's like, actually, you know what, mate? Now I don't work for the company. You're a dick and I'm really glad you probably won't be working for the company anymore, either.

And this turned into then the voice actor doing a whole Twitch stream Twitch stream in character screen Twitch stream in character trying to prove how loyal his fans were. The Cullen fans is the guy who voices Cullen for anyone who's played these games. Which one's Cullen? Tall, do you play? Did you watch me play Inquisition? He was like my first very much to play all of it.

Yeah, he was like the tall broad shoulder commander guy I romance the first time around. Oh, yeah. OK, I know he was quite boring. I'm not too upset by this. I mean, obviously, I'm upset he exists. But what's quite sweet is because so many people are fans of the character is everyone's sort of like, yeah, so weird that that character just doesn't have a voice actor and lots of people who do very good

cosplay is tweeting like, it's OK, I'm your Cullen now. So I've quite enjoyed watching a racist homophobic transphobic arsehole get his arse handed to him by his former boss. Yeah, I seen as a small contendant of the don't bring politics into games. If they are, they're really not vocal. Oh, turns out Dragon Age found them very, very accepting and not too weird and gamery. Well, it is a pretty inclusive dragon sex simulator.

So yeah, pretty much everyone in it is a bit bisexual. I mean, it's an incredibly homophobic game because it wouldn't let me as a woman run up romance, the tall butch woman with the strong jaw line. Is that so? Yeah, which means it's definitely homophobic. Or maybe she's straight. Yeah, that's homophobic. Damn it. I knew my existence was homophobic somewhere.

Fucking hesseroes. OK, right. Well, now I've been incredibly offensive. Don't you know the straights are the real impressed ones? Call me a breeder, I know you. As I pointed out before, considering how nebulous my grass one gender is, everyone who fancies me is slightly gay. Yeah, I fully accept that. Right, shall we?

Yeah, I literally can't think of a way to get from this to Pratchett. So shall we just make a podcast? Yeah, yeah, let's do that. Hello and welcome to the true shall make he threat, a podcast in which we're reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, one is a time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll.

And this is part two of our discussion of Which is Abroad? The witches, they are abroad. Yes. So part two of the 12th. Part two of the 12th. Note on spoilers before we get started. This is a spoiler like podcast, obviously heavy spoilers for Which is Abroad, the book we're on, but we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series.

And we are saving any and all discussion of the final Discworld novel, The Shepherd's Crown, until we get there. So you, dear listener, can come on the journey with us. Whilst hustling several shady looking men out of all their money on a paddle boat down the Mississippi, which is exactly what I want to do. Yeah, we can go do that later. That's cool. I'm pretty sure I know how to cheat at Blackjack. Yeah, sure. Why not?

I've also been good at maths. So I feel like cripple Mr. Onions more like bridge. Yes. But as I have no idea how to play bridge, I'm going to stick to cheating at Blackjack. OK, anything to follow up on? If there is, I've forgotten it. How about you? Not much slight weirdness of recording an episode

before we released the last one, what is time? November didn't happen. We're all quite confused by that. Brief dispatch from the round world. We got a lovely email this morning from Abby. Thank you for sending us actual Albatross content. Oh, I will actually have access to the inbox. I'm not going to send you the link.

OK, that's fine. Yeah. It's nice to know we have listeners in the middle of the states and this and I'm sorry that you're feeling alone with it, but we understand your discworld references. We're here in theory and we are glad we're a happy place for you. So thank you, Abby. That was a really lovely email. You did your proper kids presenter voice, sir. Yeah, I can't help it.

Thank you, Abby. That's lovely. We'll be sticking it up on the fridge. So, Francine, would you like to tell us what happened previously on which is abroad? Sure thing. Previously on which is abroad. The death of a fairy godmother forces well-meaning witch magrat

into a role of responsibility, micromanaged, of course, by the squabbling sorority of granny and nanny. The three witches and one cat must travel to far away, Genua, through miscellaneous fawn parts with quick stops along the way to meddle in mines, eat garlic, sausage and to rent tyrannical landlords and smack heavy handed Tolkien references over the head with an oar. When they get to Genua,

they have to stop someone from marrying a prince. But that might be harder than it sounds as the apex of their adventure sits a mysterious woman surrounded by mirrors. Oh. Anyway, so this time on which is abroad, we begin with nanny inventing the postcard. The witches continue their travels and granny terrifies kitchens across the disk

as we discover that she doesn't hold with all this foreign muck. Nanny continues her mischiefs as the witches experience a thing with some bulls, sore from bristles and broomsticks. The ragtag bunch of misfit mystics take a trip on a riverboat. Granny and nanny lounge on the deck and discuss deserata's writings. And we learn that Genua is a magical place ruled behind the scenes by L, the Baron S is dead. E is safe, but L has plans for a Mrs. G is fighting mirrors with swamp magic.

Nanny heads off to explore while granny plans and naps. Unfortunately, nanny's exploration leads to dire financial straits and granny plays cards carefully to reclaim their hard earned cash. After postcard interlude number three, the witches leave the boat in a hurry and head closer to the rim on their broomsticks. Granny gets recognized as she jumps into a rural myth to wake a sleeping castle. Continuing on, the witches come across a girl in a red hood off to visit her grandmother, interrupting the story once again.

The witches posing as fairies saved the grandmother stop the wolf and granny has a stern word with a woodsman. The witches continue on through story after story until rudely interrupted by a house falling from the sky. Nanny saved from flattening by a truly spectacular hat and they befriended a gang of singing dwarfs before setting off on their merry way. Granny nanny writes postcard number four as Lily watches and gives instructions to the mysterious mute sisters,

the witches fly on to Genua and experience an unfortunately swampy landing. Posing as clean as to get into the city, they discover there's no room at the inn. Nanny extols the virtues of banana, nana, nana, nana, daquires in postcard number five and the gang take refuge in a stable. At first light, Magra decked in her finest sets out for some independent fairy godmothering. Nanny sets off to experience the sights of the city and granny witnesses genuine justice. She takes it upon herself to follow the sisters. As Magra meets Ella in her kitchen, Nanny sets out for a stroll with Mrs. Pleasant,

the palace cook, experiencing Genua's Epicurean delights. Nanny loses her companion and finds herself in Mrs. Gogol's tent. Granny joins them and nanny scrolls postcard number six as they all head to Gogol's swamp dwelling. Back in the kitchen, Ella insists she will not marry a prince and isn't too optimistic about Magra's assistance. At the swamp, Granny's appetite is ruined by the zombie waiter. Griebo faces off against the biggest cock Nanny has ever seen. We learn Baron Samadhi's backstory, his probable murder at the hands of the Duke

and Ella's true parentage. Granny loses her hat to an alligator and just as Magra finds herself facing the sisters, Ella's guardians, Granny arrives for a quick confrontation. Making their escape, Magra insists that Ella shan't go to the ball. I'm usually so good at not interrupting, sorry. Hey, I kept a straight face, which we all know is not my strong point. Particularly enjoyed Misfit Mystics, very nice. Yeah, I'm trying to keep Saul on our toes, mix things up a bit.

And have you ever felt more empathetic with Magra than when she puts on that crinkled silk dress? I have so many thoughts on Magra and her outfits. It's going to be a fashion episode, is it? Yeah, we're going to do a fashion watch. And here we have in this season's latest pile of occult jewellery. Don't stop you from being yourself, but give you something to distract you from yourself. Look, Teenage Me feels very attacked right now. Yeah, well.

I had so many pentagram necklaces. Yeah, I didn't think I could pull that off. Oh, mine were all like, I would buy a pentagram charm and make like charm necklaces with guitar picks. I'd stole them from boys. Oh my God. Yeah, I was such a fucking nerd. Absolutely.

Anyway, sorry, what are we meant to be talking about? A helicopter and loincloth watch. I am still claiming broomsticks as our helicopter representation for the episode. Okay, cool. And obviously implied loincloths. Always, always implied loincloths. Who do you think they're being implied upon? And then the section of the book?

I don't know. I feel like there could be some loincloths lurking around the swamp. Maybe Granny having to remove a vest is symbolic of loincloth. Well, obviously, Granny is always loinclothed because she is never naked under her clothes. No, that would be disgusting. No. God. Next thing you know, you'll be bifurcated.

Gary, are you just pleased to see me? Oh, no. There was an irrelevant elephant, at least one. I feel like there might have been another that I skim read over the second time. On page 194, this is a long ass section. Yeah, sorry, I did end up making this one a bit big. Well, that's all right, because I think we're going to have a lot to talk about next week anyway. But Granny bemoans a lack of elephants at the circus last year.

She paid a whole tuppence, she did, and not a single elephant. So an irrelevant elephant fact. Jumbo, a world famous circus elephant, so I'm sure you recall from the late 1800s, is credited with popularizing the word jumbo to mean large rather than clumsy or ungainly as it did beforehand, and it wasn't as popular a word then. So things like jumbo fries can be more or less directly attributed. Yes, exactly. Attributed, as I was halfway through mispronouncing, to this poor elephant.

Because obviously I'm very against elephants being used in the circus, and jumbo had a very sad life and died when hit by a freight train. So there's a download to pick up one. Yeah. But I feel like it's an on theme downer, because like the disgusting reality behind glitzy magic, you know? Yeah, I like it. Yeah.

Yeah. On theme downers. Speaking of on theme downers, should we go to quotes? Yeah. Say that. This stolen quote here, I think, comes before mine. Look, I'm sorry. This is because Francine and I plan the episode separately and then read each other's notes.

That's cool. How could you know I only took a photo of it and put it in the group chat? After I, oh wait, no, you did do that before I actually put. Okay, fine. I totally stole Francine's favorite quote from the book. This is a very long section. It really doesn't matter. This is on page 137 in my copy and showing Granny and Magrette having a bit of a bani.

Haven't you got any romance in your soul, said Magrette plaintively? No, said Granny. I ain't. Stars don't care what you wish. Magic doesn't make things better and no one doesn't get burned who sticks their hand in a fire. If you want to amount to anything as a witch, Magrette garlic, you've got to learn three things. What's real?

What's not real? And what's the difference? I always get the young man's name and address, said Nanny. I love that line so much. I like that. That's the important one Nanny remembered from the three referenced in the first section. I just like Nanny. Granny's really stern practicality and because in Granny's way, she is helping Magrette.

Magrette doesn't really see it and she's doing it in a really shit way. But these are good things, lessons for Magrette to learn. This is quite soon after the Red Riding Hood bit, right? Yes. See, I don't feel like it is a shitty way of doing it because I feel like at this point, if Magrette is still being all, do wishy-washy about it after seeing that, I'm not surprised Granny's super pissed off. Oh yeah, that's fair.

I will definitely be behind you on Granny's being a bit of a twat to Magrette across quite a lot of the book. But on this one, I was also feeling quite angry at Magrette. Yeah. I like this attitude of Granny's even though sometimes I would be slightly more romantic. Yeah, whereas speaking as a member of the completely and totally dead inside community, which has been very concerning at work since we started doing regular temp checks because everyone thinks I'm a lizard now.

Does Red Shoe let you attend his meetings? I've asked. Is he already dead inside? No, I've got to be dead on the outside as well, apparently. Fucking zombies. You're like an inverted zombie. Yeah. Dead on the inside alive on the outside.

Bad name. Anyway, yeah, so I really like that quote. I like the stop fucking wishing on stars and go and sort it for yourself. And once again, I like the writing device of Ra, Ra, Ra. Granny said something silly. Excellent on a burger. So what is your second favorite quote because I stole your best one? Oh, that's cool.

Well, similarly, ish, just after the Wizard of Osbit, so 10 pages later, 147. But even Magrat, who hadn't as much experience, could feel genuine now as a barometer feels air pressure. In genuine stories come to life. In genuine, someone set out to make your dreams come true. Remember some of your dreams? That is such a good like horror moment. Isn't it though?

Yeah, because I think earlier in... No, not earlier in the episode. In the last episode, we mentioned that Pratchett had kind of half based genuine on the Magic Kingdom on Disneyland. And I think dreams come true or making your dreams come true or something is like a tagline of Disney, isn't it? Yeah. Or certainly it was in the early 90s when this was.

And I like the fact that Pratchett's mind immediately goes, what, dreams? You want to make those come true, do you? Those eldritch horrors that are in my subconscious. I'm just saying, considering I spend every Friday night looking through the top week of catastrophic failure posts on the subreddit, my dreams are a little bit weird. Don't do that, by the way. Listeners, that's my anti-recommendation of the week. Don't top off your work week by scrolling through train accidents

as well annotated as they invariably are. And this is why my Reddit feed is carefully curated to take a break from doom-scrolling. Well, I never click on any of the not-safe work-ons. I'm not going to look at. So yeah, so characters. Yeah, sorry. In fact, I'm a tangent city this morning. Starting with the silly one.

I think there was actually also a reference. This name is also in the first section, but I missed it, which is one of the authors of Margaret's self-help kung-fi books is Lobsang Dibla. Yes, yeah, it was in the first section. So it's nice to know he's diversified. Yeah, he's probably still got those contacts that you got the special anti-star ointment from. No, wait, what did he?

Anti-dragon. Anti-dragon ointment, that's right. Yeah. I believe that was it. I'm sure someone will correct us on Twitter. Thank you. And then onto bigger references, obviously. We have Black Alice is mentioned for the first time,

who is sort of this classic fairy tale villain, which that all the other witches sort of know and have this healthy respect for. Yeah, it didn't even occur to me until now to Google Black Alice spelt normally to see if that was a thing, did you? No, I didn't. I assumed it was just meant to be an archetype thing. But you know, Pratchett, he'll never miss a chance to put a reference in a name if he can. Very true.

Yes, the greatest witch you ever lived, not bad, but so powerful. It was hard to tell the difference. Would quite often be in many stories at once. And I like the fact that she was getting pretty eccentric by the end. Gingerbread houses, that sort of thing. She spoke sadly, as one might talk about an elderly relative who'd taken to wearing her underwear outside her clothes. Yeah, I think that's Black Alice pops up in the next Witch's Book as well,

doesn't she? So that'll be nice to explore again. Yeah, she kind of exists as this background archetype, but she is also this old woman, all these witches new. Yeah, yeah. And they've sort of got some of the witchiness is based around being or not being like Black Alice. Yeah, yeah. And then obviously, one of the big sections of new characters is when we get on to the red riding

hood bit, which so you've got the grandmother. And I really do like there's a certain freemasonry about grandmothers, but no one has to stand on one leg. Nanny Ogg just automatically fits in as soon as she's gone into this cottage because she's a fellow grandmother. Yeah, and then does the same in January later. Yeah, she gets that same moment with Mrs Pleasant. There's a nice line about it.

But yeah, the whole wolf thing. Yeah, that's fucking... God, it's dark. Proper dark bit shoved in the middle hour, isn't it? So in the red riding hood story, you have this. So Lilith is practicing stories by just making them happen. But because of that, you've got this wolf who is neither fully wolf nor fully human and not in a lovely Lupine once way.

Yeah. But in a he cannot cope. We cannot hold both things in his brain at once and it's torture for him. Yeah, because it turns out, you know, wolves don't actually go and dress up in granny's clothes. So you need to boss this into his head and it fucks up the nice simple predator mind. There's the moment where the wolf is ended and him asking for an ending. Yeah. But also there's a line about, so see the woodcutter performs this execution

and then granny insists on the wolf being properly buried and his body being treated with respect. Yeah. But the old woman, the one in whom anger rolled like Pearl Barley in a bubbling stew. And Granny Weatherwax is obviously one of our favorite characters. But I don't think we talk about her ability to really feel rage at some point. She is, you see her lose her temper, but you don't really see the full anger of her very often until you get moments like this. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. And it's not to get spoilery, but one of the other big characters that has this incredible rage thing is Sam Vines. We saw this in Guards, Guards. I think it's Pratchett coming through in the characters. Yeah, I was going to say this is, I think, the most Pratchett-y Pratchett-ness. There's that beautiful Neil Gaiman piece about the fact that Pratchett was an angry man. He was capable of this amazing simmering fury and everyone sort of thinks that Pratchett

put so much from himself into vines, but he's always said it was more Granny Weatherwax. And I think this is one of those really, really clear moments where you see that incredible seething, bubbling rage. Yeah. And it's an interesting one because it does the kind of animal crawl. Crawl-ty thing which he hates. And also a theme I've noticed in a few other books. He clearly identifies somehow with and hates the idea of old women neglected or

spat upon left in cottages to rot kind of thing. Yeah. I feel like he must have seen stuff like that at some point. Well, it does happen in societies, especially in rural areas and there's not a lot of money and someone doesn't say have young relatives around to keep an eye on them. And this whole moment where Granny makes sure the entire village looks after this old woman now because she has been sat there alone. Yeah.

It's that whole section is just incredible. Yeah, it is. Because it's that dark underbelly of stories. It's what does it actually mean for these stories to exist? It is really interesting how he's kind of dropped these dark moments into a fun romp across the discworld kind of thing. And it's... Yeah, if you actually look at where that...

It's really quite seamless. If you look at that actual moment, it happens between the riverboat, the sleeping beauty bit, and then after that, you've got to... You start getting into Genua. Oh, and you've got the Wizard of Oz bit. There's a lot of levity the side of it. And you manage to slam this really dark moment in in a way that doesn't feel forced and like oh, hang on, I want you to think about something serious.

Okay, you're allowed to laugh now. But feels really natural in the progression of the story. Yeah, and it really kind of builds up the... Here is a demonstration of why Lilith's type of magic or helping is actually super duper evil. Yeah, it makes it very clear who the villain is in the story because up till now it has been... I wouldn't say it wasn't clear before. But she maybe didn't come across as the most villainous villain in the whole world. Yeah, I think that shows her villain are more than you could actually anything

right about Lilith herself. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Show not tell. Speaking of onto the next one, the sisters. Oh, yeah. Which is implied they're sort of humans made out of snakes in a Cinderella mice turned into coachmen sort of way. Anthropomorphizing strongly implied.

Yes. And they're so creepy. Yeah, for sure. I quite like snakes. I don't like this. I absolutely love snakes, but creepy humanoid stakes, snakes. Hungry. Starving. Have breakfast and everything.

And there's sort of this the bit where they're fed the mice, I think is the creepiest bit. Yeah, yeah. And the fact that they don't have voices. And like the little hints when you're in Ella's kitchen about, oh, the pantry's always stocked with cheese. Oh, they eat cheese? No, I don't think so. Yeah.

But I never find any mice. It's very good, vague horror. Yeah, yeah. Which is my kind of horror. And then obviously we have a very important character introduced to the Discworld canon, which is the banana, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, daquiri. Yeah, which is very important. Never mentioned again in Discworld, but every Discworld fan knows a banana, na, na, na, na,

na, na. I say never mentioned again. It may well be, I don't fucking know. I think it is very rarely. But yeah, it's not really a big thing, but it is like one thing. It's the thing I was saying, like Pratchett knows how to make things that sort of stick with the fandom a little bit. And I think-

Yeah, I don't know if it's so much he knows how. Like, I don't know if like, I feel like the things that stick with the fandom are not what Pratchett would have guessed or even wanted, to be honest. Some of them are a bit random. Some of them, like the ones that come up a lot, like the one in a million chances thing. Yeah, no, that one's a good thing. That's one where it feels like he's very good at creating a tagline and he knows it. Whereas this, yeah, this is just a weird thing.

I love Nanny Ock knew how to start spelling banana, but didn't know how he stopped. And I think that line is why the banana daquiri thing started forever. Yeah. Did you say there's something from Slip of the Keyboard about it? Yeah, yeah. In, when he's in Australia, so Slip of the Keyboard is like a collection of his non-fiction stuff. He talks about being brought to banana daqueries all the time during book signings. Like people bring him all kinds of weird shit, but he always gets given banana daqueries.

So, oh, by the way, it has been a few months since I strongly recommended Slip of the Keyboard. So go read it if you haven't people. It is very good. Actually, I don't know if there's any spoilers in it. So maybe if you haven't read all of them, don't. But I'm pretty sure it doesn't have shepherd's crown spoilers. If it's just that one you're avoiding. Yeah, no.

Yeah, it doesn't. I think I'm going to double check that. I really don't like banana daqueries, by the way. I'm not entirely sure I've ever had one. Well, I mean, it's just rum and banana. Rum and banana and it's kind of blitzed and blitz my sin. And it's basically like a boozy banana milkshake, although without the dairy. No, do you know, I think we had them in curvo when that was a bar.

Maybe at the opening night, we got given daqueries or something. Yeah, they were raspberry daqueries. They weren't so bad, but I don't hate banana. I love how that sticks in the mind. Oh, you don't like banana? Yeah, no. Yeah, I think I would have probably liked a banana daquerie, although rum's never been my thing.

Yeah. Anyway, I'll quite happily have a banana milkshake, which is my equivalent these days. So, no. Why do people eat things that taste of banana? I don't know how to. I've decided as I mildly dislike this group, it's going to become another hill I die on on the podcast.

Oh, like giraffes. Have we even mentioned the giraffes on the podcast? Joe's really got something against giraffes. I don't have anything against giraffes. They're just clearly not real. Okay, sure. They're ridiculous. Look at them.

They don't have vocal cords because their necks are too long. Okay, well, they're clearly not real. So much of their fictional. It just annoys me that people treat them like they're real things. I won't hold with it. They're nonsense. You've seen them at the zoo. I don't care.

Still not real. Okay. Sorry. Too ridiculous to be real. Ella and her kitchen. Oh, Jesus. We're not going through this very fast, are we? Sorry.

Yeah. So, Cinderella. Emborell. Yeah, four old embers. Obviously described as stunningly beautiful because she has to be. Yeah, in practice, it's very specific taste of not brown skin and very blonde hair. Yeah.

Is that, all right, maybe we get it. You like that. Weirdly. It's cool. We don't need any more of that. Weirdly looks a bit like Canina. Yeah. Although it's obviously she's mixed race as his implied her.

Yes. Kind of said or implied, I don't know. But yeah. Yeah. Because we know we've established the parenthood that she's the dead barons. So she is actually the heir to the throne. Yes. Hence why the Duke wants to marry her to make it legit.

But I really like the description of the kitchen that she sort of lives in. Yeah. Because it's the thing. She has to live in the kitchen until she goes to the ball and become a princess. Of course. It was a cave. It's far corner shadowy. It's hanging saucepans and terrines dulled by dust.

Big tables have been pushed to one side and stacked with ancient crockery. The stoves, which looked big enough to take whole cows and cook for an army stood cold. In the middle of the Great Desolation, someone had set up a small table by the fireplace. A jam jar contained flowers that have been arranged by the simple method of grabbing a handful of them and ramming them in. The effect was a little area of slightly soppy brightness in the general gloom. I think that says so much about the character. Yeah.

It's bizarre isn't it that they've got her living in a massive kitchen because that's what they have to do in the story. But like there's no need for her to be in a kitchen because nobody eats. Nobody lives in the big tables apart from the creepy sisters. Yeah. I think it's interesting because she doesn't get a lot to do. Like, she's not the main character of this book, although she is the main character of this one story Lilith is very invested in.

She's actually very minor and she sort of doesn't get to make a lot of choices for herself, which that kind of makes sense because there's several puppet masters. Yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, that's not a criticism at all. But I think it's quite sweet. There's so much personality in the fact that she has made this brightened little corner for herself with flowers and a jam jar. That's sort of a trying to give herself something nice that it just has and I think it's lovely.

Yes. Very sweet. Right. Poor old Ella. So yeah, on to characters we have already sort of spent some time with as well. So Mrs Pleasant, the palace cook, we briefly met at the end of the last section along with Mrs Gogal who bustles and says lorks and has flower on her arms. As a cook should.

Yes. I like that once again, this is the old women thing that they sort of attract one another, broadcasting inaudible signals indicating that here is someone who could go, ooh, pictures of other people's grandchildren. In front of you in a queue. But something else I wanted to talk about and like full disclaimer that obviously we're going into this conversation as two white people. Is that a disclaimer?

Basically, we work very hard to educate ourselves. We try and have these sort of conversations with lots of nuance. If we fuck up, please tell us. Yeah. We are very welcome to be in called out. We are at home to Mr Call Out. I don't know. I feel like disclaimers almost make it worse.

Yeah, I know, but I feel like I should acknowledge my privilege and shit. This description of Mrs Pleasant, she was a cook and she was the first black person nanny had ever spoken to. And then there's a footnote racism was not a problem on the disc world, because what with trolls and dwarfs and so on speciesism was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony and ganged up on green. So I thought this was interesting, especially acknowledging my own sort of unconscious bias. And I think this is probably a problem for a lot of people that until Mrs Pleasant was

described as black, I didn't necessarily picture her as black. I did with Mrs Gogol immediately, but I and I think there is something in the fact that we because she is the first character, I think really in the books to be explicitly described as black, we've obviously had like the midnight blue skinned people. Yeah, yeah. From the colour of night colour magical like fantastic. I don't know which from clutch anyway. Yeah.

Yeah. And obviously we have people of colour in the disc world because we've met people in clutch. But it's still a weird automatic thing to assume characters are white because we have those unconscious biases. Yeah. And slightly putting a pin in that because I already mentioned a character description from a much earlier book that will be relevant in a much, much, much later book. Okay.

I hope it's a sturdy pin. I will hopefully remember. But the footnote about racism not being a thing in the disc world, I think it's quite interesting because he's sort of given himself an out there of, right, I don't need to write about unconscious racial biases things because I've just said it's not a problem on the disc. But he's given him that out within writing a parody of New Orleans which has had such a weird racial history because of colonialism and slavery. Like many places in America.

And he's writing about this version of New Orleans that has the shiny bright white fantasy kingdom on top of a swamp where people are still trying to practice their own traditions. But also just because of what he goes into in later books, he does deal with differences in race. He deals with jingoism and he deals with speciesism and uses it to you know, write about these topics. So he's given himself like almost a get out of jail free card.

He's then not used because he still writes about this stuff with incredible nuance. Yeah, and I understand why because trying to introduce that theme into this book as somebody who's not like intimately familiar with it, especially, would have been fraught and I feel like would have ended up with 10 purple placelets instead of one. And yeah, I definitely get it and that did stick out to me as well as like a it almost sounds like a footnote version of I don't see color. However, because I know he does then use other species as representations of how

newcomers or outsiders or minorities are treated. It's not like he doesn't then write about this topic. I don't have a strong opinion. I'm not saying that the fact that that footnote is there or this is written the way it is is a good thing or a bad thing. I'm just saying it's an interesting thing to look at. Yeah, I agree. It reminded me of like that line specifically, a couple of things.

One of which being, and this is a little bit tangential, but Schitt's Creek, which is a show we both love and listeners, if you haven't seen it, go and watch it. It'll warm your cockles. But I was listening to an interview with Dan Levy who created it and placed the character David in it. And David, that character is pansexual. Yes. And Dan was in the interview.

I think it was David Tennant interviewing him and said, you know, you've created a fictional small town with multiple like out queer characters who don't face any prejudice. And was there something of wanting to create that for yourself? And he just said, yeah, there's no, I'm writing fiction and I'm trying to write joyous fiction. Why would I put prejudice in it if I don't have to? Not every small down is full of small minded dickheads. Yeah.

Why not write somewhere where I am completely accepted? And I thought that was a really lovely sentiment. Yeah. And another show I've just got you watching. Leta Kenny does something similar, which you'll enjoy as you keep watching. Yes. But yeah, I like, yeah, it is almost nice just to read or watch something. Where people just aren't dicks in that particular way.

Yeah. But again, do you know what I'm going to do the disclaimer now? That's an incredibly privileged thing for me to say, isn't it? But yeah. Something else I thought was interesting. And I don't remember if I actually covered this when we talked about it. Lara Rossi, who's playing Sibyl in the Watch TV series. Oh, sure.

When she was speaking on that New York Comic-Con panel that if you haven't heard us, we did do a little episode on it. One point she made. Don't watch it. We're just being angry for being angry's sake. Yeah, but I look like a villain in it. It's great. Yeah, Diana does look good.

Watch it, but like I'm mute. Just watch me talk shit for 15 minutes. God, we're gonna promote ourselves. Anyway, Lara Rossi, who is playing Sibyl, young then Sibyl. All right, I'm not doing the run again. It's cool. It's cool. One of the things she pointed out that I thought was really interesting,

she said it was really, really freeing to play a black woman in a fantasy world that doesn't have that history of slavery and oppression. Because it meant she could just exist as a black woman in the show and not have to be a black woman who has that previous racial trauma. And that was a perspective that literally just kind of never occurred to me before. Again, privileged. So I thought that was quite interesting that in creating a fantasy world where racism isn't really a thing and the whole fucking slave trade didn't happen,

it can be very freeing to have black people just exist in it. Yeah. And like listeners, if you have any thoughts on that, especially any of our BIPOC listeners, please, and if it's not piles of emotional labor, tell us what you think about racing the disc world. Yeah. Yeah, be interested to have an educated opinion.

Yes. Instead of our shitty hot takes. The bit of Mrs. Pleasant's life that I can have an educated opinion on is the way she cooks and I have a lot of respect for it. Well, she just, she sits there kind of ruling over this kitchen and then just occasionally gives an order or with great ceremony goes and salt something, which is absolutely nothing like how I cook because I am a giant control freak. Yeah.

And have to do everything. But it's such a particular fantasy novel thing. It really reminded me of like Cook Sarah in the Farsia trilogy. Yeah. And the way she would just happen to lord over this kitchen. For sure. But she might be more likely than you think because obviously Mrs. Pleasant is loading it over in the kitchen where she doesn't really care that much about what

comes out the other end. I bet she's a control freak with her good food. Mrs. Gogal. Mrs. Gogal, yes. She, I really like the fact that she sort of stopped Nanny had imagined in this dark tent. She's this old woman and she comes out and she's very handsome and she's got her big red skirt full of flounces. But I like the little not face off with witchcraft versus voodoo.

Yeah. Well, they kind of look each other off and down and go, all right, I get it. Okay. Yeah. Isn't that messing around with dolls and dead people and stuff? And she says, ain't witchcraft all running around with no clothes on and sticking pins in people? And sort of the, all right, maybe, maybe just one pin. Maybe, maybe the odd zombie.

The kind of, yeah, the mutual respect is nice. Yeah. Especially as it's not done in a kind of gushy way, like Granny is happy to question Mrs. Gogal as things go on and things like. Yeah. It's not like that. Nanny's more interested in the gumbo, obviously. But that's what Nanny, that's what Nanny does.

And I always think it's quite interesting. Yeah. She looks straight at the kind of human bit, whereas Granny's more interested in the power and what she's doing with it. Yeah. And then obviously we've also got Legba. Legba. Oh, before we go to Legba, just going to say Mrs. Gogal's first name is mentioned,

and it is Azuli. And Azuli is, as I say, Pratchett never misses a chance to do a reference in a name. It's a family of spirits lower in voodoo, and they're strongly associated with women and femininity. Ah, interesting. So, yeah. So yeah, so Legba is the big black cockerel. Papa Legba is the voodoo spirit of the crossroads, and does often appear as... I didn't even look at that.

Yeah. He leans on a stick. He's on both sides of the mirror. Ooh. Yeah. Double reference. And chickens are sacrificed to him. Oh.

Specifically by twisting their necks until they're dead. Well, that's how you kill the chicken. Yeah. And then obviously we have the Zombie Saturday. Yeah. We'll learn a bit more about... I mean, it's kind of fairly obvious that he's also the Baron. Yeah, yeah.

I'll go into more of the Baron's Samadhi of it all next week, but I... Burning eyes. This idea that the person had to have some terrible dream or desire or purpose that would enable them to overcome the grave itself. Like, you had to want to be a zombie. And I mean, I think of Red Shoe and how, like, his burning purpose is just being Red Shoe and... Revolutioning. Yeah.

Like, Red Shoe just is... Get on red. You're not never really sure what his purpose is, but he is always very purposed. Oh, yes. Yeah, it's one of those people that is 120% behind a cause. It just varies very much what the cause is today. Yeah. I did obviously look into some of the Vili stuff a bit,

especially some of the bits around zombies. There's a really good article I'm going to link to in the show notes. Zombie archetype, The Repressed Half-Life of Slaves. It's, I haven't got the full title of the arse called Tand, but it's a very interesting piece about zombies in popular culture and where it came from. So Voodoo, specifically in New Orleans, so this is Louisiana Voodoo, which is not... It's distinct from Haitian Voodoo. Sort of almost much in the same way Protestantism and Catholicism are different to use something

I know about. Yeah, yeah. Because it developed as a separate tradition, but largely came from obviously the large Haitian slave population in areas like Louisiana. Yes. But there's a different emphasis to the Haitian stuff. There's more of an emphasis on things like the Vili queens and paraphernalia. And it was through...

It's almost a more city version, isn't it? Yeah, it was through Louisiana Voodoo that such times as Gris Gris was invented, which is a Wall-off term, which Wall-off is a dialect from Senegal. And it's also through the Louisiana Voodoo that Voodoo dolls became something known in the American lexicon. But it was heavily... After the Haitian Revolution took place in 1804, all forms of Voodoo in colonial areas like New Orleans were really heavily suppressed.

And some of that is actually where the zombie archetype comes from. It was sort of thought of as a representation of the half-life that slaves were living. Oh, really? Yeah. So I thought all of that was, I mean, obviously horribly depressing, but quite interesting. Yes. Yeah. And in this, like, Voodoo's being repressed as well all the way.

So different reasons, isn't it? Yeah, but it's still, it's effectively still colonial oppression, isn't it? Very much so. Cool. Okay. Lily. Lily. Lily.

Or Lilith. Yes. What do you reckon of that origin story? That rubbed me up the wrong way. I put a purple post-it note in for the first time in ages. Is this about her being wanton? She's 13. Yeah.

I don't know why, like, he specified 13. Our mom kicked her out when she was 13, which kind of, like, assumes this has been going on, so she was 12 at least. Yeah. Like, you don't get one month of being wanton and kicked out. Oh, I didn't. But yeah, like, yeah, like the old, the young man's fathers would come around to complain and like, obviously it's bad if she's using magic to seduce

people as obviously is, is referred to here, but she's a child. This is very odd that Granny, and although Granny obviously doesn't hate her sister, like, it comes up in the next part of the book that she's got some sympathies there still. Yeah. Like, it's quite odd to me that Granny was such a, and branched it by extension, was such a formed sense of justice about this kind of thing usually is like, oh yeah, this 13-year-old who was kicked out for being sexually active is, like, that's not explored? I thought that was a bit weird as well.

It did rub me up the wrong way because, you know, there's the line of sort of, yes, Granny was wanton too, but it was all right because she just used an off-the-shoulder dress, not magic. I get that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, why say 13? If it was 16? Yeah, even say that would be like a, hmm.

That would still be a, hmm. Yeah, fine, whatever. Yeah, hmm, not a, hmm. Yeah. But 13 is, it's very weird because, yeah, what you're talking about here is a literal child being kicked out. Yeah. And, you know, she also talks through about, you know, she always looks in mirrors and she's

prideful. And obviously the mirror thing leads into the mirror magic and we see this is a bad thing. Yeah. But prideful and looking at herself. I think that's Granny's prejudice. That is very much Granny's prejudice. Yeah, I could see that more as a obvious Granny thing than a, yeah, than a value judgment.

But yeah, no, it did rub me up the wrong way a bit. It was very odd. Yeah. See, I dug out my actual purple post-it for this. I don't usually color code anymore, but I was like, you know what, no, this deserves one. I didn't even get too full feminist on that one. Until you pointed it out, it didn't occur to me to purple post it up. Well, you know, every now and then I like to remind people that at Haas I'm a terrible,

terrible STW. Yes. Those bastard social justice warriors with their swords. Ruining everything for everybody. Woke for woke's sake. All of that. I see. So before we go on to locations, a few more characters.

Obviously we have got the witches. I do really love Granny's card shark scene. That is just a perfect Granny moment. And the little check-ins with Nanny and Magra as that scene is happening, with Nanny sort of explaining to Magra, like you really need to think about who she is and what she's doing. She's got an ego and she's got psychology, but she's also a really fucking good witch. Yeah.

So she's worried that she's going to be using magic to change fate, which is bad, but she's not. She just turns out that the psychological is the... Psychological. Persecology. Yeah. Is good enough. Yeah.

And I really enjoy Nanny pointing out, yeah, she's not basically a nice person. She's incredibly nasty. And she doesn't like that she was born to be good. Yes. Which is... Which comes back. Yeah. That's a nice foreshadowing thing.

Then obviously, yeah, we touched on this, but Magra and her occult jewellery in her silk dress. For Magra. She sort of buys the jewellery as a bit of a distraction from being Magra. This is one of those things where I want to be Nanny and I see far too much of myself in Magra. Now the silk's got creases in it. I feel like anyone who owns a silk dress should know that, but we've all been caught out. Yeah. All of my clothes have creases.

It doesn't travel well. No. Don't travel with silk. This is what you should really take away from this book. Locations. The Vier, I think. Brackets masculine. Yeah.

Which means the river. Brackets masculine. Yeah. Which is obviously... The Old Man River. Yes. Obviously a reference to the Mississippi Old Man River. Yes.

Which was nicknamed that after a song in a film from the 1930s. Is it? I thought it was older than that. Huh. Yeah. And then we have the Swamp as the second location. Which is the outskirts of January. And it's the...

I just liked the very evocative, you know, rotten looking, juggered black trees and the... I want to point out that we just skipped over one of the best lines about the river, which is nanny, hopefully, saying to Granny, words have sex in foreign parts. Yes. We have to skip over some of the lines, Joanna. Because you're the one who has to go to work. Oh yeah, that's the point.

I know, but I really like that moment. Because it's exactly what I would say. Okay, yeah. Sorry, so yes, we have the Swamp. Yes. And then which surrounds January? Yes. Because of our destination. Genuine, rich, lazy and unthreatened.

Used to have the largest branch of the Assassin's Guild outside of Ankh-Morpog. But it's sort of two separate cities. So you have this surface genua, which is this magic kingdom thing. And then you have the genua underneath, which is where all the incredible food is lying around. Yeah. It's like fake, oldy-worldy versus actual cities that grew from nothing. Yeah.

And it's sort of that the new one doesn't like the old one, but needs it because somebody has to do the cooking, which is very limited with the world. Yeah, yeah. It's like Disney can't exist without a bunch of minimum wage people being grubby behind the scenes. But you've also got, obviously, we've talked about it being based on New Orleans. And while they're on the boat, they're talking about the fact that something has got to take place on Samadhi Nui Mort at the end of Mardi Gras, which was quite interesting. So Nanny says that Mardi Gras means fat lunchtime.

Mardi Gras obviously means fat Tuesday. Yeah. So I'm assuming that's like a Mardi midi joke. Lindy Mardi. Yeah. Yeah. So Mardi Gras is the pre-lent celebration. In England, we have pancake day in New Orleans.

There's a giant fucking carnival that runs from the Saturday to the Tuesdays. It's the last day of it. Oh, that's much better than our thing. Yeah. I like pancakes, but yeah. So it would normally run from the Saturday to the Tuesday. Obviously, it's been reversed in this so it can end on the Saturday for Samadhi Nui Mort, which means Saturday night death, which I'm assuming is meant to be a Saturday night live reference.

Oh, yeah. There is a feast of Baron Samadhi traditionally on November the 2nd. Yeah. So he's taken existing recognizable things and he's, I think he's imported them into the fictional world very well to fit this story. Well, my husband and dog have just got home. So good chance for a coffee break. Yep.

Coffee break. Okay. So little bits that we liked. Postcards. Love the postcards. I enjoyed the postcards, the language she uses in them. And I've drawn it and it's all, look at it empty all the way to the bottom. And just going off on random tendons about how, you know, how Granny gets.

And yeah, just it's, it's very, very nanny-og distilled into the new invention of postcards. Yeah, it's very good. They bring me joy. I like the early bits of traveling where they're finding all the odd bits of foreign food. And Granny's insisting, you know me, I'm not the demanding sort. Oh no, it's me. It's shocked by things like open sandwiches, trying to swindle people out of a slice of bread that's thereby rights.

I agree with this. Sorry, Scandinavia, but, you know. Oh, I love an open sandwich. Get your shit together by shit. I mean, slices of bread. See, if you do an open sandwich, you can basically give yourself twice as much filling though, without just eating two sandwiches. All right.

All right. We'll return to this. Let me think about it. The actual frog's legs, the crepes Suzette that gets us fire. Oh yeah, the frog's like nanny thinking faster than she ever had done here. She likes things that tell you plain what it is, like bubble and squeak or spotted dick. Which obviously, like Britain does have so many stupid names for food. We have got spotted dick is very much a thing.

Toad in the hole, which is a sausage and bat pudding. Well, Rolly Poly makes sense because it's like rolled. But I don't know much about food with really stupid names in other countries, apart from, you know, America has grits, which doesn't sound appealing, but are amazing. I know you disagree with me on that. Yeah. I've only tried them once. I'm willing to accept that they could have just been terrible.

And I will eat them if offered by a friendly American. Okay. So yeah. So listeners, if your country has any particularly weirdly named food, please let us know. Yeah. If you're interested, by the way, toad in the hole is sausage is in batter, like Yorkshire pudding batter. Yeah.

Which if you don't know what Yorkshire pudding is, it's just confusing I suppose. Spotted dick is like a suet pudding type thing with raisins, right? Yeah, dried fruit. Yeah. And what was the other thing? Bubble and squeak, which is basically fried up leftover potatoes and whatever veggies lying around normally with an egg on top. It's an excellent like post-Christmas hangover food.

Boxing day bubble and squeak is beautiful. Yeah. Except I never do roast potatoes on Christmas anymore. I always do like doping wire or something, which is not great for making bubble and squeak. See, I always do roast potatoes, but there's never any leftovers because I like at midnight, I will be sitting there dipping roast potatoes and gravy going, I hate myself. This is amazing. Mate, the best thing about making like a giant roast dinner is the midnight bowl of roast potatoes,

stuffing balls and gravy. Yeah. I made myself stuffing balls and gravy for breakfast yesterday after putting up like a couple of Christmas things. I was like, this is festive. I'm so proud of you. It's snowing. I want to eat this.

I'm doing all my Christmas decorations next week and I can't wait. There are going to be fairy lights everywhere. Them's fighting words. Them's fighting words. Yeah, when everybody's bickering, Granny ends one of her statements with the word pray, which as Nanny points out is the equivalent of DEF CON 2. And the other polite fighting words are asking someone to repeat themselves when you've heard very clearly what they said the first time.

And it kind of ties into some of the stuff we've talked about before on subtle rudeness or kind of polite hostility. Yes, there's certain things. And I think the British accent is particularly good for this, is that you can say, oh, that's interesting in a way that means, oh, dear God, stop talking. Yes, yes. Oh, that's interesting. There you go.

That's a good one. I was trying to think of some more examples and I thought you'd probably have some more. Thank you very much. Can be a dangerously close to a fuck you. Yes. Well, thank you for that. I do enjoy the polite fighting. I'm sure you've got a whole list of references you want to point out.

Yeah, obviously we've got Sleeping Beauty. We've got Red Riding Hood. One, three, four, they're talking about all the other stuff that's been going on in the forest. There's bears acting human, pigs living in little cottages. Just going through the Grim Brothers content page, basically. Yeah, basically. There's a line about an enchanterist in history who lived on an island and turned shipwrecked sailors into pigs, which is a Greek mythology.

Odysseus. It is. Yeah, it was Odysseus. It was Cersei. They landed on her island and she turned his crew into pigs. I definitely don't just remember that from when the Simpsons did the Odysseus story. Sure, sure, sure. And then, obviously, we've got the whole Wizard of Oz section, which I love,

because this is entirely the reason Nanny is wearing red boots. She gets the farmhouse dropped on her head. The dwarves feel like they really need to sing and take her boots, and they don't really understand why. I don't know why. I don't know why. We just need to. You know, Gribo, I don't think we're a lanker anymore.

But yes, but Nanny survives this thanks to Mr. Venissage's millinery masterpiece. And I prepare of nothing. I think it might be time for a word from our sponsors. Do you regularly suffer falling farmhouse-related concussion? Yes. Sorry. Are you a red-booted witch wiped out by Kansas winds? Yes.

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Core hardly felt it at all. Core hardly felt it at all. Definitely the quote I'm taking home from this episode. So, bigger stuff. The foreshadowing. We talked about this with the red boots. That being kind of a nice little foreshadowing moment. Yeah, he goes hard on it, doesn't he?

Properly hard on the foreshadowing. So, you've got obviously the putting the hand in the fire. You don't get burnt there. We'll come back to that next week. Groobo being practically human. We'll come back to that next week. Granny being recognized in the Sleeping Beauty parody. The way all the reveals about Lilith being Granny's sister is slowly built up through the book.

And that's why I was avoiding talking about it last week, because I can't remember exactly when it was revealed. Yeah, just at the end of this section, I guess. Yeah, and that's what I didn't say last week is Lady Lilith to Tom Sear. Tom Sear means weatherwax. Oh, nice. It's fairly obvious, but yeah. And it's something that he becomes really, really good at, especially in later books.

And I think this is the first book where we're really seeing him. Yeah, it does seem like on this one, he's like, oh, you know what I could do? Let's have a go at that. And just kind of have fun with it through the whole thing. I wonder if most of it came through edits. Yeah, quite possibly. I'll bet it did, because he loved the editing process. I don't know if he loved it, but he did it extensively and thoroughly, so.

He's a really, really tight, well-crafted story. Unsurprising considering it is a story about stories. Yes. Yeah, no, no. I very much enjoyed his kind of, I enjoyed his enjoyment of it. Does that make sense? Like you could tell how much he was loving, being clever with bits and going, oh, I bet I, oh, do you know what?

I can go back and add this in here and then it's a, yeah. Yeah. I think one of my favorite sort of almost four-show bits is the very, very subtle tension between Granny Weatherwax and Mrs. Gogal. Hmm. Because it's not a tension that comes from them having two different styles of witchcraft, and it's not a tension from them being two different people. It's a base tension of, I don't know if I trust your methods combined with,

I don't like how much of I see myself in you. Yeah. And I like how some of that tension was broken by Granny refusing to let the zombie go into the alligator kind of thing. It's like they do little tests for each other. Yeah. It's very clever writing. Yeah.

You can sort of see them almost like circling each other in slow motion. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. That's it. And the way that does get brought to a head in the next section is fantastic. Yeah. God, it's a good ending section.

It is. It's a bloody good book. Isn't it? So, it's a rural myth. Tell me about those. Also, this, the first time it's said is in, when they approached the Sleeping Beauty Castle, and Granny and Annie are immediately right, pick up the spinning wheel, throw it out the window, and Margaret's asking, how do you know all of this?

And Annie says, well, it's a rural myth. It's happened loads of times. Well, once, and I've heard about it, everyone has. Everyone's heard about it happening in their cousin's friend's neighbour's village. Yes. And there's something about this power of stories thing. I got into a quite passionate argument about this with someone a long time ago. Mostly because we were actually talking about diversity in theatre,

and it was someone who had a giant opposing viewpoints to me. And was trying to claim that an all black or female production of Richard the Third was racist. Yeah. Unfortunately, I occasionally have to deal with dickheads in my life. But I was trying to make the point that every person, every culture, every place has stories, and stories to tell. And they stick with you in all these different ways. There are stories from every different section of mythology about things like

why the sun rises, why the seasons exist. You have Persephone and Demeter in Greek mythology. There's all this stuff in Norse mythology. Stories just exist everywhere as a way to shape the things we don't understand. Okay, cool. And because they're explanations of things, it always seems natural that they end like this, or the next bit is like this, I guess. Yeah.

Because it builds on something pre-existing. Yeah, they build on something pre-existing. They're an explanation of something we don't understand, or they're a way to warn of something. Yeah, every fairy... Yeah, there's quite a lot of moral panic ones, isn't there? All the fairy tales there. Fairy tales, there's always some essence of morality. There's so much writing I could go into about ideas of loss of innocence and sexuality.

And but also not taking things for granted. I mean, Sleeping Beauty at its very base level is about not being rude and making sure you do invite everyone to something like a christening. Well, there's the whole reason that child gets cursed is because they didn't invite the evil fairy to the christening. Is that true in the original as well? Yeah, yeah, basically. All right.

Sleeping Beauty is effectively just a story about good manners. Plus, you know, thorns. Yeah. But I love this idea of humans just having this shared fantasy. You know, we have the western canon of fairy tales that we know. The Brothers Grim and the Hans Christian Andersen and the Disney of it all. Yeah. And then you go into...

But every culture has their own versions of it. And there's always similarities. They might not be brick castles. It might not be roses. It might not be dragons, but there will be someone being saved by someone. There will be heroes and villains. And absolute morality that doesn't exist in day to day because it gives you a framework to work towards.

And this is something I'll definitely talk about December next year, actually, in a very different Pratchett book where there's a line not set as a big spoiler about humans having to believe the small lies so they can believe the big ones. Yes, yeah. It's another Pratchett-y concept that comes up in various forms. So I don't think it's a... Yeah, but just this idea of the power of stories and that at some point they become entire faiths and some stay as fairy tales and the opposite.

Some are the foundation of faiths and later just become stories. We tell each other, especially when you go back into the whole mythology of it all. Yeah, everything's of it all today, I notice. Yeah, I don't know entirely why. I like it. It's a very mythic tick that you've got there. Is that a mythic tick or are you pleased to see me? So yeah, I like the idea of these stories existing as rural myths and everyone's

heard about it happening in a neighbouring village because it's on the disc world where these things are so much more tangible. But then if you also think about how these stories started being told, obviously the brothers Grimm and Hans Christy and Anderson wrote them down, but they existed in oral storytelling traditions before that. There's many different versions of Cinderella and Snow White. Yeah, and isn't it a crying chain that will never be able to go back to the fairy tale and find it? There must have been some kind of, these are ways to form logic around reality because

there probably were castles that not everyone went to sleep, but that slowly the people in that area died off and you end up with this ruined, thorn-covered castle because the building lasts much longer than the people and there probably were evil stepmothers and badly treated stepdaughters. There were children getting lost in the woods and it's better to write a story about a witch capturing them than to imagine that they just got lost in the woods. Well, especially as it's the parents' fault really in that, isn't it? The story doesn't seem to linger very long on the fact that the parents are complete bastards. Literally trying to get rid of their children, yeah.

Hans and Gretel is fucking dark, I shouldn't have brought that one up. Yeah, no, you should, that's very relevant to this section. I was going to go into the red riding hood of it all, but I'm still slightly haunted by the depiction of it into the woods. I deliberately didn't mention that in case I brought back terrible memories for you, with that scene in the... Oh god, that song is so disgustingly cringe, especially performed by Johnny Depp in the film. We'll link it in the show notes, but warning ahead of time, don't...

You will want to rip off your own skin. Yeah, I'm linking it to people like me who enjoy ruining their own sleep. Yeah, to full context, so into the woods, the Stephen Sondheim musical that plays with lots of fairy tales. I do really like that film though, I shouldn't... It is great, especially if you don't want to sit through the whole thing, but you want to watch a bit from it, look up Meryl Streep performing The Last Midnight because it's epic. The soundtrack is great, but the whole red riding hood of it all is a very creepy metaphor about

innocence. Any kind of metaphor about innocence is just so creepy, isn't it? Yeah, innocence and a loss of, and then when you throw in the fact that it's Johnny Depp as the wolf. I'm just going to shove some bleach in my ear. Well, that doesn't sound like a very good application of practical witchcraft, Joanna. Oh yes, witchcraft. This is another one of those things...

Poor that force segue, I barely managed to shove that in, sorry. I talked about this last week, but I like coming back to this, this is one of those recurring themes where because we're still, although we're into like mid-stage practice, it's still very world-building-y. And this is last week, we learned more about how the witches operate as a coven and a shabbat and running their territories. We get lots more about the power of witchcraft in this section. So we have, before the stars don't care what you think, this idea of

Margaret's insisting that magic exists for more than just illusion and bullying. And this is the whole wishing on stars and fairy dust of it all. Yeah, and she kind of starts bringing it up on the boat when she's inventing to Nanny. And Nanny sort of does put her in her place and says, no, she's not necessarily using magic all the time. Yeah, no, Nanny is very sweet to my growth, but she does sort of say, no, it's not necessarily about using magic all the time, but when Esme does something, she does it.

Yes, I like how Nanny can respect and acknowledge the flaws in Granny. And in Margaret, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But it's also, of course, Margaret is looking for the magic within the magic to sound particularly wanky because she is young and because she has gone from, you know, if you think about obviously, and it's a fictional setting, but there's not a lot for young girls to do in Lanka.

Your option is basically become a witch or get married and have a lot of children. Yes. She is becoming a witch is quite an impressive feminine power thing. You know, she's in this whole thing of trying to find herself and find her feminine power. I mean, it's Mother Moon and all this bullshit. Yeah. Yeah. And that's why teenage girls get into witchcraft.

It's about, you know, and go through those weird witch faces. That's fucking great. It feels very natural. Yeah, it feels very natural. And it's about finding power in a world where you're not necessarily empowered. Yeah. And the hardest thing Margaret has to learn is effectively to not do magic. Yeah, I guess Granny probably, Granny and Nanny both probably skipped a lot of those stages

just because they always felt empowered. Yes, because they already had that kind of burning core of confidence that Margaret still needs to light. Yeah, she's getting there. There was one interesting line about the nature of witchcraft, but to me anyway. When Granny sees the execution of the thief, she sees this person kind of brought up onto the platform and she can tell from the nature of the crowd and the way it's moving that there definitely is at least one witch in January, there are witches.

She'd heard that in countries, they'd chop the hands off of thieves so she, they wouldn't steal again, which she'd never been happy with. In January, they cut their heads off and it's Granny sees someone be decapitated for thieving and she goes, okay, so the witches are in charge. Yeah, yeah, there we are. Yeah, and Granny's, but that thought process of if something like that happens, witches must be taking charge, that's a damning thought of witchcraft. It is, it shows the kind of understanding of herself and explains a lot about why she doesn't

use a lot of her power and yeah, she can know the importance of witchcraft and value it and still know that it should not be the overarching power, which is very, very mature, which is patronizing things to say about an old lady. So yeah, I really like, I thought that was really interesting, this look at what power does to someone with power. Yeah, for sure. The last thing about witchcraft as well is, I think this is the first time this has been discussed specifically with witches, which is the hat.

Yes. So we talked about the importance of hats for wizards. Yes, even the bad wizards. Yep, but you never heard of a witch without one. In short, every craft and trade has its hat, you know, kings have crowns, hats are important. And it's interesting that although the pointy witch's hat isn't recognized in January, the idea of a witch having a hat is very cross-cultural because Mrs. Gogol understands the importance of Granny's hat and gives her the special fancy hat as a kind of replacement.

Ah, the pomegranates really bring out your ears. So yeah, so that's all I have to say about the witchcraft this week. I'm sure I'll have much more to say next week. Oh, I expect so. Rather, rather, Joanna. Before we bimble off into the sunset. That time already. It's lunchtime, so it's not far off.

Do you have an obscure reference vinyl for me, Francine? Yeah, so when Naniog is in Mrs. Pleasant's kitchen, in the fireplaces, whole carcasses of animals were being roasted. Turnspit dogs galloped in their treadmills. It's like that, turnspit dogs, they were a thing. Yeah, yeah, they were also known as Verne-Peter Curse. I can't pronounce Latin. It is Latin for the dogs that turn to wheel.

They were bred specifically for the purpose and the breed is now extinct, probably largely because we don't do that much anymore. No, but yeah, I look them up. They looked like kind of hench-daxons or like really tough corgis, something like that. They had like quite crooked legs and they were described as ugly quite a lot, but obviously they were quite agreeable because they were also kept as pets and like they were, they were nice household working dogs and they were taken to church to use as foot warmers. Yeah, and Queen Victoria kept retired turns, but dogs as pets apparently.

Oh, that's lovely. So they were quite corgish, I'm guessing. Something about our royal family that likes strange stubby dogs, which is possibly the one thing about our monarchy I can currently respect. I do like a strange stubby dog, as we know. Once again, I direct our listeners to look up corgi crossbreeds because it just looks like corgis in disguise as other breeds, and it's the best thing on the internet.

Corgi is the Kirby of the dog world. All right, well, we've said much more than we probably actually intended. We've said some things. We've said a lot of words today. We've said some words. We've ummed some aisles. We've played with things probably too close to the microphone. So thank you for listening to the two show, Mickey Fratt.

When this episode goes out, it will be our last call for letters to the Hogfather for our Christmas special coming up. If you have anything to say to the Hogfather, or if you've got anything to say to us, any questions you want answered, anything you'd like to hear us chat about, please do, or any castles, queries, snacks and albatrosses. The usual. Please.

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