The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 46: Lords And Ladies Pt. 1 (Or Not to Bee)

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

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 1 of our recap of “Lords And Ladies”. Erotica! Esoterica! Bees!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:Lords and Ladies - Colin SmytheLords and Ladies - The Annotated Pratchett File The King of Elflands Daughter - WikiHexagons are the Bestagons - CGP Grey (YouTube)Drumming the Bees - Preservation Beekeeping Long-time nuclear waste warning messages - WikiThe Ray Cat SolutionIdentifying Amanitas - Wild Food UKLlamedos on the ClacksMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

I've given up shame and dignity for lent. Have you given up anything for lent Francine? No. Okay, good. Obviously not. I only ever used to use that as an excuse to do stupid diets, which I don't do anymore, so... Yes, now I've given those up. I'm going to have a lovely dinner tonight. I'm going to treat myself to a little... I'm going to braise a couple of chicken thighs with white wine and garlic and sage, and then I'm going to make a lovely bossa bean situation with some pancetta and caramelised radishes. The butter bean what?

Situation. Sorry, I thought you just used a culinary term I wasn't familiar with. No, no, it doesn't really have a name. I'm just going to cook lots of delicious things together. Mostly, isn't it used to linger for an hour or so in the kitchen and have a nice little time? Maybe a little dance party. Very good. So we're back. We've had our little... So we're back. We've had our week off.

We have our little mini break to get up to much. Made stuff. Yeah, you made a very cool, relevant to this episode jacket. I have a jacket covered in bees. By the time we record the next episode, I will have a matching skirt covered in bees. What kind of skirt is it going to be? It is going to be a pencil skirt because that's all I've got the fabric for. I like a good pencil skirt anyway.

It is very nice learning to sew them because I cannot buy pencil skirts that fit me. I don't know who they're meant to fit really. We've got very different body shapes and neither risk can find pencil skirts that fit. Yeah, I mean, I've got like a fairly hourglass figure. I've got the waist to hip ratio, but then they never... Either they're way too constricting on the legs or they hang just in a really weird shape and are uncomfortable. Maybe the constricting thing is just one of those things you meant to get used to if you want to wear them. Yeah, but I like being able to take a step of more than a half an inch.

I'm reading about couture sewing techniques at the moment and the history of couture sewing with Andy Dandy Burke next to me. What's the difference between couture sewing and normal sewing? Well, so hope couture is a very, very specific protected term. There's a big council in Paris and for a house to call itself a hope couture sewing house, it has to show a certain amount of collections for this committee twice a year. So the spring, summer and the autumn, winter collection. Otherwise, you're just a sparkling seamstress.

Yes, there's a lot more hand sewing quite often. Almost entire garments are almost entirely done by hand. It's made for individuals. The French love their gatekeeping, don't they? You're talking about dresses that sell for like £500,000. Oh Jesus Christ, okay. What kind of techniques are you learning? Have you learned any or are you just learning like the background right now?

Right now I'm just reading about the background and some of the history of, but there's a lot in here about because the things I'm struggling with like how to line, especially when I'm doing some big two-piece garments like big fruity dresses and things, which is what I want to learn to make. I'm going to have so many ball gowns by the time this lockdown is over. So yes, that's what I've done with my little mini break. What have you been up to? What have I been up to?

I've been learning how to do video editing on my phone for stupid reasons. Annoyingly, it's significantly easier than, you know, I made the little promo video for the last episode with the Gepold nonsense. How do you call that nonsense? Yeah, I used my nice desktop software that I paid a reasonable amount for to do that. And I could have recreated it probably much more easily on the little phone thing that I bought for 20 quid. Yeah, I know it'll be good for this time. Before we dive into recording, I just want to quickly say,

neither of us are particularly active in any of the Terry Pratchett Facebook groups, mostly because we're not particularly active on Facebook. But we've heard that rampant transphobia has once again reared its ugly head, especially in the Facebook groups, or some of them, obviously. So we'd like to take an opportunity to say that we very much stand with our trans and non-binary and gender non-conforming listeners and Discworld fans in general. The Discworld and the associating fandom should very much be a lovely place for everyone. Yeah, trans-inclusive podcast chaps.

Is chaps, that's probably not the right word, this famous, is it? Darlings. I was hated, folks. Yeah, I don't like- Darlings is a little bit much for me. Yeah, see, I can pull off Darlings. You've got that extra level of posh in your voice. Sweethearts.

No, I can't pull off Sweethearts. I really want y'all to be a thing. Y'all should be more a thing. I end up fighting it quite a lot because it's very inclusive of class, gender. Yeah. Amount of people without having to look. The problem is, I can't say y'all without sounding like a very posh person trying to do a cowboy impression.

Exactly, exactly. I can type it, can't say it. One of my favourite words- And it would open the door- Oh, sorry. One of my favourite technically, grammatically correct shitload of contractions in a word is y'all out of- Yep, I was literally about to say that while they-

It opens the door to beautiful contractions. So, Joanna, as due to my myriad technical difficulties that I won't get into for the benefit of our poor darling listeners who put up with so much from us already, we probably better get on with it. Shall we make a podcast? Let's make a podcast. Hello and welcome to The True Shall Make You Freight, a podcast in which we're reading and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Discworld series,

one at a time, in Chorological Order. I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll. And this is part one of our discussion of Lords and Ladies. The- Fuck, what number are we on? Fourteenth. The Fourteenth Discworld Novel.

This is where our listeners finally learn that I cannot keep numbers higher than 10 in my brain consistently. All right, sorry. I haven't written down as a matter of course. So, yeah, note on spoilers before we crack on. We're our Spoiler Light podcast. Obviously, heavy spoilers for the book we're on, Lords and Ladies. 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. Hopefully, not through dimensions via a magical stone circle. Hopefully, but, you know, if that happens- That is to be avoided. So, yeah, this book, as you say, The Fourteenth, and it was published in 1992. At the start of what I think could be called the big boom of Discworld fervour,

because small gods kind of kicked that off. Yeah, small gods definitely ignited some fandom, didn't they? Yeah. And I had a look at Colin Smy's thing as usual, and it had mainly glowing reviews. One that I found slightly confusing, I'll read out. Which is, Pratchit has the kind of flair for somersaulting your preconceptions that Adam strives very hard to not quite achieve city limits. Yeah.

I'm not sure whether that was meant to be a diss on Douglas Adams. It reads like one, but it might be genuinely that Douglas Adams tries very hard to keep up with your conceptions in an amusing manner, I don't know. No, and we're back with The Witches. So this is the- We are back with The Witches. Third book that gives us the sort of trio, The Nanny Magra and Granny. And it kind of matters this time.

For the first, and I believe the last time, we have a little previously on written by Joe Pratchit on the author's note. Pre-prologue, there's a brief summary of the events of Weird Sisters and Witches Abroad. So we know why The Witches have been away for the winter, and why Magra and Varense are acting weird. And why Varense's king, but newly king, has had kingship thrust upon him. For any listeners who have not read those books and are listening in a strange order, I guess we won't go into spoilers. But yeah, just read that prologue, I should tell you more or less what you need to know,

but would thoroughly recommend you go back and at least read the rest of this arc. Yeah, yeah, it's nice. This is the whole thing we were talking about that small gods didn't do, but we're in that sort of mid-stage disc world where he goes back and visits previous characters. Yeah. So not again and again and again, but in this case, this is the second Witches book we've had in this. So we had Witches Abroad, small gods, and then this. So it's almost two Witches books in a row.

Yeah. And it's our first major revisit to the wizards since, I want to say Reaper Man. Yes, because that was only two books ago. Yeah. Look, time has been endless. Well, we did that one in the middle and then it was Christmas, so that's why I'm getting confused. Sorry, I'm not dissing you, I just can't remember anything myself.

That's cool. So yeah, so, and this is a kind of Witches Wizards combo, which is nice. We're not heavy wizard, but we've got a bit of wizard. Yeah, a bit of wizard around the edges. Like the salt on a margarita glass of Witch. Oh, I like that. I've been having fun with reading all the Pratchett's metaphors this morning. I think it must have rubbed off.

There is a particular simile in this book that I, in this section that I really, really love. Have you got it down? Yes, we will get to it. So yeah, do you want to summarize what happens in this section, actually? I will do. Meet myself and down a coffee while you wax lyrical about part one. Which ends at page 129. Did you say that already?

No, I didn't say it. So this section is from page one to page 129 in the Corgi paperback edition. Francine and I have matching editions this time. We do. I think we're now back on the same. I've got a little run of the normal editions now, so we'll be okay for a couple books. Excellent. So in part one, in the beginning, there was nothing which exploded.

Fast forward a few years as stones that love iron come crashing to the disc. Fast forward even further to a young woman with flowers in her hair, leading a boy on a merry chase. She stops at the stones to be briefly tempted with knowledge, get your mind out of the gutter, by a queen in a red dress. Fast forward even further to the present day as mysterious elves discuss their plans. On a dark night, Jason Ulck does his duty for death. On a brighter day, Granny, Nanny and Magra return home from their travels.

The witches are no longer abroad. Granny shoes a badger from the privy as Nanny inspects the handiwork of her daughter's in law and Magra frets before heading to the castle to see her possible intended, King Verence. The artist formerly known as the Fool, has the marriage arranged and ready to go, but his not-so-romantic proposal is rudely interrupted by an unexpected crop circle. The three witches meet to discuss the latest phenomenon, but Magra's lack of knowledge sends her tantruming off. Granny warns Nanny that the gentry might be coming,

and they agree to meet at the Standing Stones the next day. We witness the tragic death of William Scrope as something comes through the circle. Magra decides to move to the palace, tossing out her occult accoutrement along the way. After a brief elf interlude, Granny and Nanny meet at the Standing Stones and uncover Scrope's body as they realise someone's been dancing. Meanwhile, over in Ankh-Morporg, Arch-Chancellor Rick Cully wakes up his unseen university colleagues as he discovers a small, localised crop circle.

He's soon distracted by an invitation to the royal wedding in Lanka, his old stomping ground. He determinedly chivies his colleagues to join him. After a crop circle interlude, we see Magra learning to queen as Granny watches the bees and goes borrowing, and Nanny interrogates poor Jason. In their own ways, they both learn that young local girls have taken it upon themselves to learn witchcraft and have been dancing around the stones. Nanny warns Jason about them as her and the hunted lives up to his name. Back in Ankh-Morporg, Rick Cully rails at Daylight Robbery.

Granny and Nanny go to confront the dancing girls, and Granny accepts a challenge from Diamanda Tokli as a unicorn torments the town. A bored Magra attempts tapestry before learning of Granny's challenge and heading to the square to observe. Granny proves herself the better witch, and Nanny mentions receiving Magra's wedding invite and invites Magra to the entertainment Jason and the lads are preparing. We take a sneak peek at the first rehearsal before going back to Rick Cully and the gang

on their way to Lanka. Rick Cully's reminiscence is rudely interrupted by a diminutive highwayman, our old friend Katananda. Magra measures for curtains before wandering the gardens and visiting Hodj Sardar, the Falconer and Mr Brooks, the beekeeper. We end on the universe into lining up. I'd have to go back and check, but I feel as though your summaries are getting less and less abridged.

Yeah, I didn't really, I couldn't decide what to cut. I mean, I could absolutely decide what to cut, but it would have most been the alliteration that I was really proud of. Yeah, no, no, never cut the alliteration. Cut the actual sensible stuff before you cut the alliteration. So that's where we are in section one. So helicopter and loincloth watch. Shout out to Crispy Rolls from The Subreddit,

who I think at this point is the official podcast meme maker. I forgot to put them in the show next for last week. Have you been tweeting out the memes? I have been, but my favourite one possibly so far is that meme from the office, where it says, Corporate needs you to find the difference between these two pictures and Pam underneath, saying they're the same picture, but the two pictures are of a helicopter and a broomstick.

Excellent, good stuff. So on that note, helicopters represented by broomsticks. No official loincloths yet. Good, good. We all know they're there. Waiting to be discovered. So I put no turtle in the opening, but you've pointed out, yes, there is. Yeah, there is a...

Just mentioned after the Elephants this time for once. Yeah, there's a brief explanation that the Discworld travels through space on the back of four giant elephants, which stand on the shell of an enormous turtle. But we get the whole how the universe started bit first, so I'm still calling it not a turtle opening. Okay, sure. Is that just because I pointed out you were wrong?

Yeah. Okay, cool, cool. I'm so mature. Like how you suddenly took against personality quizzes after you got Jonah from Zephyr Store. I am not Jonah. I know you're not Jonah. I'm closer to Jonah than you are.

That's why it's funny. I don't have the energy to have that many opinions on things. By the way, there was a great recommendation to start with, and I've just slowly grown to hate that show. I think I'm going to have to stop watching it. I'm not enjoying it. I'm slogging through it. It definitely hit a point of cringe that I stopped enjoying,

but I'm such a completionist, and it was fine enough to be on in the background. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, I'll be honest. I'll probably have it on the background a couple of times while I'm doing tedious things, but... Yeah. It's not a watching during dinner one anymore.

No, that's fair. Some other stuff we're keeping track of. De. Right, yeah, podcast, sorry. Yeah, we're making podcast. You can talk about sitcoms afterwards. Fine. Like I'm ever not talking about, God, I love sitcoms.

Anyway, which is why WandaVision is so good. So, death is here. Good. Okay, fuck. Sorry. That's a progressive death threat, fine. Death is here in the book. Oh, good.

Okay, sure. Yes, twice. So... Pinky's getting chewed. Is that what it's called? Shooed, yeah. One shoe's a horse. He's chewed.

He, she, is chewed. They chewed. They chewed. They chewed. They chewed. Yeah. They hand-graded it. Shod, sorry.

They shod. They shod. He's getting shod, my bad. All right, so yes, death is here. Pinky's getting shod. So, we have still 14 books in, not had a single book without an appearance of the grim reaper. No, well, he's one of the only certainties in life. And the librarian does get explained, but in quite a nice way.

Where it's due to the... Yes, you know, how are they going to think of him in the mountains kind of way? Yes, and the wizards are sort of... No one notices he's an orangutan. They're sort of used to it. Yeah, and was it a magical accident? Yes, I suppose he must have been a man at some point. Shakes all of soups him.

I don't see how that's relevant. So, I think those are the only bits we're keeping track of that I think I noted. Cool. So, quotes. Am I first? You are first by a couple pages. Let's find mine. It was really hard to pick a quote from this because there's...

I know we say this every episode about every book, but this one's so good. Yeah, it's one of those ones where I could have picked out something very meaningful and I would have had to pick through 10, but instead just pick the one that made me laugh loudest, whereas I think you've gone for something meaningful. Yes, I have. So, mine is paid 76. There was a price. No one asked you to pay it, but the very absence of demand was a moral obligation.

You tended not to swat. You dug lightly. You fed the dog. You paid. You cared not because it was kind or good, but because it was right. And you left nothing but memories. You took nothing but experience. And this is on the matter of granny borrowing.

Yeah, the whole borrowing things got quite an interesting explanation in this one, hasn't it? Yeah, there's more layers to it. Yeah, especially... It's quite interesting in Canon retrospect that she taught Escarina borrowing as one of the first witchcraft things. As we now learn that Magra won't touch it and Annie Org's a bit nervous of it. Yeah, and it's quite a unique thing.

It's not really surprising that Esk went a bit mental on the power right away. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't teach that to a six-year-old for them. I don't know anything about it. All right. I wouldn't... Your mum's not in a complaint about it. Let's not go to mum's next thing, silly face. But it was the absence of demand was a moral obligation,

was my favourite part of that little section. That's just such a good line. Yeah, yes. And it brings true as all the best random witchy lines do. So, what was yours? Also, a Weatherwax adjacent one. Oh, no. I've turned to your page, not my page.

That's no good at all. It's no good for anybody. I'm sorry. This is when Diamander's playing with what are clearly tarot cards. There you go. It's got a picture of the moon on it, said Muscara. Of course, it's not a moon. It's a non-mimetic convention not tied to a conventional referencing system,

actually, said Diamander. Ah, Augusta rocked the cottage. The door burst open and slammed back against the wall, giving a glimpse of cloud-wrecked sky in which a non-mimetic convention was showing a crescent. Oh, I like that. He's just straight-up mocking his own character in the next line. I really love all the stuff with the young witches.

It's hilarious. Yeah. Especially reading it now are a little bit older, I think. I definitely sympathise more with them. I still sympathise with them. They are related more to them when I was a teenager reading this. I see. I never read this one as a...

Well, I would have been a teenager. I would have been 18, 19. I was more into the adulthood end of it. And I think I would have felt quite personally attacked reading the young witches if I'd read this at 14, 15. For sure. So, speaking of characters, should we talk about characters?

Yeah, all right. That seems like a thing we've got next on the plan. Fuck, I'm doing well. Okay. Granny Weatherwax, Joanna. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of characters to talk about. Obviously, some of them we've met already.

Some of them are completely new. But, yeah, Granny Weatherwax. One of the greats. Well, actually, we're going to talk about the witches first. And there's a really nice bit of description that just manages to sum up all three of their characters very handily, which is when they fly into Lanker on the broomsticks.

He said, The first one flies sitting bolt upright in defiance of air resistance and seems to be winning. The second is dumpy and bandy-legged with a face like an apple that's been left for too long and an expression of near-terminal good nature. The third is also the youngest, and unlike the other two who dress it like ravens,

she wears bright, cheerful clothes, which don't suit her now and probably didn't even suit her 10 years ago. She travels with an air of very good-natured hopefulness. Yeah. That's the reason I wear neutrals now. See, I'm just starting to embrace colours again. It's quite exciting for me.

Yeah, you went through a goth phase as a youngster. I went through a hippy phase, or like a psychedelic-y fashion phase, followed by an attempt to get into florals, which didn't really work. Look, I've got orange on my t-shirt. Yeah, I mean, I say I'm embracing colour, but I'm monochrome today.

I've got an orange sock. Good, well done. I'm glad we get sock updates from you every week now, Joanna. I can't remember how often I've left them in. The listeners need to know what mug I'm using, what socks I'm wearing. This is important. What mug are you using?

We're on Teal La Cruze today. Oh, nice. I like that. That's very classy. I've got a David from Schitt's Creek mug. You, David. You, David. Anyway, but we meet young Granny Weatherwax, and I think this is the first time we've heard about some of her youth in Lords and...

Not in Lords and Ladies, that's the book we're on. Which is abroad? We heard in abstract terms about her youth and which is abroad, didn't we, yeah? Yeah, but this is obviously... We didn't get any flashback bits, yeah. In her later teens, and she's decided to... She, at this point, has definitely decided to become

not just a witch, but the best witch there's ever been. Yeah. Even if no one wants to teach her. But I quite like the description. She's not beautiful. There's a certain glint in her eye, generally possessed, by those people who found that they're more intelligent than most people around them,

but who haven't yet learned that one of the most intelligent things they can do is prevent people over finding out. Yeah. Teenage Granny must have been fucking unbearable. Oh, yeah. She must have been a dick. Like, Diamanda Plus. Yeah. It's got to be why she hates Diamanda, right?

She can see herself in it. It's the same thing as with Lily. She doesn't like anyone she sees herself in. Yeah. She's a past self in. Does not, like, confronting herself. Yeah. But, yeah, she's a... It's nice to have her fleshed out slightly more as someone who hasn't always been...

The witch that she is now. The immovable object, yeah. Yeah. You can see some of the doubt and uncertainty in the sort of, there's flowers in her hair. It's been that sort of afternoon. Ran a little bit too fast. Yep. That'll come up later.

We'll talk about that. And it's vaguely come up. We already know it was clearly Ridcully, didn't we? Because he was talking about the girl who was striking not pretty. Yeah. It's by the end of the section, we can infer that the boy is Ridcully to young Esme. But, no, there's something else.

Has anyone written a nice fan fiction about what if... Someone must have. There was something else. Nothing. I don't want anything dirty. I just want a nice, like, easily tied up. Oh, and then we're happy together, so... Yeah. Just a nice little them in a cottage or something. Yeah. I think it's funny.

The other trouser leg of time version of those two. Yeah. But, yeah, not dirty. Please don't write... Feel free to write dirty discord fanfic if that's your cup of tea. I'm not judging. Please don't send it to us. No, don't feel free to write that. I'm judging.

Going right back to episode one here. I'm judging you. No, you're kidding. You're very talented on this podcast. I can tolerate Discworld or Roscoe, provided I don't have to read it. But there's a couple of good granny moments in this just on her own. One of them is when she's come home and she's showing the badger at the privy and she's looking at the clock and winding it up.

And it's the clock that used to be her mother's. And we don't hear a lot about her relationship with her parents, but when they're talking about the funeral and how she was so prepared, she didn't have a chance to cry until in the middle of the lunch when the clock had stopped and she suddenly drops the hand rolls and has to go and have a little sit down. Yeah, a little cry there. And just that really, really perfect description of grief in like four lines.

Obviously, we waxed lyrical about how Reaper Man really beautifully handled the subject of grief through a whole book, but the fact that he can do it here in such a short thing gave me a minute of... I'm just going to go put the book down and turn a couple of circles around the room, I think. And it beautifully humanised her as well. Yeah, because she is... I think as we get into like the mid-stage disc world, he's fleshing out all of the characters quite a lot.

But with Granny especially, she does start as such a severe crone figure that it's really good, because Witches Abroad gets them fleshing out very much in her power and who she is as a Witch now. Yes. This gives us a lot more fleshing out of how she becomes that Witch. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, and it's a lot easier to show with Nanny Elk and Magra, isn't it?

Because Granny's character is predicated on, as it says, her having already learned to hide the emotional. That she is. That's the answer, yeah. Yeah. Whereas Magra... Sorry, speaking of Nanny... Oh, the only other thing I was going to say on Granny before we get to Nanny is just that

she's got the Iatent Dead sign while borrowing, and I can't remember if this is the first time we've seen the sign or not. I think it might be, yeah. I think this might be the birth of Iatent Dead. Yeah, and that... I don't remember it being in Weird Sisters, I can guarantee. It wasn't in Weird Sisters, and I don't think it was in Witches Abroad either. No, she didn't do any borrowing in Witches Abroad.

Yeah, so here we are. Iatent Dead. This might be a thing. Yeah. So yeah, so who else we got? So we've got Nanny being Nanny. Love Nanny. We do love Nanny.

I don't have huge amounts to say on all of these characters. I just like saying hi to them in this section. She did a good job, I thought, as she did in the last book, of neutralising Granny's stubbornness with a smart trick. Yes, that is one of her... Sort of, I can't remember how much I got into this sort of headcanon back in, which is abroad, or Weird Sisters, but Nanny quietly actually being the sort of more powerful, which is definitely something that still floats around my brain,

especially in this section, but I'll get on to their contrasting styles of witchcraft later. And we've got Magrat the Almost Queen. Almost Queen Magrat. Apparently she can become a witch queen, but it involves a lot of low-cut dresses and poison apples. Yeah, yeah, she's poor Magrat. I'm still like seeing a bit too much of myself in her and having to confront that, especially with...

I'm happily not this time, I must say. She's just being a bit wet. It's the stubbornness, and it's a different sort of stubbornness to Granny's stubbornness, where she's being silly. Do you know what? That's not fair. She's not being wet. She's, you know, she started the Queening and she was like, right, I'm going to learn how to do this then, which would be quite a ordeal.

Yeah, the Queening does sound incredibly dull. Glad I'm not royalty. Yeah. As if that was an option open to us, I think. Well, when I eventually, you know, wait for someone I'm mates with to form an empire and then sign up for a seat of power. Yeah, yeah. King Verrant.

King Verrant's the second of Lanka. The artist formerly known as the Fool. Yeah, I guess we're seeing from him, he's turning into one of these aristocratic academics that Britain used to have a surplus of a couple hundred years ago. He's also got a bit of the Prince Charles thing to him or sort of the, yes, yes, what do you do? Yeah, kind of distracted, genial. Yes, very interesting legumes.

It was because he wasn't raised as royalty, he's determined to actually do the best for the country. Yeah. And some of that is sort of under his agreement of how he became king with the help of the witches. He's like a properly benevolent version of Lilith from the last one. Yes. Organize the country in a good way, but it's like taking it on the chin when they throw it back. Yeah, trying to sort out democracy. Yeah.

I feel like they would have given women the vote had they done the Lanka thing. It doesn't seem like King Verrant's as much of a sexist. I did note that they were doing the Greek version of democracy. Oh, sorry, the Athenian. I think it's more sort of that's just sort of the way things are. Sorry. It's sort of that sort of the way things are in Lanka. It's still quite oldy-worldy.

We're looking at like sort of medieval to Tudor-ish area that we're paralleling. Yeah. And the wives are very much wives and the widow becomes very much a widow. Yeah, that's true, yeah. Bet you half a dollar. Best way to announce a death. Yep. There's a couple of little, these aren't like major characters, but just mentions.

The sort of king-ish of the local dwarfs. And obviously we learned from a different book that King is more like head of the mine rather than actual royalty when it comes to dwarfs. Yeah. But he's Mr. Iron Foundersen. And I don't remember if we've learned yet that another character's surname is Iron Foundersen. I believe we did. We probably did because he signed up officially and everything, didn't he?

Yeah, either way, it's not a major spoiler. I'll cast it if we didn't, but it's Carrot. Yeah. I'll double check. Carrot from the watchbook's surname is Iron Foundersen. I don't think that's a huge spoiler. It doesn't match it, does it? Anyway, it's not plot point, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. It's not a major relevant thing. It's just sort of quite nice that, oh, the Carrot came from near here. Yeah. Isn't that nice? And then there's obviously Hwell and Vittola and the play company from Whids. It's just aren't here because they're touring Clatch, but Hwell's written a nice little play for the wedding.

But it's just nice to know they're still sort of around and doing their thing, really, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. And then into rank Moorpork. Into the university. Into the university, like I said. We're back with the Whizzards. But Rid Cully and his early rising. Uh, as in he gets up early in the morning, Francine, honestly.

No, I wasn't. I was just laughing at the passive aggressive post-it notes. You're the one with the fucking dirty mind, Jesus. Hang on, wait. How are my post-it notes passive aggressive? No, he has passive aggressive notes. Oh. The point of the early rising section.

Sorry. Jesus. You agreed to make a podcast with it. I'm not attacking you. I'm sorry. I'm laughing at the funny bit in the funny book. This is what happens when you agree to make a podcast with a living shitpost. Anyway, yes, Rid Cully and his funny post-its.

Yeah. I'm sorry, Francine. They're funny, aren't they? They are funny. Not an insult. Yeah. Yes. Much the same as he was last time we saw him in the boisterous

room. Let's go, lads, ahead of the university. Yeah. And the bursar is very much still. Pulling the bursar into further insanity. But poor Bursar's still living off his nerves. This is where my favorite simile of the entire book came in, which is, Rid Cully's asking if Bursar would like a little time away from the university.

I should like that very much. Archchancellor said the Bursar, hope rising in his face like an autumn mushroom. I must have skim read that. That is very beautiful. I think I might make it like a writing exercise for myself to try and write a practitian metaphor per day. That's a nice thing.

It's like a doable challenge, isn't it? Do you want to get on board with that? Yes. I mean, I won't stick to it. I'm going to say that. I'll try and remind you. Yeah. Excellent.

But yeah. Go in there, listeners. Yes. Send us your practitian metaphors and similes. Metaphor corner. Yes. It's a metaphorical corner too. It's not real.

So that's appropriate. I was going to try and come up with something really clever off the cuff and then realise that improv terrifies me so my brain just completely stopped working. No thoughts. Poor little theatre kid. It's been too long. Traumatised by improv. There's a really lovely bit later on though when they're in the coach and heading towards

Lanke and Red Cully has his reminiscence about what's obviously granny. And he sort of has to keep going over and over again. There was this girl. There was this girl. Eyes like gimlets, which is a fun little callback as well. Yeah. But it's quite sweet. Yes, it is.

I think this is, I think this is probably the first book where Bersar is insane all the way through as well, isn't it? And the drive-throw pills, this is their first appearance. This is. Yeah. And then we've also got, amongst the wizards, we have Ponder Stibbins, the reader in Invisible Writings. Yes.

The new and very junior position amongst the faculty. The senior faculty, yes. We have met Ponder before. Obviously, he was Victor, do I mean Victor? He was his, what's his, chops his classmate back in moving pictures. So he's worked his way up. He was in Reaper Man as well, but he was a fairly small part. What was he in Reaper Man?

I don't think he, I think he was, he was a student. Was he still, he was still a student. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because he was, he had a sort of whole segment of trying to sneak out of the university to go for a drink and horrible things kept happening to him. That's it, yeah, yeah. So it's the first time we get Ponder Stibbins as a member of the senior faculty and he's the young wizard with the new ideas around the high energy magic building where they're like splitting

towns and things. Yeah. I quite like the idea of the whole Invisible Writings thing as well. Yes, his job is to read the books that haven't been written yet. Yeah. So similar to practice other theories of like future wine and. Yes, well, I mean, Ponder's very into all of this quantum and continuum things, but as our listeners now I refuse to have them sleep.

Don't say quantum again. That was Ridcully I was quoting, not me, but also you can take that from me. Careful, we don't want to wang the physicists. I like the idea of alienating an entire sector of the scientific community, but I do know that some of the listeners I like quite a lot are physicists. So yeah, I won't run with that too much. I think our esteemed meme maker, as mentioned earlier, mentioned they were a physicist. So yes, so we don't dislike all physicists.

Carifying the podcast dance on quantum physics. We have nothing against it. We should probably write a handbook of our stances on things so we don't forget. How do I feel about quantum physics this week? Terrified. I don't want to learn. Always terrified. And the continuum.

Continuinianium. Continuinium. Anyway, Casanunda. So something that's not just random syllables. Casanunda, who hopefully you'll remember from which is abroad. The finest swordsman, soldier of fortune, outrageous liar, stepladder is required. Yeah, we saw a business card this time. Fuck, I'm into business card after I saw that and I haven't.

All right, I'm putting that on homework underneath metaphor. These are really good notes. Metaphor, business card. I'm sure I'll know what these mean come tomorrow. So yes, Casanunda, the world's second greatest lover. But he tries harder. But he does try harder. So yeah, hopefully you'll all remember him from which is abroad and his lovely little

lacination with Nanny. So yeah, which is also a sort of question I have. So he's in January at the time of the ball in which is abroad. Nanny, Granny and Magra have obviously gone the long way around to come by and spent the winter traveling and whatnot. But he happens to have also found himself spending the winter traveling and whatnot and ending up in almost exactly the same place. Fate is a strange thing.

It is a strange thing. Or possibly he was able to follow the tales of terrified locals. Yes, quite possibly. If he really wanted to second date with Nanny. I mean, who wouldn't? Well, quite. That's got to be one of the most interesting nights of his life, certainly. Yes.

Well, they did end up in a clock. Happens all the time. I'm just going to keep winking at these actual descriptions of events in this. They're very complex. Double entendre. And then we have found ourselves in a clock, so to speak. No, a literal clock. I know what you mean.

Okay. And then we have the new Coven. So we've got Diamanda, Lucy Tockley, Perdita Knit, who had once mainly been Agnes Knit. And well. Amanita. We've got Amanita, Mascara. It's Amanita device, which reminded me of

Agnes device. Anathema. Anathema. Thank you. Oh, I was thinking of Agnes Knott. Agnes Knott, so yeah. Yeah. Project definitely kind of rejigged a few favourites for this plan.

Yeah. And Mascara, who used to be called Susan. Yeah. Yes. As we said slightly earlier, like I can see quite a bit of myself in the team, which is the non-mimetic. What does mimetic mean? Sorry.

What does mimetic mean? Like a depiction of, like I think it's from the same root word as mimicry. Gina, I've said that with reasonable confidence and I have less than 10% certainty on that, so let me just double check. Relating to constituting or habitually practicing mimesis. Thank you. Mimesis. Yeah, imitation.

Yeah. Okay, good. So she is really just being a prick, because every picture is an imitation of something in the house. Well, she says it's non-mimetic. I was like, did you ever have that art teacher thing where they showed you a picture of a key? Like, what is this?

And the class of Spanish is going, a key. Yeah. And they know it is a picture of a key. I was like, oh, thanks, Mr. Smith. And I clicked up. Wow, mind opened. Wow, such metaphor. Such metaphor.

And then we've got the elf queen, dark-haired woman in a red dress lurking in a circle. In a red quest. Red dress. Always match your dresses to your quests. Obviously. Jesus, who needs to be told that? I'm sorry. I don't know who's listening.

We might have people who've never been on quests in dresses at all. Wow. Unlikely, I know in this day and age. Yes, who hasn't been on a quest in a dress? Anyway, how many times have I said the word anyway, just in the characters section? Oh, I love us. So, yes, we've got the elves. One of the other elves, one of the other elves is called Lankin,

which, according to Annotated Pratchett, is a reference to a character from an old folk song. Very nice. Um, we'll obviously spend a bit more time with them as the book goes on. Yes, I've got, this book is the one that I've got, like, a bunch of crap, but marked from over the months that I keep coming. I kept coming across like, ooh, elf related. Yeah.

So, we've got lots of other things for next week. We've got PowerPoint presentations. Who else do we have? We've got Herna hunted, who we met back in Weird Sisters. Our lovely little rabbit terrified god. Terrified pray god. Bless his cons. Millie Chum from the village,

who's now apparently learning to be a lady's maid and basically just curtsies constantly, and bless her, I think she's very sweet. It's another one of those just nicely rolls off the tongue, side character names that I at one point said I would keep track of and never did. Millie Chillum, that's the full name. Ah. I've written it down wrong in the, in the notes.

Yeah. Mum. Yes, mum. Yes, mum. And we've got Hodja. Hodja. Hodja. The, the castle falconer who struggles because

lancobirds are particularly stubborn dickheads. Again, not a metaphor. I like the sort of rules of falconry as well. So the kings are not a guy falcon. Elves are allowed a peregrine. Priests can have sparrow hawks and commoners are allowed a stick to throw. I was going to go into. There are some parallels aren't there?

Like that was a thing. There was a hierarchy of who could fly what. Yeah, it's just not really interesting. No. It is interesting that there was one, and those who are interested in that kind of thing will, by definition, be interested in this, but I will link to it. Yeah.

There is one discrepancy is the stuff about the queens not being able to fly quite such exciting birds. I don't think has as much basis in history. But my falconery knowledge is comparatively limited. So. Comparate, compatible. Somebody knows a lot about falconry. Okay.

So I'm not meaning to be addicted. My natural confusion is coming out as like aggressive question. To be fair, I mentioned being in a quite good mood with high self esteem this week. So it's only fair that you don't have to get me back on my base level of self loathing and existential dread. Anyway, so birds exist. Mr. Brooks, the Royal Beekeeper. From the birds to the bees, we go to much better segue.

Mr. Brooks, the Royal Beekeeper. Yeah. And this is something that's suspiciously Republican smile. My favorite description of a person in the book. There are a couple of things I've noted in this that we won't get to talk about for a really long time, but one of them is describing Mr. Brooks as almost the closest a man could get to a witch in his sort of relationship. Oh yeah, really long time.

Yeah. In his relationships with the bees and his knowledge of them and stuff and the fact that he has his shed. Yeah. Yes. His arcade knowledge in one very specific area. Yes. And yes.

He enjoyed the fact that the cook also gets an honorific as one of the few revered. Yes. He gets an honorific, the butler and the cook. Is it allowed to be, I know chefs get upset if they're called cooks. So you're allowed to be a cook if you work for a private household? I believe so. I don't, so the word chef has origins in the French word chief, in the French for chief. Okay.

So technically a chef is somebody who runs a kitchen and if you work below that, you're not a chef, you're a cook. Obviously it's more complicated now and you have commie chefs and nine cooks and. Yeah, two chefs and such. Yes. But as there was also a strange thing that for a very long time women would never be referred to as chef. So in this case, as it's women who would work in these domestic settings running kitchens,

they would be a misses and they would be a cook. Very good. I mean, not very good, very interesting. Yeah. Um, pretty bad. We don't like sexism on this podcast. That can go in the handbook. Sexism thumbs down.

Sexism thumbs up. It's very simple rating system. So who else do we have? We've got Jason Og. I love Jason Og. I think he's really sweet. He is. He's very good.

Character. Searing analysis, Francie, and a very good character. No, he's a good egg. Um, he's good. He's got slight himbo vibes. Yeah, I'm not into this himbo thing. I'm not into it as a whole. It's a taking, it's reappropriating.

I don't, I feel, I feel bad for anybody labeled as such. I think you just mean, you know, the sort of big, quiet, quite sweet types that happen to be built like an oxen. Yes. Um, but he's a nice character. He is a nice character and he's very good at his job. He is very good at his job. He can chew anything.

Because he's allowed to be. Yes. The fact that he can chew anything means he has to chew anything. Oh, it's like the, uh, it's a mirror of the, the absence of asking is the, you know, the thing you highlighted with your quote. Oh, uh, the very absence of demand was a moral obligation. Yeah.

Yes. Kind of. Oh yeah. I hadn't thought of that. Uh, yeah. I'm not sure, not as well, which again, I think he's quite a sweet character. He's very enthusiastic.

Oh, Jason. Oh, just before I. Oh, sorry. Move on because there's nowhere else I'm going to be able to mention this, but, um, he's got a really simple way of finding out the horseman's word, but I think it might be an L space. I read this or it might have been somewhere else, but, um, the various myths about how one learns the horseman's word are quite interesting.

There's a, I think English one, which has something to do with boiling a toad in the moonlight and then putting the bones in the river and then one bone floats upstream and you grind that down and then they smelt it probably. Whereas Jason, I think just got it handed down to him, didn't he? Yeah. It was handed down to Jason and then handed back up to Nanny because she threatened him. And then at some point given to granny because she threatened him and the horseman's word itself is to threaten the horse.

Yeah. But not Binky. Binky doesn't need a threat. Well, Binky is very well behaved. Binky is a very good horse. And then, yeah, Sean, the, Who's just very sweet and very enthusiastic. A very busy dog.

He's a very busy dog. Trying to battle and foot, footmen and Considering Nanny is an old lady. Yeah. Or certainly old, elderly, whatever. I always imagine Sean is like a barely 20 something. But he's my son. Yeah.

Jason and Sean are both her sons, she thinks. She's not great with the counting. Yeah. I mean, I picture Jason slightly older, like I have him in his 30s. Yeah. As he's got a kid as well. Pucie is his. But yeah, Sean, I always think of as like late teens, early 20s.

Still a bit sort of shorty, greasy spot spot. Exactly. Yeah. But yeah, I know he must be a bit older. He's just got the air of the teen about him, hasn't he? Yes. But yeah, I think he's quite sweet. I love him running around and trying to cram his wig on and

getting carried away with his fanfares. And I see you've put a really important character at the end here, which in no way is a way to shoehorn in a dirty joke reference. What a bestiality carter. Yeah. I just thought the whole carter family thing is very funny that they've started with the sensible thing of naming their daughters Hope, Chastity, Prudence and Charity, and then got a bit confused when it came to the sun.

So they've got anger, jealousy, bestiality and covetousness. Bestiality got the short end of that stick, didn't he? But he's very kind to animals. Yeah. Bestiality, for instance, was very kind to animals. Whereas the girls, though, the girls, Hope's depressed. Chastity is enjoying life as a lady of negotiable affection in Ink Moorburg. Which, again, might be one of our discos first. Sparkling seamstress.

Sparkling seamstress. I think that might be one of the first times we've had them referred to as ladies of negotiable affection within the book. Yeah, maybe. But I really love the phrase. I've come a long way since Horpitz, haven't I? We have come a long way since the Horpitz of yore. And thank goodness that pink pigment was very difficult to get hold of.

Moving swiftly on to locations. So we've got lots of places, although we're mostly just hanging out in Lanka. We've got the Elfland, or the land of Elves. Hmm, land of eternal winter. Time does not pass, or it is cold. It's not winter, it's a land of ice. Winter, because winter, yeah. Presumes an autumn and a spring.

This is a land of ice, not just a time of ice, which I just thought was a fantastic description. And I'm going to talk more about the Elfland, as we talk more about the Elves as well in later sections. But if anyone listening fancies a bit of advanced reading, it's not a particularly long book. I really recommend The King of Elfland's Daughter by Arthur Dunsony, which is a very early fantasy book.

It was published in 1924. And it's considered to be one of those big proto-inspirational fantasy books, like Tolkien held in the same sort of fame as things like Tolkien. And it's sort of a story of a kingdom that lives next to the land of Elves, and someone wants to marry a daughter. Okay, cool. And yeah, it's not too long. It's a really beautiful book,

and I think there's definitely some inspiration taken from it here. Yeah, the eternal ice thing was giving me vague Narnia vibes, but I suspect that's been used in a lot of fantasy. No, I can see. I definitely kind of got the Narnia vibe as well, especially with the Queen having similar vibes to the Witch Queen. He's definitely... Oh, wow, I just opened that on the right page by accident.

He's definitely referencing a bunch of fantasy through, like when he was talking about the new directions that had to be invented, wasn't he? Like the... Yeah, there's a bunch of... One of those is a reference to something from King of Elves Land's daughter. It is, is it? Yeah, because I recognize there and back again, obviously.

Yeah, that's the topic. What's the page number? 85. 85. Yeah. The back of Beyond is like obviously quite not saying. Beyond the fields we know is from King of Elves Land. Very cool.

That's where the Elf Kingdom is located. That's sort of how it's referred to. I'm guessing one of the others is Lilligwain or something and... Quite possibly, yeah. Elves Land's probably has it, don't they? It does. I don't have the tab up anymore, no, I don't know. I don't know, that's all right.

Irrelevant. Yes. Yes, absolutely not irrelevant, for once. Well, quite relevant. Quite relevant, but... We can circle back around to that speaking of circles. Oh, oh, very good. We've got the dances.

Maybe it would be smoother if we didn't call attention to it every time we successfully say quiet. That's not the sorts of podcast we are fancying. The dances, this is not the stone circle as we met back in The Light Fantastic, but those sorts of stone circles are mentioned through it's building them as weather computers. And there's lots lying around because it's cheaper to build a new 33-megalith circle than upgrade an old slow one. Yeah.

Which is a nice little reference, but these are these stones that love iron and they have been placed around. So it's not that because the stones are there, this is a magical circle, they have been placed around an area where the worlds are thin. Even the way where he, like right at the beginning, where he's just describing what magnets are in that way of the stones that love iron, isn't it beautiful? It is.

It's one of my favorite things where it's something completely normal to us described through this fantasy. There's a word for that that I found that I never told you. Huron. Oh my God, did you thank? Because this has come up a bunch of times, hasn't it? I know it has. Yeah.

Carrie, talk about what you're talking about for a second. Let me see if I can find it again. Yeah. So one of the things, it's just a little thing that I noticed. As they're talking about, the wizards are talking about going to Lanka for the wedding and some of them are complaining it's too far. Ridiculay says, no, they've got that new term pike open all the way to Stohelit. Coaches every Wednesday.

And as we get into this mid-stage disc world and we start revisiting characters and then we get something like this where the wizards are going to go and, or some of the wizards are going to go and hang out with the witches. As the world building gets bigger and more detailed, the world also becomes smaller or at least closer in a really good way. It stops feeling like these are, there's a city and there's another, you can go back and forth between these places, which means we can see more of the characters interact with each other.

I think it's a really lovely part of seeing the books develop. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. He ties the, he ties it all together a lot more. Yeah. So that just excites me. And I thought that little mention of it's really easy to just get a coach over to Stohelit. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. He's definitely trying to wreck on a bit more sophisticatedly. Yes. If you compare this to the journey that like rinse wind and two flower went on back in colour of magic, especially where they were apparently walking for days and carrying on dragons and these huge swaths of octurine grass, country, etc.

Which in fairness, they were very bad at getting places. So they were particularly bad at getting places. You are. And then yeah, lastly, I wonder if, as we're in Lanka, that we get a description of what's quite normal for Lanka. Big well wind on Hogswatch night. One of brother peasants hens laid the same egg three times. Portiax cow gave birth to a seven-headed snake.

There was a rain of frogs over in slice. I think, yeah, that was kind of established in weird sisters. Was it? Yeah. This is just sort of what this sort of places are. Kind of weird, don't go humans through. Yeah. Yeah.

Everyone needs their omens. It's been a while since we had ne amphibious rain. It's a small country. We can only afford rain of frog. It's just one frog. Right. So that's all the locations. I found what I was looking for.

Oh, so yeah. What's the word? Not in life as a like. Yeah. No, I didn't think the definition of a word or the word of the definition, in fact, working the other way around the. Yeah. De familiarization or Ostronini.

I'm very sorry. I've definitely mispronounced that. It's Russian. Ostronini. Sorry, I said it again. Ostronini. I don't know. It's busting out the Russian accent.

All right. Do you want to hear the fucking definition? Sorry. Make attention. I really don't have the right to be like that. I talk over you constantly. It's the artistic technique of presenting for audiences common things in an unfamiliar or strange way so they can gain new perspectives and see the world accordingly.

Marvelous. Which is what Pratchett does and what we're always on about. And I didn't even realize there was a word for it until I came across it randomly the other day. Excellent. I didn't even try and look it up. Although it did just take me a full five minutes googling to find it this time. So I probably would have given up before I got there. Yeah, that's fair.

Right. So on to the. Oh yeah. On to the podcast. Little bits that we liked. This bit can go in the show. Trolls and time. First off we're throwing away.

As always we're slightly over running but I think we had a full section of stuff that can't go in at the beginning of the recording, didn't we? Oh yeah. Yeah. Trolls and time. Yeah, this is right at the beginning. Young granny has been going off to talk to people and learn about things. And trolls think time goes backwards because you can see the past.

Is this the first time we hear this? I think it's yeah and it's a fun little well-building detail. Did we not get it in moving pictures? We might have done. I'm not sure if we did. No, we got troll counting in moving pictures. That's it, yeah. One, two, many lots.

Yeah, we start getting a little bit of a hint of trolls having a more interesting. Nature. And yeah, culture or whatever. Right, royal fashion. Varence is sent off to Boggies in Ankh-Morpork to get all of the latest royal fashions for Margaret. I'm sure mean Boggies is meant to be like a reference to Gucci or something. Yeah, probably.

Yeah, that all may be one of the royal tailors on Seville road. Yes, Seville road is where the road is where the tailors are. But I did do a quick bit of googling about what some of the things are. The pantuffle, which is... Sounds like a dessert. A pantuffle is a type of shoe. It's an overslipper. It doesn't go there, then.

Unless you're talking shoe pastry. I'm a delight. Ooh, a clasp. Sorry. Might make a clasp. I haven't learned to clarinators. I haven't made them in ages. The farthingale, which she refers to as things like saddlebags and the kind of

other, these big padded hip things that go here, which is what makes the... Sorry. Oh. Yeah. Big padded hip things. So, in theory, I could wear those 50s dresses that looked terrible on me. If you had a farthingale. If I wanted to wear saddlebags.

I had to wear something like that back in when I was studying drama and I was in a production of Seven and Two Masters, which is a play from the 18th century. And luckily, the character I was playing was dressed as a man for most of the plays and my outfit was quite comfortable, but I did have to throw on one of the proper feminine outfits for right at the end. And it did involve wearing these big hip pad farthingale type things to make the skirt do the sort of... So, it goes straight down and then it sort of almost goes out horizontally at the hip.

I don't know that for a long time. Yeah, especially as I had literally three minutes to change from my men's outfit into my women's outfit and get back on stage. Future memory, Francine. What of it? Oh, that's me. Yeah, no, I just like the way that he described Granny Weatherwax's apparent impending demise kind of looming up as a blankness in front of her.

And so it's quite a nice concept anyway of kind of having a vague sense of the future. And it kind of ties in with what they were saying about L Space and the future books, whatever. But I particularly just liked the... It has much the same effect on a witch as emerging from a cloud bank and seeing a team of Sherpas looking down on him, doesn't it? An airline pilot. Yes, I like that one.

It's not a good simile. Yeah, and then speaking of simile. Ah. Damn it, we nearly made through. When the wizards are traveling up to Lanka when we're well underway already and we're talking about Rigkali's recollections, Rigkali says, you know, when they say things like she had a laugh like a mountain stream, I'm not personally familiar with it, said Ponda, but I've read poetry that load of covellers poetry, listen to mountain streams and they just go trickle,

trickle, gurgle. Pratchett likes having definitely like self deprecating jobs with poets because obviously he's very poetic himself. But I think that that sense of how ridiculous metaphor can be within poetry is what drives his like beautifully unpoetic metaphors as I think before, like the deliberately sore thumb, ugly metaphors that just work much better than something pretty would. It's also a great thing with Rigkali's character. And I think it's the next section we get something about like,

Rigkali wasn't stupid, he just had a very directional sense of intelligence. It is the section. Yeah, the locomotive mind is when Stibbins is trying to explain the puzzle with the Oh, yeah, the one. Casting on just like stab one stab one of them and threaten the other one. Rigkali's like, yep, that tracks and Ponda sort of so good. No, it's a puzzle. It's logic.

Do you know the answer to that puzzle? I always forget. No, all I can remember is the bit in the labyrinth where she's like, no, I've definitely figured this out. I never could before. And then she falls down into the v yet. You've not seen the labyrinth. Okay.

I have seen the labyrinth. Oh, you have seen the labyrinth. It's just very long time ago, not since I was a young teenager, I think. So that moment is one of my favorite things on film just because of how they made it and my whole overwhelming love of practical effects. And there are actually loads of people with gloves on sticking their hands through a wall catching her and making these faces and stuff.

Can we watch that together at some point and you can tell me what's happening in a media way? Yes, we can because I'm always very excited about how the Henson company makes stuff. And then Shakespeare references, you've got bookmarked. There's a few. This isn't the biggest section for them. So obviously Weird Sisters was like a direct parody of Macbeth and then which is abroad moved away from Shakespeare and more into the fairy tale.

This is there are bits of Midsummer Night's Dream, but there's also lots of lovely little bits thrown in from other Shakespeare plays. There's even and I'm unfortunately didn't write this one down, but there is a quote for this meant sort of a reference to the Jew of Malta, Christopher Marlowe play. Oh, so I'll double check that and let you know next week. Can we stab Shakespeare and stab Shakespeare or no, got stabbed in the eye in a tavern fight. Which means he wasn't Shakespeare. Yeah.

Or he faked his own death and then continued to be Shakespeare. That's it. Yeah. The guy that wrote the guy that wrote Faustus, we talked about him. There's some are born great. Some achieve greatness. Some have greatness thrust upon them. That reference when we're talking about him, is it?

That Shakespeare. That's from Twelfth Night. Oh, sorry. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's not Malta. Yeah.

Twelfth Night. Yeah. Sorry. I can't remember. I came up with a lot of stuff. Didn't he Shakespeare? He did. There's a whole piece.

Someone's noted. Cruel to be kind as a Shakespeare one. That's not in this. That's just that's one of those things that comes from Shakespeare. In fact, cross be kind. I think it's from Macbeth. There's a line I've crept about at nights that the Queen says and that is I believe a Midsummer Night's Dream line.

I would have to double check. And then there is also going to be a Fairy Queen, Elf Queen, which is so Midsummer Night's Dream. You have Titania Queen of the Elves and Oberon the King. Fairies rather than elves, but same thing as far as this book's concerned, I'd say. It's definitely all the stuff about elves and the mythology and yeah, leaving out the milk. That's all very fair, but they're also referred to as elves. Yes, it's a beautiful story of the love of the Queen of the fairies for a more

humorous interlude with comic artisans, which is the the rude mechanicals bit of Midsummer Night's Dream. These are the guys who were going to put on a play and eventually put on the play within a play. Which is what's going on here. Yeah. Yeah. Got a play within a play and they're doing within a thing about a thing. It's referencing a thing that's a thing in a thing.

Yes, it's a. Theatre all the way down. Even at regression. The approximate carpenter, I thought was a rather good artisan name. Yeah. Overdia carpenter the tailor. I nearly put that in characters, but it's literally just a great name. But they're talking about why has there got to be a lion in it?

And that's a reference to the. Tragical tale of Pyramus and Theisby, which is the play within Midsummer Night's Dream. All right. Okay. Which involves someone getting eaten by a lion. And then obviously there's that no one would want to see a play if it had a donkey in it. Which is actually in. In Midsummer Night's Dream.

Midsummer Night's Dream, yeah. Boston is turned into an ass, which gives us the brilliant line from Titania. And we thought I was enamored of an ass, which is one of my favorite Shakespeare quotes. It did have fun, didn't it? Now, bees. Bees. So bees are a big theme in this book. The bees are there.

Bees are there. We like bees. Everyone likes bees. I'm glad everyone's coming around to bees. I'm a big fan of bees. Bees make the best houses. They do. No, that's because they use hexagons.

Literally. The hexagons are the bestagons. Hexagons are the bestagons. Did I link to that video in the last time I said that? I'm here. Probably not. I'm trying to do that. Yeah.

CGP Grey's video. Hexagons are bestagons. That's my recommendation. I did do some looking into hexagons, and it is the most efficient structurally sound shape. Yes. That was the base to some up CGP Grey's video. Yeah. In this, like I said, accidentally opened the Encyclopedia Britannia,

and there's 19 pages on bees. That's like one of the good, probably full pages about all the people who tried to prove the bees wrong, basically. And then over and over again, the bees got it right. Yeah, hexagons are the bestagons. I did try and sort of, obviously, everything written about how bees operate is fairly accurate. Terry Pratchett himself was an avid beekeeper to the point where he even wrote complaint letters to gardener's magazines because they've got beekeeping facts wrong.

Very important stuff. It is. But I struggled a bit doing the research on how things like the hive memory works and the drone assemblies work because it's so easy to go down rabbit holes of long scientific papers experimenting on bees. Yeah, and also because a lot of it's still very disputed. It is very disputed. There's no sort of big hard fact, but there is things very much observed by many avid beekeepers

like Terry Pratchett. And it's a lot more fun to read anecdotal stuff from beekeepers than it is the long scientific papers. Yes, I'd much just rather read about people keeping bees. Do you have a favorite bee fact? I do have a favorite bee fact. But it's not even really a fact, which is nice considering what we're just saying. Oh, actually, I thought the intro from the Encyclopedia Britannica on this was from the late 1800s, but I just thought it was really nice.

The bee from its singular instincts, its active industry and the useful products resulting from its labors has, from the remotest times, attracted great general attention and interest, no nation upon earth has had so many historians as this remarkable class of insects. And it goes on waxing, as it were, lyrical, lyrical about them for like a full few more paragraph, the full column here, like several paragraphs before nice getting into the subtitles, like everyone loves bees. Bees are great. Yeah.

Anyway, the fact I liked is that although as we say, we're not entirely sure how a lot of the bee sensors work exactly, drumming the bees was once common practice. And this wasn't mentioned later in this book, was it? I don't believe so. Drumming a swarm of beans to attract them. So it was once common practice to use drums or like bang on boxes or kettles or something to attract a swarm of bees to where you want them to be. Huh.

To be. Or not to be. Or not to be. Yes, you can drum them out. That's definitely effective. But there's lots of anecdotal evidence of it working, like online and beekeeper forums I found and a few old books that I've got around. But there is just as much claiming it doesn't work.

And I found that quite interesting considering like we've been, we've been writing about beekeeping probably longer than almost any other continual scientific thing because bees were involved in all of that cross-pollination stuff that, you know, was like the pioneering of the pro-scientific methods and genetics and all of this. Like, and we're still like, I can still find six beekeepers arguing with six other beekeepers citing different sources. All in quite nice ways. They're not very rude to each other.

I can imagine bees quite polite. Yeah. I found just some nice blogs of beekeepers and I'll link to a couple because they're just they're very calming. I can imagine. I do have a, I do, to produce a kilogram of honey, bees fly the equivalent of three times around this world in air miles, which I like because, wow, bees do a lot. But also because I found that immediately after trying to write down some of the mid-summer

night's dream references and Puck states, I'll put a girdle on the world in 30 minutes. Oh, cool. So I quite like the idea of bees girdling the world, making honey. And one of the metaphors I liked from this section, I remember, was Granny's inquiry about Magrat being girdled or corseted in a politeness. That was a good moment. So where are we? Girdles, eh?

Bloody girdles. Contrasting styles of witchcraft, Joanna. Yeah, this isn't sure. Which witches? Which witches, which? This is a theme we get through these different styles of witchcraft in this book. And I like looking at it in this section because you don't just have the difference between the older and younger generations, so Granny and Nanny versus the teenage witches.

And Magrat somewhat in the middle, because she's very much not a teenager. Yeah, we don't really see much witching from Magrat in this section, do we? Not in this section. There's also the differences between how Nanny and Granny do things. One of the things I noticed is you have this section where they both want to find out what's happening at the stones and Granny's instinct is to go borrowing, whereas Nanny's instinct is to go and ask and chat to people. Because that is the sort of witch Nanny is.

She talks and she listens. Yeah. Whereas Granny finds out. But then within that, there's also the moment where while Nanny is going to the town and making inquiries, she has a word with the shopkeeper about the now widow's grope and making sure she's looked after. Yeah. And I think the difference is both Nanny and Granny think that the shopkeepers need to know

that she is a widow, so she needs to be looked after. Nanny goes out and does the thing, whereas Granny would, I think to a certain extent, assume that, of course, she's now going to be taken care of. And there's a way. There's just a way that Granny holds herself slightly more separate from people than Nanny does. Yeah. I think, yeah, possibly Granny might have assumed it, noticed it wasn't happening, and then got very angry and made it happen.

But yeah, whereas Nanny could just anticipate the lack of action. Yeah. Yeah. You said earlier that about Nanny being more powerful than Granny. I know we've talked about this before, but I think I've settled in my head on more effective in certain ways, rather than more powerful. Because I feel like power does give this sense of Granny's pure magical abilities are better than Nanny's, as far as we can see.

As in pure magical abilities, yes. But then you look at the witchcraft challenge, the staring contest interrupted by the child crying. And of course, that means Granny's the better witch because she stops because the child is crying. And then it's the thing, Granny might have more of the straight up magical power, but Nanny is more the one that would stop for a child crying. And does that make her the better witch? It's not a statement of fact.

I mean, Granny does in that situation. Yeah. Yeah, it's not a statement of fact. I think it's a question to pay attention to. It's a nice extra layer when you're reading it, sure. Hmm. Yeah, I think Nanny is the more effective witch in how she uses her power. Yeah. And I think if Nanny took it upon herself to be more like Granny, the world would be a

terrifying place, although possibly quite fun. And there's a moment later when Granny's been borrowing and Nanny goes and waits for her to come back so she can tell her about this. And Granny sort of does this. Yep, there's definitely people dancing up there. I can't tell who they are. And Nanny just recites all the names off and says, yes, I know, I found out from Jason.

And Granny says, oh, I'm a fool, aren't I? And that's the first time I think, and part of this is, you know, this journey Granny's journey. Granny's going through in this book where she's potentially facing her own mortality as she goes through this. Yeah. But it's the first time I think you really see her show weakness. Yeah.

Or self-doubt, maybe. Because even in which she's bored, when she's confronting Lilith. But if you then look at, as she starts kind of letting herself acknowledge that maybe she is not the best and perfect all the time, it would be a very different thing for her if she didn't have Magra sort of poking the bear enough to make her draw the drawbridge back up and be confident. And that confidence is, that confidence in herself and that lack of confidence in Magra is almost a downfall as the book goes on. Almost, yeah.

But then in other ways, again, necessary, I think it all kind of ties together to show how necessary all three of them are, which is kind of the point of... Yeah, that you need these three influences on each other. And of course, then you do have the difference between Granny and the Old Guard versus the New Guard with the Teenage Witches. And we talked about that a bit already. It's very sweet and it's very silly, but I like the midnight versus noon thing. Anyone can be a witch at midnight.

Noon is when it's a challenge. Yeah. Cool. I like. I like. So future generations. Yeah, just I'll just do this very briefly, actually, because we are overrunning and it's not that relevant, I guess.

But on page 86, when they've been talking about the kind of places that are thin in the world, and I think we visited that before. But if people knew where such a spot was, if they'd experienced what happened here, then they might, if they knew how, mark such a spot with certain stones in the hope that enough dark buggers would take it as warning and keep away. And there's a whole area of round world speciality that is kind of surrounding this that I've always found very interesting. It's nuclear semiotics.

I can't really, I can't remember if I've talked about this on the podcast before. I've definitely talked about it with you. Yeah. But it's basically the problem we face is warning future generations of who knows what language or culture to keep away from the massively dangerous factors of nuclear waste we've created. And written signage is obviously very limited in this regard. Pictorial signage is interesting, but we can't really guarantee in which direction

people would read a message even. And so it's been posited that you could perhaps put the relevant illustrations next to another set of illustrations that had to go in a linear fashion. So like an egg hatching, for instance, that anyone could recognize this happens in this order. And then what seems to have happened here with the standing stones is physical markers. And the concept of shunned land is what they call it in the nuclear semiotics field. That's really interesting. So some of the designs have been suggested include a landscape of thorns, a spike field,

spikes bursting through grid. I'm not going to read the descriptions for these, they're easily available. Menacing earthworks, black hole, rubble landscape and forbidding blocks. The whole field is bonkers. I mean, there's a cultural memory is another one they've got. Someone suggested that they propose the creation of an atomic priesthood to preserve the myths or preserve the warnings as myths. And then the most bananas one I could find was a pair of one French one Italian scientists

who said that domestic cats could be genetically engineered to change color in the presence of dangerous levels of radiation. The significance of these radiation cats would be reinforced through fairy tales and myths. Nice. Isn't that amazing? That's fantastic. But you know what would happen is what would happen here? Yep.

You get it would get twisted and your fairy tales about the glowing cats be like, Oh, there's an interesting place who's got glowing cats. Exactly. Or the glowing cats would be seen as harbingers. You know, how crows get blamed for what's going on. Rather than just seen as early warning systems like you can know. That's just a thing I wanted to talk about and found. No, that was really interesting.

On the glow in the dark cats thing, I read something online the other day about they were looking at genetic treatments. I can't remember what disorder they were looking at treating in cats, but they were looking at implanting a genome to see if it would make a difference. But the thing is when they do test like this, they then have to implant something else to see if that's working and taking effect because the other thing is invisible. So they effectively implant the sort of glow in the dark genome.

So if the cats are glowing, then it's worked because they've also thrown the glow in the dark genome in with it. That's cool. I know they've managed to make fish glow in the dark before, but I didn't know they'd got any further. That's cool. I don't know how far they've got or if it's still at the rescue stage, but potential glow in the dark cats, I want one.

And then my last one isn't really a big thing. I just like the difference. The book brings up parallel universes versus parasite universes. And especially in the description, parallel universes saying, universes aren't going to branch for every decision because the universe doesn't care if you tread on a butterfly. And history always has a great weight of inertia, which is great because it almost goes completely against the small gods.

It's only history if it's observed theory. You say theories, scientific test books. But in this, it's basically saying the universe isn't going to split into one where Hitler died and one where one didn't, because honestly, things would have probably worked out the same. Not that Hitler would have popped up 10 years later and done the same shit. But then you have the parasite universes, which is what the self lander effectively is,

because it's stagnant and cut off from past and future. So it's stealing past and future from other universes, like a remora fish hanging on a passing shark. Sounds a little bit like the Dungeon Dimensions, doesn't it? Well, there's a, the difference between somewhere like Elfland and the Dungeon Dimensions is brought up when Grand Nanny is talking to Jason. Those live outside, but them lives over there. Ah, yes, yes. Well, that plays it all up, doesn't it? Thank you.

Yep. Thank you, Annie. So that was all I had to say. I don't have some big in depth. This is how parallel universes work, because that's another thing I don't like thinking about in case I get a headache. Francine, do you have an obscure reference for Neil for me? Yeah, I do. I noticed at one point, Perdita's little nasty inner voice saying

that Amanita was a terrible name and also come to that was Perdita. And that's because Amanita means poisonous mushroom. Well, it's a family of poisonous mushrooms, like almost all the ones that kill people are Amanitas. And Device, I don't know if that's actually her surname, but either way, it's, as you said, anathema device. And that's because one of the Pendle Witch's family names was several of the Pendle Witch's were device,

as we talked about many months ago. Diamander seems to be a reference possibly to a singer, Diamander's surname I've gotten, began with a G, who looked sufficiently gotsy and witchy and was around that time period. And Perdita, the name means lost or abandoned, but she was, I've got a Shakespeare reference, actually. She was a character in Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. She was the daughter of Lyontes and Hermione, abandoned and put to sea in a boat to drift away.

It all ended up, okay, spoilers for the 300-year-old. Spoilers. 400-year-old? I was forgetting. Many years ago, for you. I did see in Annotated Pratchett that apparently all of these names have taken some inspiration from the Lancashire witches, which is the Pendle Witch trials. Oh, yeah? Yeah, so they may have...

I couldn't draw any of the obvious ones. It might... This is from Annotated Pratchett, so I don't know how accurate, but all of these names are based on the so-called Lancashire witches, apparently. Maybe if I dug a bit further, I'd find Elysee Tockley or something. Possibly. I think that is all we'd better say, as we are now on two and a half hours. Yes, but most of the first hour was bollocks.

Yes. But yes, I think that's all we've got to say about Laws and Ladies Part One. Join us next week for Laws and Ladies Part Two, which we'll be running from where we've ended here, page 129, up to page 254. Two by four. What's the ending line there? In her head were the faint, insistent thoughts of a thousand Esme weatherwaxes. That is a troubling way to end a section.

Yep, I'll... I like to leave our listeners troubled. I'll start them troubled, honestly. Engaging with me is quite a troublesome experience. Until next week, dear listener. This is coming out on Monday, so Friday coming is the beginning of Lamidos on the Klax, the online discworld convention. So... All the cool kids will be there.

All the cool kids will be there. We'll be there. We're doing a panel on the Sunday about podcasting in the discworld with Colm from Radio Morepork and hopefully, possibly, some people from the Desert Island Discworld and the Pratt-Shout podcast. Please join us for that. Tickets are 20 quid for the whole weekend. We will link to the Lamidos on the Klax website in the show notes, or you can find them on Twitter at Lamidoscamp.

There's lots of other cool things going on over the weekend. There's like a Feneronovich Q&A. There's panels with extras from the Colomagic TV series, which nobody told them how much I slunked off that. The guys from Backspindle Games who created the Discworld board games, they're going to be doing a Q&A, which I'm very excited for. And there's also sort of some fun... The troll bridge, that recent thing, the people from that.

Yep. And there's going to be fun contests. There's a divination in the style of Granny Weatherwax. I think there's even going to be some fun, like, cooking tutorial things. And it's going to be fun. It's going to be good weekend. There'll be like little chat rooms. People can just go and hang out in.

So yeah, so check out Lamidos in the clerks. And in the meantime, until you see us next week, hear us next week, you can follow us on Instagram at the True Show Mickey Fract, on Twitter at Mickey Fract Podge, on Facebook at the True Show Mickey Fract. You can join our subreddit, r slash t t s m y f. You can email us your thoughts, queries, castles, snacks and albatrosses, the Truth Show Mickey Fract Podge at gmail.com. I remember to tweet us with some cool Pratchettian metaphors because I made that idea.

Yes, send us your metaphors. And in the meantime, dear listener. Don't let us detain you. I should buy a witch's hat. Should I buy a witch's hat? You should always buy a witch's hat. I didn't think about it. No, I probably shouldn't do a cosplay of him.

You should do a cosplay when you're not on a panel. Yeah. We could at least get witch's hats. Yeah. Anyway. Cool. I can probably think aloud what we're not recording yet.