The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 66: The Carpet People Pt 1 (F5 To Pay Respects)

Episode Date: November 8, 2021

The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret is a podcast in which your hosts, Joanna Hagan and Francine Carrel, usually read and recap every book from Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series in chronological order. This week, we continue our Proto-Pratchett season with part 1 of The Carpet People. Snargs! Suspense! Oh-so-small!Find us on the internet:Twitter: @MakeYeFretPodInstagram: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretFacebook: @TheTruthShallMakeYeFretEmail: [e-mail]: www.patreon.com/thetruthshallmakeyefretWant to follow your hosts and their internet doings? Follow Joanna on twitter @joannahagan and follow Francine @francibambi Things we blathered on about:What is Cuil Theory?Good Omens season 2 shares promising update with first look pics - Digital SpyDogma: Metatron (Alan Rickman) - YouTubeMark Beech - NB IllustrationThe Magic of Terry Pratchett - Pen and Sword BooksThe Carpet People Book Covers - L-SpaceThe Carpet People - Colin SmytheThe Carpet People - Art (& photos) - L-SpaceThe Carpet People - TV TropesWainscot Society - TV TropesAlways Chaotic Evil - TV TropesBrian Greene: An Unexpected Guest - The Friendship Onion - YouTubePismire - WiktionaryMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

Sorry, you know those days where you sort of think your brain's doing okay and then you start thinking maybe it's not and then you do something really fucking stupid and it's like oh okay no actually my brain's done. So I was doing my C++ course and at the end of each section has like a section challenge and because I'm still really early on in the course they've been simple and I've been able to do them all and then today's came up and it was like oh I can't immediately think of how to do that. It's not the coding that's the issue, it's the logic behind the coding I couldn't think of off the top of my head and also it's coming up for five so I want to start getting sorted to record. So I thought well I'll go and do my makeup before we record and start

thinking about setting up and I'll think about the challenge while I'm doing that and maybe I'll come up with the solution because it's not coming straight to my brain and then I sat down to do my makeup and put anti-frizz serum on my face instead of primer and realised that I should I should stop for the day. Yeah that's I mean my face is marvelously frizz free. The glossiest I've seen your face in years and so manageable. Right stop fucking with your mic. Sorry that's okay don't apologise it's just before we start properly because I'm not going through and removing mic noises. No it was because I was getting the blanket. Okay that's cool. My flat is very cold. Still not got those curtains eh?

I'm going to order them I just I need to set a measure properly and make sure I'm ordering the right amount. Sorry you're saying that to me like like you don't have a tape measure. I've only got a dress making tape measure which it turns out is not what you want for measuring windows. No no you need one of these um I need a rigid ones do you know I've one of them god no I'm going to get you a proper toolkit one of these days. My toolkit's fine it's got three square it's got three screwdrivers five sets of allen keys an empty jewelry box and for some reason one pack of playing cards. I brought over my own tools when you moved house and I was correct to do so. I had plenty of allen keys. You did. Well I bought allen keys thinking they would be what I

mostly needed for my flat pack furniture but then everything that needed allen keys came with a fucking set of them. Yeah. I will at some point own a proper toolkit. I will if if you don't get to it soon just get you on for Christmas or your birthday or something because it distresses me to think of you not being able to measure things. Anyway I'm sorry you're cold though that is miserable. I was pleased to see your huge unicorn slippers but do agree they seem slightly impractical. They are between the giant horns that catch and everything and the fact that they've got absolutely no grip so wearing them in my flat that is all wooden tiled floors means it's a miracle I've not gone over to it yet. The cold's not too bad it's just it's it feels like the

temperature dropped really suddenly as soon as the clocks changed. Yeah. Because this time last year so around the time the clocks changed it was my first winter in the flat I was just realizing how cold the flat could get in winter and we'd just gone down into a lockdown and I wasn't bubbled with anyone so I was alone and I was very directionless and I just had a really rough mental health months while we were in that lockdown. Yeah. Like you remember I was trying really hard to study and then for the last week of the lockdown I kept just crying. Yeah. Not like sad crying but it was just like oh my face just just is leaking now. Yeah. So over the last week is the temperature dropped and the clocks changed my brain went oh this is the sad time it's time

to be sad luckily I was halfway through a dress couldn't get on with it because I was waiting for zip so I made a jacket to go with it instead. Is that related to your previous paragraph? It gave me something it gave me something to do. I was feeling really sad but luckily I didn't have a zip so I made a jacket. My brain makes these leaps they just don't always come out verbally. The problem is that there's a really good chance I'm just not picking up on really sensible connection between us we you know we can't really rely on either of us here. The point is I've had stuff to do this week and I have to go to the office tomorrow and hopefully going to the office will remind me that I have a life. Yeah outside is good and

rain has been constant. Have you ever heard of Kuhl Siri? C-U-I-L-Q? No. Kuhl was a terrible surge engine. Right. Back in I want to say 2008 something like that. It was like it was built by some people who quit Google and went to do their own thing and it was shit it was bad and there was this Reddit thread that like made up Kuhl as a unit of measurement for abstraction so one Kuhl equals one level abstraction away from the reality of a situation. Right. So example you ask me for a hamburger. One Kuhl. If you ask me for a hamburger I gave you a raccoon. Two Kuhls. If you ask me for a hamburger but it turns out I don't really exist. Where I was originally standing a picture of a hamburger rests on the ground. Three Kuhls. You awake as a

hamburger. You start screaming only to have special sauce fly from your lips. The world is in sepia. Four Kuhls. Why are we speaking German? A mime cries softly as he cradles a young cow. Your grandfather stares at you as the cow falls apart into patties. You look down only to see me with pickles for eyes. I'm singing the song that gave birth to the universe and there's several more of these but they get much longer so I'm not going to read them but I'll link to it and it is delightful and I found it in the worst way. I was watching TikTok and the first four of those the ones that I just read out to you were being recited by a girl in rabbit ears doing it in the anime voice. This is just so much information to take in. Yeah, I know. And then I started work

for the day. This gives you an idea of the baseline I started from. That's good. Yeah, that makes sense. Suddenly my day seems like it was actually quite a bit easier. I made truffles. My day was pretty easy. It just wasn't necessarily as linear and productive as it could have been. Be made truffles. For the recipe blog for work I made truffles with blood orange tea and with coffee. Why is everything blood orange? That's what I want to know. I don't know but we sell a blood orange tea which I'm currently drinking. Is it nice? It's all right. I'd rather have coffee but I am very weak and if I drink coffee now I won't sleep tonight. Do you have anything like not completely unrelated to what we're going to be talking about?

Pictures have started coming out from the filming of series two of Good Omens which is exciting. Where are they? Twitter? I haven't been on Twitter today. Oh, I've been on Twitter for too long today because I was trying to study and make a dress. Are they good? Are they on Neil Gaiman's Twitter? They're on Neil Gaiman's Twitter. David Tennant's hair is looking very red. The bookshop is back. They might be leaning on each other so obviously the intense shipping side of the fandom is going apeshit. I don't know how they can play that to make people happy. God, they can't. No one is going to be happy. I don't care.

I think I said on our podcast Twitter that we were very much looking forward to see what Neil Gaiman would do with a series two of Good Omens. I said on my personal Twitter that I cannot wait to watch the fandoms go absolutely fucking feral. Yeah. It's going to be a thing. I like the idea of them being asexual but romantically involved because canon, canonically, they kind of have to be. Yeah, very much so. Although I'm taking a lot of the asexual angel canon from the beautiful moment in Dogma in which Alan Rickman says angels are ill-equipped while dropping his trousers to reveal a very Ken-style crotch. God, yeah, it's been a long time since I thought about that. It is one of those line deliveries that

lives in my head completely rent-free. It's Alan Rickman saying angels are ill-equipped, Alan Tudyk in A Knight's Tale saying it's called a lance, duh, and Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde saying what, like it's hard? What, like it's hard? I'm not going to subject the listeners to my American accent. I love doing the terrible volleyball accent but I'm probably very bad at it. I just love going, thank you. Thank you. That's my favorite. I think it's the cutest thing ever how American women say thank you. Thank you. I love it. So I'm out of coffee. Should we get more hot drinks and then should we make a podcast? Let's make a podcast, yes. Hello and welcome to the Two Shall Make Key Fret, a podcast in which we are usually reading

and recapping every book from Terry Pratchett's Disclod series, one as time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll. And today we are concluding our proto-Pratchett season by talking about the carpet people. Yeah. Terry Pratchett's very first novel which came out 50 years ago this month. Note on spoilers before we crack on. We're a spoiler-like podcast, obviously heavy spoilers for the carpet people. Which came out some time ago. Which came out 50 years ago. Very nearly. Guys. Get it together. Come on. But we will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series. And yet we're saving any in 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. On the back of it and usually large snags. I've pasted the original copy cover of the carpet people into our little show plan here. And I will link to it in show notes. It shows a very adorable selection of the wildlife of the carpet eating a large sugar crystal. Yeah. You and I have got very different editions because I bought the new one. But we are going to go from chapter one to chapter 11 today. So mine's the new edition and it's got illustrations by Mark Beech. I know. Mine doesn't have illustrations. Mine's one of the older but not very old paperbacks. £3.99 it's cost. So quite old. But he's the guy that does a bit Quentin Blake-ish. Oh nice. Okay. Yeah. No, I think I knew

the ones you mean. I spent a long time looking at pictures today. Yeah. Follow up. Thank you Alex for your lovely email. Hopefully by the time this episode comes out I will have actually written a reply. But also Martin got in touch to say I did some research into the non-prachet quote in ancient times cats were worshipped as gods but they've not forgotten this. It seems to be a slightly tidied up version of PG Wode houses. Cats as a class have never completely got over the snootiness caused by the fact that in ancient Egypt they were worshipped as gods. Oh shit. Well done. I didn't find that. The story of Webster and Melinda Knight originally published as the bishop's cat in Strand magazine in 1932. Well, well done, Martin.

Martin also goes to point out that Snuff, one of the later disco novels, won the Bollinger Everyman Wode House Prize for comics fiction because he captured the spirit of PG Wode House. Just as a nice little... Yeah. Nice little full circle moment there. Yeah. Very good. Very good. Oh, that's pleased me. I just tracked out the bishop's cat you say in 1932 Strand. Okay. Yeah. I will track that down for a little light reading. That's it. Before bed. Shall we talk about the carpet people? Yeah. Let's. I've got so much on like the book. Yes. Yes. Introduce us to the book front scene.

Okay. So, the carpet people started as a short story in the Bucks Free Press in 1965, which is now available tweaked somewhat in the Dragons at Crumbling Castle short story collection. Marvelous. Practically always said, although, you know, he polishes his anecdotes a bit, that the idea came to him during the pub argument. It was originally published when Pratchett was 23, I think. No, 17, wasn't it? Oh, no, written. Written at 17. Written at 17.

Took quite some time to publish. Yeah. By Colin Smythe and Peter Bander. Peter Bander, side note, was a heraldry expert. So, that's another little... Ah, fun. Yeah. I wonder if that's where Pratchett picked up some other stuff. And yeah, as we just mentioned, 50th anniversary of that is on 15th of November or 14th of November. I've written down 15th, but I feel like it was 14th. The Times Literary Supplement reviewed it as saying, one need not worry too much about the allegory, which is about human rifts on the larger world. It rises up from time to time, but only when the action clears sufficiently.

Which I thought you'd look quite like a saline. That is excellent. I found a page on Ellespace, which has all of Terry's original illustrations, the watercoloured versions that only appeared in a few books, like he painted them himself, I think we went to Friends. So, I've linked that in our little link file, which will become the show notes. If you want to have a look at that during, then it can, but it's not compulsory, of course. Mandatory link viewing.

The original had two blurbs because Smile and Bander couldn't agree who would write it. And there was a contract signed for a sequel that Pratchett called that off. There's an interesting note, actually, in my copy about the sequel, with a letter Pratchett wrote. Terry did discuss the idea of a sequel. He sent an undated letter to his then publisher, Colin Smyth. I've been working on the outline for a second carpet book. Obviously, I'm truncating, I'm not reading the whole thing.

It's been suggested to me by a friend who was in at the genesis of the carpet people that one book is enough. He puts his case that a second book would be as intrinsically good as the first, but it would, however, look as though the convenient background was being exploited, and a second book would take away some of the mystery of the carpet. Plan for the second book includes no characters from the first. What do you think? My friend sums up his argument by saying that a writer should not exploit a landscaping universe

invented for one book in another unless the second book is deeply bound up with the first. That escape clause excuses Ghana, Lewis, and certainly Tolkien. Having considered all this, I'm still planning to go ahead, but I'd be interested to hear your view on sequels and whether a second carpet book could be a good idea. Oh, so must have then backed out afterwards. Interesting. And Colin remembers replying enthusiastically, he can't remember what he said,

but Terry decided against it and instead started to write The Dark Side of the Sun. But I like that bit about not exploiting a landscape written for a particular novel considering, obviously, you had carpet, not carpet colour of magic and the light fantastic, using the same landscapes, they're bound together. But then very much decided to keep that landscape and use it a few more times. Couple, couple. Couple. Couple little, little tails there.

Nice. It was republished, somewhat polished, somewhat rewritten in 1992. Although even the first version was pretty heavily edited because he started writing it by Lula Council in his mid teens and described in 2014, the first draft is the worst book he'd ever read. But the republished version met the bestseller list, I believe. I found a comment from Pratchett on one of the Pratchett forums saying, just after publication, this was in 1992.

Remember, folks, the carpet people is really a reprint of a book written 25 years ago. I've rewritten it enough so as not to feel too embarrassed about it, but it's not what I'd write today. Officially, it's number six in the bestsellers this week, but the Sunday Times are snotty about it and won't acknowledge it because they say it's really a children's book, even if adults are buying it. So that's interesting. And finally, little publishing fact.

This is much longer than usual, but there's a lot about the carpet people. And I think, as usual, I have Mark Farrows to thank for a lot of this research. Thank you, Mark. I'll refer to the podcast. This is a practical comment, though, from one of their forums again. Some years back, Transworld experimented with a carpet-bound edition for the 25th anniversary of the carpet people. They couldn't see how to make it a profitable project, so I have the original.

Limited edition, one-of-one, signed by the author. I should note Colin Smyth said that it was, like, specially made for Pratchett for his 50th birthday party in 98. So, you know, whatever. Doesn't matter. It's funny. Pratchett summarized his whole two authors. One book saying it in authors now.

I don't know if you can read that out. This book had two authors and they were both the same person. The carpet people was published in 1971. It had a lot of things wrong with it, mostly to do with being written by someone who was 17 at the time. And it sold a bit and eventually it sold out and that was it. And then about seven years ago, the disc world books began to sell and people would buy them and say,

here, what's this book? The carpet people buy the same author, all capitalized. And the publishers got so fed up with telling people that there was no demand for it, they decided it was time for a new edition, which was read by Terry Pratchett, age 43, who said, hang on, I wrote that in the days when I thought fantasy was all battles and kings. Now I'm inclined to think that real concerns of fantasy ought to be about not having battles and doing without kings.

I'll just rewrite it here and there. You know how it is when you tweak a thread that's hanging loose. So this is it. It's not exactly the book I wrote then. It's not exactly the book I write now. It's a joint effort, but I don't have to give him half the royalties. He'd only waste them. And that was written by Terry Pratchett in 1991.

Yes, just before the publication. Yeah, cool. Uh, I suppose we should do the blower as we're making a whole thing of this. In the beginning, there was nothing but endless flatness. Then came the carpet. That's the old story everyone knows and loves, even if they don't really believe it. But now the carpet is home to many different tribes and peoples, and there's a new story in the making.

The story of Frey sweeping a trail of destruction across the carpet. The story of power, hungry malls, and of two Munrung brothers who set out on an adventure to end all adventures when their villages flattened. It's a story that will come to a terrible end if someone doesn't do something about it. If everyone doesn't do something about it. It's a good blurb.

It is a good blurb, yeah. And with that, should I... Yeah, yeah. Do the summary. We're going up to the end of chapter 11, which in my copy is page 130. But the benefit of chapters is that we don't need too many page numbers. That is good, yeah.

87 in this old paperback. So yes, in the first half of The Carpet People, in chapter one, Glurk, Chiefen of the Munrungs, is wondering why there haven't been someone to be counted at Tragan Morris. He's returning from a successful hunt with his brother, Snibril, when the Frey rips through the hairs of the carpet and they return to find their village destroyed. Black snags and their mysterious riders from the unswept regions

remain a threat and the villagers decide to leave for their safety. In chapter two, The Munrungs pack up Snibril rides ahead to meet Pismir, the medicine man, and is introduced to Bane, a mysterious fighter. Snibril, Pismir and Bane make it to burnt end in time to find Glurk and the villagers under attack by mauls. In chapter three, Snibril wakes after the attack to find the villagers have survived, although Glurk's bed bound for a bit. Pismir mopes about the lost knowledge and gives Snibril a belt made by whites

taken from one of the mauls' snags. They break camp and travel on to find a wagon and figures approaching the crossroads. There's so many stupid fancy words in this one, it's way more than I'm used to. Try reading this aloud. Mauls and snags and whites, oh my! In chapter four, The Munrungs meet a clan of whites. Seven of them are invited to the Feast of Bronze. In the Whites' time, it's the Chay of Bronze, a time of war and destruction.

At the Whites' dinner, Snibril asks the precient travellers for help, but they keep their knowledge of the future to themselves. In chapter five, a week later, the Ragtag village is travelling north when the way is interrupted by creatures turned to stone by the eyes of a termigant. After three nights of blind night watch duty, Snibril hears the creature and follows. In chapter six, Snibril hides in the termigant's treasure-filled temple, avoiding his eyes to avoid petrification. The termigant catch at sight of its reflection and weeps.

His tears wake the petrified creatures in the temple, including a diminutive warrior named Bracando, who's been missing from his kingdom for a year. The termigant dies as Snibril asks Bracando for a place to stay. In chapter seven, Snibril and Bracando arrive at the camp. Glurk gets a bit royalist and we learn Bracando's history with the Dume Empire and General Bane. In chapter eight, the villagers head west to Bracando's city of Jeopard and see the beautiful carpet gardens and no people. They find an escaped child who explains that the deft means,

Brock's people, have been enslaved by the mules since Bracando disappeared and his brother took up the throne. In chapter nine, Bracando wants to take the throne back and plans a secret attack as they enter the city through a hidden passage in the underlay. They make it out of the dark and into the palace. In chapter ten, our hidden misfits hear the king wanting to the mules about their taking of the deft means. Bracando and the gang burst in, fight the mules.

Bracando gets his people rising up and his brother sent into the underlay passage along with the mule Gormelish. And in chapter 11, the newly free city celebrates as Snibril, where the headache waits outside with Roland the horse. He senses the fray coming just in time and the city evacuates, with Snibril just getting away. Bracando, Pismir, Bane and an unconscious Glurk find themselves lanternless in the underlay passage and Gormelish, possessed of excellent night vision,

finds them and takes almost all of them captive, not noticing Glurk and leaving him behind. He's taking his captives to the Highgate land, home of the Vortgorns. All three of us. All three of us. All three of us. Shut up. You know how you have that thing where you can't

describe punk music without sounding like really upperclass and like you disapprove of it? Yeah, yeah. I feel like that's me saying every fantasy name in this. Vortgorns. Vortgorns. Oh, Vortgorns. Is it Vortgorns? All right, fine.

Vortgorns. I am enjoying saying it. Throw one's hands, was it? Throw the horns. Throw one's hands is to fight. And to throw one's horns is to rock. Thus. Yes, thus.

Thusly. Thusly. Oh, excellent audio content. Right, helicopter's loincloth. I feel like the fray has got some helicopter vibes. Sure, yeah, definitely. Like if I imagine if a helicopter flew really low above the weird carpet forest that you lived in. Yeah, that would be bad for it, just as the fray is, yeah.

Exactly. And I feel like loincloth's very implied. Definitely. There are definite loincloths around. No one's explicitly described as wearing a loincloth, but... There's someone's wearing a loincloth. Pierce me, there's got a loincloth vibe. Yeah, and some of those petrified warriors.

Yeah, probably a bit loincloth-y around the years, which is not where one should wear a loincloth. But it was the olden days, of course. Quotes. Shall I go first? Yes, do. Page 17 in mind. This is after Glerk finds his village destroyed.

Then he raised his fist above him and swore. He cursed by the hares, by the dark caverns of the underlay, by the demons of the floor, by the weft and by the warp. He bellowed the unutterable words and swore the oath of retwood should the frugal that cracked bone or so it was said. Although Pismir claimed this was superstition. Yes. Having made that my quote, I really should have

practiced saying retwood should. But is that parallel to a word in English? It's not as a retwood should, right? I found myself reading nonsense words aloud a lot while I've been reading this, just in case I miss one like a chair leg, you know? I've been trying to. I can't find anything in retwood should.

Listeners, if you find a word in retwood should. Yeah. Anyway, when the termigant is dying to Sniperl's amazement, it began to coo at its reflection and lay back again with the mirror cuddled in its arms. And then the termigant with a clank died peacefully in the temple that had been built for it time out of mind. Often later, it was said by minstrels and wandering storytellers

that the termigant died when it caught sight of itself in the mirror. Never believe what you hear in songs. They put in any old thing if they think it sounds better. They said that its reflective glance turned it into a statue. But the death of the termigant was more complicated than that. Most things are. I really loved the death of the termigant scene.

I thought it was incredibly sweet and well written. The bit where it was crying made me unhappy. And so I thought I'd own it by doing the actual death bit. That also reminds me of something I noticed in my first read-through. I forgot to note in my post-it read-through, which is the phrase time out of mind is used a few times in this book, at least twice in the first half. And it was a weird one because it pinged in my brain as I've heard that.

And then I was thinking about it more and I was like, but it's not a common saying. I don't hear people say time out of mind. And I realized I remembered it from Shakespeare. Oh, in M'kiusheo's Queen Mab monologue, he says time out of mind the fairies, coach makers. I did not notice that phrase. Yeah.

Nice little ping. It was one of those things where you read it and it's almost a phrase you hear a lot, like time after time or something. And then you go back and you go, now hang on. Time out of mind. Does that, it just means like longer than people can remember it. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway. Characters. Yeah, them. Characters. Shall we start with the Munrungs? Seems sensible. We've got Glurk. Yeah.

Good name. What a name. Glurk. Strong name. Strong fellow. Glurk is the eldest son of old Grim Orkson and has therefore succeeded his father as chieftain. Broad shoulders, great thick neck.

He wasn't stupid. His brain always got there in the end. It just went the long way around. And one of my favorite lines, he's a man of few words and he doesn't know what either of them mean. Yes. I like Glurk. I think he's very sweet.

I do. He's not like your trophy idiot, strong man. He's slightly more complex. He's got some depth to him. And yes, Snibrill, the younger brother. Sometimes I just sit was Glurk's favorite line. Oh yeah. So Snibrill was sent off to a school in the Dumi Empire

to become a clerk. So Snibrill does not like being sent away to study, insist on coming back, and is instead taught his schooling by Pismir. Yay, we like Pismir. We like Pismir. Pismir, the sort of local medicine man, Shaman. Yeah.

But sensible and likes things like correct observation followed by meticulous deduction and the precise visualization of goals is vital to the success of any enterprise. Quick, fetch me a towel. He has got the towel vibes about him. Yeah. If Pismir lived in the disc world,

it would be in a fee, wouldn't it? Yeah, for sure. But I like the... There's a few lines about his methods of treating people, but I think the best one is when Glurk's being bedridden. He should stay in bed for at least two days, so I told Bertha Six, that way he'll threaten Billy

or interletting him up the day after tomorrow and feel a lot better of having outwitted me. Positive thinking. It's very weatherwax. It is very weatherwax. Speaking of Bertha, Glurk's wife, the only named female character, and the whole book, huh?

That's not true. We've got a white. Yeah, no, the only name feel character and female character in the first 11 chapters of the book, which I'm not going to blame this Pratchett for, because 17-year-old Pratchett was writing inspired by the fantasy he'd read, and I assume that that didn't contain a lot of women.

Yeah, I mean... And I'm assuming the Pratchett rewriting in the 90s didn't feel the urge to shove a female character in for the sake of having a female character, if that makes sense. Wow, you sound like a Reddit comment thread. Thanks. No, not a compliment.

No, I know. Well, no, but you know what I mean? It's like when Peter Jackson shoehorned that character into the Hobbit films. Yeah, why would he pandering minorities like women? No, I don't. But that didn't feel like... I'm kidding, I know, I know, I know, I know.

It's a bad film. We don't talk about the Hobbit. The fact that I didn't enjoy Evangeline Lilly in tight clothes shooting a bow and arrow says something about how bad the Hobbit films are. That is a good point, yeah. Yeah, I can see why Pratchett didn't thought that adding a whole new character

to correct his 17-year-old teenage boy self. Yes, my point is not it's fine that there's no female characters. It's this is not the book. There's not much going on about it, yeah. Yeah, this is not the book to get annoyed about it. Anyway, I choose to believe that Rowland is female. Rowland could quite possibly be female.

At no point did we get a scene of anyone checking. Well, I've looked at the illustrations and I can't see anything to suggest otherwise. It's very rare that in children's books, and this is something of a children's book that people bother drawing the genitals on the horses. Well, I'll look to the image, but like it's lifting its leg up quite a way.

Oh, okay, yeah. And to be fair, male horses, it's usually quite clear. I mean, on one hand, I'm very glad that 20-year-old Pratchett or whatever he was when he did the illustrations didn't draw a horse dick. This massive horse's penis is disgusting. Sorry if I'm watching Blackadder. I didn't get the reference.

I thought you were just doing Pratchett. She was a French accent. Right, okay. We're not even halfway through the episode and we're on horse cock. I don't think we're even a quarter away. Well, I want to see there's nothing else I can say about Rowland now.

Bane. Bane. Bane is an interesting character. I wish I could do a Bane impression, like Batman Bane, but I can't, so. No, I can't. No, you're doing Christian male. Yeah. I'm Batman. You need to smoke more.

Don't do as we say. Listeners. No, not listeners. Not listeners. Just you. Just I need to smoke more so I can do a better. I'm not going to smoke more just so I can do a better Batman impression.

Okay. Well, you did take up knitting just so you wouldn't have to measure windows. I didn't just take up knitting because so I didn't have to measure my windows. I also did it because I wanted to know how my cardigan worked. Oh.

I was looking at my cardigan and I was like, how this happens? So I bought some knitting needles. Is it a knitted cardigan? Yes. All right. Good. Well, that's that's the start.

How does this work? Maybe if I make a new one, I'll work out what these tubes are for. I feel like I need to really clarify to our listeners now. So I do it in fact, no matter how to wear a cardigan. Oh, fuck. Bane is a general.

Bane is, it was a general of the Doomy Empire, which the Munrungs are a part of. You said doomy, didn't you? You're a fucking infant. I'd be pronouncing it dummy. It probably makes more sense. So I don't spend the entire episode saying doomy, but I'm already there now.

Bane was a general of the- I thought that once you're a general, you're always a general there. Like, admirals always get called admiral, I think. Yes. But he's not actively generaling right this minute. No. He's tagged along to follow malls and fight them and-

He had a chew gum and kick mull ass and he's all out of gum. So I guess he's gonna skin a snog. Yeah. That sounds badass. Bane is pretty badass, actually. He's a very badass character. He is. And then the malls.

Who come from far away, the unswept regions. They follow the fray or somewhat worship it. Yeah. They believe- A little chaos god thing going on there. Yeah. And they believe they are the only true human beings. All of them do.

All of the tribes believe that they are the only true human beings. And then we have the whites. Yeah. A tribe who see and follow the thread. It's a little bit quantum. It's definitely a little bit quantum. You can see the proto pratchett vibes here. They were the ones that crossed the tiles and brought back fire.

Quarried wood at the wood wall. They found out how to varnish off a chair leg. And they travel around making different things and understanding the future. They have perfect memories. They remember everything. Yes. Forwards and backwards. And quite often give answers before they've answered the questions.

Which I'll talk in more detail later about all of the various things that come up again in Pratchett. But this was very- That particular- Mrs. Cake, thank you. That's who I'm thinking of. I was also thinking of the witch, at least one of the coven meetings, who's just temporarily adrift and sometimes manages to catch up

with the conversation at the right time. Ah, yes. His name, I've forgotten. Who's Christabella? Christabella's the goat. That's a female character. All right, yeah. Now, we've got two named female characters, one of which is a goat.

Yep. Yep. Yep. But I just enjoyed it because she hates everything and likes to run around and hurt everything. I love goats. They're dickheads. They smell so bad.

They do. But they're the kind of dickheads I can respect, not like swans who are just dickhead dickheads. You ever come into conflict with a swan, Joanna? You bring it up with such regularity. I feel like there's something I've just not heard about your past. I don't like to talk about the swan. Incident.

Okay, we'll move faster then. We've already talked about the term against with your quote and I don't think I have much more to say. Brocando. Brocando. The king of Jeopard and the deft means a, like I said, somewhat diminutive tribe. He believes everybody else is outsized.

Yeah, everyone else is just too big. He is amusing because he's very much kept up his kingliness and gets his fill on Prince Charles moment. Yeah, for sure. He meets Gluck and does the, so you're the chief tonight. You amazing brother here to tell me all about. You must be an incredibly difficult job, highly skilled too.

I'm sure you do. I'm sure you do. Fascinating and a terrible responsibility. Do you have some sort of special training? There's another great moment later on as well where he's walking along with Gluck, who's becoming more and more royalist and Brocando's describing the beautiful halls of Jeopard

and the amazing feasts and the treasure everywhere and Gluck says, we had a rug. Yeah, we had a rug. And then locations. Locations. Tragan Maris. Tragan Maris, the city that has unfortunately fallen already. Yeah, oh well.

When he went to be counted and Tragan Maris is part of the Dumie Empire. I'm going to keep saying Dumie now, which is why people are counted. The Empire likes to count things, keep track of things. There are taxes. They've got a bit of an economy happening. It doesn't have an economy.

And this range is quite wide across the carpet. The Munrungs are part of it. Jeopard very proudly isn't. Yes, it is the independent city that basically told the emperor to sod off, got attacked anyway and told them to sod off with menaces. Yes, good effort. Well done, that mammal. Yeah, shame about the prey.

Shame about all the violence. We have Woodfall. And Burnt End. This is, I like, I mean, we haven't really talked much about the fact that the whole conceit of this book is that it's a tiny fantasy world within a carpet. Yeah, we maybe should have started there. It is a lovely, it's a lovely conceit.

And it is pleasing to imagine just how tiny these people are, even if it's like slightly inconsistent sometimes, it doesn't matter. Like the entire massive capital city is decided for full stop. Yes. Which means that this match stick must be many cities wide, which I think probably isn't the case here. But yeah, I kind of, you know, in the author's note,

we should probably mention there's a thing where he says, oh, and this is the size of the city is where and there's a full stop. It doesn't really work if you think about it too hard. So we sort of, you know, but everything is very big. So Woodfall and Burnt End are obviously a dropped Burnt Matchstick. And it's nice the way things are described. And you slowly come to the conclusion,

another one being Varnus Holm, a chair leg, which is where the whites boil down there, varnish from and use it to make things. The kind of concept of, I'm not sure if time dilation is the right word here, but their world must go a lot quicker than ours. If we drop a matchstick and that becomes part of their geography. Yeah. Because even you and I generally pick matchsticks up

before we start measuring in geological terms. I would say so. Are we to agree with the theory that Frey is a Hoover, by the way? That was what I got from it. Yeah, yeah. It's like pressure change, isn't it, that got me? Yeah. Because I think it said sweeping on one of the blurbs,

but that was like a later one. Pride didn't say that. I think it's a Hoover. I think it's something along the lines of a Hoover. Back to the Cleaner, for the non-branded. For those non-branded among us. Yeah, and then Deppard. Yes, built on a piece of grit.

The grit in this is very much geological down within the carpet. Yeah. The actual city was a cluster of buildings at the very top. A spiral roadway wound several times around the grit between the city and the floor. Had a gate at the bottom, but that was just for show. No one could have got up that road if the people at the top didn't want them to. Cool. It's a very cool city.

You can see how they held up against the Empire for so long. Yeah. Well done, those mammals. No, it's like immediately knocked over. Well, it's a good way to kind of demonstrate exactly how terrifying the Frey is. It's one thing to see it destroy Tragenmarus, which is sort of a small city, or to see it destroy the village, but to see it destroy- Yeah, we're kind of moving up.

And in size each time, aren't we? It's escalating. It is. Yeah, I like the kind of descriptions of it being built out for these precious materials and... Yeah. The sort of implications of- The sort of implications of a rich kingdom. Very rich kingdom, very well-to-do, aren't they well-to-do?

And we have the underlay. The underlay. Every time you say that, I'm like, I'm underlaying. Arriba, arriba. Arriba, arriba. Every time I read it, literally every time I read it, just a little Speedy Gonzales moment every time. I'm so sorry.

You're not anywhere. But that's underground. That's underground, under the carpet. Like a- Very dark. Full of canfans and abysses. Abisai. Abai.

Abisunia. Abisipods. Albatross. Shut up. It's good. It's very creepily written. Nearly as bad as discovering all your worst fears are coming true, Snybral Thought is finding out that they're not.

Yeah. And the sort of going into the horror of the underlay and finding it not quite as horrifying, and the way that because different parts of the imagination. Yeah. I mean, just pure darkness is a thing that humans don't experience very often. Not actual dark, dark, no. Yeah, like people who go caving apparently sometimes just switch all the lights off

just to really experience actual darkness, and it's quite unnerving. Yeah, I don't want to- I'm going off of a Magnus Archives episode for that information, but... Well, no. Like before it got weird. Yeah. Before the episode got weird, that obviously the show was always weird. I was going to say, I've been listening from the

beginning, I'm only like eight episodes in, and that shit's weird. Have you listened to the undergroundy one yet? No, it's like in the teens, I think, isn't it? Yeah, I'm still quite early on. Anyway, sorry. I don't think Calum's listened to the fucking finale yet. It's like a year ago, I made him start this. Fuck.

It's taking me- No one I know listens to it. I'm listening to it, but it's taken me a very long time to get through it, because it's a horror podcast, and I live alone. Sure. It's not like scary, scary. It's not like scary, scary, but his voice is very lulling, and I find if I listen to more than a couple of episodes at once,

I start getting a bit unsettled. Fair enough. Anyway, God, right, tangent. Oh, yeah. The point is, the underlay is creepy. Yeah. And that's all the- That's the major locations we go to in this section.

Yes. We go through several colours of carpet, which makes me think it's a patterned carpet. I like imagining it. I like the idea that it's a pub carpet, to be honest. Hmm. Little bits we liked, Francine. Do you want to kick us off?

Yeah, just like a general note. I liked the imaginative, wildlife-y things. I like the snogs, and how they're different parts of the carpet. And I liked the hyometers of which there is a picture in the list, I'll send, which is very cool. It reminds me a little bit of the- Which of them was it that had the wasps on the front of it? I think it was Dark Side of the Sun.

Yeah, one of those. So I think they were like robot wasps. Yeah. I was going to send you a link to look at the picture of the hyometers, because they're very nice. I'll put it in the chat. And then I liked just the blue badger that they mentioned, this little blue badger.

I think that's just a blue badger. I like that, because everything else is so fantastic. Yeah. Oh, the hyometers are really cool. That's an amazing picture. Yeah, they've got like a weaved floor, but then they've got the little- The hairs of the carpet.

The hair of the carpet. Yeah. That's amazing. And the silverfish, because I've always liked the idea of silverfish. There's someone who's not had to live in a house with them. Yes. They were in a children's book I had, and they described silverfish in there, and I've just always liked the sound of them.

And I've looked at pictures, and I still like them. But do you admit that I probably wouldn't want to name Festation? No. I would rather avoid infestations when at all possible. Just generally. Yeah. Just generally. Infestations.

Bad. Yeah. I'd say infest is an almost universally negative term. They were infested with delight. Yeah. No, it doesn't work. Does it? No.

Can't do it. Cool. All roads lead to everywhere. Do they? I've written down the wrong page number, so I can't find the line I'm thinking about now, because I'm a really practical person. But there's a lovely moment where they're sort of setting off on the road,

and Sniperil's thinking about the fact that Pism is always told him that all roads lead to where, which is like the capital city of the empire. And Sniperil's not thinking, and if you go onto that road, but it can go off that way, it can go onto that road, and he goes through a thought tangent of all the roads go everywhere, and they all link up. And it's that exact kind of thought tangent that both you and I go on when we start thinking about things just a bit too much and then have an existential crisis. Yes.

It is also very directly a Lord of the Rings. Yes, also that. But a good Lord of the Rings reference to make, because it is, as you say, one of the nicer thought tendons. I just found it very relatable. It is relating. Relatable, pleasing. Pleasable, relating.

I would say all four of those things. Not infesting. Not infesting. I'm infested with glee. And then we have the explanations of economics. Yes. Sniperil thinking for the first time about these tokens with the emperor's face on, and thinking about it as the emperor is so trusted that these tokens can be exchanged

for goods and services. Yeah, yeah. I think Pismir tried to explain it as like, they love the emperor so much that they value these little pictures of him. Which is a way to describe it. And it was just, it's that thing, we talk, a defamiliarization thing. Yes, yeah. I just remembered the word in time.

I don't know why that word just won't stick in my brain properly. It's because we looked up another term for it, which is like a very odd one. And I think we're always grasping for that before we remember the easy one. I think it's because also whenever I approach the concept, I remember first that I can't remember the word for it before I remember the word. So I've like built this horrible pattern of behavior in my head. Yeah, that is pretty much. Yeah, I can see that going through your eyes actually, now you say it.

I get that every time I get in a car still. It's like, no, I know how to drive. No, I'm good. It's fine. Speaking of being bad at things, Francie. Hard podcast. All right. Yes, I am a bad driver.

You don't need to tell on me on the podcast. I didn't mean to be a bad driver. I meant being bad at remembering stuff. Although last time you came to pick me up, you thought about how last time you missed the turning to my flat while missing the turning to my flat. It's that, that's the thing. That thing. I was thinking about, last time I just missed this turning

and then drove faster while I was thinking that, fuck. I love you so much. Wrong with me. Don't answer. So yeah, I like the quote, there's stuff that you care about enough to do badly, care enough about to do badly. Like for instance, playing an instrument in Pisma's case. Can you think of any hobbies that you have that you care enough about to do badly?

I mean, at the moment, knitting, because I'm learning how to do it, I don't feel like I'm actually, I actually care about it. I think for me, it is continuing to attempt to put eyeliner on. It has been 17 years since I started trying to do liquid eyeliner properly. I can't really do it. Can't do it. But I really want to. One day.

I have absolute faith that one day, Tuesday. I've got very hooded eyelids, you see. And I watch all these tutorials for the hooded eyelids. It still doesn't work for me. I saw, I get better at eye makeup as I got good at paintings. It's similar, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

It's just general coordination with the brush. Yeah. No. Whereas I can't paint for shit, but I'm quite good at eye makeup. Yeah. Such is life. So suspense. Suspense.

Oh yeah, sorry. Let's not keep them waiting for this last one. That's dramatic. Shortfall. Sensible chuckle. It's as they're approaching Jeopard, but you also get it in the underlay scenes. It just, this is still, I know he went through and rewrote it in the early 90s, so probably around time wise, similar to where we are in the disc world at the

moment, slightly earlier. Yeah. But he's just so good at writing very creeping suspense. As they're approaching Jeopard and they start noticing there's not many people around. And Sniperil's thinking about the different kinds of silence, the silence made by small creatures being still, the silence made by big creatures waiting to pounce on small creatures. Sometimes there was a silence made by no one being there, and there was a very sharp, hot kind of silence made by someone there watching.

It just, it builds it up. So, and obviously the big reveal is going to be that it's going to be a little kid or something like that. Yeah. But it's so well done, he really just does build it well. Yeah. Yeah. Even if it's a big reveal for this one as the little kid, it's like, he's right.

It could be a creeping horror. And there's more bits like it with the term again, like I said, going through the underlay, going through the underlay the second time when Gormelish catches up with them. Yeah. I thought you were going to talk about Pismir and his headaches. But I like this better. Sniperal, sorry. Yeah.

The headaches are good because they're not ever built up as a big thing and he doesn't notice what they are straight away. Yeah. He's had sort of a weird, yeah, he has by the end of the section. Yeah. But it takes him a second to come to the conclusion. Should we go on to talking points? Yeah.

Tiny worlds, Lord of the Rings, other trips, trips, trips. We're talking fantasy. We are. We're talking about fantasy tropes because this was originally written by a teenage boy who was very into fantasy and then rewritten by a middle-aged man who's very into fantasy, although in a less directly derivative way. The tiny worlds kind of trope, I'm not sure if it's a trope or just a thing, but I always quite liked it.

TV tropes taught me the term Wayne Scott society. What's a Wayne Scott society? A society that kind of lives just on the other side of a wall or, you know, because the way Scott's like the thing on the wall, the wooden bit, you know? Yeah. That was well described there. But yeah, they don't have to be tiny, but a lot of them are. I love the borrowers.

Did you ever read the borrowers? I enjoyed them. No, I don't think I've ever read the borrowers. I watched the film. It was one of my favorite kids books, anyway. Ariety Clark is one of the best character names ever. Yeah. And that has nothing to do with anything,

but I don't think I've said it on the podcast before. One of Pratchett's forum comments I found was kind of, this one was relating to Amazing Morris, actually, but it's having a secret people, anyway. I know this as alt.fan.pratchett, but the concept of a secret people is practically a cornerstone of children's fiction. The midnight folk, the borrowers, the little gray men, a lot of Alan Garner's early stuff.

And for that matter, the carpet people and the names. A browse through the Encyclopedia of Fantasy will lead anyone through dozens of these. They're referred to there as Wayne Scott groups, even if they're made up of humans. Linking the Amazing Morris to Rowling and Pullman is to ignore this huge tradition in favor of a fashionable reference. Pratchett being his normal grumpy forum self in 2001. A couple of the other tropes I got,

I spent quite a lot of time on TV tropes that kind of have, in that vein, the humans are Cthulhu trope. So humans just being this unseen, incomprehensible, chaotic force. And then going on to probably the more obvious parallels to draw. Because even though it is a tiny Wayne Scott society, it is much, much tinier than any of the ones we could otherwise draw parallels to. But we can draw very obvious parallels to Lord of the Rings

and Lord of the Rings style high fantasy stuff. From Mark Burrows, magic of Terry Pratchett, the carpet people was written in the shadow of Tolkien by an unabashed fan boy, and the Lord of the Rings is coded into its DNA. And now that quote is about the original, to be fair. And some of the stock characters like Pismir coming across as a Gandalf, or whites being very elven, are substantially altered and bettered in the second version. I've never read the full original, I must admit.

But even with the editing, even this version, we've got Bane, Barry Strider, Tobias Aragorn. We've got the Mools, who are the always chaotic, the orcs. Every high fancies got a race of weirdly evil, chaos worshipping. Things with names very much like Gilgamesh, whatever. What's his name? Gormelish. Yeah, am I talking about ancient gods again?

Gilgamesh? What's that? He was a hero in ancient Mesopotamian mythology. But to me, that sounds like an orc name. General, this kind of fantasy has a lot of historical parallels. So you've got one empire that's like the Romans. In this case, it's the doomy, the carpet Romans, and the overarching theme of order versus chaos.

And I think we've talked about before how in later fiction in general, it's kind of swapped so the order isn't always the good guys. Yeah, and sometimes chaos is somewhat necessary. Yeah, and I think I don't know about the original, but in this version of the carpet people, I would say that Patrick Kammer tries to strike a balance, saying the empire does lots of good stuff, but it's also clearly rooting for the odd chaos.

And the last little trope that I always like in a book, even if it's occasionally frustrating, is like the ancient elder precursors, the lost knowledge, all that kind of stuff, as the elderlings in Robin Hood. Yes, yes, it's a go. All of that bullshit. And I quite enjoy how tropey this is for something that doesn't read like a trope. I enjoyed this more than Ducks like the Sun or Strata,

because I'm more familiar with the tropes of this sort of fantasy than I am with the tropes of that sort of sci-fi. Sure, yeah. I don't think this was written as a parody in the same way those were. No, I think it was written as a tongue-in-cheek fantasy book. I mean, it's also, it's slightly more simply written like it's obviously it. I know it's not a kid's book, but it is written for younger people. Yeah, those young people, youths.

I think it was. It was the short story, it was based on a kid's book, yeah. But you know what Pratchett's like, and eventually we'll actually talk about what his Discord kids' books are like, because they're not kids' kids' books. I don't know. I think there's something about just, oh, okay, I know exactly what world I'm in. I know what direction my brain needs to tick in to read this. It sinks into the right gear in a way.

It doesn't quite with the sci-fi ones. Yeah, probably the other way around for me, because yeah, I'm a lot more familiar with sci-fi than fancy. Although this book in particular, I've read so many times that that's not really a consideration. I first read this as a kid, and I've read it many times since. I only read this once before, and it was when I was a kid. But it was one I think I got from the school library, so I never had a copy of it. So I didn't reread it over and over again.

And then it just never occurred to me to get it as an adult, because I was rereading Discworld when I was rereading Terry Pratchett. You enjoy it the second time around? Oh, I really enjoyed it. Had a great time. It was good fun. It's also got the sort of weirdly obvious, but not... There's a hint of the chosen one narrative about it with Sniprill and with him being able

to recognize the fray coming. And also just another little thing I noticed that Varnishholm, which is where the Whites get their varnish, a chair leg. But Varnishholm sounds very Nordic. It does, doesn't he? Yeah. And we know the Norse ends up inspiring quite a lot of fantasy in different ways. Yes.

Especially, I don't know, Tolkien was really inspired by a lot of Norse mythology and Norse history. Tolkien was very inspired by fucking everything he read, wasn't he? Yeah. Amazing mismatch of everything in there. He was such a fucking nerd. You heard it on a true show. I would love one day to do a deep dive onto C.S. Lewis and Tolkien's friendship slash rivalry. That'd be a really good one.

Yeah, I'll do that as a little bonus one day because it's very funny. It is. They are both very petty clever men in that order. So what was your talking point? We just picked one each because we were being so general about things. Yes, and because there was a lot of stuff. There was a lot of preamble here. We've got a very top-heavy podcast.

As it's our proto-pratchet season, I was looking at the proto-pratchet moments, which less proto in this because this version we're reading is written... And when you say proto, the less that sounds like anything. I love it. Yeah, I know. Because obviously this version was written and edited after a lot of the Discworld books were written, but it's still nice seeing the bits that either came before Discworld or that because he'd been writing Discworld, he then had this style of these ideas in his head.

Yeah, and there's some of the stuff that... I mean, we're in 91 here, so... Yeah, we're still early-ish in Discworld. Power of Words. Power of Words is there. That seems particularly relevant as we're just on feet of clay. When Grimm really wants Snibbrawn to read, he'd been impressed by the clerks at Traygon Maris.

They could make marks on bits of parchment that could remember things. That was a power. Yeah, sounds like Pismay kind of disapproves of some of that, doesn't he? He sort of disapproves and he doesn't. It's always that if everything gets written down, then no one bothers to remember it. Yeah. Whereas if you have to keep telling it for it to stay in memory, then... Yeah, we are going to be fucked when the internet breaks.

Oh, right? Yeah, there's already so many things that have been lost. I keep meaning to download Wikipedia. Just all of Wikipedia. That's the thing you can do. Oh, you can? Yeah, yeah. But then you need to work out what format to keep it in. I just don't have access to that many stone tablets.

No, and there's a lot of chiseling. Yeah, there's a lot of chiseling. Like, your wrist gets sort of fairly easily. Oh, yeah. So do I. Yeah, there's a bad thing for someone in my case with arthritis. Your case was Carfall Tunnel. Yeah.

All right. Maybe a floppy disk. Carry on. Ah, yes, floppy disk. Those reliable old... Look, just don't bring them near magnets or like a slight breeze and they're fine. Well, say what you like about the chiseling state tablets. It takes a while, but they can stand up to a magnet.

Don't put jam on a magnet. Never put your granny in a bag. Sorry, that's a bit of a hazard. Yeah, right. Took me a second. I was going more insane clown posse magnets. How do they work? Right.

What else have we got? Oh, the thread and the premonition thing with the whites. That's very bratchety. It's very much houses of time. Later on in the book, we'll even get a bit quantum, which will be fun as I once again try and understand quantum physics. I listened to a podcast episode about it the other day, so I feel like I'm more qualified now.

Which podcast? The Friendship Onion, the one that Billy Boyd and Dominic Monahan of Lord of the Rings do together. They did have an episode with Professor Brian Green, who's written a lot of interesting books about quantum physics. I'm sure he has. It was a good episode. Do you remember anything from it?

No, God knows. Yeah, every time I learn about physics, I have to be fucking time. It just won't stay. Kings versus emperors is another very good. Yeah. Pratchety, what's it? The doomy didn't like kings. They preferred emperors because they were easier to get rid of.

Yes. And Bricando hates the doomy because they straighten roads, number things, make maps of places that shouldn't be mapped, and they turn everything into things to count. They don't know how to laugh, and at the end of it, it's all things in rows and orders and all the fun out of life. Very Roman. Very Roman.

It's a fun playoff that I feel like is Pratchety sort of trying to not land on one side or the other. Yeah. Like we were talking about the balance between order and chaos thing. Again, it's with them in the book as well. Yeah, you get the impression, certainly, that Pratchety instinctively favours the chaotic side of an argument that can appreciate the comforts that come with being able to count, for instance.

Yes. There's a little moment when they've gone for dinner with the whites and Glurk has said he doesn't like whites, because his grandfather lent one an axe once and never got it back. Oh, yeah. And one of the whites gave Glurk an axe. It was his grandfather's, although the handle and the blade had been replaced a few times. Nice.

Which is our ship of Theseus thing that comes up quite a lot, but with Pratchety specifically, it seems to be axes. Yeah. I think the, oh, sorry. One of the most common ways to present the riddle is definitely the axe. Because it's only two pieces. It's a lot easier than replacing an entire fucking ship. The riddle is a thought experiment.

It's a thought experiment, like the paradoxes. Yeah. Paradoxipods. Paradoxitroses. Paradoxes. And the Bain and Bracando relationship, especially near the end, as they're reclaiming Geopard, Jeopard. I think it's Jeopard.

I'm going Jeopard, like Leopard. Yeah, can't change its spots, that kind of thing. Yeah. Well, because it's a city, it'd be really weird. And it's Fallen over now. Well, that too. Rip. F5, F5.

There's something. F5? F5 is refresh. F, press F to pay respect. F in the chat. I'm getting my memes wrong. Frusty. Sorry, children.

Press F5, press command F5 to pay respect. I do. That's what I do. It really works, actually. It makes everything much better. My last one as well, the Bain and Bracando relationship, especially during the reclaiming of Jeopard before the fray turns up. There's something Carrot and Vimes about it,

or at least Vimes and what level of police brutality is now, but we're allowed to find it funny here because no one's a policeman. That's Joanna always says violence is funny as long as it's imperialist. Just let me enjoy it. Um, one of the deaf means ask Bracando. One of the deaf means ask Bracando what they should do if they capture one of the malls alive. And Bracando says, we haven't got many dungeons.

Perhaps if you could afford capturing any alive, that would help. Anyway, actually, he's monarchist, isn't he? He's quite anti-imperialist. Yeah. And Bain says, you mustn't kill an enemy throwing down his weapons. And Bracando says, can't you? I always thought that was the best time.

Yeah, it makes my sense to me. Yeah, it gives me more of a knobby knobs vibe with the whole. Yeah, maybe not Carrot and Vimes, but there's not a direct parallel to any of them, but I can see that conversation happening in the discord between two watchmen. Yeah, the dynamic is there. And I feel like Carrot would be the, we've got to take them prisoner one.

And it could be Vimes, Nobby or Angwer saying, it's probably the best time. Look at it and it's fine. Anyway, so those are the nice little things I pointed out. Francine, do you have an obscure reference for Neil for me? I do. I do. I've picked a name meaning which I don't usually for my orph,

but I can't really find many. No, this isn't really a book for that sort of reference. No, but Pismia is an archaic word for ant. Is it? It is. It is the equivalent to Piss plus Maya, so-called due to the bad smell of ant hills. Marvelous.

Yeah. That's a new thing I've learned there. I enjoyed that. Yeah, it's good, right? Piss plus Maya or Mia, I'm not sure. Actually, it might be called Pismia, I suppose. Pismia probably makes a lot more sense than Pismia. Yeah, I don't care.

Whatever. There's a long time ago I expect. Galaxy, far, far, balloon. The carpet. No, it's just there, isn't it, yeah? Yeah, it's all that far away. And on that note. Oh, we stop making sense.

If we stop making sense near the beginning of the episode, Francine, we've just sort of limped through since then. I must say, you have tried your level best to keep me on path, and I admire that. I admire your willful tenacity to go nowhere near the fucking path and in the process make more work for yourself. Let us get lost amongst the carpet hairs. Let's get lost amongst the carpet.

Anyway, well, I think that's everything we can actually physically say about part one of The Carpet People. I don't want his blood sugars getting kind of dodgy. Mostly because I really need to go and kick a very large bowl of pasta. We will be back next week, hopefully well-fed, to talk about part two of The Carpet People. We will be going to the very end of the book, because it's not long enough to split into three parts.

In the meantime, dear listener, you can follow us on Instagram at The True Shall Make You Frat, on Twitter at Make You Frat Pod, on Facebook at The True Shall Make You Frat. You can join our subreddit community, r slash t t s m y f. You can email us your thoughts, queries, and castles, albatrosses, snacks, abysses, and paradoxes at The True Shall Make You Frat Pod at gmail.com.

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Thank you, but only if you give us five stars. If you hate us, keep it to yourself. Why did you listen this long? What the hell? Yeah, like, if you didn't like it, you don't need to tell us. We're very much unsensitive. It's true, it's true. I'm of a delicate disposition. I talk a big game for somebody who crumbles immediately.

Until next time, do your listener. Don't let us detain you. Oh, my God, can I go? Yeah.