The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret - 94: Thief of Time Pt. 3 (Yoghurt Where There Shouldn't Be)

Episode Date: September 26, 2022

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 3 of our recap of “Thief of Time”. Cherries! Chocolates! A Jug!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:Teletext jumper - Twitter [already sold out :(]Teletext ArtThe Teletext Archaeologist - TwitterRussty_Russ #Retro - TwitterAll aboard Botswana's Elephant Express - BBC Future Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes: The Official Biography by Rob Wilkins  Reaper Man Movie Concept - r/TTSMYF Ultraviolet communication in butterflies - Wikipedia Zhuangzi (book) - WikipediaMusic: Chris Collins, indiemusicbox.com

Never mind. I'm being really fucking dumb. Ignore me. Okay. I mean, I'm not going to ignore you because that'll make a really weird podcast. But yeah. Okay. I don't have weird page numbers. I forgot how to read. Oh, okay. That's fine then. That also might make for a weird podcast. I just posted a poem on Twitter and that's driven everything else out of my mind because now I'm anxious about people having opinions. Oh, let me see it. I know you've had it before. It's the Doty Catholic one. Oh, yeah. That's a good one.

But it's, it's bisexual visibility day. So it seemed appropriate. Is it? God damn. It's like video year. Yeah. Okay. Well, Joanna, I see you. Thank you. Thank you. National Telly Text Day is today. It's a National Telly Text Day. It is. Oh, I'm correct. And I'd, oh, Joanna. Oh, Joanna, I've just found a Christmas present for Jack that you'd never wear.

But let me send this to you on Signal if you're still going to open. I can open it. It is scary when I open Signal after like an evening where we've been messaging each other because it's like loading 500 messages. Like, don't call me out, Signal. Come on. That's a fantastic jumper. I know. I will link that in the show notes listeners. And I don't think Jack can hear me from here. So I'll say for people who don't have to click on the link,

it is a CFAQ slash teletext themed jumper. Did Americans have CFAQs or teletext? I don't know. How do you explain CFAQs or teletext? I don't know because we were kind of on the tail end of awareness of it. Yeah. Like I remember playing that bamboozle game. So CFAQs or teletext was like a pretty easy access to Google and stuff. You'd press the red button on your TV remote and it would bring up like, it was kind of search and it had all these different pages,

one of which was this game you could play bamboozle like on your TV with your TV remote. But there was also like, you could book holidays through it and stuff. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It looks like the US had something similar. Yeah. But anyway, it's very nostalgia now. The aesthetic is so very distinct as well. It's not just that it's kind of pixelarty. It's the colours on the black background and...

I've seen a lot of people do like specifically teletext themed art, like it's the sub genre of pixel art. And yeah, there's a couple of teletext themed Twitter accounts I follow, which I'll just copy paste into my notes. Now everybody, guess what? You've got a new interest. I don't, I feel like I've started abusing our audience somewhat with my extremely unappealing interests. But here we go.

Clock accuracy in teletext. They're not forced to click the links front soon. I know, I know. It's between them and their gods. Yeah, that's true. Woden's day, Wednesday. Yeah. It's stupid. It's named after Odin.

Yeah. But apparently we named it after Odin because we're trying to find like the Norse equivalent of Mercury, because on the continent is like Mercury. Right. Et cetera. But the proper equivalent to Mercury, if there could be such thing in two incredibly different Pantheons, would be Loki. Oh, yeah.

Odin isn't Mercury. No. Oh, yeah. Because that's where we get my curious from. Oh, yeah. He's a trickster god. He is a trickster god. So we're going to start calling Wednesday Loki's day.

Locust. Well, we've got to, we've got to jazz it up a bit to pretend we've had centuries of vowel shifts. So Locust's day. Yeah, Locust's day. Locust's day. Yeah. Cool.

Right. I will write a letter to the king. But people are pronounced at Locust's day and then like really pretentious people will be Locust's day, like we would say Widen's day. My grandmother has a very specific way of saying Widen's day. Widen's day. It's Widen's day. Might just be a shifting accent thing.

Yeah, it's like semi-local-ish. Yeah. I don't know many people who say February. I do when I'm trying to remember how to spell it. Yes, that's true, me too. The only time. So I also say Wednesday. I'm quite careful with nuclear now.

Now I'm worried about myself. Yeah, nuclear. Nuclear. It's easier to say like that, so I understand. And millennium I quite often get wrong, but I managed to do it on the first time that time. Little round of applause for myself and my head there. Nothing to do with the microphone. How do you end up saying millennium?

I don't know. Now I've said it. I can't think of it, but I know it sometimes takes me a bit of a run-up. Millennium. Minnellium or something like that, if I'm very tired. Yeah, minnellium. That's it, yeah. I have been repeatedly assured that I say red dwarf as in the TV series weirdly,

but I can't hear the difference. We just kind of had a run-up at it then again. That's the problem, isn't it? If you're trying to demonstrate to people you're always being more thoughtful about it, you sounded normal to me. Yeah, I'm very self-conscious and try not to talk about that particular TV series more than necessary. It was when I was in a play and I had to say it, apparently there's a weird like inflection because

it's a descriptor. I don't fucking know. Red dwarf instead of red dwarf. Red dwarf. Oh, I see. I see it's the stress on the red dwarf. Red dwarf. Red dwarf.

There's not another word in that sentence. I love the game where you put your stress on a different word. In this economy, in this economy. In this economy. You can vary it if you're good. I'm trying to think of other interesting things that have happened. Nerd TV continues excellent. Good, good.

House of Dragons, good. Still haven't watched any of it, but that's fine. I've just not been in a TV mood at all. I go through phases when I do. I know I've got a lovely backlog of really good TV now. I think it's, I follow so much TV, Twitter and listen to podcasts that it's very much like I'm watching it when it comes out. So I'm not spoiled and blah, blah, blah.

But I don't mind. I'm very weird about spoilers. I don't mind knowing what's going to happen. Like I just bought and read Fire and Blood, the book that House of the Dragons based on, because like I want to know what happens. But it's still exciting for me because I get to see how they get there. But I don't want to see stuff from the show before it as like that there was a green dress in the last episode, not a real green dress.

That's cruel. But it was a big deal. It's from that bear naked lady song. I was like, what discourse have I missed now? Fuck. Turns out all green dye is harvested from pandas. Bad luck, everyone. Sorry, guys.

But it's a big deal that this character wore a green dress to an event. For many, many, many reasons. Then I saw it for the first time on all over Twitter for like the entire week before the show aired. And I would have liked to see that on the show for the first time. Right. But yeah, so I watched stuff right away. But it is at the point where it's starting to feel more like an obligation than I'm enjoying things.

Well, there's quite a lot of long shows on at the moment. Well, you've got House of the Dragon. You've got Rings of Power. They're both like our minimum episodes, but they're very good. I'm really enjoying them. She-Hulk is shorter because it's sick on me. And that's fine. That's like a nice I can put that on while I eat my lunch.

And I don't feel the need to listen to an hour long podcast explaining to me who every character is. Good. Like I do with other things I watch. Not only do you watch an incredible amount of television, but you double your viewing time in practice by listening to recap podcasts of so much of it. I'm not going to tell you like how many hours of podcast I listen to on House of the Dragon and Rings of Power because it is not double. Anyway, and Andor just came out.

Andor's out. So that's the thing. Star Wars? Yeah, Star Wars. Yeah, that sounded like Star Wars syllables to me. It's like formation of Rebel Alliance and Cassie and Andor, who's the guy in Rogue One. Are you good? I've only watched the first two episodes.

One of those things I think is objectively good, but I'm not very into it yet. I see. But there are only 40-minute episodes, so I'm willing to keep giving it a go. Everything's so long. It's better than like an hour and 15 minutes. That's true. It is kind of nice when I'm watching sitcom stuff as research for the book, and all the episodes are only 20 minutes long.

The American system of feeding me 20-minute episodes is very helpful for my background viewing. It doesn't really matter if you miss the plot. It'll all start again in 20 minutes. Not only are these hour-long episodes an hour long, but they make a difference to the next one. It's like a 20-hour-long movie. Yeah, some stuff with the big nerdy TV boom right now,

some stuff is but another's with that. She-Hulk is really nice and episodic because it's a sitcom structure. House of the Dragon, there's huge time jumps between episodes, but it all very much pays on to each other. But it does make it feel episodic rather than a movie, so I don't mind that. There is a self-contained story within each episode, while stuff's, which is what I love about TV. Rings of Power is definitely feeling a little bit more 10-hour movie,

but there was a really good song in the last episode, so I'll forgive it. Also, if you just want to know what happens, you know I am very willing to recap the entire history of the Targaryen rule for you, especially by Red Fire and Blood. Absolutely, but I'll wait till it finishes before I ask you to do that. With puppets? No. In which hand will you hold the gin?

With a puppet. Ah, smart. All right, I'm not sure this is going to get much more productive. Yeah, no, do you want to just make a podcast? I think we can manage it. Yes, I do want to make a podcast. Hello and welcome to The Tree Shall Make Keyfret, a podcast in which we are reading and recapping every book from

Terry Fraggett's Discworld series, one this time in chronological order. I'm Joanna Hagen. And I'm Francine Carroll. Note on spoilers before we crack on. This is a spoiler-light podcast, obviously heavy spoilers for the book, Thief of Time. We will avoid spoiling any major future events in the Discworld series, and we're 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. There's one of four, five, or six or seven horsemen, depending on how many friends you want with you. I've got something to follow up on. What do you watch we follow? Chris tweeted us. Well done, Chris, for managing to tweet this less than an hour before we started recording.

Very well timed. Ree Zimmerman's Valley could be a reference to Robert Zimmerman, better known by his stage name of Bob Dylan. Oh. Who, of course, wrote, among other things, the times they are are changing. They are. They are. Although at that point they weren't.

Francine, would you like to tell us what happened last time and the Thief of Time? Absolutely. Previously on Thief of Time. Jeremy and Igor get going on a glass clock good enough to stop time in its tracks. Their handiwork is hindered by Miria LeJean, who's going charmingly insane, but progresses enough to psychically shake the shoulders of Sweeper and his newly acquired prodigy. So Lutzé and Lobsang set out to save the world, armed only with a couple of clockwork contraptions,

eight hundred and seventeen years of experience, all told, and Lobsang's increasingly incredible time talents. So they'll probably be fine, actually. The pair befriended Yeti, who calmly loses his head in a helpful display of fortitude and foreshadowing. After hopping off their cryptid cab, Lobsang and Lutzé steal a broomstick, soar into a potential storm and arrive in Ankh-Morpork just in time to be a split second too late. The clock strikes one. Time stops.

Yes. Now we finished the podcast on that last week, so shall we just... Yeah, I think that's how we should end every podcast now. Yeah, that's much creeper than our usual one, I like it. It's nearly October. We'll have to do some kind of spooky pun thing like Twitter does every year. I'll do my best to think of that. What's scarier than fretting? Listeners, please write in your best terrible pun names for the podcast you use on Twitter,

so I don't have to think. Thank you. Right, this time. This time. Yeah, this time. There is a... So time has stopped. I can't think what could possibly happen now,

but apparently enough to do a summary, so let's go. Time might have stopped, but Ronnie's soak hasn't. Procrastinators are keeping Lutzie and Lobsang on borrowed time, and there's a yoghurt where it shouldn't be in a bone rat running. Susan violently introduces herself to Lobsang, and reassures him that Lutzie will be just fine in Ronnie's company. Lou himself enjoys some of the finest yak butter, as Ronnie gives him the finger and reveals he's in fact the fifth of four.

Human-shaped auditors argue names until one gets the axe, and Lobsang's making his own time as his procrastinator winds down. The rat and the raven visit the clock, and the grim squeaker gets lost to time while the auditors experiment with taking orders from each other. That sounds quite kinky, doesn't it? At the museum, auditors take art apart until Susan and Lobsang take them out.

There are signs up to trap the auditors, and the rag tag exceptions to frozen time see a mysterious figure get violent with a chocolate. Lady Lejeune is fighting back. There's a frozen family in Anatic, and Jeremy's still awake. Susan tells the truth. Lobsang and Jeremy are the same soul born twice. The time boy's touch in the world goes white,

leaving in place destiny in a mysterious blue light. Susan and Lady Lejeune make their escape as the talking blue light urges them towards the clock, and they stop at the chocolate shop for some anti-auditor's stock. Jesus, we've got Eminem over here. I'm regressing, rising this now. I'm actually going to say it all out loud. Oh no, I'm enjoying it hugely.

Lutzie guesses Soak's origins as chaos and goads him into riding out before heading off himself. Soak's sulks as Susan winds Lutzie up. I'm so glad I put that in. And in the skies above, death gears up for confrontation. The auditors are in the skies as the rest of the horsemen arrive, along with a figure in white. As the horsemen agree to fight against the auditors,

chaos burns through the sky and Ronnie sits in. Meanwhile, Susan and the glowing blue light head for the clock shop as Lou loses his head temporarily. The sky burns blue as glowing Lobsang and Sue make it to the event horizon, and Lou unravels auditors. Susan and Lobsang and me head home. Susan and the glowing blue light sounds like a title in a series of children's books.

It absolutely does. At the clock outside the universe, Wen and Susan stroll the perfect garden, while what was Lobsang and Jeremy meets his mother. Lobsang takes on the job, and they head back to a world of shattered history to correct with Lutzie and Lady Lejeune, now going by unity. At Oidong, the spinners are running out,

but the ragtag bunch of anachronous misfits save the day, fix history, and get the yak butter going. Lobsang disappears, and Lutzie plans to lie, while auditors die in their dreams. Lobsang visits Lutzie for one last fight, and Lutzie wins and changes the rules, while Lobsang takes the robes of a sweeper and sets things right. Death and chaos help unity with her final wish to die in chocolate.

And finally, Susan returns to class and takes the chocolate to the cupboard, only to experience a single perfect timeless moment. There we go, I got through it. You did? It was very good, wasn't it? Thank you. A helicopter and loincloth watch. There are plenty of flying horses and the like up in the sky.

That's all very helicopter. Ronnie's lovely apron, I feel, is taking loincloth duty for the day. Surely not. There's fig leaves and bits of gauze. I know, but I really like the apron. All right, fine. And, you know, the statues were getting taken apart, so... That's true.

Ronnie's apron, I think, is made of sterner stuff. Sterner stuff than a statue fig leaf. Yes. Not that, I suppose. We do also get quite a good turtle-ish moment. It's not at the opening, but as we haven't had a nice turtle-ish moment. I've written down like five titles already. Yog at where they shouldn't be is currently in the lead,

Father. Thank you. Death looked down at the world. Timelessness had reached the rim now when it was expanding into the universe at the speed of light. The disc world was a sculpture and crystal, which is, as we haven't had a turtle opening, I thought we'd appreciate the zoom out. So, I have an irrelevant elephant.

Do you? Elephants were mentioned several times through this. Should we add elephants to the helicopter and loincloth watch? Yes. Cool. Okay. The elephant express bus, have you heard of this? No. Elephant express.

Okay, so, Botswana's Okavango panhandle has as many elephants as people. That's about 15,000 apiece. And about two people per year, on average, die from elephant trampling, and about 25 elephants killed in conflicts with people. So, in order to reduce casualties for both species, and to generally improve elephant human relationships

in the relations in the area, a nonprofit called ExoExist started the Elephant Express Service in 2020. And it's a bus that I was heartbroken to learn does not transport elephants, but does transport people safely through elephant heavy zones. So, children in that can get a lift to school instead of having to walk on roads where elephants are often crossing and might get prime play.

And they've done lots of other stuff too, to protect the elephants and help local community. And I'll link the full article in the show notes, but Elephant Express was the coolest sounding bit of it, so. That delights me. Here we go. And I think that covers several elephants. I think the Elephant Express covers all of our elephants for the day.

And as you pointed out, name of the thing in the thing. The name of the thing is indeed in the thing. So easily, does the thief of time repay his debts? Says Lutze to Lopseng. Which is nice. It is nice, except I think it was said with a little bit of scorn. I take everything Lutze says slightly sarcastically. It's the similar problem to we have

where we seem really sarcastic, the more sincere we're trying to be. Yeah, absolutely. We've literally resorted to using... Are they called tone indicators now? Yeah. We've got brackets, not sarcastic at the end. And we can't.

It's really important, Joanna. I know the temptations there. I felt it myself. We can't start using those sarcastically, otherwise we'll be lost. Quotes. Should I go first? Yes.

Timelessness grew like ice. Waves froze on the sea. Birds were pinned to the air. The world went still. But not quiet. Very good. There's some good stuff in this. What's your quote, Francine?

This is when giving Susan a more direct philosophy. Defend the small spaces. Don't run with scissors. And remember that there is often an unexpected chocolate, said when he smiled. And never resist a perfect moment. Delightful. That last but especially,

I feel like it's really easy to resist a perfect moment for whatever reason. If you just like, oh, fuck, there's a perfect moment happening. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. Enjoy it. You're enjoying it wrong. You're enjoying it wrong.

So if we can all internalize this philosophy, there is no time but all likes are present. My mantra for like the rare occasions I meditate, which is like when there's a yoga video that trusts me to meditate for a couple of minutes, it's just fucking concentrate on nothing. Yes. I think that's probably faulty.

If I don't yell at myself for not concentrating on nothing, then I just think about food when I meditate. Good. Which is how I came up with the recipe I'm doing for patrons this month. So, you know, it's kind of worth it. People meditate in different ways. Yours is baking related.

Mine is tarty. Characters? Ronnysoak. I thought we'd start with Ronnysoak. Using the vampire named disguise. Very talented. But like, so do you remember like reading this for the first time and getting that or experiencing that moment?

No. And I doubt I would have got it before he said it. No, I mean, I didn't get it this time before he said it. I'd forgotten who Ronnysoak was. There's a really good moment though in Rob's new book, The Life and Footnotes one, where he's, he was taking dictation. He was typing everything up as Terry Bratchett spoke.

And the moment with the Ronnysoak name reveal. And I can't remember if it's where Lucy reads it backwards. And then Rob took a second to think about it or when he actually says it. But apparently he did like leap up out of his chair and punch the air and go, yes, which is just quite sweet. I like that. It is a cool moment because it takes me by surprise every time.

I forget Ronnysoak is chaos because I'm trying, I think I get distracted by trying to think like, what's Derry got to do with? What's Derry got to do? What to do with it? I'm going to brush over some of the chaos theory a bit in this section on the basis that I don't understand it. Chaos being very, very cold is interesting

because obviously movement, general chaoticness is quite often associated with very, very hot. But enough chaos and everything drifts apart eventually. And it's very, very cold and still. So it is the stillness on the other side of the hotness. But yes, so I really like Ronnysoak. He's such a grumpy fag.

I respect it. Speaking as a grumpy fag. Somebody who was determined to, what was it, cuddle a sulk to himself like a blanket. Yes. I love how easily, like we'll talk a lot about how human or the horsemen and stuff are, but I do like that Lutzi finds a very specific part

of humanity in him, which is, I can wind you up. Susan. Susan, Susan. People who refuse to have a nice time. She gets some great moments in this one though. I always like when you, because the books tend to be very, you know, it's from a character's perspective at the time. And the shifts are normally quite well broken up.

So it means when Susan turns up and introduces herself, like we see her from Lobsang's perspective. Yeah. So we get her hair standing out around her head like an aura. But it's the way she fades into the foreground and everything she stood in front of became nothing more than background. Yeah. And I like her just incredible, real presentness.

It's one or the other with her, isn't it? Very much. Very much so. And the way she, we were talking a lot about heroism in the last thing and we'll talk about it here, but her response to Lobsang of you hero. Oh, you dickhead. Yeah, I said exactly that tone.

Oh, I loved the bit where Lobsang like tries to be impressive for this martial arts and Susan's like, do you have a weapon? Ah, no. She's like, well, get out of the way. It's like, no, no, you're taking that away. No, because like, look, get her sword or shut the fuck up. Oh, he's such a 17 year old.

And she's kind of a dick, which I obviously appreciate very much, especially because, you know... We forget she's like 19, 18, 19 here. Yeah, we don't really know how old she is, do we? I think we're guessing because she's got like a romantic attachment to Lobsang that I'm guessing she's still in her teen years. I have a lot of opinions about the romantic attachment to Lobsang. Do you?

Why? What? Tell me. Because I imagine that Susan's slightly older by this point. Like, I thought of her as more in her. Like, bear in mind, she was a governess before she became a teacher. I feel like she's like early 20s. And okay, so it's fine because Lobsang is like a creature outside of time. And so it's very much what he appears, 16, 17.

He's been in the Valley for a few years and probably is also in his early 20s and also an ephemeral concept. I need information before I have an opinion now. I just automatically put her at about 19 in my head because Lobsang's 17. I don't think it's a problematic age gap, especially as like I said, they're ephemeral beings outside of time and what have you. I just don't see it. There's this weird and it's a weird thing that kind of happens with Susan.

So like, I get it in the end of cell music. She runs off and she's excited to see the boy who looks like he might be elfish. She's a teenager with a crush. Like, it makes sense in the writing there. There's a weirdness in Hogfather where it's not so much like she fancies the Oh God of Hangovers, but there's a weird, almost jealousy thing when he's very willing to rescue the sort of damsel and distressed tooth fairy and Susan sort of. Yeah.

And I'll go off and just, I don't get to have that sort of thing and be a damsel and distressed because I've got to go and be the sensible one. And obviously those two are going to go off together. And yeah, I don't think she needs to get a romantic moment. And I know it's supposed to be about connection because they're both outside and more than human and she's finally got someone to connect with, but it just doesn't. If you never connected with anybody and this happened once every few years, I think you would see more into it, especially if you're a young boy.

I mean, remember when we were this age, Joanna? Like you've read everything into everything and I say you, like the general you. I guess it. I just don't enjoy it as a plot point at the end of the book. You think she should have stayed lonely. I don't think she should have stayed lonely. I just don't think there's enough in the book to build it up between the two of them. Like I feel like if you'd had more time with them together,

where they could play the bickering that you get with like Morton Isabel or. It doesn't say they fucked though. They just had a nice moment. I know, but it reads romantic to me. Yeah, but like you can like how much build up do you need for a romantic moment? It's not like they got married. I know. I'm not saying, but A, it's kind of parallel to when in time having their thing together.

And that's very romantic. I just feel like this feels, I don't know if cop out is even the word. I'm really struggling to say what it is. I don't like about it now. I just don't enjoy it. That doesn't make it a bad book, but it feels like it's a kind of weird, I don't know, consolation prize. Like he's a chocolate, but he's a new got filled chocolate.

Does that make sense? I see what you're saying. I don't see it. I thought it was nice. I think part of it is, part of it is it doesn't feel like there's much connection between them beforehand, beyond running towards the clock and away from auditors, most of which, you know, he's a glowing blue light. And obviously that's all a bit weird.

But I think that's it. I think the point was there's this metaphysical connection after Lobsang's like reconnected with himself. And that like it does feel quite intense for them because they're the only people sort of having that kind of metaphysical connection. I don't know. Maybe it wasn't even romantic. Maybe it was.

Yeah. There's swirling stars. But then again, again, death and death and getting a fucking name. Mrs. Flitwick or something had the. Yeah, true. And I love the death of Mrs. Flitwick. Had the exact moment.

Yeah. And I don't know why death and Miss Flitwick was much more enjoyable for me than Susan and Lobsang as a personification of time. Part of it is the Jeremy problem, which if we want to kind of start moving towards talking about Lobsang. And like I said, I'm not saying this means I don't like the book. It's just I don't enjoy these plot points as much. I never said.

Like I never read it as you not enjoying the book, by the way. No, I know. I just feel like I need to clarify it. He's taking it to the extreme and arguing from that point now. I just feel like I need to clarify it. Like I'm not saying I want to literally murder everyone involved in the production of this, but it's just that these are the bits of the book I didn't enjoy. The whole podcast is not just me going this bookish it.

No, I don't. It's okay. I'm reassuring the listeners. They're okay too. When Lobsang and Jeremy reconnect and afterwards Lobsang is very like, as I've I've put them in that their hybrid names in the plan, Lobbamy slash Jeremy. Straight to Dale.

Dale immediately for this. Not the worst things I've done on the podcast. Wait, what? Do you mean it's not the worst thing you've done on the podcast or not the worst thing like ahead of me? No, it's just not the worst thing I've ever done on the podcast. Okay, good. Right, right, right.

I suddenly read that as a bit ominous note. Okay. Listeners, please send in your lists of my worst moments. The more I say Jeremy, the more I like it. Jeremy. It sounds like the nickname that Jeremy from Peep show would give himself when he became a DJ. Yeah. Lobbamy I don't like because it sounds too much like Lobotomy.

Yeah, anyway, yeah. No, the Jeremy problem. The job problem. The prayer. Once they hybridize, reconnect, do whatever they do, become a glowing blue ball of light, as we've all done with our long lost, not quite when the Jeremy part of him is kind of is gone. And I understand what he says. Like, you know, my memories were happier as Lobsang,

but Jeremy's so well built up as a character to this point. I know he becomes like Lobsang changes in that he's like grounded. And I think that's what Jeremy's meant to be. But then all of Jeremy's idiosyncrasies, idiosyncrasies, idiosyncrasies. Yeah, like lost in it. And yeah, I know it's odd. It's especially odd as a culmination of like a point being made that life can shape you so differently. Yeah.

And that he then gets to pick and choose. Yeah. Yeah, no, that bit I, yeah. Now, Joanna, I'm not saying that I'm like disrespecting the entire memory of Terry Pratt here. But I'll stop now, I'll stop. But no, I agree with you on this for sure. The Jeremy problem is indeed a problem. So Jeremy is, fuck you, right?

That's a good word. All right. Out of jail. But now he's time. He's time now, which is interesting because he succeeded his mother on this one. His mother's retired, which is not something we've seen before with the descendants of death.

Yeah, he was thinking about it for a bit maybe when Mort was taking over, but that went so wrong. Like no one could take that role. That wasn't. And Susan can kind of step in when he goes off and does stuff, but she doesn't want that to be her life. It's not bad for it. No.

Yeah. Whereas Lobsang. He's clearly built for it. I think if Lobsang hadn't been brought up in the mountains, like with the history amongst, then whatever became of him would not have been able to take over. Yes. But that's the best bit of kind of putting the two characters into one, is that you have Jeremy's relationship to time and Lobsang's relationship to time,

not as in time being their mother, but as in Jeremy working with clocks and Lobsang working with history. Time the concept, not time the person. Yes. Not time the anthropomorphic interpretation. Time with the capital T-A-M-E. Time. There's a really good moment when Jeremy's looking at the spinners and trying to put

history back together and all of that, that calls back to the moment with Jeremy's desk. Yes. Oh, good. I'm glad you got that. I screenshotted it and forgot to send it to you. Yeah. Yeah. Lobsang stared into the air above the little wooden bobbins.

Things twinkled. There were complex curves and spirals brilliant against the blackness. And that's a good callback to the Jeremy's desk moment of galaxies of cogwheels from the first section. Yeah. And then it's almost echoed right at the end, isn't it? The brilliant against the darkness, a galaxy in miniature gently spinning. Oh, yeah.

When the stars come out in the cupboard. Oh, do you know what? I was thinking while I was reading this bit that I fancy it more as a comic strip for our never-happening adaptation. Oh, yeah. I see what you mean. Especially when I was the bits about the five horsemen. Like I was seeing it very much comic strippy.

I can see it as very vivid colors, especially with these things like red blue color shifts. Yeah. I think that'd be cool. Anyway, do you want to talk about Lucy? Yeah. Yeah. The cherries. Yeah, I do.

I love the cherries. Oh, my God. I love it so much because that, that A, isn't that amazing that that's what he wanted? He just wanted the cherries from the cherry trees. And B, a gorgeous bit of foreshadowing that I was really pleased with because I picked up on it, like not, no, I knew what was going to happen. But in that, oh, that's interesting. Wait, when all the monks were running, there was cherry petals falling like snow.

And I was like, oh, no, they're breaking their day. They're breaking their perfect day. Something's going terribly wrong. But no, no, there's lots of things shifting forward a little bit so that you could have his cherries. That delights me. That makes me very happy. Yeah.

And we get the fifth surprise. Wiggle wheel. Just waggling eyebrows above a mask. That's a good comic strip moment. Especially the turn away into the shadow. And then you turn the page and it's a full. You turn the page and it's like a full panel of just Luzo with the mask on. So you get the surprise.

I love that moment. Yeah, that was good. That was good. And then like double surprise turns out he is good at fighting. Hey, yeah, of course. As has been hinted throughout, of course. Yeah. But this is the first time he does a violence.

Well, it's the thing with the ones that use boffo. Yeah. Is that they always can do at the end. Yeah. So that's another story. What's it? Yeah. Shape thingy.

Yeah. God, I'm good at speaking. It's another part of the jug. There we go. It's the handle of the jug. Yeah. Violence is the handle of the jug. It's a good thing we've got a podcast considering how good I am at saying words.

Not only that, Joanna. You are a poet and a playwright. Now me, I am a man on fiction writer. I'm allowed to think carefully about my metaphor. Feels is meant to flow out of you like water from a fucking jug. I'm not letting the dog go. That was a simile, Francine. Fuck.

Lejeune, who becomes unity. Yep. I love that it was so perfect for her and that Susan realized it as well, like Susan. Brokeragingly does get it a lot of the time. Like she gets what people need. Yeah. She's sort of screaming at her like, Mary is a stupid name. You're not many.

Yeah. You're one. Unity. Yeah. I didn't like how mean Susan was to mirror through it, but I kind of get it because like the autistic did try and kill her granddad a few times there. But yeah, Susan's got a lot of rage about the auditors, actually, which I enjoy.

It's interesting. I wonder if she sees herself a little bit in them, in that she's very ordered and sensible and very not of the chaos of mankind. Yeah. There's a really good line where she's ranting about what she dislikes them. And she says, the bastards get into your head if you let them. When you find yourself thinking that ought to be a law, or I don't make the rules after all.

Yeah. And that's, that's so Susan. And it's such a good like underlining of the fact that auditors, this the anthropomorphic sonification of the petty bureaucracy that drags us all down. And also that if you think about it, Susan often has to step in to be the antithesis of her grandfather. And by that, I don't mean she's like turning up and bringing life, but death can sometimes get a bit whimsical.

And that's when he runs off to join the patchy and foreign legion. And that's when Susan has to step in and be sensible. Yeah. Yeah. She has to get in there with the scythe. And it's just as well she's there now, otherwise some fucker with a combined harvester might come along. That sounds like I was stretching a metaphor too far, but it happened.

It did happen in a previous book. Who's next? Actually listeners, if you're feeling reminiscent of Reaper Managas, one of our, someone just posted in the reddit, a very good breakdown of how they'd think about adapting Reaper Man as a movie is, is worth going over to. Oh, was that backseat final? Yes.

Yeah, I did see that little schedule. Yeah, it was a cool breakdown. Yeah. So the auditors. Wait, no, I have more on Unity. Talk to me about Unity. I love the description of her outfit and her physical appearance throughout, because it is incredibly swivel-eyed.

And so she's got, she's got the evening dress. Yeah. Or the slinky evening dress, but it's okay because she's wearing really big plumbers and really big pink series plumbers. And she's got the bandages for protection. But then this hat with far too many feathers in it. And she's just like done all of it. She's done all the things because she's living life to the full, darling.

She's gone very ab fave in order to enjoy her short life to the full. It's Le Coix, darling. Le Coix. And I, she's a very sweet, sad character. And her death was funny. Yeah. But still kind of sad. And then the lovely, lovely moment at the end, obviously.

But yeah, that's sorry. That's all I had to say on that. Auditors. The other ones. Shit ones. The other ones. The shit auditors. I really like the hosepipe test.

Yeah. No, the malignancy test. Malignancy. Yeah. The local hostility of things towards non-things, such as the hosepipe test. What other things do you reckon would work? I feel like shoelaces not tying properly or

coming untied. Oh, all your shoelaces come undone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Headphone tangle, obviously. But then you can never tell if it's malignancy or just a spite inherent in the headphones. Or like you try and button a shirt and no matter how hard you try,

the buttons will not align. Yeah, good, good. Like, you know, when you've tried like three times and you know you started at the two button buttons and yet somehow. I do. And I think maybe one more thing would be like, every time you open a fizzy drink,

it would go everywhere. Yes. Or be flat. Or somehow already. And then be flat. Yeah. It goes everywhere and then it's flat. Yeah.

And then it goes double for champagne. Cool. Because then I can open a bottle of champagne every time I suspect in order to. It's an expensive habit, but someone has to make these sacrifices. Absolutely. All things about the oddities that aren't just

that's going on about things we don't like in real life. Miss Tangerine's reaction to Mr. White. I love that. As soon as they assume human form, you also get these kind of weird petty things. And this one's a very gendery thing of the kind of man who thinks he knows everything and the put-up on woman that's can't stop thinking yirk

every time she looks at him. Yeah. Yeah. And Miss Brown was very similar, wasn't she? Just up, well, then Miss Brown was kind of more the woman who actually knew what she was doing and was saying sensible things

and then got hit with an axe. Whereas Miss Tangerine is very much like, this dude is just really fucking cringe. Like the vibes. Look at him talk with his mouth flaps. Ah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yirk. Yirk. Yirk. Mouth flaps. Did he say the yirk aloud when he got to it as well? Yeah. Yeah. And we have an angel clothed in white.

And it is clothed. It is clothed. Very important. And to double check how you do an accent in Google Docs to make sure I got that in there. Alt E. I couldn't remember the keyboard short but. Is it the right way up?

I think so. I can never remember that when I'm writing cursive. It's so much easier on my phone. The downside is because of us putting stupid accents. Oh no, it's the wrong way up. It's the wrong way up. I went through the other way. Well, I tried.

Because of us putting stupid accents on words is a bit. Yeah. I can't write the word wank without it having an accent over it now. Including wanker. Which is a word I use quite often. Wank. Wank. Anyway, yeah, sorry.

Paul put upon an angel who's no longer part of the official church dogma thanks to the convocation of E. In one of the few TV ruining my internal image of things saying I don't mind, I'm seeing him as Michael Sheen. Yeah. No, I can see that. Yeah. I was picturing Peter Capaldi.

Like Angel Islington in Neverware, Baby Peter Capaldi. Okay. Somehow that's still mentally my go-to angel, not Michael Sheen. Apparently the Neverware TV series really stuck with me. But yes, he's been thrown out just like the damn rabbits and the big syrupy things. But he hasn't. Death was just being a twat. He got to have a go.

He got to have a go. He got to blow his trumpet, didn't he? I'm very happy for him. Sorry, do you want to talk about heroes a bit before we move on? Yeah. So this was going to be a talking point, but it's not really big enough. And also we're fucking with the timeline today. So let's do it.

Yeah. I thought we've got, depending on your point of view, three or four heroes here. And three of them, I think, fit into quite well-trodden tropes. So we've got your Susan. We've got your sensible hero, who's almost always female because this was the proto strong female lead that practiced it better than anybody else.

It's always a mix of strong female lead and a little bit wendy to lost boys. Like, I'll sort this out because the boys are being silly. Exactly. So except in this, she is actually far more powerful than anyone else, which is much better. Apart from Lobsang at the end, but what you're going to do if you meet the personification of time.

So Susan is that and is very good. And she's allowed weaknesses. She's not being like Hermione. She's very cool, very good. We've got Lobsang, perhaps the most archetypal hero, the young man who's been thrust into this adventure. Not quite unwillingly, but certainly unpreparedly. But it turns out he's perfectly suited for it.

And despite his slight reckless nature, he's clearly got a heart of gold, runs back to try and save Lootsay. It's the events of everybody else and, you know, eventually comes out if everything turns out well. And he saves the day. We've got Lootsay, who is the older, more sensible heroes, learned from experience and steps back. And I think maybe he's not quite the hero in most of the stories,

but he's certainly the... He's like a catalyst for a hero. Yes. He's the Burik to Fitzgerald. Ten points, any listeners who get that reference. And then Unity? I can't fit her into any space in my head, but maybe you can. Well, it's kind of the enemy coming over.

Ah. And becoming the hero is the one who's crossed sides. It's that hero archetype. There we go. Thank you. As you do get. Yes, I was trying to, like, press the personality into something, but yes, you're right.

It's the enemy learning not to be an enemy. Yeah, that's true, actually. Yeah, like Singy and Avatar. Oh, yeah. I've just totally forgotten the guy's name. But yeah, the... Is this spoilers? Yeah.

I feel like the show's old enough. I never got to that point in the show, but I know that that happened because I go on the internet. So Scarface Fire Lord Son, and I'm really annoyed that I've forgotten the name because I have seen that show a lot. Begins with Zed. Zuko.

Zuko, Prince Zuko. Just like in Greece, that's how. Oh, why? Oh, yeah. Danny Zuko. Yes, he is very much... This is the Prince Zuko character. Unity is Prince Zuko.

Yes, except a slightly less annoying and sulky. Yeah. All right, so locations. Locations. We go to the Royal Art Museum. We do. Despite the lack of kings. I like this idea of the art museum kind of needing to exist,

so the city has got somewhere to put all this stuff. Yes. It's kind of like the equivalent of the crap draw, but a lot more aesthetically pleasing. Yes. I love the tiny bit of world building that like the families of all the museum workers live up in the attic there.

Yeah. Like we've never heard of this museum before, but perhaps it's like, all right, gonna put some cool details in. Yeah, that's a nice detail. I like it. Yeah. I guess some of the artworks are pretty popular,

like Man with Big Fig Leaf and three large pink women and one piece of gauze. You can see why I thought this would be the loincloth. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. But one piece of gauze, just not a loincloth make, Francine. Well, I would say so,

but the things you've turned into loincloth in your imagination, Joanna. I am a talented, talented... Imagineer. Shit, my stuff. Cool. Small mention for when and times state that his own separate, personal,

beautiful moment, his gorgeous forest with bird song. You just get to see outside the castle and it is good. You also get that nice pratchet, thud moment of this is very beautiful and Susan going, right, but who cleans up after the fucking peacocks then? Yeah. There's that line near the end about,

oh, your mother and father retired now. So I'm guessing they moved out of the glass castle and somewhere into the grounds there. And that's why he spent so long lovingly discarding the forest, I'm guessing. Yeah. That's a wonderful image. I like it.

Cool. Right. Little bits we liked. What do you like, Joanna? Little bits we liked. It's just a fun Susan moment where Lobsang wants Susan to wind up as procrastinator and says,

can you wind me up? And she says, Lobsang, you are thoughtless and impulsive and deserve to die a stupid and pointless death. Yeah. And then she tries to do it again later. She's got a real, like, dicker sense of humor, hasn't she? Yeah. Which I enjoy.

I very much respect that sense of humor. This may be why Susan's one of my very favorite characters because she's kind of a dick. And also, she's got women with sword energy and we know how I feel about women with swords. This is the thing we most disagree on, actually, is Susan, generally. Now I'm thinking about it.

I think we had, like, our latest, apart from this one, more than one sentence disagreement, I think, was on soul music and on Susan as a character. Because I just don't like her that much. I like her a lot more than this. I get finding her annoying in soul music because she's a teenager. Yeah.

Yeah. No offense to any teenagers listening to this. Like, I know you're not all bad. It's just... Yeah. But no, I've always hated the sense of humor that's just being a twat for the sake of it. Like, it's funny if that's, like,

something that the other person finds funny. But the whole, like, I'm just going to slightly wind you up constantly for the sake of it. And I know if it's not constant. Yeah, no, that's fair. I think I enjoy it because I mostly enjoy that sense of humor with, like, you and our other mutual friend.

Oh, yeah, no, I mean, it's all very... I feel like there's a kind of affection in knowing the exact kind of dick to beat somebody, you know, well, you know. Yeah, yeah. It's consensual dickery. Title of your sense. Anyway.

Auditor traps. This is, like, 50-50 little bit I liked in Iran. I'm just going to keep going, Francie. I mean, it's very much like the lady does protest too much of you, but consensual in your sex day title, isn't it? It's like the people's republic of...

Fuck. Sorry. The people's republic of dickery. Absolutely not funny joke, Francie. Come on, sorry. Tell me about auditors traps. Oh, that's quite funny, though. Auditor traps.

I mean, this is, like, 50-50 a little bit I liked in Iran. I like the idea of the traps for the auditors in this, like a keep left sign that points right. And the sign that says do not feed the elephant, but there's no elephant to not feed. Ignore this notice, duck, that sort of thing. It's funny, and it's a really clever idea within this book. It makes me chuckle.

In that sense, it's a little bit I liked, but then it also is one of those annoying things that's turned into a long-running joke, like in the fandom. One of the five jokes allowed in the squelk group. And it's not like they're not ordered to trap things, they're just signs that are wrong, and it's like that's not an order to trap. Yeah, exactly, yeah, yeah.

That's a misprint. Get your nerdy joke right. Come on. No one is allowed to have fun. I'm thinking of doing it wrong. You're enjoying yourself wrong. No, stop smiling, don't you see? Stop feeling joy.

Well, okay, we're both very Susan at this moment. Yeah, no, we are. You've got a bit. Don't let go of my hand. The bit where Lobserking says, don't let go of my hand to Susan, because they're going through the time warp again. Have we not sung that yet?

Because I've held it in. He's just a dump to the left, and then a step to the alternate universe. Sorry, yeah. And Susan said, don't worry, I won't let you go. I'm Lobserking says no, it's because you'll be compressed instantly. And Susan's like, oh, and I just saw it was a nice,

well, A, it was funny, and B, it was a nice clear example of the sudden power shift, because now Lobserking is deity not confused, teenage half boy. Yes, by a half boy. I mean, half boy, half missing, not half boy, half fish. He's a mere man. He is not a mere man. He is not even a fish boy.

Right, yeah. The problem is, Joanna, and you know this, you know this, especially from the group chat, as my messages get less and less coherent as the night goes on, until about 2am. It doesn't seem to matter that I've been sober for over six years. It's just a 2am message. You and I have like really different sleep patterns,

because I don't have insomnia, and I go to sleep a lot earlier, so my hysterical giggling at messages, while also sober, I don't drink in the week, starts a lot earlier. Yeah, yeah. So you guys will be in the middle of a fairly sensible conversation, and like last night, by the time we got on to cheaters,

it was only 11 o'clock at night, I was gone. That's cheater, the cat listeners, not cheater, the unwelcome at the poker table. Anyway, back on topic. I'm very proud of you for pushing me forward on this, on this episode. Well, clearly not willingly. Because every time I try, you interrupt me to tell me

it's not going to happen. Right, speaking of going through the Time Warp again, the description of there was bright blue, light ahead, and dark red light behind, and I've been, I really like that moment, because I've been reading about like red blue light shifts for creating like 3D visuals about recently, as research for the books.

There was like a weird thing in 1997, where a couple of different TV networks tried to like broadcast shows that were in 3D or had 3D moments, but they used two different technologies. So there were two different sets of glasses from different like fast food times. You had to watch both of them. If that doesn't underline our rapid descent

into a throwaway consumer culture, I don't know what that's. This is the main problem with capitalism, inconsistent 3D programming. Yeah. Anyway, three lines, Francine, you like three lines? Yeah, I sure do, Joanna. All right, cool. So I thought Practic did particularly well with his little,

oh, here's a small foreshadow, or not even that, or here's a nice thing and here's a little connector to it later. And there were lots of long ones and short ones throughout. So the Cherry Blossom one I already mentioned, the desk circle you already mentioned, a couple of others that I liked were the, you can't think about one person saying, Susan always telling Lobsang when he was still just Lobsang.

That's a really good moment because there's like a really quick parallel thing. Susan gets to have her what about me moment and it's followed up a few pages later by Lobsang talking about like one person versus the whole world. Like it's a nice learning moment. So it's like a little through line with him, with a peg in the middle. Less obviously connected, but I feel like was connected,

which is that you notice something once it's gone saying. And there were two in this section, the first one being Luce's procrastinator wine. He didn't notice the wine. He noticed the absence of wine that he'd had so long. And then Susan hadn't been aware of the rise of her heart, but now it's sinking. Yeah, that is a good reason.

I partly just wanted to put that in there because it made me sad. But like in a good way. It's a good line. I do like that moment. Allow me to be awfully wanky poetic for a second because I've often thought and I wonder now if it's because of the subconscious imprint of this book. But I have often associated like bittersweet sadness

with the sound of like that wine glass, the crystal wine glass thing. I just think those two go together. Yeah, I can see that. I once had a dream that I remember very vividly now the whole theme of it was this kind of happy sadness and that sound was going like throughout. And I'm now wondering if it's because of this

that's made me now come back to reading this and made it better. I don't know. Cool. Did that make sense? Yeah, no, that doesn't make sense. Were those sentences? Yeah. Okay, good.

So, mythic bordering on smug was my... Oh, love that moment. My last little wine, which was... Well, basically the whole climax of the lute, say, Lobsang interactions is they finally go to the... What's it called? Not the gym, the... Dojo.

Dojo, thank you. And the whole time you're like wondering how practice is going to do this. And it kind of goes a little bit airy-fairy and then right back down to earth. And then Lobsang decides to not prostrate himself exactly but remains subordinate as a point to make a point. And everyone likes it.

Everyone liked that. And then Lootsera at the end says, nicely mythic, the whole thing. Yeah, that's really good. Well done. But it was bordering on smugs. So, don't try it again. And I felt like that was practice

kind of giving yourself a tiny slap on the wrist because I was reading it a bit like, oh, isn't that nice and wrapped up in a bow that almost doesn't feel fractured. And then he clunked it. He did the poetic and clunked it. Well done, practice. Thank you.

Thank you, Terry Bratshift for clunking it. Speaking of three lines, actually, there's a good bit when we get the kind of flashback Susan and Nanny Ogg conversation. Oh, yeah. And she's explaining kind of how she felt about what had happened and describes it as, it had all gone mythic with extra myth.

So, that's a nice payoff at the end of that. Yes. The way that bit of the story was eked out was nice. It wasn't particularly frustrating. Yeah. And you can kind of figure out what the reveal's going to be if you really want to think about it.

Yeah, but you want to hear it. But you want to hear it. You want to hear the story told. And Nanny Ogg's the person to tell it. And actually, speaking of just like nice sweet moments, right at the end of her explanation, when she's talking about leaving and said, the man took me aside and said,

thank you, and it was time to go. And why would I argue? There was love there. It was in the air. Which is very nice. She's like, oh, well, those two clearly kind of have it sorted, I guess. It's a nice moment, especially for Nanny Ogg,

who is less sent. She's not sentimental. She's practical. Yes. You know, she's the one who suggests the guilds to them. But she is more sentimental than, say, Granny. Yeah.

And I enjoyed her giving season a little slap on the wrist for being a judgmental little twat. So season was, wow, a bit of a chilly decision, wasn't it? Bit rich season for a start. Nanny Ogg's like, perhaps, but I was on standing there and had to make the decision. So don't fucking judge me. Yeah.

Well, we've had a lot of fun kids, but it's time to talk about the nature of humanity. Oh, no, we foreshadowed it. Now we must just shadow it for it. Be it, I suppose. Do it. Francine, how do you feel about the nature of humanity? Don't let your dreams be dreams.

Sorry. Sorry. So what makes a human? Well, I don't know how to make an ale. I was going to say, I can't really answer that because we haven't done the relevant book yet. All right. Well, in that case, let's go less on the atomic level

because I think the auditors have that covered. And more on what separates us from not a human? The darkness behind the eyes. Darkness behind the eyes, perhaps, yes. Is it the voice behind the eyes? The separation of reality and how we perceive it? Well, to grab a through line from last week and carry it through to now.

Oh, thank goodness. We need some kind of line, yeah. To grab a through line as though it were a rope thrown out to us floundering in the river. I feel like this book argues that it's very much the shape. It's the jug. Yeah. The jug is what makes us human.

Are we floundering in a jug? OK, yes. So, yeah, that is an interesting concept, isn't it? If it is, as discussed in this book, I'd say, they say it's the shape and it's evolved memories. The what's left in there after we've gone through thousands of years of being scared of fire and chaos and tunnels, taking it slightly more round world theories,

then it's the endocrine system, isn't it? What part of us is made purely by the non-brain part of us or by the parts of the brain that can't be reconstructed in, say, the cloud? I've got to be honest, Joanna. A lot of my fascination with this is my fascination with immortality. And I won't go too far into that

because we've done it already. I've already outed myself to complete fucking weird. I want to be vampire, not in a fang-bang away, just dinner. I don't ever want to die away. But I'm not scared of death. I'm just scared of not existing anymore. Ooh, another callback to another book. By the way, by the way, part of the shape of things.

Be a duck for too long and a duck you'll stay. A bright duck, maybe, with some odd memories, but still a duck when talking about the witches and their borrowing. Yes. Right back to us. That's a through line that's carried through a lot of books. I think kind of interesting with it as well

is it's more than just the human shape and what we've learned, but it's the way humans need to perceive things that in turn forms that humanity. It's like a commonality thing, like something that makes us human is something humans share. So pulling it over from Hogfather, that belief in fantasies, and it's nicely paralleled here,

talking about callbacks to other books. Sometimes the mind of the most sensible person encountered something so big, so complex, so alien to all understanding that it told itself little stories about it instead. Then when it felt it understood the story, it felt it understood the huge incomprehensible thing. Yes.

So now we have kind of almost an origin story for the horseman as a parallel origin story of the figures of fantasy, and a third parallel really is the figure of gods. Absolutely, yeah. They're the small lies that become the big lies, we tell ourselves. And it really comes through in the moment where death confronts the auditors

up in the sky, because him and the horsemen are trying to find the bits of humanity they've now got as a way to defeat them. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And you have, you know, famine saying, look, they've got a kind of hunger, I can find a way to get to it. And death says to them,

look at the hand, four fingers and a thumb, a human hand. Humans gave you that shape, and that is the way in. You do not feel small in a big universe, that is what they are singing. It is big and you are small, and around you there is nothing but the cold of space and you are so very alone. The drama.

The drama, also nice little call back to the hand being important. A little similar. Yes, after the Ronnie and the, doing the thing. One thing I found interesting out of practice take on this was that the bodies understood orders. This was clearly something that made humans humans.

And I wonder what you thought of that. I mean, to me, cooperation, I would put it more as is what makes people, maybe not people people, but people successful, but then maybe taking orders counts of cooperation. Yeah, I feel like they are kind of blurring into one mush there. Some of it is because it works for the auditors, but if you think about it,

people form themselves into hierarchies so easy. They have gods and then they have bosses and then they have themselves. And do you think that is like the natural state of the species or like a, just a continuation of one fuck up we made thousands of years ago? I would like to think it does not need to be the natural state, but I feel like it's also is kind of the natural state.

Like I feel like that's the point being made there is that people will look for gods to worship and sometimes they'll create those gods closer to home. Yeah. Anyone who's tried to make decisions in a group where nobody takes charge has experienced this. Yeah, no, I've been in and I've been in enough committees to respect that sometimes someone needs to take charge.

Unfortunately, the kind of person who needs to take charge is not Mr. White, but the person who will take charge is Mr. White with an axe in the library. Unless we get that first one spreadsheet. Yeah. Not as a murder weapon, is it? Do Anna in the study with a spreadsheet? How old would one murder someone?

Don't ask how, it was gruesome. But she was wearing a fantastic dress. Who knew a pivot table could be utilised in that manner? Did she does an Excel championship each year? Yes, you've sent me links to like the YouTube videos. Yeah, good, yeah. Oh, no. So, yeah, I suppose I wanted this out of the point

because it's one of Pratchett's very favourite subjects, is what makes a person a person. And we've talked about the nature of humanity several times. And I think that in this one, a lot of his nebulous ideas being solidified for the first time. And we'll see it more and we'll see it evolve. And it's something he keeps coming back to. And in this one, we just get it through this like perfect metaphor

of the auditors and the genre's a translator. Yes. And it's just so good. I feel like there's also, there's like a touch of cynicism to it as well as the auditors become human, they remain villainous. And the auditors we've talked about a lot, they are the most terrifying Pratchett villains because it's the opposite of love is not hate,

it's indifference because of their cold bureaucratic indifference and seeing that. Though they delude themselves slightly with that, don't they? Because they hate humanity, they do, they hate us. They do, they do. It's everything they don't like. And when it's, they're put into human form, that doesn't go away.

Either the hatred or the bureaucratic indifference, it's still very there. And so you have these things where they feel the need to go and try and figure out how to appreciate art, but they do it by taking a painting apart into its requisite pigments. Take the world apart one atom at a time. Show me a single atom of truth, of justice.

A beauty, and that's what they're looking for. They are looking for an atom of beauty by taking apart the painting. In Rieferman, we get Azrael with the big clock. Yeah. How does he tie into this myth? Let's not worry about it. Is he big granddaddy time?

Oh, no, I get it, I get it. He's, he's, he's time on a universal scale and time is time on a world scale. Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. Okay, cool. Let's go with that. I also like the concept of the tiny apocalypses,

apocalypti, apocalypti pods. Sorry. You had that Francine smile on your face. And even when you try your best not to chide me, I chide myself. I don't need to say anything like on this podcast. No, you don't. I've been trained.

Fuck, what was I saying? Yeah, sorry. So little apocalypses. Another thing about humanity is an ability to build the universe around whatever small world you have. Yes. And that your village burning down

is enough of an apocalypse for the five horsemen to ride. Is a nice embodiment of that, I think. The world is genuinely ending for these people. And this ties in when Luce is trying to kind of goad chaos a little bit. Yeah. Oh, is that right? One of our elephant mentions actually,

he says it's like putting a sheet over an elephant. There's the sheet over the elephant. There's the chocolate syringe being maybe an elephant thing. He used to impregnate an elephant. But he also starts to, he's kind of building chaos up and saying, oh, my Abbott loves you. He loves a bit of chaos, has written those about you. You're important understanding how the universe works.

And he goes into talking about cities and quality and fear and how fear is belief. Yeah, you can't fear something if you don't believe it. Yeah, it's like, and this also ties us back into the power of belief, which, you know. I was trying to find like a point to make about belief having different types and like maybe the fear type of belief is the opposite of another.

And I'm not sure that's true. I think fear might be at the root of all belief powerful enough to create a mythical being. Yeah, because it's either a fear of something or a fear of something allows makes you desperate for the opposite. Yeah, you're shaping your own defense or your defender or your comfort or you are shaping the fear itself, but all of it was rooted in fear.

It's when you're not scared that you don't need to conjure up beings higher than yourself, I guess. It's like take famine as an example and the quote from the last section about how for famine you need humans. You need the avarice, you need the greed. And again, that all roots backwards towards fear. Yes, you can have drought and you can have other things that stop crops from happening.

I don't really know much about farming. And sorry. But it's not famine until you truly fear the famine, which is a cool idea, but it's not great to end on. But yeah, so we've got back into the power of belief, which I really love. Yeah, yeah, but it's way more grim. I mentioned that it's a bit more grim and cynical than other times we've looked about what it means to be human,

but it's still kind of beautifully optimistic at the end. It's all of the creatures and characters that aren't strictly human, finding human moments. It's what the perfect moment is all about. And I know I said I personally don't really enjoy the Susan and Lobsang, but it's a very human thing. It's the perfect moment even if it's got the nigger. Yeah.

It's time getting to kind of step out of being the personification of time and have this sort of human retirement in an endless perfect moment. Yeah. There we go. That's much nicer, more poetic bit to end on. Obscure reference for Neil Franzen. Yay! Always had to ruin it.

Oh, it's quite a nice poetic one for once, actually. The poet Lobsang quoted, Am I a man who dreamed he was a butterfly? Or am I a butterfly dreaming? He is a man, said Lobsang. He didn't flap around making information-rich patterns in the air or laying eggs in cabbage havens. He's probably a man, wasn't he?

And I was like, oh, do butterflies flap around making information-rich patterns in the air? That's interesting. So I started looking that up, and then you'll be thrilled to find out that instead I found out about ultraviolet communication and butterflies. Cool, isn't it, though? That sounded sarcastic, it wasn't.

No, I know it's there. Yeah, I can see your face, so it's fine. But yeah, butterflies use ultraviolet signals, reflectance, or absorption to communicate. And we could go on it for a while, but instead we're just going to mention one butterfly because they mention cabbages, and I can tell it back better. The white cabbage butterflies use their

private ultraviolet communication system for mating. So females can reflect ultraviolet light, so make themselves glow ultravioletly, and males can't really reflect it, but can absorb it really well. And so if they perceive an ultraviolet communication from a female, then they will start their courtship routine, and then the female can then communicate

her receptiveness to it by doing more ultraviolet stuff. And isn't that wonderful, isn't that wonderful that cabbage butterflies specifically, they are the boring little white ones, boring little ones, they're very common, but they're not boring. Our eyes are just shit, taking us back to what the cuttlefish see.

Our eyes are just shit, they're glowing ultraviolet, they're communicating with each other in like fucking rave. It's amazing, isn't that nice? That's so cool, I love that. Isn't that nice to know? Next time we see cabbage white butterflies, we can know that they're flapping around all ultraviolet. Yeah, that's a delight.

Amazing. Ultraviolet butterflies. Also, just on that quote, while we're in the obscure reference finial, that is a translation, obviously, of a quote from a Chinese philosopher from... Oh, is it? Yes.

Good, good. I'm glad you picked that up. Right, I think that's all we can say. Sorry, listeners. It's fine, I'll edit it this time. Oh, cool. I think that's everything we can say on Thief of Time. We're going to have a week off.

I know we started like this month, but we're quite tired. We've done the work. We've done it. Well, what do you want? The schedule is going to be a little fucky over the next couple of months. We're doing a couple of... Like in a good way, we're not...

Like a fun way. Yeah, a fun fucky. So, does that go along with consensual decree? So, next month, we will be coming back from our week off, during our week off, Patreons will get it, don't worry. On or around the 10th of October, I'm going to say we'll have a little bit of leeway I'm releasing that week, just in case something goes wrong.

We are going to be talking about Rob's new book, A Life with Footnotes. We will, yay. And then the next two weeks of October will be dedicated to the last hero. Yay. Very excited to talk about that. Friends are coming back.

So, that's October. Until October, dear listeners. You can. You can follow us on Instagram at the TrueShermakeyFret on Twitter at MakeyFretPod, on Facebook at the TrueShermakeyFret. Join our subreddit community, chat, join in, say things, subreddit, r slash t t s m y f.

If you want to email us your thoughts, queries, castles, snacks, and albatrossapods, go to the TrueShermakeyFretPod at gmail.com. And if you would like to support us financially, go to patreon.com forward slash the TrueShermakeyFret. And exchange your hard earned pennies for all sorts of bonus nonsense. There's a nice little backlog for you to listen to now.

There's a lot in there. And until next time, dear listener, even with Nougat, you can have a perfect moment. Am I saying Nougat right?