Esk says herself she doesn't really feel like a wizard either. She seems to use witch or wizard magic whenever appropriate; either she's both, or it's more like by now she's just plain transcended the definitions.
I certainly wouldn't be surprised if Nanny takes it upon herself to make sure the girls of Lancre are informed of the basics, along with a whole lot of anecdotes.
Not a coincidence it works well, since they're both inspired by the same memory from her childhood that clearly affected her deeply; coming across a toy lost years before, buried and upside down at the bottom of her garden.
(The gem reset inspiration is a bit less glamorous; she wiped her phone one time and lost all her stuff.)
I don't think it was really meant to be a sequel or coda so much as an... encapsulation? It was meant to be... not standalone, since it built heavily on what had come before, but a self-contained spectacle.
Also it's not just Ted Leo! Aimee Mann plays Opal. Independent Together is a reunion of The Both!
Spinel was a tribute to something even earlier than looney tunes - she was in the style of rubber hose animation, the first really common style that spread over the industry as animation became widespread in the 1920s and animators reveled in being able to make their characters flow without physical limitations. It was most famous for Felix the Cat or the very early Mickey Mouse cartoons, but it faded out of favour by the mid 1930s as Disney took animation towards a more realistic place, and nowadays is, with the exception of an occasional throwback or revival (Cuphead is a particularly prominent example lately), a bit of a forgotten treasure of a bygone era. You can see how appropriate a style it is for Spinel (deliberately so).
The plate of the Disc slowly rotates on the back of the elephants and turtle through means unknown. The sun is a small furious ball of heat follows a set ring around the world, so it's summer in ankh-morpork when the rotation of the disc means that the sun passes directly overhead, and winter when it's 90 degrees from that and the sun's path is furthest away. Each year therefore has two summers and and two winters.
I don't really interpret Pepe as pretending; I've known plenty of people who are totally different in their 'on' persona than their 'off' persona, and they're both just as much them. I just see Pepe as a non-binary person who channels their passion into being flamboyant in one environment and is dour and cynical around their friends and people they trust when they're letting their hair down, so to speak.
Oh, speaking of the lady with the large glittering ball, today I learned pratchett was probably inspired (although not exactly):
https://bit.ly/2XFRFHD
I’m amazed by this direction because Pratchett is spending so much time digging into these characters, and I expected that most of the book would focus on the wizards and the football match. That’s still the framing of the narrative, but it’s not what’s given the most space in the book.
Pterry, 2008, while he was writing the book (spoiling because I know Mark doesn't even want to hear author's thoughts until the end) >
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