IntenseDebate - Salvius23

5 years ago @ Mark Watches - Mark Watches 'Babylon ... · 3 replies · +20 points

A friend of mine posted this on Facebook today:

5 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Wintersmit... · 0 replies · +13 points

Now that I'm finally back from vacation, more-or-less unpacked, and settling down a bit, and now that I can post it in the open, I'm going to basically repeat what I posted last week, about the reason I jumped onto this section several years ago, to make sure I could claim it:

The last two sentences of this chapter are maybe my favorite two sentences Pratchett ever wrote. I don't think I've ever read a more perfect expression of grief, and the necessity of letting go of grief because the rest of the world stubbornly insists on continuing to happen around you. If this isn't capital-L Literature, I don't know what is.

5 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Wintersmit... · 0 replies · +13 points

My wife & I are going to Key West for a week, starting Wednesday, which means I won't be around when Mark's review post about the section I commissioned goes live. So I just wanted to say, in case I don't get a chance next Monday, that I commissioned Chapter 5 (which turned out to be the second half of Chapter 5) three years ago, because (mild expectation spoilers for that part) gur ynfg gjb fragraprf bs gung puncgre ner znlor zl snibevgr gjb fragraprf Cenpurgg rire jebgr.

(Slightly more specific spoiler) V qba'g guvax V'ir rire ernq n zber cresrpg rkcerffvba bs tevrs, naq gur arprffvgl bs yrggvat tb bs tevrs orpnhfr gur erfg bs gur jbeyq fghoobeayl vafvfgf ba pbagvahvat gb unccra nebhaq lbh.

5 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Wintersmit... · 0 replies · +12 points

"No, no. No, it's spelt 'Raymond Luxury-Yacht," but it's pronounced 'Throatwobbler Mangrove.'"

5 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Wintersmit... · 2 replies · +13 points

I suspect it just seems like Pratchett doesn't put random shit into his work for the sake of it because when he does, he tends to take that random shit and work it into serious world-building in later books.

For example: An early offhand reference to Trolls being a silicon-based life form, which is just a science fiction trope dropped into his fantasy book, later gets the "let's think through the implications of this" treatment, giving us trolls who are natural at counting to two, and whose brains work better when properly cooled.

5 years ago @ Mark Watches - Mark Watches 'Babylon ... · 1 reply · +11 points

And to be fair, we're watching the episodes here on a vastly accelerated schedule. For those of us who watched the series as it came out, this was a flashback to a scene that had happened two years earlier. And while I believe the older episode had been repeated in that time, it wasn't referred back to within the show, so if you had been watching the episodes as they aired, and didn't bother watching any repeats, it would literally have been two years since you saw Vir tell Morden what he wanted.

5 years ago @ Mark Watches - Mark Watches 'Babylon ... · 0 replies · +11 points

Well, back in "A Late Delivery from Avalon," Marcus did tell already us he was Galahad, didn't he?

5 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Thud!': Pa... · 0 replies · +10 points

Also, importantly: The artist had apparently painted it to be displayed that way, as a panorama, but it had never actually been displayed that way previously. The Ankh-Morpork museum was about to show it that way for the first time, ever (except, apparently, for Sybil's smaller-scale sketch produced when she was in school, but no one Important had been aware of that).

5 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Thud!': Pa... · 0 replies · +15 points

Back near the beginning of the book, Fred Colon brings up Verity "Hammerhead" Pushpram, and Nobby says of her, "you can never get rid of the smell of fish. And her eyes are too far apart." But in the end, he reconsiders her, saying "ol' Hammerhead, well, you might never be sure which way she was lookin,' but her buttered clams, well-- [...] An,' y'know, these days, when she hits me with a wet fish, it doesn't sting like it used to. I think we were reaching an understanding."

Which could probably be seen as a kind of growth, if only a very Nobbsian kind of growth.

5 years ago @ Mark Reads - Mark Reads 'Thud!': Pa... · 3 replies · +5 points

FWIW, my copy, which is the first US hardcover edition, has that same cover art as the one you have labeled "the only US version I could find," but without the "New York Times Bestseller" text or the review quote from F&SF; and instead of referencing a future book, says "Author of the National Bestseller Going Postal".

So, possibly those alterations were made for paperback release (or some other edition after the first), and it's just that no one online has archived the earlier version.

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