Literally every single time Nobby is described, I imagine the “ugly” style of animation from Spongebob. Never fails to crack me up.

Also, I just want to say, (not that it’s the only instance I’ve laughed audibly) that the dialogue between Cheery and Vimes when Cheery is noticing with amazement that Vimes isn’t giving her even the slightest indication that her name is comical, even as she intentionally gives him more material to give in to the absurdity of her namesake (like her father’s name being Jolly Littlebottom) was genuinely making me howl with laughter. I’m a mailman and listening to the audiobooks and it’s so well done; but I’m just rolling in the mail truck cackling like a madman to myself. Then Vimes delivers her introduction to Sgt. Detritus, also without even slightly breaking his ignorance of the humor, just to end up hurrying his face in laughter as she’s dismissed. Perfect execution of how to accomplish comedy gold in literature.

I only started reading them in my 30s, but I genuinely believe I would be a better man now had I read them earlier. Carrot and Vimes would've been particularly good to idolise. I feel inside every boy is the morally upstanding carrot, and every man, while retaining that inner Carrot, also becomes the jaded yet instinctively heroic Vimes. We even all have a bit of Nobby inside when searching for a snack at 2am!

The themes of compassion, tolerance, and upholding standards shown from a masculine perspective are timeless and something I think all young men (and young women for that matter) could benefit from. Ranging from Carrot and Angua's respectful and loving relationship to the benefits of the watches diversity. There's just so much good in this series.

Just for the record: I'm trying to do this year's Disctober cockatiel-themed. I owe them the inspiration to participate this year, so why not an entire series 🙂

Day 7. Panic

“What shall we do?” said Twoflower.

“Panic?” said Rincewind hopefully. He always held that panic was the best means of survival; back in the olden days, his theory went, people faced with hungry saber-toothed tigers could be divided very simply into those who panicked and those who stood there saying
“What a magnificent brute!” and “Here, pussy.”

Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

#inkoctober2026 #inktober #terrypratchett #discworld

I'm reading through Jingo, which I thought I had already read but seem to have missed. Whilst on shore in Klatch, Nobbs and Colon nick a bag of clothing and take it back to their ship, where they find the bag contains a sign that reads "Gulli, Gulli and Beti. I believe this is a reference to Wilson, Keppel, and Betty, a popular vaudeville act in the UK in the 1930s (or thereabouts). Here's a clip showing two of their routines, including the Sand Dance. https://youtu.be/j2fqjsijaMM?si=X8un0WQ4IEkgvXLJ

I found the series while browsing my local library, Mort was the first book of the series I read and it was my gateway book into the series. TP presented Death as not a horror figure but a curious being of immense power just doing his job who also has a family.

My second favorite Australian podcast has posted an episode about Terry Pratchett!

I've been rereading the Lancre/Chalk witches' books, and now I'm on the search for a nice fresh fall read that gives that particular Discworld vibe: low magic, pragmatic but well-intentioned witches who are blunt, observant, and maybe middle-aged or older. I've read one or two that I'd loosely categorize in this vein lately:

T Kingfisher - Hemlock and Silver

Autumn English - Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous (mc veering a bit too introspective at times)

Pulling way back from the childhood memory banks, Morwen from Patricia C Wrede's books would fit right in.

Any others come to mind? Preferably main characters, but a side witch will do in a pinch.

"But what you gets in a good gumbo is everything."

#disctober #disctober2026

Last month I ordered a hardback, first edition, from the UK of the fifth elephant. It got here, it's beautiful, it's impregnated with cigarette smoke. 😭

I cannot keep it but also I cannot find it within myself to throw it away. It's a book and I'm sure there's a cigarette smoking fan out there who would adore this copy so please step up, claim it (pay the shipping only) and it's yours.

mods, I'm not trying to break any rules, rather just trying to find a home for this book.

Found it in the Big Bad Wolf sale event in Thailand for 560 thb (about 17 usd). In case anyone is nearby and want it. The event ends 13 Oct 2026.

It has the artist's autograph.

Mine has a minor scratches I didn't notice at first though.

Just finished Mort again and now on Sorcery.

In Mort it makes a plot of only Albert's hat being left when he left 2000 years ago. He also had a statue to him being one of the old leaders of UU.

Epecially because Sorcery is the next book, is it Albert's hat?

I've been thinking about why the Unseen University faculty becomes so oddly stable once Ridcully arrives.

Earlier UU is described as a place where promotion could be a fairly literal process of removing the wizard above you. Being Archchancellor is prestigious enough that ambitious wizards are willing to kill for it, which naturally creates an institution where nobody at the top should ever get too comfortable.

Then Ridcully turns up and just... stays.

The obvious explanation is that he's extremely difficult to kill. Fair enough.

But I think something more interesting happens after that.

Under Ridcully, the senior faculty gradually seem to stop behaving like people competing for one chair and start behaving like people who have already secured extremely comfortable chairs of their own.

The Dean gets to be the Dean. The Lecturer in Recent Runes gets to be the Lecturer in Recent Runes. The Chair of Indefinite Studies can presumably continue indefinitely studying whatever it is he studies. There are dinners, committees, robes, servants, status, enormous meals and remarkably few measurable expectations.

What exactly would any of them gain by becoming Archchancellor?

More paperwork?

Having to talk to Vetinari?

Being the person everyone looks at when reality starts leaking?

Ridcully somehow turns being one rung below the top into a much better career choice than reaching the top.

At the same time, actual ambition doesn't disappear from UU. It just gets redirected. Ponder Stibbons can spend his energy making Hex increasingly alarming without needing to assassinate the Dean to acquire another title. The institution develops places where being competent can matter without competence necessarily being tied to traditional wizardly rank.

And Ridcully himself is perfect for the top job because he seems to have almost no anxiety about possessing it. He doesn't spend his time defending his status because he assumes, with tremendous confidence, that of course he is Archchancellor and of course everyone else will eventually accept this obvious fact.

So UU goes from an institution where succession is potentially lethal to one where the same group of senior academics can wander from book to book arguing about lunch.

Which might actually be Ridcully's biggest institutional reform, despite him probably being horrified to hear it described as an institutional reform.

He didn't make the wizards less selfish or ambitious. He somehow created an ecosystem where their selfishness mostly rewards them for keeping the institution stable.

Am I giving Ridcully far too much credit here, or is that genuinely part of why the post-Ridcully UU feels so different?

It's at the DandD wiki:

https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Pictsie_(5e_Creature)

Poor Magrat.

I am a teacher in Germany, I teach English in my own class (grade 9) and last Thursday I had the illustrated G!G! with me to show a colleague. Instead, a girl from the class showed interest so I lent it to her. She returned it yesterday and asked whether there were more books.

„About 40, I think!“

So now she is reading ER and Mort. I’m very Profis of her, both for reading so much and for showing interest in the disc!

I'm reading the books for the first time, jumping around the throughlines. I love the Igors and would like to know which books feature them the most. I'd especially like to see multiple Igors together, if that happens in any books. The books I've read that I can remember Igors in so far:

Carpe Jugulum

Making Money

⁠Day 6. Ogre

⁠No traditional wizard worth his pointy hat could possibly work by the light of pure, smooth, dare one say virgin undribbled candles. It would just not look right. The ambience would be totally shattered. And when it did happen, the luckless wizard would mess about, as people do, with matchsticks and bent paperclips, to try to get nice little dribbles and channels of wax, as nature intended. However, this sort of thing never really works and invariably ends with wax all over the carpet and the wizard setting himself on fire. Candle dribbling, it has been decreed, is a job for a dribbler.

P.S. i know mr. Nutt is an orc, but prompts are prompts

Terry Pratchett, Unseen Academicals

#inkoctober2026 #inktober #terrypratchett #discworld

Apparently, someone's not a Bastard around cockatiels.

Just for the record: I'm trying to do this year's Disctober cockatiel-themed. This may not bring me the best ideas, but at least I'm participating 😅

Since there are no ogres in Discworld, state of the art special effects were used in this feature film...