“THERE'S NO JUSTICE, JUST US.”

Have you seen his later stuff? The dementia affected him, I'm afraid to say.

agreed. reading raising steam just made me sad.

The books definitely start to suffer from if nothing else repetition senpai. Even TP himself highlighted how difficult he found it to use the same characters over and over and still make stories interesting. Unlike I don't chalk this up to the dementia, it's just the way the series runs.

There are stuff some fantastic books after I feel the series as a whole declines: just before Jingo, The Truth is probably my second favourite of all the novels and I think Thief of Time is fantastic.

I'd say the same of a lot of book series, it's not exclusively to Pratchett. Iain Banks is the same, and I'm really glad he had a huge return to form with The Hydrogen Sonata before he went out (and likewise, that Pratchett finished on the slightly divergent Aching series which is great).

T I P P E D
I
P
P
E
D

Night Watch is my favorite, but most people say you can't pick it or most people would. So...

> Fifth Elephant
In which we see Sam Vimes at his best and worst.

> Making Money
Maybe it was just the comparison with Going Postal, which was by far his best of the later books, but everything here felt a little sloppy, even hokey at times. Still enjoyable, just less satisfying.

What did he mean by this?

>And imagine, you didn't have holes in your brain when you wrote this.

Did someone write something mean about your binky, skippy? Oooh poor widdle diddums...

Alzheimer's begin effecting a patient's brain tissues long before it can be diagnosed. Pratchett's brain, and therefore his writing and thinking, were impacted well before the tremors and forgetfulness appeared.

While I like Pratchett as much as any other author, I've never quite understood why so many spegs want to give him a perpetual reach around and/or elevate him to godhood. He was good and he had some fun ideas. That should be enough of an epitaph for any man.

...

>Even TP himself highlighted how difficult he found it to use the same characters over and over and still make stories interesting.

I was lucky enough to attend a Q&A session with him in Washington DC in '02 or '03. He commented that he hadn't written any more books with the Lancre Witches because he was having trouble plotting for them.

>act like an asshole
>get salty when people treat you like an asshole
Truly they will say, this dude was an asshole.

>confusion will be my epitaph

Found the fanboys. Be sure to put one of his books under your pillows tonight!

Oh man you got properly mad didn't you?

I am a Terry Pratchett fan, yes.

>come into a thread about Pratchett
>"oh man people in this thread like Pratchett how could this be happening to me?"
Hilarious.

>Night Watch
>The Fifth Elephant

I think the only Discworld novel that is actually bad enough that he may have wished to rewrite it is Equal Rites, though. In a sense, the Tony novels is probably him trying to do just that.

>“THERE'S NO JUSTICE, JUST US.”

>Thief of Time
>Haven't read the more recent ones, unaware of eventual decline

>Can't pick Night Watch
Then Rea-
Small Go-
Fuck it. Witches Abroad.

>Did someone write something mean about your binky, skippy? Oooh poor widdle diddums...
The fun thing is that you escalating from bants to full-on schoolyard insults means you're far more emotionally invested in them talking back to you than they were in you being coarse to begin with.

If you can't handle the banter, then you should probably not try to start banter. Some might say "or even be on Veeky Forums," but honestly I've found that by being straightforward you really disarm most of the venom that people put out.

Fuck.
Fave is probably Night Watch. Or Thief of Time.

The decline I'd say was starting to show its very first signs in THUD, for me - "That's not my cow" was memorable and it was good, but honestly it didn't feel all that Vimes-y to me - even taking into account character growth, he feels very remote from the man who struggled with the gonne in Men At Arms.
It's also a couple of years before the diagnosis. That said, I still liked the book, and it was only at Snuff that the shine was gone for me - Unseen Academicals I still enjoyed, perhaps because of the subject matter, but Snuff and Raising Steam were really unfortunate.
Glad he'd put the effort in for Shepherd's Crown though - he probably had a lot of help, and being posthumous probably helps given the events of the book, but it works.

Justice is the result of authority creating a moral code and an idea of moral value to certain action.

Unseen Academicals is when it got real obvious there was nothing left in the noggin

No one ever brings up the second part of that quote.

Yeah Vimes went to shit

My problem with Thud is that it just felt too heavy handed, and it covered concepts he'd done to death already.

Jingo, Fifth Elephant, Thud, Feet of Clay and Snuff all carried the same message, and they were all varying degrees of heavy handed aseops. After a while, getting the same message over and over just doesn't carry.

It didn't help that Raising Steam, which was meant to end on this high note, also had the same sort of message in the end, except without any sort of villain to deal with.

>very remote from the man who struggled with the gonne in Men At Arms.
but user, the entire point of the Dark subplot WAS the struggle with the gonne. The Where's My Cow bit was Vimes' vehicle for resistance.

Pretty sure that's Reaper Man, part of his speech to Azrael... Maybe he says it in Mort too, but Reaper Man is one of my favorite books so I remember it the most.

Monika please go and stay go.

is from Hogfather

This is the one case of legitimate 'what did he mean by this' that I can't get over. I see acts of mercy and kindness every single day

Nü Teegee is contrarian.

Because it's in the nature of humanity to help each other. The universe itself is uncaring and hostile, and it's up to us to help ourselves through it by imposing our own order on things.

t. butthurt asshole

That's because you're missing the rest of the conversation where he underscores that doing so is what ultimately makes us human.

There doesn't exist any of this. Yet we strive to make it. Because how else can it become?

He means that justice, kindness, love etc. are not physical things. Those are things humans insist exist even though they are pretty much make-believe and without our insistence on making those things "real" we wouldn't survive as a species. We wouldn't be "human".

It was a bit - and I'll admit, Vimes's Inner Dark that watches him was fairly well done, but it was crude - and, of course, the outcome. Vimes could barely beat the gonne. Against the Summoning Dark he had issues, but it never seemed so dire - despite (or perhaps because of) it playing out on a larger scale.

Men at Arms too, though that had a fair-sized subplot. Jingo had a minor subplot, and Fifth Elephant was almost entirely focused on the message.
Feet of Clay was quite filler for me, I always kind of struggle to recall what happens.

Should I cast him as my next setting's DEATH or a God of Narrative?

Reading Making Money right after Going Postal feels weird because all the time I felt like I was reading a worse, less interesting, less fleshed-out version of the same story.

I just assumed that Unseen Academicals was less than brilliant because of my dislike of football. For me there were no stakes in the main plot. It's just that looking back on it I can't think of much that I enjoyed of it not related to football.

I didn't like the idiot airhead supermodel, I didn't like her freeloading workshy boyfriend, Vetinari did not seem to be as Vetinari as he once was and I don't see why there needed to be the introduction of the massively OP as fuck Orcs into the setting so late.

At least with the goblins they had been mentioned previously, if rarely.

Orcs could have been the half-elves mentioned by Granny Weatherwax in Lords and Ladies and it would have at least fit and explained the utter hatred of them anyone sensible had.

This and the Science of Discworld after the 2nd (the one with the elves?) are the only Discworld books I haven't felt any desire to reread and I have read the others so much the words are starting to wear off of the page. Raising Steam is the only one I haven't even gotten to the end of once as it felt like watching someone die.

I did like reading about the Wizards again. Those few bits were worth the price of the book at least.

The Spinner of Stories. He is the reason why history runs in circles and the stories are repeated.

Unseen Academicals is where it went downhill IMO.

Sounds about right. Narrative Causality's a bitch.

>they had been mentioned previously
Huh, had they?

I think once, off-handedly, in one of the very first books.

Yes. In The Last Hero I think it was. One of the Silver Horde, might have been Kid Willie, and Rohana Raven Haired. She left him surrounded by angry goblins and ran off with all of the treasure.

They were also mentioned in passing in one of the earlier books.

People always leave out the rest of the conversation.

"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"

MY POINT EXACTLY.

The point of the conversation is supposed to be that there's no intrinsic meaning in the universe, but our belief in that meaning existing gives us purpose.

I loved the villain in Feet of Clay, but that was about it.

The golem kind is just such a cool concept.

All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life bearable."
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
"Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little—"
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
"So we can believe the big ones?"
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
"They're not the same at all!"
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET—Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED.
"Yes, but people have got to believe that, or what's the point—"
MY POINT EXACTLY.

Ah, fair enough then

"WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, BUT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?"

He could write better with Alzheimer then you could with your 'full' brain

>THERE IS NO JUSTICE, JUST US
The whole meaning behind this saying is that there is no great universal justice that will come for all the 'bad people'. it's up to us as a race to create our own justice. one that's fair and accessible for all of us.

It's been a while since I've seen this level of genuine assdamage on the part of a redditor

Stay triggered, kid

>Going Postal
>It didn't decline, it felt more like a hazy fog rolling in, like the clouds on the edge of the screen in a flashback slowly growing. That started just after Making Money with some exceptions.

I have to say, people give making money a hard time but I think it just suffers the usual sequel dilemma of living up to a much better book that came before it.

That said, the trial scene. I have reread that scene dozens of times. I have reread that book many times just for that scene. The entire book, every last bit, is a setup for one big punchline and the punchline is that scene.

You have Moist getting sweaty and worried that he's at the end of his rope, just for a little bit of utter lunacy to pop up and remind him that he already was, everything is just a big show and he is the main event. The entire book, all the characters, all their plots, all their drama, it all falls like a house of cards and Moist has never at any point in any other book been more in his element.

And while some disagree I like the way Moist's character humanizes Vetinari. We saw him too often from the perspective of other characters like Vimes, but while Vimes is Vetinari's guard dog, Moist is his cat, knocking over things in the other room and then sitting in the window with an innocent look when you barge in to see what happened.

There is one under my pillow because I fell asleep reading it and move around a lot in my sleep. That was a week ago I keep forgetting it's there until I wake up to find it lodged into my back again but I keep forgetting to put it away.

I remember reading a post somewhere about how Vimes was a man who was in love with the city and always gave to it while it never gave anything back but pain, but after men at arms it started giving back and his wife was representative of that as she was very much of the city and a symbol of its wealth, prestige, and what virtue it had, and the class and status he never had and which had always scorned him before.

That's character growth. Once you've peaked there you can only be the source of growth elsewhere and only for so long until you're only solid as a background character for youngsters who need to grow some themselves.

>THERE IS NO JUSTICE, JUST ICE

What information did the author intend to convey?

>Quote is the end of one the most stirring defenses of faith put to page, even if it's written by an atheist
>You post a shitty meme
At least with summer we have an excuse

Is hating Rincewind really that unpopular an opinion? The only books I liked of his were the first two and The Last Hero (and Science of Discworld I guess). Eric was particularly bad, one of my least favorites. I just didn't find him a very compelling character and the fact that his stories mostly amounted to wandering around and meeting cultural stereotypes didn't help.
Also how do people feel about I Shall Wear Midnight? No one ever talks about it, but I thought it was great, especially given that it was both preceded and followed by two of the worst books in the series.
As much as I like Thud... ya. Unseen Academicals is a much worse book, as laid out, but it's uniquely bad. It's a mess of half-baked ideas that didn't really fit the series. But most of what's wrong with the later books can be traced back to Thud. Snuff and Raising Steam were really just poor rehashings.

>small gods
>unseen academicals

I just read Going Postal and Making Money. Is Raising Steam just the same thing over again? I don't want to read the same book again...

No, it's Going Postal and Thud all over again

>Also how do people feel about I Shall Wear Midnight
I'll argue that for what it is (ya lit) it's the last good discworld book, and provides a perfectly fine end for Tiffany. With that in mind, why the fuck would you make a sequel

I was thinking it was funny when Lavish tells Vimes to arrest Moist and he's like um no. Basically 'lol only Vetinari can tell me what to do.' Then I realized why Lavish thought he could order him to do it. Not his usual arrogant rich spoiled behavior, like how his sister acted. He thought he could order the commander of the watch around because he thought he was Vetinari.

I didn't get the point of Shepherd's Crown either. The only good thing I could say for Raising Steam is that the overblown cameo-fest made for a good epilogue to the series, even if it wasn't a very good book. I honestly teared up on those last few paragraphs the first time I read it. I think while he was writing it Terry honestly believed he was done with Discworld. When you put out another book after that you rob it of its only redeeming qualities, and making that book about a character who'd gotten her own happy ending was just inexplicable.

Thanks for context.

To give their own endings to other characters.
There was an old witch whose final encounter with Death was long in the making, and was probably planned as the 'end of the witches cycles' many books ago.

Monstrous Regiment
Snuff is the only bad Pratchett book, the last two were ghostwritten

Do modern printings of his books in the UK have the Kirby and Kidby covers?
I really want to get around to replacing my collection of the godawful American books.

Not the user you are responding to but I'm going to chime in here. I like Pratchett as much as anyone but by the time Judgement Day had rolled around he was a full fedora tipper. I don't know if this was due to the Alzheimers or just his books being ghostwritten but that book has a main character who un-ironically spends her time moving bibles to the fiction section of a library. That and numerous instances of 'HEY LOOK HOW DUMB DAE RELIGIOUS PEOPLE ARE' so yeah, user isn't wrong.

>get bantsed
>descend into a wall of butthurt with a babbytalk opening
Whatever is wrong I'm sure it will work out

keheh

Parts of Unseen Academicals were repeated almost word for word. It's the first thing I noticed when my grandmother had Alzheimer's - she'd get stuck in a loop of asking the same question a few times or something, then shake it off and seem fine for a while.

>Guards! Guards!

>Haven't gotten too far yet, so can't see the so called decline

I enjoy reading Discworld a lot, but a lot of times it just makes me feel so fucking stupid, because I know I'm just missing so much of what's being said. A lot of times I know that there's a bigger message or a more subtle nuance to one of the characters but no matter how much I try it just flies right over my head.

I get the sense of enjoyment and keep thinking about certain parts, but I think sometimes I'm too much of a brainlet to connect all the dots. I don't know if it's because english isn't my first language, if I just know nothing about england's social culture and whatnot, but it just happens.

Like Death. I understand that his books are all about him trying to make sense of humanity and understand how it feels to...feel? To be alive? But at the end of the day I don't get it. I just don't and I just have this sort of confused but happy feeling when I think back.

The fuck do I do with myself?

>Favourite
The Shepherd's Crown
>Decline
I never saw it, honestly. The later wizards books were mediocre but I never cared for the wizards anyway.
>Bonus, Favourite Quote
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.

>Monstrous Regiment
Myfellow yurifag

I'm going to sound like a huge fag for saying this, but my favorite Pratchett book is Where is My Cow? I read it to my 6 month old son every night. My mother-in-law gave it to us and the first time I read it to him, I cried.

>I Shall Wear Midnight
Unpopular opinion, but I pretty strongly disliked it.
I can't really point to any concrete issues I had with it but the entire thing felt deeply unsatisfying to me.

He had that sword made from metal from a meteorite. It was after he was knighted, he said that every proper knight should have a magic sword.

> Small Gods
> Jingo

Also Rubendevela should do more Discworld art

>Going Postal

I don't think he really declined but a lot of the later books just feel tired, the same way most series do after a while, I still enjoyed them though

Did anyone else think Pratchett might have had a thing for fatties. It seemed like the love interests of all his male characters are described as a bit on the heavy side

...

>Angua
>Adora Belle Dearheart
>fat

Uh...

Lady Ramkin sure, but who else?

>I never saw it, honestly.

It's pretty fucking blatant

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvelous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes, look behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.

Veeky Forums has always been contratian, it's just that the fad opinions change. Nowadays it's gotten to the point where you can't even say religion is fake and gay anymore without someone parroting the fedora meme.

I think it's pretty much a reflex at this point.