[R] Why TLC is a great book [LONG analysis, spoilers]
Miq
Here be minor SPOILERS for Witches Abroad, Moving Pictures and all
Rincewind books. They don't start for a few paragraphs, so I'm
not bothering with the space this time.
***************************************
Many people have written fairly unkind things about _The Last
Continent_, in contrast to _CJ_ and _Jingo_. In fact, the
majority opinion of the relative merits of these three books is so
different from mine that I feel the need to explain what it is I
like about _TLC_ in particular.
It's often said here that _TLC_ is a lightweight story of no real
inner meaning. I think there's much more to it than that. _TLC_
contains some hilarious insights on topics that Terry addresses
extremely well: the perception of stories and the nature of
belief. It is one of the great books precisely because these
insights *don't* get in the way of the humour. Quite the reverse.
Stories end - this is arguably what makes the difference between
fiction and reality. When you're reading a 253 page book, no
matter how twisted and grim things look on p. 233, you know that
in another 20 pages, everything is going to be sorted out somehow;
if it isn't you'll feel cheated - it becomes a weak ending to,
most likely, a poor book. We, the readers, know this, even though
the hero doesn't. Moreover, in most books, we also know that the
central character(s) will survive. Despite this, most genre
authors try to generate a spurious sense of suspense by putting
the hero in some sort of cliffhanging peril towards the end of the
book.
_TLC_ brings these conventions out from the back of our mind right
into the open. At the outset of Rincewind's adventure, the hero
himself is told that he will not only survive but also save the
day. We, the readers, *knew* this before we even opened the book
- the novelty in _TLC_ is that Rincewind himself knows it.
I think this makes Rincewind the first of Pterry's characters to
be *aware* that he's only a character in a story. In _WA_, Granny
fights tooth and nail against 'the power of stories' to manipulate
people's lives - but in fact, all she's doing is generating a sort
of meta-story that transcends and incorporates all of Lilith's
smaller ones. In reality, neither she nor any other character is
any more 'free' than the big bad wolf. They are Terry's
playthings, as much as the wolf is Lilith's.
Rincewind actually *realises* this, and begins to understand its
implications. He keeps running away, automatically, because
that's what he has to do - you have to play by the rules. (Like
Victor in _MP_ - he *knows* he'll reach the top of the tower in
the nick of time, but he still has to run up it as fast as he
possibly can. It's the Rules Of The Game.) But he's not really
frightened, any more than he honestly believes that running will
do any good - merely apprehensive, because he knows that he's
going to have to do some extremely uncomfortable things.
Related to this narrative inevitability is Rincewind's continuing
run of outrageous good fortune, substituting for magic. Way, way
back in _TCoM_, we saw Rincewind thinking 'there must be a better
way to do things' - he felt it should be possible to produce the
effects of magic by other means. Ever since then, he's been doing
exactly that.
In _TLF_, the effect was direct and unsubtle - instead of
Rincewind performing magic, the Spell did it for him. In _S_, it
was the hat. In _Eric_, Rincewind keeps clicking his fingers, and
Vassenego does the actual magic; Rincewind himself is mystified as
to why it keeps working, since he is now absolutely sure that *he*
isn't doing anything. In _IT_, it's made very clear that The Lady
is favouring him with a string of outrageous coincidences; these
allow him to perform feats of 'magic' that would leave most
'proper' wizards at a complete loss - blowing a hole in the wall,
killing the cell guards, leading the Red Army, surviving the
teleport 'home', killing Lord Hong.
By the time of _TLC_, he's had enough hints to know that he really
is just a pawn. This is something that all the wilfully heroic
characters - Granny, Carrot, Vimes, even Susan - never fully
understand, though some of them have a suspicion. (Death knows
it, but he doesn't express it in quite the same terms - he talks
about DUTY and the Fabric of Reality and all that cobblers
instead.)
Thus, in _TLC_, Rincewind warns the leader of the road bandits
"You give me back my hat or there'll be trouble!" We know how
attached Rincewind is to his hat, but he is clearly in no position
to do anything about it. What even the reader doesn't realise at
this point is that, even though Rincewind himself is powerless,
this is not an empty threat. Thanks to stealing the hat, the
leader dies horribly and the ensuing pileup wipes out the rest of
his gang.
Only Rincewind himself is unsurprised.
The adventures of the other wizards provide a different, comical
and more direct view of Inevitability. As they step through the
window, Ridcully leaves a sign on it saying 'Do not touch' - from
that moment, it is obvious that someone *will* touch and the
wizards will get stuck. As they realise they're in the past,
there are similar observations: with surprising perspicacity,
Ridcully says "history already _depends_ on you treading on any
ants that you happen to step on" - a very true observation that
the earnest Ponder clearly hasn't realised.
Then they meet the God of Evolution, who is to gods what Rincewind
is to wizards: supremely incompetent, yet dreaming of a 'better'
way to do things. I think this character shows what *might* have
happened to Rincewind if he hadn't been so 'honoured' by the Lady:
he might have spent out his days like some more earnest version of
Leonard of Quirm, trying to invent clockwork and steam power and
other things to 'harness the lightning' without the aid of magic -
hampered by some very basic blind spot, like wanting to make
everything out of glass.
It's fun to speculate that maybe the God of Evolution grows up to
be the creator of *our* world - a god who believes in 'scientific'
laws, and is trying desperately hard to make them work to produce
all the things he wants to produce. This is precisely the God
that the Deist philosophes of the Enlightenment believed in:
Diderot, Voltaire and Hume would recognise him instantly. And
having been given the hint of 'sex', this work could progress by
leaps and bounds. But the real beauty of this idea lies in its
resonance with the story of the creation of Eve: 'sex as an
afterthought'.
There are more resonances on the same theme: for instance, the
version of L-space theory that says that 'future books can be
deduced from present ones'.
There are other themes - about the nature of gods, for instance -
but I've written quite enough for now. Someone else can take up
the baton if they're so inclined.
Anyway, that's my take on TLC, and that's why it's my favourite
among the recent crop. All I'm hoping is that some of those who
criticise it as 'lightweight' (as if this were somehow a bad
thing?) might reconsider.
--
Miq - afpiance to the thoughtful MEG, insightful Supermouse and literary Heather
Richard Eney
Miq <Mi...@kew1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>***************************************
>Here be minor SPOILERS for Witches Abroad, Moving Pictures and all
and now major spoilers for TLC
>Rincewind books. They don't start for a few paragraphs, so I'm
>not bothering with the space this time.
>***************************************
>
>Many people have written fairly unkind things about _The Last
>Continent_, in contrast to _CJ_ and _Jingo_. In fact, the
>majority opinion of the relative merits of these three books is so
>different from mine that I feel the need to explain what it is I
>like about _TLC_ in particular.
Hey, I was trying to write that. :-) I'm so glad you got it started!
(Though I also think Jingo has a lot going for it, and I haven't read CJ
yet but I have very high expectations. And I'm still trying to work out
my discussion of Maskerade, which has a lot of great stuff in it.)
>It's often said here that _TLC_ is a lightweight story of no real
>inner meaning. I think there's much more to it than that. _TLC_
>contains some hilarious insights on topics that Terry addresses
>extremely well: the perception of stories and the nature of
>belief. It is one of the great books precisely because these
>insights *don't* get in the way of the humour. Quite the reverse.
<applause>
<snip details on sthe "perception of stories">
>I think this makes Rincewind the first of Pterry's characters to
>be *aware* that he's only a character in a story.
Um. I'm not sure he's aware he's only a character. What he's aware of is
that he's been told he's going to do something, not that he'll survive
having done it. And Death doesn't tell him he isn't going to die
tomorrow, just that he's not officially on the list right now.
>In _WA_, Granny
>fights tooth and nail against 'the power of stories' to manipulate
>people's lives - but in fact, all she's doing is generating a sort
>of meta-story that transcends and incorporates all of Lilith's
>smaller ones. In reality, neither she nor any other character is
>any more 'free' than the big bad wolf. They are Terry's
>playthings, as much as the wolf is Lilith's.
<applause>
>Rincewind actually *realises* this,
Here I begin to disagree but I'll have to go back and rethink it.
>and begins to understand its implications.
I think it's Terry who is discussing the implications; I don't think
Rincewind is entirely conscious of it.
<snip excellent summary of Rincewind's career)
>By the time of _TLC_, he's had enough hints to know that he really
>is just a pawn. This is something that all the wilfully heroic
>characters - Granny, Carrot, Vimes, even Susan - never fully
>understand, though some of them have a suspicion. (Death knows
>it, but he doesn't express it in quite the same terms - he talks
>about DUTY and the Fabric of Reality and all that cobblers
>instead.)
Though from our point of view he is a pawn, within the context of TLC
Rincewind is not just a pawn. He could slow things down considerably, he
could refuse to do what he's supposed to do - yes, he would probably die
if he chose that, but he could. Short of actually taking over and forcing
him to say and do things (the way the magic did occasionally, working
through him, in earlier books), the powerful beings, who are using him
because he happens to be there at the time, would have to find someone
else to solve the problem/be the hero.
I think one issue to discuss here is the effect of The Lady. She
caused the whole mess at the end of IT, by altering the space-time
configuration of Hex's spell so that it became 3-way instead of 2-way.
This no doubt saved Rincewind's life, but it landed him in XXXX and sent a
kangaroo to be smashed flat in UU, and the excess speed and distance were
transmuted into a time-effect and sent the Luggage into the past.
Remember, geography equals history, which means space equals time, and
since speed is a matter of covering space in time, any equation that
meddles with space-time is likely to affect speed as well as location.
Taking the excess speed from Rincewind and adding some distance to get him
equidistant from the Agatean Empire and UU meant that time had to
compensate; this sent the Luggage into the past and opened up the
time-tunnel at UU. That in turn sent the wizards into the past, where
they did what they had already done, and _that_ led to the innocent baby
Librarian stealing the Old Man's bullroarer, which removed the rain and
made the Dry happen. Thus, as soon as Rincewind arrived in the present,
all that stuff in the past had happened (though it hadn't happened
before), and now Rincewind has to bring it all together in order to solve
the problem. The Old Man and his trickster companion are helping, so the
Lady stays out of it.
We now return to Miq's elegant and insightful discussion:
>Thus, in _TLC_, Rincewind warns the leader of the road bandits
>"You give me back my hat or there'll be trouble!" We know how
>attached Rincewind is to his hat, but he is clearly in no position
>to do anything about it. What even the reader doesn't realise at
>this point is that, even though Rincewind himself is powerless,
>this is not an empty threat. Thanks to stealing the hat, the
>leader dies horribly and the ensuing pileup wipes out the rest of
>his gang.
>
>Only Rincewind himself is unsurprised.
Interesting point. Was he unsurprised? I think he was a bit surprised,
even though he had learned from experience that anything left unguarded
was likely harbor something venomous. His hat had been on the ground
briefly, and his natural paranoia, added to by experience, led him to be
cautious about retrieving it.
>The adventures of the other wizards provide a different, comical
>and more direct view of Inevitability.
Also some comments on the nature of those who seek to understand how it
all works.
>with surprising perspicacity,
>Ridcully says "history already _depends_ on you treading on any
>ants that you happen to step on" - a very true observation that
>the earnest Ponder clearly hasn't realised.
This part is also a clear discussion of the problem of predestination,
besides being involved in the situation of how it all got started.
>Then they meet the God of Evolution, who is to gods what Rincewind
>is to wizards: supremely incompetent, yet dreaming of a 'better'
>way to do things. I think this character shows what *might* have
>happened to Rincewind if he hadn't been so 'honoured' by the Lady:
>he might have spent out his days like some more earnest version of
>Leonard of Quirm, trying to invent clockwork and steam power and
>other things to 'harness the lightning' without the aid of magic -
>hampered by some very basic blind spot, like wanting to make
>everything out of glass.
But the G of E isn't incompetent; he can do the creating just fine. It's
just that he has a bee in his ear about trying to do something _for_ his
worshipers, not just fake it. He's more of an eccentric than an
incompetent. A version of Leonard of Quirm, but on the god
scale. Like Thoth, Merlin, and Vulcan, a god who makes things. Whereas
Rincewind is incompetent as a wizard (unless, as perhaps you meant to
suggest, his style of wizardry is that The Lady favors him).
>It's fun to speculate that maybe the God of Evolution grows up to
>be the creator of *our* world - a god who believes in 'scientific'
>laws, and is trying desperately hard to make them work to produce
>all the things he wants to produce.
And revising them as he goes along, whenever we come up with the
loopholes. The way Ponder found out about things not being impossible
until just after you've tried them.
>having been given the hint of 'sex', this work could progress by
>leaps and bounds. But the real beauty of this idea lies in its
>resonance with the story of the creation of Eve: 'sex as an
>afterthought'.
Instead as part of the main theme of the book, as it is in M!M. But let's
save that for a different discussion.
>There are other themes - about the nature of gods, for instance -
>but I've written quite enough for now. Someone else can take up
>the baton if they're so inclined.
That's one reason I hadn't written up my version yet - I didn't want to
start a religion thread. I'd like to keep this discussion totally
on-topic, with every comment relating directly to something actually in
the book. There's certainly enough to discuss! Just try listing all the
different types of gods in TLC.
>Anyway, that's my take on TLC, and that's why it's my favourite
>among the recent crop. All I'm hoping is that some of those who
>criticise it as 'lightweight' (as if this were somehow a bad
>thing?) might reconsider.
AOL.. ahem. Yes, I think it is an excellent book for similar reasons.
=Tamar
Daniel Proost
Miq wrote:
>Many people have written fairly unkind things about _The Last
>Continent_, in contrast to _CJ_ and _Jingo_. In fact, the
>majority opinion of the relative merits of these three books is so
>different from mine that I feel the need to explain what it is I
>like about _TLC_ in particular.
<Major Snip>
I have to say this: I think this is a good review of TLC, it
gave me a lot of new insights in this book. This review is
better then everything I could ever hope to produce.
I think I am going to reread TLC now:-)
--
Daniël Proost <dwpr...@telekabel.nl>
ICQ 25652054
Heather Knowles
<snipped fore and aft>
>Stories end - this is arguably what makes the difference between
>fiction and reality. When you're reading a 253 page book, no
>matter how twisted and grim things look on p. 233, you know that
>in another 20 pages, everything is going to be sorted out somehow;
>if it isn't you'll feel cheated - it becomes a weak ending to,
>most likely, a poor book. We, the readers, know this, even though
>the hero doesn't.
Sorry to reply only to one part of your essay - the trouble is that I
agree with all the rest, which is cheering for you, but a dull response
for everyone else!
I really want to disagree with this idea that untied threads mean a poor
book. Jane Austen and I agree with you about the reader knowing it has
to be sorted out *somehow* in the next few pages: 'The anxiety, which in
this state of their attachment must be the portion of Henry and
Catherine, and of all who loved either, as to its final event, can
hardly extend, I fear, to the bosom of my readers, who will see in the
tell-tale compression of the pages before them, that we are all
hastening together to perfect felicity.' ('Northanger Abbey'. One of my
'A'-level set texts, what can I tell you?)
However, there are more ways of finishing off a book than tying up all
the loose ends. William Golding leaves not only loose ends untied, but
the last *sentence* of 'The Paper Men' unfinished, although in a way
which leaves the reader in no doubt as to what has happened to the
narrator; and David Lodge's 'Changing Places' ends, after a discussion
of just the same passage from Jane Austen as quoted above, in the middle
of a scene from a film script. It doesn't tie up the loose ends of the
story, and in doing so is incredibly suitable as an ending - the whole
story has been about two men who can never finish things (relationships
and books).
I wouldn't describe either as 'poor books' with 'weak endings'. But...
I'm willing to concede that they may be the exception that proves the
rule. I wouldn't describe TLC as a weak book, either, although several
people on these groups have - and I'm pleased that you've defended it so
cogently and articulately.
--
lotsa luv, Heaven xxxxxxx
cat, n. - a soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature
to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle
- Ambrose Bierce, 'The Devil's Dictionary
Richard Eney
>>everything is going to be sorted out somehow;
>>if it isn't you'll feel cheated - it becomes a weak ending to,
>>most likely, a poor book. We, the readers, know this, even though
>>the hero doesn't.
>I really want to disagree with this idea that untied threads mean a poor
>book.
>However, there are more ways of finishing off a book than tying up all
>the loose ends. William Golding leaves not only loose ends untied, but
>the last *sentence* of 'The Paper Men' unfinished, although in a way
>which leaves the reader in no doubt as to what has happened to the
>narrator;
As does TLC, in fact.
And *sigh* my mother was annoyed by that because she wasn't absolutely
sure what happened - she tends to assume the worst and didn't think it was
funny. Which is to say, assuming _any_ level of understanding on the part
of a reading is always a risk.
>I'm willing to concede that they may be the exception that proves the
>rule. I wouldn't describe TLC as a weak book, either, although several
>people on these groups have - and I'm pleased that you've defended it so
>cogently and articulately.
<applause to both, for articulate and intelligent comments>
=Tamar
Marion Diamond
re-reading it this week and, as always, found it much better the second
time around. It struck me the first time, and still does a bit, that
the problem with the book as a narrative is that it has no 'baddie' -
there are NO evil or disquieting individuals [e.g. D'Eath) or groups of
people (e.g. elves) in the whole book. This lack of an anti-hero
unbalances the narrative a bit.
But the other thing that struck me is that Rincewind is a Prometheus
figure - a Hero in the Joseph Campbell meaning of the word. But instead
of fire, he (and the wizards) steal another element - water - from the
Gods, to give to mankind. And the story of Prometheus is one where
there is no anti-hero, so Pterry's running true to the archetype.
Marion
in...@fdhoekstra.nl
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> I also really enjoyed Richard's analysis of TLC - especially as I was
^^^^^^^^
Wasn't mine, was Miq's. Unless you mean Tamar, whose posts
show the name of Richard Eney, not her own.
> re-reading it this week and, as always, found it much better
> the second time around. It struck me the first time, and still
> does a bit, that the problem with the book as a narrative is
> that it has no 'baddie' - there are NO evil or disquieting
> individuals [e.g. D'Eath) or groups of people (e.g. elves) in
> the whole book. This lack of an anti-hero unbalances the
> narrative a bit.
Actually, there is an antagonist in TLC, unless you insist on
having one in human form. It is the usual antagonist for
Rincewind, to whit Fate, the world, and circumstance. I don't
think there is more than one book[1] where Rincewind has a
human adversary - he has them for parts of the books, as in
TLC, e.g., the jailers and the cart gang, but never one for
the whole book.
Rincewind tends not to make many enemies, but to have so bad
luck on the grand scale that he keeps getting involved in
other people's troubles. In TLC, it's the trouble that the
back-in-time wizards make by stealing the bullroarer; Rincewind
has nothing to do with that, but he gets to solve the mess.
Good thing, really, that on a small scale his luck is very
good indeed.
> But the other thing that struck me is that Rincewind is a
> Prometheus figure [snip]
> And the story of Prometheus is one where there is no anti-hero,
> so Pterry's running true to the archetype.
Yes, there is, but it's the same kind as with Rincewind,
really. In Prometheus' case it is the collective of Olympic
gods, who withhold fire from the humans out of fear, and
Prometheus gets to interfere on our behalf. Mind you, after
that he does have some _very_ bad-tempered enemies.
Richard
[1] The one is Sourcery. IT doesn't count, Rincewind hardly
meets Lord Hong and is really used as a pawn by everybody.
lam...@my-dejanews.com
> >Continent_, in contrast to _CJ_ and _Jingo_. In fact, the
> >majority opinion of the relative merits of these three books is so
> >different from mine that I feel the need to explain what it is I
> >like about _TLC_ in particular.
>
>
> I have to say this: I think this is a good review of TLC, it
> gave me a lot of new insights in this book. This review is
> better then everything I could ever hope to produce.
>
> I think I am going to reread TLC now:-)
It is an excercise in Literary Critisism, not a book review, IMHO.
A book review is for people who have not read the book.
LitCrit is intended to give a better apreciation of the book to those who
have already read it. (As I understand things.)
DougL
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
MEG
>In article <b++zFtAO...@kew1.demon.co.uk>,
>Miq <Mi...@kew1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>***************************************
>and now major spoilers for TLC
>
re-intalled spoiler space (just in case)
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>>It's often said here that _TLC_ is a lightweight story of no real
>>inner meaning. I think there's much more to it than that. _TLC_
>>contains some hilarious insights on topics that Terry addresses
>>extremely well: the perception of stories and the nature of
>>belief. It is one of the great books precisely because these
>>insights *don't* get in the way of the humour. Quite the reverse.
I think TLC is one of my (newer) faves. Mainly because of the
approach being 'from the conclusion - back'. I found it more -
<wiggle fingers in the air> philosphical </wiggle fingers in the
air>
><applause>
<further applause>
><snip details on sthe "perception of stories">
>
>>I think this makes Rincewind the first of Pterry's characters to
>>be *aware* that he's only a character in a story.
>Um. I'm not sure he's aware he's only a character. What he's aware
of is
>that he's been told he's going to do something, not that he'll
survive
>having done it. And Death doesn't tell him he isn't going to die
>tomorrow, just that he's not officially on the list right now.
No, I think he's told he's going to have done something - so he
already did - so he still has to... eeerrr ouch!
I do believe that Miq's interpretation fits mine. I found that it
put me, as The Reader (tm), in a bit of a quandry. I felt some
compassion for someone who suddenly realises that, whatever happens,
the end result is inevitable. But I could assist if only I could get
through [a]
From the outside, I knew who the hero was supposed to be. Suddenly,
so did the hero, but was somewhat reluctant - and wouldn't you be ?
Who appreciates knowing that they are being used as a pawn ? Who,
usually, appreciates that this is the case even ?
My natural reaction to those situations [1] is to rebel and try to
change the outcome. Rincewind (IMHO) tries to fight it but accepts
that there is nothing he can do to change 'destiny'. Is it the
stuggle to change destiny or the acceptance of 'que serra, serra'
the bigger strength ? and am I too stressed from a particularly
gruelling interview to write coherantly ?
>>In _WA_, Granny
>>fights tooth and nail against 'the power of stories' to manipulate
>>people's lives - but in fact, all she's doing is generating a sort
>>of meta-story that transcends and incorporates all of Lilith's
>>smaller ones. In reality, neither she nor any other character is
>>any more 'free' than the big bad wolf. They are Terry's
>>playthings, as much as the wolf is Lilith's.
>
><applause>
>
>>Rincewind actually *realises* this,
>
>Here I begin to disagree but I'll have to go back and rethink it.
>
>>and begins to understand its implications.
>
>I think it's Terry who is discussing the implications; I don't
think
>Rincewind is entirely conscious of it.
In a book by Peter Trayne [2] the characters actually give
commentary on the words being placed on the page by the author and
object to them becoming true simply by their being read by The
Reader (tm).
Did that make any sense ?
The story line went on to describe the discomfort felt by the
characters when the passages returned to description of them. Also
their feeble attempts at 'doing something' whilst The Reader (tm) -
me - was otherwise engaged in reading seperate descriptive passages.
It just gave me the feeling of complete inadequacy and impotence.
But I think that was the intention :-)
<reluctantly snipped excellent discussion re The Lady and the fact
that everything that will happen has already happened or will have
already happened - at least that's the way I see it>
[a] who ? me ? taking it too seriously ?
[1] trust me, I've been in situations where I suddenly realised I
was a pawn :-( .... dontcha just *hate* politics ?
[2] read - Rocky Frisco </unashamed plug>
- MEG the anticipant
--
Afpianced to Miq {comfort kiss} & Rob Smiley {comfort huggg},
afppals of Heaven {comfort shoulder} "..the first
son-of-a-bitch that says "hobbit" is a dead man.." - Peter Trayne.
******The Ankh is a sewer, purge it to reply******
Miq
<bow>
<Marion: there's no serious Baddie in TLC>
>Actually, there is an antagonist in TLC, unless you insist on
>having one in human form. It is the usual antagonist for
>Rincewind, to whit Fate, the world, and circumstance.
Do you mean Fate with a capital F, as in the Lady's opponent in
IT? If so, I can't see any real evidence that he's involved. I'm
not convinced that 'the world' is against him either, even though
he thinks it is. I think it's one or more Divine Powers (the old
man and the trickster, mostly) who are arranging things so that he
keeps landing in the doo-doo.
>I don't
>think there is more than one book[1] where Rincewind has a
>human adversary - he has them for parts of the books, as in
>TLC, e.g., the jailers and the cart gang, but never one for
>the whole book.
Oh, I don't know. In TCoM there's Death and the Patrician, who
were both pretty unsympathetic back then. In Eric there's Astfgl.
And although Lord Hong isn't *Rincewind's* enemy in particular,
he's still a villainous hate-figure for the whole book.
>> But the other thing that struck me is that Rincewind is a
>> Prometheus figure [snip]
>> And the story of Prometheus is one where there is no anti-hero,
>> so Pterry's running true to the archetype.
I think that's quite an apt comparison. It's a 'Quest' story,
overdone to the point of a spoof, and Prometheus is perhaps the
archetypal 'Quest'.
--
Miq - afpiance to the troubled MEG {*hug*}, questing Supermouse {*hug*}
and heroic Heather {*hug*}
Miq
>In article <b++zFtAO...@kew1.demon.co.uk>,
>Miq <Mi...@kew1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>***************************************
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...and that's quite enough of that.
>>I think this makes Rincewind the first of Pterry's characters to
>>be *aware* that he's only a character in a story.
>
>Um. I'm not sure he's aware he's only a character.
Just to clarify: I'm not suggesting that he suddenly thinks 'Wow,
I'm a character in a book'. But, combined with what the kangaroo
tells him - which is really little more than a standard prophecy,
though unusually clear and direct - I think he's realised, after
the events of _Eric_ and _IT_, that the story will happen around
him (or, as he probably sees it, *to* him) whether he likes it or
not.
To me, his tone in his discussions with the kangaroo suggest that
he's protesting - as well he might - but he knows it's futile.
>What he's aware of is
>that he's been told he's going to do something, not that he'll survive
>having done it. And Death doesn't tell him he isn't going to die
>tomorrow, just that he's not officially on the list right now.
Well, he's told he'll *know* when he's completed his task, so it's
a fair bet he'll still be alive after it's finished.
>Though from our point of view he is a pawn, within the context of TLC
>Rincewind is not just a pawn. He could slow things down considerably, he
>could refuse to do what he's supposed to do - yes, he would probably die
>if he chose that, but he could.
I don't really see how he could. Each time he tries to avoid
something unpleasant, he simply advances the storyline despite
himself.
It's possible he *could* bale out by committing suicide (in the
Ankh-Morpork sense of the term), and if and when we get another
Rincewind book, I wouldn't be surprised to see him try it. But
he's not quite at that level of protest yet.
But *this* book, in my view, is all about the unstoppability of
the narrative. If he tried something like that here, the plot
would simply rewrite itself around him and advance some other way.
>I think one issue to discuss here is the effect of The Lady. She
>caused the whole mess at the end of IT, by altering the space-time
>configuration of Hex's spell so that it became 3-way instead of 2-way.
Yes - with some caveats - see below.
>Taking the excess speed from Rincewind and adding some distance to get him
>equidistant from the Agatean Empire and UU meant that time had to
>compensate; this sent the Luggage into the past and opened up the
>time-tunnel at UU.
Err - you've lost me. I thought the speed differentials thingy
was all to do with the rotation of the Disc? Rincewind and the
'Barking Dog' both arrived more or less stationary, which means
that the poor kangaroo inherited the combined momentum of both of
them... nasty.
As for the Luggage, it wasn't part of the teleport. Time on XXXX
is 'all mixed up', according to the kangaroo, and the relativity
of time is mentioned once or twice in the book; and the Luggage is
capable of time travel on its own initiative (as in _Eric_).
When Rincewind was teleported, the Luggage will have tried to
follow him (any idea what happened to its family, btw?) But
because XXXXian time is out of sync with the rest of the Disc, it
made a mistake. Perhaps Rincewind's beacon had reset to '30,000
years after Creation', 'cos that's when he's at in XXXXian time -
so the Luggage went back in time before making its way to the
continent, in which case it would arrive considerably early.
Are we told that the time tunnel at UU has something to do with
the teleport cockup?
>That in turn sent the wizards into the past, where
>they did what they had already done, and _that_ led to the innocent baby
>Librarian stealing the Old Man's bullroarer, which removed the rain and
>made the Dry happen.
The time travel is a wonderfully elegant closed loop, yes. I'm
just not convinced that the Lady is responsible for all of these
details. To me, it seems more in character for her to take
problems/tools that existed *already*, put them together and shake
vigorously until they're resolved. That's what her name is, isn't
it?
So unless I've missed something, I think the time tunnel existed
already - though of course the wizards wouldn't have stumbled
across it if they hadn't been looking for Rincewind.
>The Old Man and his trickster companion are helping, so the
>Lady stays out of it.
What do you think is the relationship between the Lady and the Old
Man? Has she 'lent' Rincewind to him, by way of reparation for
using his continent, and his kangaroo, to save him earlier?
I suspect that she's still sticking her oar in. The spider-in-
the-hat incident looks like her style to me.
>>Thanks to stealing the hat, the
>>leader dies horribly and the ensuing pileup wipes out the rest of
>>his gang.
>>
>>Only Rincewind himself is unsurprised.
>
>Interesting point. Was he unsurprised?
I think so. Not that he specifically expected something venomous
to be lurking in the hat, but he knew from experience (mostly in
_IT_) that *some* sort of outrageous chance like that would almost
certainly come up. For him, they always do.
Look at his conversation with the warder, when he's locked up. He
has no doubt that he'll escape somehow... so he goes through all
the ideas he can think of with the warder. When these all come up
blank, he goes through a brief crisis of faith until Death turns
up to cheer him up...
(And I've just seen an [A]nnotation there. p. 185: 'the narrow
square of blue the prisoner calls the sky' - Oscar Wilde, 'The
Ballad of Reading Gaol')
>>The adventures of the other wizards provide a different, comical
>>and more direct view of Inevitability.
>
>Also some comments on the nature of those who seek to understand how it
>all works.
<g> True.
>>Then they meet the God of Evolution, who is to gods what Rincewind
>>is to wizards: supremely incompetent, yet dreaming of a 'better'
>>way to do things.
>
>But the G of E isn't incompetent; he can do the creating just fine.
Not really - he can't 'create' a sustainable species, a trick
that's common knowledge everywhere on the Disc except for his
island. That's fairly incompetent.
>He's more of an eccentric than an
>incompetent. A version of Leonard of Quirm, but on the god
>scale.
Again, I disagree. Leonard has thousands of little ideas, and
works out a fraction of them. The G of E has *one* big idea
(Evolution), but doesn't have the faintest notion of how to make
it work. Just like Rincewind had that idea of 'harnessing the
lightning' - but without Rincewind's outside 'help'.
>Whereas
>Rincewind is incompetent as a wizard (unless, as perhaps you meant to
>suggest, his style of wizardry is that The Lady favors him).
Yes, I suppose that's one way of putting it. Referring back to
_IT_ again: he accomplishes far more in that way than any
'competent' wizard could achieve by 'real' magic.
>>It's fun to speculate that maybe the God of Evolution grows up to
>>be the creator of *our* world - a god who believes in 'scientific'
>>laws, and is trying desperately hard to make them work to produce
>>all the things he wants to produce.
>
>And revising them as he goes along, whenever we come up with the
>loopholes. The way Ponder found out about things not being impossible
>until just after you've tried them.
Hmmm... that's one aspect of Discworld science that I really don't
think is true of our world - but that way lies another religion
thread... As you say, let's keep this firmly on topic.
--
Miq - afpiance to the sane MEG {*squish*} and huggable Supermouse {*hug*},
afptwin to Heather
Richard Eney
In article <spBOweA8...@kew1.demon.co.uk>,
Miq <Mi...@kew1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On Thu, 21 Jan 1999, Richard Eney <dic...@Radix.Net> wrote
>>Miq <Mi...@kew1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>>***************************************
>Major SPOILERS for TLC and other Rincewind books
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<snippity>
Miq wrote:
>Just to clarify: I'm not suggesting that he suddenly thinks 'Wow,
>I'm a character in a book'. But, combined with what the kangaroo
>tells him - which is really little more than a standard prophecy,
>though unusually clear and direct - I think he's realised, after
>the events of _Eric_ and _IT_, that the story will happen around
>him (or, as he probably sees it, *to* him) whether he likes it or
>not.
>
>To me, his tone in his discussions with the kangaroo suggest that
>he's protesting - as well he might - but he knows it's futile.
This is where it gets iffy because I don't want to turn this into a
religion thread, yet I see quite a lot of this element as - as Marion?
said - {waggle hand} philosophical {end waggle}.
Rincewind's development as a wizzard and as a human (and as a character)
has reached a point where the visiting Creator God can use him
effectively, and therefore has instructed his agent, a trickster, to
provide divine aid. We are told that Rincewind's presence there was the
cause of the problem and therefore Rincewind must repair the damage. This
much so far is directly related to the events that sent him to XXXX in the
first place (The Lady's adjustment of Hex's calculations and the results
thereof).
The part that doesn't obviously follow directly is the part about
Rincewind personally having to do the repair job - and in fact, when the
visiting (nomadic?) Creator is talking to his trickster, he essentially
admits that RW is not vital to the correction, he just happens to be there
at the time when the Creator needs a local (promethean if you will) hero
to occur, to make the continent complete. The nomadic Creator is in the
past and in the present, and can obviously travel between them, but for
reasons unknown (ineffable?) he has chosen to require that RW deal with
the problem instead of just going back and retrieving his boomerang.
Maybe it's because his favorite creation, a kangaroo-bearing continent,
does require a hero to come out of nowhere, and everyone local is
identifiable, so RW is the only total stranger available, the only person
not attached in some way to the existing situation and culture, living
entirely in the moment with only his ragged reddish garment(s) and a bowl
for his grub (if you'll excuse a Buddhist allusion). Oh, and his hat, a
standard symbol for his persona role.
The idea that you are going to do something because you've already done it
is a paradox that occurs in some deep philosophical and religious studies,
and that's as far as I intend to go with that one.
>>What he's aware of is
>>that he's been told he's going to do something, not that he'll survive
>>having done it. And Death doesn't tell him he isn't going to die
>>tomorrow, just that he's not officially on the list right now.
>
>Well, he's told he'll *know* when he's completed his task, so it's
>a fair bet he'll still be alive after it's finished.
Bets? RW has been to Death's Domain and heard the voices of the ghosts
("What a great view -oops" etc.) so he knows that there is consciousness
after death; he could very easily only know when he was done because he
was dead.
>>Though from our point of view he is a pawn, within the context of TLC
>>Rincewind is not just a pawn. He could slow things down considerably,
>>he could refuse to do what he's supposed to do - yes, he would probably
>>die if he chose that, but he could.
>
>I don't really see how he could. Each time he tries to avoid
>something unpleasant, he simply advances the storyline despite
>himself.
What if he didn't try to avoid the really unpleasant things? If he sat
quietly and didn't escape from the cell, would they have pardoned him?
Even after the water dried up and they started fighting to the death over
the last bottle of beer? How about after all the liquids are gone
and everyone starts dying of thirst?
While he was totally unconscious of the role he was being put in, he was
protected. After he was told, when he tried to resist, the trickster
stopped providing miraculous food in the desert - at that point, I think
there is a possibility that if RW really wanted to resist out of total
stubbornness, he could just reach under a rock and get bitten by something
venomous. It would be out of character, but RW's character is changing
anyway.
>It's possible he *could* bale out by committing suicide (in the
>Ankh-Morpork sense of the term), and if and when we get another
>Rincewind book, I wouldn't be surprised to see him try it. But
>he's not quite at that level of protest yet.
That's a fair point, mate^W Miq. RW hasn't yet reached the level of
development where he is willing to die because then they can't do anything
else to him. He did reach the point of being willing to risk death way
back in Sourcery, when he was fighting to stop the wizard war that was
destroying the world he lived in, but he hasn't yet been completely
suicidal.
>But *this* book, in my view, is all about the unstoppability of
>the narrative. If he tried something like that here, the plot
>would simply rewrite itself around him and advance some other way.
This gets back to the meta-level of the story, the relationship between
free will and destiny. The {waggle} philosophical statement of which come
out something like "the greatest free will is to see your destiny and do
it willingly instead of grudgingly - then you're not being forced to do
anything." It's related to the concept of Acting instead of merely
Reacting. RW mostly Reacts, but on important occasions he has chosen to
Act, to do something even though nothing outwardly was forcing him to do
it, just because it was the right thing to do. There is usually one,
sometime more, such moment in each RW book.
"Narrative" being unstoppable can be thought of as a metaphor for
"existence/development" being unstoppable. Or even as Cultural Demand -
no matter how often RW tries to explain that he wasn't doing anything
heroic, the XXXXian culture wants him to be a hero so they won't listen.
>[...] The Lady [...] caused the whole mess at the end of IT,
>>by altering the space-time configuration of Hex's spell so
>>that it became 3-way instead of 2-way.
>
>Yes - with some caveats - see below.
>
>>Taking the excess speed from Rincewind and adding some distance to get
>>him equidistant from the Agatean Empire and UU meant that time had to
>>compensate; this sent the Luggage into the past and opened up the
>>time-tunnel at UU.
>
>Err - you've lost me. I thought the speed differentials thingy
>was all to do with the rotation of the Disc? Rincewind and the
>'Barking Dog' both arrived more or less stationary, which means
>that the poor kangaroo inherited the combined momentum of both of
>them... nasty.
Well, Ponder thought so - but he doesn't know everything Hex does either,
and he didn't know that The Lady had made a change in the equations.
>As for the Luggage, it wasn't part of the teleport. Time on XXXX
>is 'all mixed up', according to the kangaroo, and the relativity
>of time is mentioned once or twice in the book;
Yes, so far...
>and the Luggage is capable of time travel on its own initiative
>(as in _Eric_).
>When Rincewind was teleported, the Luggage will have tried to
>follow him (any idea what happened to its family, btw?)
(They gave the impression of waving goodbye at the end of IT; I assume
they stayed with Twoflower. Most of them took after the female Luggage;
only the smallest one seemed to have a touch of RW's luggage's attitude.)
> But
>because XXXXian time is out of sync with the rest of the Disc, it
>made a mistake. Perhaps Rincewind's beacon had reset to '30,000
>years after Creation', 'cos that's when he's at in XXXXian time -
>so the Luggage went back in time before making its way to the
>continent, in which case it would arrive considerably early.
This is a good point. But in Eric, the Luggage could travel in time
without getting stuck. The time being mixed up in XXXX, experience of it
is different from different viewpoints. Um. The Wizards are frozen in
time, but it doesn't seem all that long to them. The Luggage doesn't have
much way to tell time and doesn't seem to age, so perhaps it too didn't
perceive the experience as being too long. Yet from the outer point of
view, they were stuck for at least 30,000 years. The way the cave
paintings of the wizards were there for 30,000 years but weren't there
yesterday - today they were created 30,000 years old. [This resonates
with the Creationist view of geological and historical evidence, by the
way. [A]? ]
>Are we told that the time tunnel at UU has something to do with
>the teleport cockup?
Indirectly: as I said:
>>That [the time tunnel] in turn sent the wizards into the past, where
>>they did what they had already done, and _that_ led to the innocent baby
>>Librarian stealing the Old Man's bullroarer, which removed the rain and
>>made the Dry happen.
If the wizards hadn't gone into the past, the bullroarer would not have
been stolen, and the continent would not have been dry. The Dry occurred
because the wizards did that. And they only did that because RW was sent
to XXXX. However, because they did that, they self-created their own
evolution by giving the idea to the God of Evolution.
>The time travel is a wonderfully elegant closed loop, yes. I'm
>just not convinced that the Lady is responsible for all of these
>details. To me, it seems more in character for her to take
>problems/tools that existed *already*, put them together and shake
>vigorously until they're resolved. That's what her name is, isn't
>it?
That's a _long_ name...
I think she did take tools that existed already. She's very efficient.
She doesn't worry about the comfort of RW's situation as long as he
doesn't get killed - so she prevented him from getting killed by altering
the calculations. After that it was up to him again. She set up the
situation and left it to everyone else to deal with it. Since everyone
else _was_ dealing with it, she had no need to interfere further.
As previously noted, she doesn't play fair, and she doesn't play to win,
she plays not to lose. Here, her actions are affecting those of other
gods who aren't even officially in the game, and she's never seen.
>So unless I've missed something, I think the time tunnel existed
>already - though of course the wizards wouldn't have stumbled
>across it if they hadn't been looking for Rincewind.
But its existence is necessary for the wizards to go back to steal the
boomerang, and as soon as RW landed in XXXX, _everything_ was wrong, and a
major part of that wrongness, the Dry, is caused by the wizards' meddling.
Therefore I think it was created by the same effect. (Such a lovely
iconic image for the way the story works - a curve that comes back to
where it started - I hope they use a boomerang for the American cover
picture!)
>>The Old Man and his trickster companion are helping, so the
>>Lady stays out of it.
>
>What do you think is the relationship between the Lady and the Old
>Man? Has she 'lent' Rincewind to him, by way of reparation for
>using his continent, and his kangaroo, to save him earlier?
Interesting idea, but we haven't been let in on that. I'm not entirely
sure he realizes she's at work - he's new in the area, after all, and may
not have visited Dunmanifestin.
>I suspect that she's still sticking her oar in. The spider-in-
>the-hat incident looks like her style to me.
>
>>>Thanks to stealing the hat, the leader dies horribly and
>>>the ensuing pileup wipes out the rest of his gang.
>>>Only Rincewind himself is unsurprised.
>>
>>Interesting point. Was he unsurprised?
>
>I think so. Not that he specifically expected something venomous
>to be lurking in the hat, but he knew from experience (mostly in
>_IT_) that *some* sort of outrageous chance like that would almost
>certainly come up. For him, they always do.
But only when he is not depending on them. If he ever planned for it to
happen, it would fail. This is true for anyone who depends on The Lady.
<rustle, rustle - page 90, hardcover TLC> When RW says "You give me back
my hat or there'll be trouble!" it isn't a prediction - it's just his
desperation talking. It's the wording of a small child being bullied on
the playground. The hat symbolizes the fact that Rincewind is a wizard.
His hat - his role as a wizard, his concept of self - is the first thing
he fights for, way back in Sourcery. He doesn't know what he'll do, he
only knows that he'll do anything to get his hat (role, essence of being)
back. In Sourcery he attacked the Librarian to get his hat! <pg.91> "'s
my hat,' said Rincewind sullenly. He wasn't at all sure what had
happened." I submit that Rincewind was surprised. Claiming by
implication that he had something to do with the carnage ("'He
shouldn't've stolen my hat,' Rincewind mumbled.") is just protective
coloration, an instinct for RW.
>Look at his conversation with the warder, when he's locked up. He
>has no doubt that he'll escape somehow... so he goes through all
>the ideas he can think of with the warder. When these all come up
>blank, he goes through a brief crisis of faith until Death turns
>up to cheer him up...
>
>(And I've just seen an [A]nnotation there. p. 185: 'the narrow
>square of blue the prisoner calls the sky' - Oscar Wilde, 'The
>Ballad of Reading Gaol')
<rustle, rustle>
The conversation with the warder just shows that all the old cliche
escapes aren't going to happen. Rincewind is just putting on a show of
confidence.
pg. 189, after the conversation with the warder: "So it was down to this,
then. One brief night left, and then, if these clowns had anything to do
with it, happy people would be wandering the streets to see where his head
had come down." At this point it's pretty clear that Rincewind is
convinced he's going to die.
_Then_ Death appears and eventually tells RW that he isn't especially on
the list. But we, as readers, can't even trust that, because we know that
Death himself doesn't know when Rincewind will die; Death is just showing
up when there's a chance of it, to check the situation in person. RW
thinks he can trust what Death says at that point but is still puzzled as
to how he's supposed to escape.
[The other wizards]
>>>Then they meet the God of Evolution, who is to gods what Rincewind
>>>is to wizards: supremely incompetent, yet dreaming of a 'better'
>>>way to do things.
>>
>>But the G of E isn't incompetent; he can do the creating just fine.
>
>Not really - he can't 'create' a sustainable species, a trick
>that's common knowledge everywhere on the Disc except for his
>island. That's fairly incompetent.
O.K., but it's partly because he wants to improve them. In the long run
(as Death might say), all species are non-sustainable. And it's the
Special Creation type of Creationist theory, pushed to extremes.
>>He's more of an eccentric than an incompetent. A version of
>>Leonard of Quirm, but on the god scale.
>
>Again, I disagree. Leonard has thousands of little ideas, and
>works out a fraction of them. The G of E has *one* big idea
>(Evolution), but doesn't have the faintest notion of how to make
>it work. Just like Rincewind had that idea of 'harnessing the
>lightning' - but without Rincewind's outside 'help'.
The G of E has lots of ideas - one for each creature he makes. He's not
incompetent - each creature works just fine. He just hasn't gotten into
mass production because it hasn't occurred to him that he doesn't have to
do all the work himself, rebuilding each one to install improvements. Why
would you make multiple copies of something that wasn't perfected yet? So
he only makes one of each. He's an experimenter, like Leonard. He's a
Creationist God, carried to the extreme. Until the wizards give him the
idea, he doesn't really like the idea that his creations change in ways he
hadn't planned. (pg 101, pg 124) His creations are selfishly teleological
- they evolve themselves (more self-creation) to try to be useful to the
humans, and Ponder sees the weirdness of that concept (the cigarette plant
for instance, has no reason to exist before there are humans to want
them).
There's slight inconsistency here actually, as on pg. 101 the G of E
thinks the cigarette bush's speed of evolution is 'evolution in action',
but on pg 124 Ponder tells him the word for changing over time and it's
news to the G of E. We'll just have to chalk it up to Terry's translating
what the G of E actually thought into words we can understand. ;-)
TLC on this level is a book about Self-Creation - RW has to do something
because he's already done it, and the wizards create evolution and sex
(even though they are behaviorally asexual for the most part), which leads
ultimately to themselves as wizards. As Ridcully pointed out - their
present depends on their doing exactly what they do in the past. The
plants self-change to adapt to new conditions.
>>Whereas Rincewind is incompetent as a wizard (unless, as perhaps you
>>meant to suggest, his style of wizardry is that The Lady favors him).
>
>Yes, I suppose that's one way of putting it. Referring back to
>_IT_ again: he accomplishes far more in that way than any
>'competent' wizard could achieve by 'real' magic.
The Lady helps him a lot in IT, but much of what he accomplishes is based
on his own nature and what he has learned from experience. Sure, there
are coincidences aplenty, but The Lady would've had to work much harder to
make things happen (the game is The Fall of Empires) if RW hadn't rescued
the kids from the dungeons, and taught the technique of propaganda by
denial. He was even ahead of Twoflower's cynical elder daughter in
understanding the machinations of the court.
In TLC, on the other hand, The Lady is conspicuously absent, and the
intervention of the Old Man and the trickster is driven not by a game of
the gods but by the plan the Old Man has for his favorite type of
continent. Continents as afterthoughts (cf. the earlier comment, 'sex as
an afterthought'). Little changes made after the main job was done,
finetuning Creation. (The Old Man as copyeditor?)
=Tamar
Richard Eney
Miq <Mi...@kew1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>On Fri, 22 Jan 1999, Tamar <dic...@Radix.Net> wrote
Ever longer, and longer... again
But I'll try to hack it some more too
><now somewhat hacked>
>
>***************************************
>>>Major SPOILERS for TLC and other Rincewind books
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<snips>
>>The part that doesn't follow: RW personally having to do the repairs.
>>when the nomadic?) Creator is talking to his trickster, he
>>admits that RW is not vital to the correction, he just happens to be there
>>at the time when the Creator needs a local (promethean if you will) hero
>>to occur, to make the continent complete.
Erm.. check book again... ah, page 51: "He's not even heroic. He's just
in the right place at the right time... why not go and get the thing
yerself?" "You've gotta have heroes."
>But natives of the continent wouldn't be aware of what the problem
>*was* - to them, the Dry is normal.
Well, it has been for 5 minutes/30,000 years. pg. 130: The Luggage "knew
it had been stuck underground for a long time, but it also knew that it
had been stuck underground for about five minutes." Until the moment RW
landed in XXXX, there hadn't been any Dry. As soon as he arrived, there
had always been the Dry. The miscellaneous rumblings all through are the
sound of the continent adjusting itself to the twist caused by RW's
arrival. The memories of the inhabitants and their entire experience
changed the moment he arrived.
>As a visitor, Rincewind has a major conceptual advantage. And there's a
>certain karmic 'fittingness' about having him repair the damage that's
>been caused on his behalf, no?
Oh yes. He's there by an act of The Lady, and his being there caused a
problem, but there were other acts of "heroism" required - the culture
needed - and as long as he was there anyway, he might as well do those
along the way, while he was fixing up the damage. But the primary reason
for having him fix the damage is that the continent needs some heroes. It
gets precariously close to being self-referential, which IMO is death to a
book, and can kill a series. IMO, the saving grace is that RW _doesn't_
know he's just a character; he knows he's being messed around with by
gods, but not that he's a total invention. The only reason for his having
to repair the damage, as well as be the reality-seed for all the local
heroes to be built on, is Narrative Causality. That's already been
established as a force on the Disc (WA), though it isn't overtly invoked
here except on pg. 51. RW has been drawn into a hero story, or at least a
Mr. Fixit story.
<snip>
>>RW hasn't yet reached the level of
>>development where he is willing to die because then they can't do anything
>>else to him. He did reach the point of being willing to risk death way
>>back in Sourcery, when he was fighting to stop the wizard war that was
>>destroying the world he lived in, but he hasn't yet been completely
>>suicidal.
>
>He was a lot braver all round, back then. I think his legendary
>cowardice is something he only developed around that time - most
>likely during his sojourn in the Dungeon Dimensions, where he
>*had* to keep running simply to survive.
Possibly. RW had the unheroic attitude and running ability back in TCOM,
though at that point it was simple self-preservation from the normal
dangers of Ankh-Morpork (and before that, UU), described as cowardice. He
also was _already_ a pawn of The Lady. Fate didn't decide to go after him
until The Lady used him to win a game. When you have Fate and Death both
gunning for you, you survive only by concentrating on survival. (Luckily
;-) for RW, Death decided to back off about the time Fate started up.)
>>RW mostly Reacts, but on important occasions he has chosen to
>>Act, to do something even though nothing outwardly was forcing him to
>>do it, just because it was the right thing to do. There is usually
>>one, sometimes more, such moment in each RW book.
>
>Yes, and this is why we think of, and admire, him as a hero,
>despite his extremely low self-image as a world-class coward and
>shirker.
>
>[me]
>>>Are we told that the time tunnel at UU has something to do with
>>>the teleport cockup?
>>
>[Tamar]
>>If the wizards hadn't gone into the past, the bullroarer would not have
>>been stolen, and the continent would not have been dry. The Dry occurred
>>because the wizards did that. And they only did that because RW was sent
>>to XXXX. However, because they did that, they self-created their own
>>evolution by giving the idea to the God of Evolution.
>
>Whoa - you think that the G of E is actually responsible for
>modern life on the Disc?
>
>In Eric, we're fairly clearly told that life starts from
>Rincewind's egg-and-cress sandwich, and it seems to start
>developing from that moment. If the G of E is responsible for all
>that development, then life has evolved from bacteria to humanity
>in less than 30,000 years...
>
>Actually, on the Disc, I guess that's possible - but it honestly
>hadn't occurred to me.
No, I think that the timeline is getting confused here. (how else could
it be? :-) after all).
The 30,000 years-ago bit IIRC refers to the apparent age of something,
but not necessarily to the actual age of all life.
The original Creator of the Disc made the Disc, and then RW dropped his
sandwich. Much later, when the Nomadic Creator came along, noticed a nice
empty ocean, and decided to add The Last Continent, some life already
existed on the other continents, including humans, according to the G of
E. We know this because the wizards hear about worshipers already
existing from the G of E, and then travel in real time on the boat to
XXXX, where the nomadic Creator is making new animals. The wizards are
then stuck in the rocks for an unspecified number of thousands of years.
The figure of 30,000 years comes from pg. 66: "Those hills look as old as
the hills." "They were made 30,000 years old." "They look millions of
years old."... "30,000 years ago they were made a million years ago."
Actually I think this is a typo - I _think_ it ought to be either "They
were made 30,000 years ago" or "They were made a million years old 30,000
years ago." Or possibly "Five minutes ago they were made 30,000 years
old." Because there wouldn't be any point to making them a million plus
30,000 years old: "A million years ago they were made 30,000 years old"
would be meaningless even in context.
The G of E was inventing new species and trying to make them more
efficient and interesting. When he was given the idea of adding sexual
differentiation and competition, evolution continued, but special creation
by the other gods of the Disc probably still continued also. At least
once (after the Mage Wars, IIRC), the basic strain of human , which was
originally very large and powerful in magic, was redesigned to make them
more controllable. Different strains of humans on the Disc can interbreed
even though they obviously come from different special creations as well
as evolving. (Hey, on the Disc, fruit flies and sweet peas cross to
produce a sad green thing that buzzes.)
Terry is playing with various aspects of creation, including the creation
of humans, animals, religions, heroes, cultures, self-images, and more.
But all of that happened when the nomadic Creator was making the last
continent. Which was not necessarily 30,000 years ago - it could have
been millions of years ago. When artifacts can be created instantly and
be 30,000 years old when they are created (like the mountains and fossils
or whatever it was), there's no need for them to be created at any
particular time.
pg. 67-68 As soon as RW arrived, he changed what's already happened, and
suddenly it had always been wrong.
>Back to the point: the wizards' presence in XXXX is because of
>Rincewind, yes - if they hadn't been looking for him there, they
>wouldn't have gone to the room of the Professor of Cruel and
>Unusual Geography, and wouldn't have found the tunnel. But
>there's no reason to suppose the tunnel itself shares a common
>cause, is there?
The tunnel goes _directly_ to the exact time that the nomadic Creator is
working on the last continent. The wizards arrive at the precise time
necessary to meddle - while the nC is creating the animals - and while he
is therefore distracted enough for the Librarian to have a chance to steal
the boomerang. That was the direct cause of the Dry, which is the thing
that went wrong when RW arrived. So the arrival of the wizards at that
precise moment has to be linked directly to RW's arrival. His arrival
brought them there to cause the wrong note. The method by which it
happened was the creation of the time tunnel.
[hat theft -> death of gang leader and gang]
>>>>>Only Rincewind himself is unsurprised.
>>>>
>>>>Interesting point. Was he unsurprised?
>>>
>>>I think so. ... he knew from experience ...
>>>that *some* sort of outrageous chance like that would almost
>>>certainly come up. For him, they always do.
>>
>>But only when he is not depending on them. If he ever planned for it to
>>happen, it would fail. This is true for anyone who depends on The Lady.
>><rustle, rustle - page 90, hardcover TLC> When RW says "You give me back
>>my hat or there'll be trouble!" it isn't a prediction - it's just his
>>desperation talking. It's the wording of a small child being bullied on
>>the playground.
>
>I see it as fitting into the fine tradition of unconscious
>prophecy. Rincewind has no way of knowing what's about to happen,
>and he certainly doesn't cause or will it to happen... but I think
>he has a moment of prescience at this point, even as he speaks.
Narrative tradition of unconscious prophecy, yes. What I call the Lie
that is True syndrome. But since he didn't know it would happen, he was
surprised when it did. This is hinted at in the description as he picks
up the hat - the only curse he can cause is 'may it rain on you some
time', and turning horrible colors as you die isn't a usual result of
anything he does.
>Incidentally, we've seen this phrase before in a Rincewind book,
>in very similar circumstances - talking of the Luggage:
>
> "Well, I'm going to have a look at it, sergeant - "
> " - not a good plan, sir, if I may - "
> " - and after I've had a look at it, sergeant, there is going
> to be trouble."
> The sergeant threw him a salute. "Right you are, sir," he
> predicted.
>(Eric, p.78 in my (VGSF) edition)
But in that case, the sergeant had immediately previous experience of
seeing what the Luggage could do and had been doing, so it wasn't
unconscious prophecy, it was irony. (Doubly so, since we're not sure the
lieutenant didn't survive - the next time we see Luggage, it's cosying up
to the commander. In which case there _wasn't_ trouble for the
lieutenant.)
<snip>
[The Lady's influence affecting RW's luck in TLC?]
>>The Lady helps him a lot in IT, but much of what he accomplishes is
>>based on his own nature and what he has learned from experience.
<snip>
>>He was even ahead of Twoflower's cynical elder daughter in
>>understanding the machinations of the court.
>
>I would guess she chose him, rather than any other piece in her
>set, for the game precisely because he has this sort of cynical
>talent. But what I was trying to say is that if, say, Ridcully or
>Granny had gone instead, and tried to defeat Lord Hong's army by
>magic or headology, they'd have failed.
Possibly. We didn't see much (any?) of the Agatean wizards, though some
must have existed somewhere, I assume. Maybe they all had the sense to
stay hidden.
But in TLC, if The Lady is involved, she is very (vewy) quiet. Rincewind
has to solve this one himself - he gets divine aid to get him _to_ the
important location - the spot where the wizards are frozen in time, with
the boomerang, but he then has to bring the past and present together into
one moment, all by himself. The kangaroo doesn't help him then, he does
it by _freeing his creativity_ and drawing, very much the same way that
the nomadic Creator drew the living creatures way back when.
=Tamar
Miq
>Ever longer, and longer...
>>>>***************************************
>>Major SPOILERS for TLC and other Rincewind books
T
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>The part that doesn't obviously follow directly is the part about
>Rincewind personally having to do the repair job - and in fact, when the
>visiting (nomadic?) Creator is talking to his trickster, he essentially
>admits that RW is not vital to the correction, he just happens to be there
>at the time when the Creator needs a local (promethean if you will) hero
>to occur, to make the continent complete.
But natives of the continent wouldn't be aware of what the problem
*was* - to them, the Dry is normal. As a visitor, Rincewind has a
major conceptual advantage. And there's a certain karmic
'fittingness' about having him repair the damage that's been
caused on his behalf, no?
>What if he didn't try to avoid the really unpleasant things? If he sat
>quietly and didn't escape from the cell, would they have pardoned him?
I imagine someone would have kidnapped him... something like his
own 'washerwoman' plan, but in reverse...
>While he was totally unconscious of the role he was being put in, he was
>protected. After he was told, when he tried to resist, the trickster
>stopped providing miraculous food in the desert - at that point, I think
>there is a possibility that if RW really wanted to resist out of total
>stubbornness, he could just reach under a rock and get bitten by something
>venomous. It would be out of character, but RW's character is changing
>anyway.
I think he'd either have found nothing, or been stung by a
scorpion that was excruciatingly painful for some time thereafter,
but not actually fatal.
>That's a fair point, mate^W Miq. RW hasn't yet reached the level of
>development where he is willing to die because then they can't do anything
>else to him. He did reach the point of being willing to risk death way
>back in Sourcery, when he was fighting to stop the wizard war that was
>destroying the world he lived in, but he hasn't yet been completely
>suicidal.
He was a lot braver all round, back then. I think his legendary
cowardice is something he only developed around that time - most
likely during his sojourn in the Dungeon Dimensions, where he
*had* to keep running simply to survive.
> It's related to the concept of Acting instead of merely
>Reacting. RW mostly Reacts, but on important occasions he has chosen to
>Act, to do something even though nothing outwardly was forcing him to do
>it, just because it was the right thing to do. There is usually one,
>sometime more, such moment in each RW book.
Yes, and this is why we think of, and admire, him as a hero,
despite his extremely low self-image as a world-class coward and
shirker.
[me]
>>Are we told that the time tunnel at UU has something to do with
>>the teleport cockup?
>
[Tamar]
>If the wizards hadn't gone into the past, the bullroarer would not have
>been stolen, and the continent would not have been dry. The Dry occurred
>because the wizards did that. And they only did that because RW was sent
>to XXXX. However, because they did that, they self-created their own
>evolution by giving the idea to the God of Evolution.
Whoa - you think that the G of E is actually responsible for
modern life on the Disc?
In Eric, we're fairly clearly told that life starts from
Rincewind's egg-and-cress sandwich, and it seems to start
developing from that moment. If the G of E is responsible for all
that development, then life has evolved from bacteria to humanity
in less than 30,000 years...
Actually, on the Disc, I guess that's possible - but it honestly
hadn't occurred to me.
Back to the point: the wizards' presence in XXXX is because of
Rincewind, yes - if they hadn't been looking for him there, they
wouldn't have gone to the room of the Professor of Cruel and
Unusual Geography, and wouldn't have found the tunnel. But
there's no reason to suppose the tunnel itself shares a common
cause, is there?
>>>>Thanks to stealing the hat, the leader dies horribly and
>>>>the ensuing pileup wipes out the rest of his gang.
>>>>Only Rincewind himself is unsurprised.
>>>
>>>Interesting point. Was he unsurprised?
>>
>>I think so. Not that he specifically expected something venomous
>>to be lurking in the hat, but he knew from experience (mostly in
>>_IT_) that *some* sort of outrageous chance like that would almost
>>certainly come up. For him, they always do.
>
>But only when he is not depending on them. If he ever planned for it to
>happen, it would fail. This is true for anyone who depends on The Lady.
><rustle, rustle - page 90, hardcover TLC> When RW says "You give me back
>my hat or there'll be trouble!" it isn't a prediction - it's just his
>desperation talking. It's the wording of a small child being bullied on
>the playground.
I see it as fitting into the fine tradition of unconscious
prophecy. Rincewind has no way of knowing what's about to happen,
and he certainly doesn't cause or will it to happen... but I think
he has a moment of prescience at this point, even as he speaks.
Incidentally, we've seen this phrase before in a Rincewind book,
in very similar circumstances - talking of the Luggage:
"Well, I'm going to have a look at it, sergeant - "
" - not a good plan, sir, if I may - "
" - and after I've had a look at it, sergeant, there is going
to be trouble."
The sergeant threw him a salute. "Right you are, sir," he
predicted.
(Eric, p.78 in my (VGSF) edition)
>>>Whereas Rincewind is incompetent as a wizard (unless, as perhaps you
>>>meant to suggest, his style of wizardry is that The Lady favors him).
>>
>>Yes, I suppose that's one way of putting it. Referring back to
>>_IT_ again: he accomplishes far more in that way than any
>>'competent' wizard could achieve by 'real' magic.
>
>The Lady helps him a lot in IT, but much of what he accomplishes is based
>on his own nature and what he has learned from experience. Sure, there
>are coincidences aplenty, but The Lady would've had to work much harder to
>make things happen (the game is The Fall of Empires) if RW hadn't rescued
>the kids from the dungeons, and taught the technique of propaganda by
>denial. He was even ahead of Twoflower's cynical elder daughter in
>understanding the machinations of the court.
I would guess she chose him, rather than any other piece in her
set, for the game precisely because he has this sort of cynical
talent. But what I was trying to say is that if, say, Ridcully or
Granny had gone instead, and tried to defeat Lord Hong's army by
magic or headology, they'd have failed.
Of course, either of them would have brought certain other
attributes to the job, and there's no telling what effects they'd
have had. It would be a completely different story. But in terms
of direct power, magic isn't a patch on what the Lady can arrange.
--
Miq - afpiance to the thoughtful MEG, well read Supermouse and critical Heather
Miq
wrote
<replying to me>
>However, there are more ways of finishing off a book than tying up all
>the loose ends. William Golding leaves not only loose ends untied, but
>the last *sentence* of 'The Paper Men' unfinished, although in a way
>which leaves the reader in no doubt as to what has happened to the
>of just the same passage from Jane Austen as quoted above, in the middle
>of a scene from a film script.
Fair enough, but these are self-consciously 'literary' books by
self-consciously literary writers. They are deliberatly flouting
convention to make a point. David Lodge in particular is so
unsubtle about it that he feels the need to quote Jane Austen just
to make *sure* that his readers see how clever he's being...
(Snide? Moi?)
Golding is enough of a navel-gazing postmodernist that he sees the
importance of an ending to a story, and knows the potential of
leaving loose ends. I haven't read the book, but I'd guess he's
using them as a device to increase the sense of verisimilitude, yes?
Terry, by contrast, is quite subtle about it. To all appearances,
TLC is a spoof of a standard 'quest' story. The observations about
the *nature* of the story are seamlessly woven into the story itself
- so seamlessly that many readers don't even see them. That's an
achievement.
--
Miq - afpiance to the pensive MEG, cunning Supermouse and well read Heather
8 ' Flesh Eating Dragon
^
| >That's a fair point, mate^W Miq. RW hasn't yet reached the level of
| >development where he is willing to die because then they can't do anything
| >else to him. He did reach the point of being willing to risk death way
| >back in Sourcery, when he was fighting to stop the wizard war that was
| >destroying the world he lived in, but he hasn't yet been completely
| >suicidal.
|
| He was a lot braver all round, back then. I think his legendary
| cowardice is something he only developed around that time - most
| likely during his sojourn in the Dungeon Dimensions, where he
| *had* to keep running simply to survive.
Surely the most descriptive summary of Rincewind's cowardice
could be the "addicted to life" in Sourcery?
Adrian.
8 ' Flesh Eating Dragon
^
| In Eric, we're fairly clearly told that life starts from
| Rincewind's egg-and-cress sandwich, and it seems to start
| developing from that moment. If the G of E is responsible for all
| that development, then life has evolved from bacteria to humanity
| in less than 30,000 years...
Whatever it was, we remember it very clearly ;-)
Adrian.
Heather Knowles
Lodge:
>Fair enough, but these are self-consciously 'literary' books by
>self-consciously literary writers. They are deliberatly flouting
>convention to make a point.
And so is Terry - so mine *are* the exceptions that prove the rule, as I
suspected.
> David Lodge in particular is so
>unsubtle about it that he feels the need to quote Jane Austen just
>to make *sure* that his readers see how clever he's being...
>(Snide? Moi?)
Not snide - just accurate :) I really like Lodge's stuff, but he does
rather lay it on with a trowel sometimes. Maybe it's his years as a
lecturer coming out.
>
>Golding is enough of a navel-gazing postmodernist that he sees the
>importance of an ending to a story, and knows the potential of
>leaving loose ends.
True.
>I haven't read the book, but I'd guess he's
>using them as a device to increase the sense of verisimilitude, yes?
Yes - and certainly to create a 'surprise' ending. If anyone wants to
know what the surprise is, see this footnote[1]. Otherwise, leave it
alone - if you ever read the book, it'll be a huge spoiler.
>
>Terry, by contrast, is quite subtle about it. To all appearances,
>TLC is a spoof of a standard 'quest' story. The observations about
>the *nature* of the story are seamlessly woven into the story itself
>- so seamlessly that many readers don't even see them. That's an
>achievement.
>
It certainly is, and that was never what I was disagreeing about. I just
decided to be picky about your belief that loose ends *usually* made a
poor ending, which they do. Like I said, mine were very literary
exceptions.
Perhaps all those Eng Lit students out there could take TLC and its
playing with the conventions as the basis for an essay? There certainly
seem to be plenty of them looking for titles and ideas...
[1] The novel ('The Paper Men') is written in first person, and the
final sentence reads: 'How the devil did Rick L Tucker manage to get
hold of a gu '
--
lotsa luv, Heaven xxxxxxx
Nanny Ogg of Stewart's Coven; in MegaMole's Hill; Keeper of Heaven's Little
Angels; and afpfiancée to Miq the Magnificent (*hug*)
Miq
Much hacking has taken place, because we could easily end up
having about 10 discussions at once in this exchange - I suggest
we separate them?
>>***************************************
>>>>Major SPOILERS for TLC and other Rincewind books
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[Miq]
>>In Eric, we're fairly clearly told that life starts from
>>Rincewind's egg-and-cress sandwich, and it seems to start
>>developing from that moment. If the G of E is responsible for all
>>that development, then life has evolved from bacteria to humanity
>>in less than 30,000 years...
>>
>>Actually, on the Disc, I guess that's possible - but it honestly
>>hadn't occurred to me.
[Tamar]
>No, I think that the timeline is getting confused here. (how else could
>it be? :-) after all).
>
> The 30,000 years-ago bit IIRC refers to the apparent age of something,
>but not necessarily to the actual age of all life.
I think it's when XXXX was created.
> The original Creator of the Disc made the Disc, and then RW dropped his
>sandwich. Much later, when the Nomadic Creator came along, noticed a nice
>empty ocean, and decided to add The Last Continent, some life already
>existed on the other continents, including humans, according to the G of
>E. We know this because the wizards hear about worshipers already
>existing from the G of E, and then travel in real time on the boat to
>XXXX, where the nomadic Creator is making new animals.
Hmmm.. I'm not sure this follows. Do worshippers have to be
human? He could be talking about trolls, which are a completely
different developmental strand, or elves, which are a magical race
from another dimension. It's even been hypothesised that fairly
primitive animals could have gods.
Though I'll grant you, I'm nitpicking now. Your interpretation
does make more sense.
>The wizards are
>then stuck in the rocks for an unspecified number of thousands of years.
>The figure of 30,000 years comes from pg. 66: "Those hills look as old as
>the hills." "They were made 30,000 years old." "They look millions of
>years old."... "30,000 years ago they were made a million years ago."
>
> Actually I think this is a typo - I _think_ it ought to be either "They
>were made 30,000 years ago" or "They were made a million years old 30,000
>years ago." Or possibly "Five minutes ago they were made 30,000 years
>old."
Very likely Scrappy himself is a bit confused. As he says a few
lines later, "I'm trying to find words you might understand."
> Terry is playing with various aspects of creation, including the creation
>of humans, animals, religions, heroes, cultures, self-images, and more.
And stories ;o)
Yes, you're quite right - creation is a Big Theme here. I'd
suggest making that another thread?
["You give me back my hat or there'll be trouble!"]
>Narrative tradition of unconscious prophecy, yes. What I call the Lie
>that is True syndrome. But since he didn't know it would happen, he was
>surprised when it did. This is hinted at in the description as he picks
>up the hat - the only curse he can cause is 'may it rain on you some
>time', and turning horrible colors as you die isn't a usual result of
>anything he does.
Interesting choice of sample curse, n'est-ce pas?
>>Incidentally, we've seen this phrase before in a Rincewind book,
>>in very similar circumstances - talking of the Luggage:
>>
>> "Well, I'm going to have a look at it, sergeant - "
>> " - not a good plan, sir, if I may - "
>> " - and after I've had a look at it, sergeant, there is going
>> to be trouble."
>> The sergeant threw him a salute. "Right you are, sir," he
>> predicted.
>>(Eric, p.78 in my (VGSF) edition)
>
>But in that case, the sergeant had immediately previous experience of
>seeing what the Luggage could do and had been doing, so it wasn't
>unconscious prophecy, it was irony.
Nunno, I'm not saying it was... merely that this form of words has
been used before with a considerably-more-than-playground level of
significance.
>We didn't see much (any?) of the Agatean wizards, though some
>must have existed somewhere, I assume. Maybe they all had the sense to
>stay hidden.
I seem to recall that magic is frowned upon in the Agatean empire,
as it puts power into the hands of the ill-bred and uncouth, who
couldn't even compose a decent haiku, or something to that effect.
In which case wizards, if any, would stay *very* hidden if they
didn't want Serious Bits cut off...
--
Miq - afpiance to the couth MEG, capable Supermouse and cultured Heather
Joerg Ruedenauer
Miq wrote:
>I seem to recall that magic is frowned upon in the Agatean empire,
>as it puts power into the hands of the ill-bred and uncouth, who
>couldn't even compose a decent haiku, or something to that effect.
>In which case wizards, if any, would stay *very* hidden if they
>didn't want Serious Bits cut off...
>
I think a wizard could well prevent having bits cut off, e.g. by
turning people to frogs etc.
IMO, the agatean wizards chose not to perform magic because they
thought it wasn't civilized. (Regarding the average agatean mind, he
would even think so if he was ill-bread and uncouth.)
Joerg
--
"Quoth the raven: Nevermore!" -- E.A.Poe
Joerg Ruedenauer
>Many people have written fairly unkind things about _The Last
>Continent_, in contrast to _CJ_ and _Jingo_. In fact, the
>majority opinion of the relative merits of these three books is so
>different from mine that I feel the need to explain what it is I
>like about _TLC_ in particular.
< snip excellent work that doesn't deserve to be snipped, but I fully
agree with nearly all of it, and the rest has been already mentioned
in this thread. So I'm only commenting the title of the post. >
I think you've misunderstood most of the people. The important thing
is the "contrast to CJ and J" (and even more to some of the earlier
books). For itself, TLC *is* a great book. But, compared with the
others, it could be e.g. disappointing that there are no new major
characters and there are "only" two story - lines where there used to
be up to five or six.
BTW, can someone tell me what "slood" is? I didn't find it in any
dictionary yet.
Shim
>BTW, can someone tell me what "slood" is? I didn't find it in any
>dictionary yet.
Methinks it's just a joke, although there are two other possibilities:
1/ It's a Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy reference (I have an annoying
feeling that this may turn out to be the case, as it sounded somewhat
familiar)
2/ Some smug b*stard is going to turn round, in about March 2000, and say
"Aha! 'Slood' is a Venezualan tribal word meaning 'soil'!", or somesuch
esoterica [1]
It may help to put it in context if you consider the "huge
continent-wrecking slabs of ice" to be taken as Shoemaker-Levy having that
little altercation with Jupiter the other year... [2]
--
-Shim, redoing his .sig.
RTC Political Officer, member of the SPoKOS, UDIC, SEC and RFC, CUT
supporter.
AFPiance to the ever-perfect Jennifer G.
If you must... replace 'cheapskate' with 'freeserve' to contact me.
[1] Is this a word?
[2] Or Comet Ponsonby-Smythe and the third moon of Saturn... I'm no
astronomer, but I know something in this vein happened.
William
<snip a whole lotta stuff debating the greatness of TLC, which I thought
was excellent, even if it isn't as good a read as CJ, J, FoC, Hf, etc.>
>BTW, can someone tell me what "slood" is? I didn't find it in any
>dictionary yet.
>
I think this was a joke in and of itself; I believe that it's something that
civilized races are 'expected' to discover. We humans have not, which says
a lot about our species...
Then again, I could be wrong, and my copy of TLC is currently in someone
else's hands...
Richard Eney
In article <78ahph$ltn$1...@library.lspace.org>,
MEG <M...@djilibeybiAnkh.free-online.co.uk> wrote:
>Richard Eney wrote
>>Miq <Mi...@kew1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>>***************************************
>>>Here be minor SPOILERS for <snip>
>>and now major spoilers for TLC
>>
>
>>>It's often said here that _TLC_ is a lightweight story of no real
>>>inner meaning. I think there's much more to it than that. _TLC_
>>>contains some hilarious insights on topics that Terry addresses
>>>extremely well: the perception of stories and the nature of
>>>belief.
<snips here and there>
>I think TLC is one of my (newer) faves. Mainly because of the
>approach being 'from the conclusion - back'. I found it more -
><wiggle fingers in the air> philosphical </wiggle fingers in the
>air>
A nice point, and one I hadn't thought about quite that way.
We start off with RW in the present, then with the wizards we go back into
the past and see what started it, and eventually get up to the present
again. This might be described as the typical beginning 'in media res'
with flashbacks, but with the time-travel story element, it seems to be a
more meaningful choice than just a way to jump into the action.
<further applause>
>>What he's aware of is that he's been told he's going to do
>>something, not that he'll survive having done it.
>>And Death doesn't tell him he isn't going to die
>>tomorrow, just that he's not officially on the list right now.
>No, I think he's told he's going to have done something - so he
>already did - so he still has to... eeerrr ouch!
<g> What I meant was, he's been told that he's going to do something that
he's already done - but he still has to do it - he's just been given that
extra bit of information, that the reason he has to do it is that he's
already done it. Possibly he's been told that as a further bludgeon to
make him more willing to try?
>From the outside, I knew who the hero was supposed to be. Suddenly,
>so did the hero, but was somewhat reluctant - and wouldn't you be ?
>Who appreciates knowing that they are being used as a pawn ? Who,
>usually, appreciates that this is the case even ?
>
>My natural reaction to those situations is to rebel and try to
>change the outcome.
Mine too (I've been in pawn positions too). Trouble is, you usually don't
realize it until it's too late to change the outcome. (I hate politics,
and I'm no good at it.)
My usual solution is to try to figure out what I really want to have
happen, and do it regardless of whether or not someone else is 'forcing'
me to do it. Act instead of React.
Just once or twice, I've been in a situation where, if I thought fast or
clearly enough, I could choose to try to do something or choose to keep
quiet. The times where I succeeded in making a positive benefit happen
(to someone else, not me) are among my proudest moments. (Nothing
world-shaking, just making life a tiny bit easier for someone whose
parents were being thickos about something simple, and I actually managed
to get through to them about it in a way that didn't cause negative
repercussions.)
Not that I'd want to be in RW's position (I don't fancy eating grubs and
I can't run, I'm more the wizardly shape).
I think my point here is that there is usually a difference between
Realizing you are a pawn, and Realizing you are (potentially) the hero. In
the larger sense, they may be the same. We are all heroes of our own
stories, but most of us don't have a magical being telling us so, and we
don't see the little alterations that make us take the path we think we're
choosing. Or we stumble over things that ought to tell us we're going in
the wrong direction, and firmly ignore them. Rincewind actually has an
advantage over us at that point. He knows he's going to do it, he just
has to figure out how while still staying alive long enough. The story is
a Howdunnit (IIRC Terry described the Watch stories as Howdunnits).
>Rincewind (IMHO) tries to fight it but accepts
>that there is nothing he can do to change 'destiny'. Is it the
>stuggle to change destiny or the acceptance of 'que sera, sera'
>the bigger strength ?
This is actually a major point. I think it depends on the situation. RW
isn't destined to rescue a sheep from being stolen, that's just one of the
incidents along the way, set up by the nomadic Creator to give his
continent heroes. RW does seem to be destined (perhaps by The Lady,
perhaps by Fate, working invisibly) to have to do that final magical
bringing together of past and present by the exercise of his own artistic
creativity, in a way similar to the method of the nomadic Creator.
<snip>
>In a book by Peter Trayne [2] the characters actually give
>commentary on the words being placed on the page by the author and
>object to them becoming true simply by their being read by The
>Reader (tm). Did that make any sense ?
>
>The story line went on to describe the discomfort felt by the
>characters when the passages returned to description of them. Also
>their feeble attempts at 'doing something' whilst The Reader (tm) -
>me - was otherwise engaged in reading seperate descriptive passages.
Sounds fascinating. It reminds me of the play, Six Characters in Search
of an Author, where they actively want someone to write a coherent plot
for them to be in; they want their lives to have some meaning instead of
being random.
>It just gave me the feeling of complete inadequacy and impotence.
>But I think that was the intention :-)
You're being awfully sympathetic to a character that is just a creation of
the author. Perhaps the author meant you to feel empowered <g> because
your reading the book made the characters exist. Even if they were a
little embarrassed by being observed by the omniscient, all-seeing Reader.
=Tamar
Richard Eney
term <waggle fingers> Philosophical for some of the elements of this
discussion.
=Tamar
in...@fdhoekstra.nl
>
> Miq wrote:
> >I seem to recall that magic is frowned upon in the Agatean empire,
> >as it puts power into the hands of the ill-bred and uncouth, who
> >couldn't even compose a decent haiku, or something to that effect.
> >In which case wizards, if any, would stay *very* hidden if they
> >didn't want Serious Bits cut off...
> >
> I think a wizard could well prevent having bits cut off, e.g. by
> turning people to frogs etc.
Only if the wizards
(a) were already that good; they may have been forbidden for a
long time, since they were just testing their powers. Merely
turning someone's hat into a frog instead of someone himself
does not prevent him from chopping your hat off;
(b) were more-or-less organised; otherwise you could take them one
by one, unawares; and
(c) were a decent number. Mongolian hordes techniques work well,
even against a very strong opponent.
> IMO, the agatean wizards chose not to perform magic because they
> thought it wasn't civilized. (Regarding the average agatean mind, he
> would even think so if he was ill-bread and uncouth.)
Not if you do it civilisedly. Turning someone into a frog may
not be very refined, turning people into a nightingales and
putting them in cages is, for Agatean values of "refined".
Richard
in...@fdhoekstra.nl
>
> On Fri, 22 Jan 1999, in...@fdhoekstra.nl wrote
> >H
> > e
> > r
> > e
> >
> >T
> > h
> > e
> > r
> > e
> >
> >B
> > e
> >
> >S
> > p
> > o
> > i
> > l
> > e
> > r
> > s
> >.
> > .
> > .
> >
>
> >Actually, there is an antagonist in TLC, unless you insist on
> >having one in human form. It is the usual antagonist for
> >Rincewind, to whit Fate, the world, and circumstance.
>
> Do you mean Fate with a capital F, as in the Lady's opponent in
> IT? If so, I can't see any real evidence that he's involved. I'm
> not convinced that 'the world' is against him either, even though
> he thinks it is. I think it's one or more Divine Powers (the old
> man and the trickster, mostly) who are arranging things so that he
> keeps landing in the doo-doo.
I mean fate with a small f; but on the D-W, this probably means
Fate with a big F. Just because we don't see him doesn't mean
he isn't involved at all; though perhaps this new continent has
a separate Fate... tempting thought, that.
Maybe you're right with Divine Powers; but there needn't be any
such. What I meant was not really that there is an active force
fighting RW; much more that he is trying to struggle, uphill,
against Circumstance. There are, in most books, several people
involved in RW's fate; some trying to help, some not. However,
RW does always tend to struggle against the World In General;
this may indeed be caused by his own attitude, but the struggle
exists.
It's much more a case of RW against the World, than the other
way around, I think.
> >I don't
> >think there is more than one book[1] where Rincewind has a
> >human adversary - he has them for parts of the books, as in
> >TLC, e.g., the jailers and the cart gang, but never one for
> >the whole book.
>
> Oh, I don't know. In TCoM there's Death and the Patrician, who
> were both pretty unsympathetic back then. In Eric there's Astfgl.
> And although Lord Hong isn't *Rincewind's* enemy in particular,
> he's still a villainous hate-figure for the whole book.
Yes... but they're not directly _his_ enemy. Death was after
RW in TCoM; but RW doesn't fight Death throughout the book.
Same for the Patrician. And Astgfl actually uses RW during Eric,
and doesn't become his adversary until RW enters his own domain,
and then lets him go. Lord Hong, too, actually helps bring RW
to Agatea; he's much more Twoflower's enemy.
> >> But the other thing that struck me is that Rincewind is a
> >> Prometheus figure [snip]
> >> And the story of Prometheus is one where there is no anti-hero,
> >> so Pterry's running true to the archetype.
>
> I think that's quite an apt comparison. It's a 'Quest' story,
> overdone to the point of a spoof, and Prometheus is perhaps the
> archetypal 'Quest'.
Yes; with one big difference. Prometheus was a Hero, intervening
with the Olympics[1] in our behalf, willingly risking their ire,
and receiving it. Rincewind gets the role dumped on him, plays
it despite himself, and, eventually, gets out scot-free, even
going back home; though I agree with Miq that this is probably
mostly the work of the Lady.
I must say, this is an interesting thread. I wish to extend my
acknowledgements to those involved; and I wish I had read TLC
that well.
Richard
[1] and paying money to get the flame? Or to get flamed?
David Brain
(Heather Knowles) wrote:
> > David Lodge in particular is so
> >unsubtle about it that he feels the need to quote Jane Austen just
> >to make *sure* that his readers see how clever he's being...
> >(Snide? Moi?)
>
> Not snide - just accurate :) I really like Lodge's stuff, but he does
> rather lay it on with a trowel sometimes. Maybe it's his years as a
> lecturer coming out.
Although to be fair /Small World/ and /Nice Work/ aren't quite so obvious - the Quest
story in /Small World/ for instance is actually almost as well disguised as in TLC.
(Personally I think all three books are well worth reading though, even if you don't spot
the underlying devices, and they're not really "literary" novels.)
--
David Brain
The Millennium Bug: An inability to spell the word "millennium" correctly
Heather Knowles
>Although to be fair /Small World/ and /Nice Work/ aren't quite so obvious - the
>Quest
>story in /Small World/ for instance is actually almost as well disguised as in
>TLC.
Yes, but the more I read of his stuff, the more I feel that's unusual
for Lodge - if you read two in succession, as I've done recently, you do
start to feel you're being hit over the head with 'I'm a Catholic
English lecturer at a redbrick university, and don't you forget it'.
When he isn't being self-referential or consciously 'clever', he's
banging on about redbrick academia or Catholicism. Both perfectly fair
topics for novels, of course - but in such profusion, and at such
length?
>(Personally I think all three books are well worth reading though, even if you
>don't spot
>the underlying devices, and they're not really "literary" novels.)
>
Hmmm... Not sure Mr Lodge would agree with you about their not being
'literary'.
He wrote a series of articles on literary criticism for The Independent
On Sunday, which were collected in one volume in 1992 as 'The Art of
Fiction'. In these he draws examples from many great literary figures:
George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, E M Forster, Charles Dickens, Evelyn Waugh,
Ernest Hemingway and so on. And one David Lodge - an extract from 'How
Far Can you Go?', which he uses to illustrate a chapter on characters'
names.
You may not think Lodge writes literary novels, but Lodge sure as hell
does. Personally (to bring us back on topic), I think Terry Pratchett
novels are just as deserving (if not more so) of literary comment and
serious review as David Lodge's. Of course, Terry's will never be taken
seriously as good writing, because - shock horror! - they're *fantasy*
novels. Like, all other novels are real-life reportage.....
--
lotsa luv, Heaven xxxxxxx
Joerg Ruedenauer
>
< snips >
>>>What he's aware of is that he's been told he's going to do
>>>something, not that he'll survive having done it.
>>>And Death doesn't tell him he isn't going to die
>>>tomorrow, just that he's not officially on the list right now.
>
>>No, I think he's told he's going to have done something - so he
>>already did - so he still has to... eeerrr ouch!
>
><g> What I meant was, he's been told that he's going to do something
that
>he's already done - but he still has to do it - he's just been given
that
>extra bit of information, that the reason he has to do it is that
he's
>already done it. Possibly he's been told that as a further bludgeon
to
>make him more willing to try?
>
Or, if they know his mind, to make him more willing not to try, and
thus to do it.
>
>>Rincewind (IMHO) tries to fight it but accepts
>>that there is nothing he can do to change 'destiny'. Is it the
>>stuggle to change destiny or the acceptance of 'que sera, sera'
>>the bigger strength ?
>
>This is actually a major point. I think it depends on the situation.
RW
>isn't destined to rescue a sheep from being stolen, that's just one
of the
>incidents along the way, set up by the nomadic Creator to give his
>continent heroes. RW does seem to be destined (perhaps by The Lady,
>perhaps by Fate, working invisibly) to have to do that final magical
>bringing together of past and present by the exercise of his own
artistic
>creativity, in a way similar to the method of the nomadic Creator.
>
It is interesting to combine that with the theory of parallel -
universes. It seems that Rincewind must save the continent; so there's
no parallel - universe in which he doesn't. But that's nearly the
contrary of the theory, so either destiny or parallel - universes.
Perhaps there's some mechanism that sorts everything out like this:
Because the nomadic Creator went back in time, he caused all
parallel - universes except the one he came from to collaps. More
probable is IMO that Scrappy lies to Rincewind about this destiny.
But the important point is that Rincewind thinks he knows his destiny.
That must be very hard and I can understand why he tries to fight it
[1]. But then again, perhaps he doesn't fight it because he knows it
but because he thinks it is a bad destiny (though that may be caused
by the knowledge :-) ).
>>From the outside, I knew who the hero was supposed to be. Suddenly,
>>so did the hero, but was somewhat reluctant - and wouldn't you be ?
>>Who appreciates knowing that they are being used as a pawn ? Who,
>>usually, appreciates that this is the case even ?
>>
>>My natural reaction to those situations is to rebel and try to
>>change the outcome.
>
>Mine too (I've been in pawn positions too). Trouble is, you usually
don't
>realize it until it's too late to change the outcome. (I hate
politics,
>and I'm no good at it.)
>
What a pity. Politics is one of the most important things IMO. Still,
better hate it than loathe it. But I'm digressing.
>
>My usual solution is to try to figure out what I really want to have
>happen, and do it regardless of whether or not someone else is
'forcing'
>me to do it. Act instead of React.
>
Yes! That's exactly the right approach, if you ask me. I mean your
ususal reaction, not your natural (they seem to be quite different).
<snip>
>I think my point here is that there is usually a difference between
>Realizing you are a pawn, and Realizing you are (potentially) the
hero. In
>the larger sense, they may be the same.
I'd say Realizing you are the hero is a special case of Realizing you
are a pawn.
>We are all heroes of our own stories,
I think I know what you mean, but that sounds very dramatic. To add a
counterpoint, I'll give one of my favorite quotations of Death (from
SM):
"You see the lighted windows and what you want to think is that there
may be many interesting stories behind them, but what you _know_ is
that really there are just dull, dull souls, mere consumers of food,
who think their instincts are emotions and their tiny lives of more
account than a whisper of wind."
>but most of us don't have a magical being telling us so, and we
>don't see the little alterations that make us take the path we think
we're
>choosing. Or we stumble over things that ought to tell us we're
going in
>the wrong direction, and firmly ignore them. Rincewind actually has
an
>advantage over us at that point. He knows he's going to do it, he
just
>has to figure out how while still staying alive long enough.
But I think he doesn't want to figure out how but to figure out how
not. Everything he does is to escape his "destiny".
>The story is a Howdunnit (IIRC Terry described the Watch stories as
Howdunnits).
IMO, the Watch stories are Whodunnits, especially G!G! and M@A. But
there's a bit there Vimes thinks something like "usually, you know
whodunnit and want to find out howdunnit". Or was it "you've got to
find out howdunnit to find out whodunnit"?
<snip>
[1] In the "Dune" series, in particular the first books, this dilemma
is described in an excellent way.
Jamie Crowther
By the way, anyone who read the rest of the thread, this isn't very long
at all...
>Major SPOILERS for TLC and other Rincewind books
>
> 2
>
> 4
>
> 6
>
> 8
>
> >...and that's quite enough of that.
<snip lots of Tamar's excellent dissertation :)>
> However, because they [the wizards] did that [stole the bull-roarer], they self-created their own
> evolution by giving the idea to the God of Evolution.
I don't really have much to add to this, but I just want to ask about
one point: if the wizard's caused evolution 'cos of their meddling, how
come there were people already on the Disc beforehand? I'm asking this
cos the God of Evolution mentions his former worshippers, and you get
the impression that humans had been around a long time before them. Any
ideas?
Jamie
Richard Eney
Jamie Crowther <J.P.L.C...@durham.ac.uk> wrote:
>Richard Eney wrote:
>
>By the way, anyone who read the rest of the thread, this isn't very long
>at all...
Even though it's me replying it's still short. :-)
Major SPOILERS for TLC and other Rincewind books
2
4
6
8
...and that's quite enough of that.
[Tamar wrote:]
>> However, because they [the wizards] did that [stole the bull-roarer],
>> they self-created their own evolution by giving the idea to the God of
>> Evolution.
[Jamie]
>I don't really have much to add to this, but I just want to ask about
>one point: if the wizard's caused evolution 'cos of their meddling, how
>come there were people already on the Disc beforehand? I'm asking this
>cos the God of Evolution mentions his former worshippers, and you get
>the impression that humans had been around a long time before them. Any
>ideas?
I think some of them evolved from Rincewind's sandwich, others may have
been created by the other gods that were around. IIRC it's mentioned
somewhere in the canon (Sourcery? DW Companions, maybe?) that the original
humans were considerably more powerful magicians and were recreated after
the mage wars to be more controllable. <memo: look this up soon, I keep
saying it with no page numbers to back it up>
Anyway, the G of E caused the evolution of possibly another batch of
humans. All the surviving ones (as far as we know) can interbreed and are
essentially similar. Maybe the variant forms all got blasted by
bad-tempered gods and the rest survived because the gods moved up to
Dunmanifestin and stopped meddling quite so much.
=Tamar
MEG
=Tamar wrote in message <78guvc$51p$1...@saltmine.radix.net>...
>Hi, MEG.
Hi Tamar <wave>
>>re-installed spoiler space (just in case) still here.
MEG:
>>I think TLC is one of my (newer) faves. Mainly because of the
>>approach being 'from the conclusion - back'. I found it more -
>><wiggle fingers in the air> philosophical </wiggle fingers in the
>>air>
Tamar:
>A nice point, and one I hadn't thought about quite that way.
>We start off with RW in the present, then with the wizards we go
back into
>the past and see what started it, and eventually get up to the
present
>again. This might be described as the typical beginning 'in media
res'
>with flashbacks, but with the time-travel story element, it seems
to be a
>more meaningful choice than just a way to jump into the action.
Actually, I'm still not sure this is exactly how I saw it, though,
to be honest, I don't think I'll ever be quite sure :-}
My perception was that the boundaries between different points in
time were not merely blurred but simply non-existent. And that it
was written in a way to specifically exacerbate any attempts to
rationalise the timelines.
I don't know if I've come to this conclusion before or since talking
to Rocky as I've not previously analysed any of Terry's books in
this way. It was only from reading Miq's post at the start of this
discussion that actually set me to thinking (Thanks Miq). It is
quite a crucial point to Rocky's theology, however, that everything
that will happen, has happened and will have happened.
There's lots more to it than that but this is some part of it.
><g> What I meant was, he's been told that he's going to do
something that
>he's already done - but he still has to do it - he's just been
given that
>extra bit of information, that the reason he has to do it is that
he's
>already done it. Possibly he's been told that as a further
bludgeon to
>make him more willing to try?
This is where people's feelings / emotions / individual
interpretations start kicking in .. I don't believe he *has* *to* do
anything. He's already done it so, even if he does nothing, that's
what he will have had has been done <g>
MEG:
>>My natural reaction to those situations is to rebel and try to
>>change the outcome.
Tamar:
>Mine too (I've been in pawn positions too). Trouble is, you
usually don't
>realize it until it's too late to change the outcome. (I hate
politics,
>and I'm no good at it.)
AOL ! - kindred spirits. I don't particularly want to improve
either.
>My usual solution is to try to figure out what I really want to
have
>happen, and do it regardless of whether or not someone else is
'forcing'
>me to do it. Act instead of React.
If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs ...
Once in a while we get that chance, we see what's happening and we
can do something about it. Sometimes, it even works. That's what was
meant to happen, however. I'm supposed to get that chance, to see it
and to do something about it. It will have happened.
<snip something to feel good about>
>Not that I'd want to be in RW's position (I don't fancy eating
grubs and
>I can't run, I'm more the wizardly shape).
I dunno, if push came to shove, I think I could eat grubs as long as
they didn't wiggle any more. I could run if given sufficient
incentive and I'm more the Rincewind shape - chin and all (no beard
though !).
As an observation, I don't believe Rincewind is the archetypal
wizard shape is he ? I don't think he could have ever got close
enough to the table to eat any really satisfying dinners.
>I think my point here is that there is usually a difference between
>Realizing you are a pawn, and Realizing you are (potentially) the
hero.
I think it's the same realisation, just the interpretation given to
this realisation by the 'perceptor'. Do you let it happen to you
(follower) or do you make it happen (leader) ? It has a lot to do
with state of mind.
<snip> Rincewind actually has an
>advantage over us at that point. He knows he's going to do it, he
just
>has to figure out how while still staying alive long enough. The
story is
>a Howdunnit (IIRC Terry described the Watch stories as Howdunnits).
We have an advantage over him, he thinks he has to try to stay alive
at the end of having done it. We 'know' that he has to come out of
it all right 'cos Terry wouldn't do that to him. He's our favourite
[1], Terry can't kill him off. Repeat after me " come on Rincewind,
come on Rincewind, come on Rincewind..." <g>
If I keep telling myself this, perhaps it will be true.
MEG:
>>Rincewind (IMHO) tries to fight it but accepts
>>that there is nothing he can do to change 'destiny'. Is it the
>>stuggle to change destiny or the acceptance of 'que sera, sera'
>>the bigger strength ?
Tamar:
>This is actually a major point. I think it depends on the
situation. RW
>isn't destined to rescue a sheep from being stolen, that's just one
of the
>incidents along the way, set up by the nomadic Creator to give his
>continent heroes. RW does seem to be destined (perhaps by The
Lady,
>perhaps by Fate, working invisibly) to have to do that final
magical
>bringing together of past and present by the exercise of his own
artistic
>creativity, in a way similar to the method of the nomadic Creator.
Or is Rincewind the Creator in another time ? The sheep gets stolen
by Rincewind, Rincewind are the heroes, time for my frog pills has
passed.
<snip stuff about book by Peter Trayne>
Tamar:
>Sounds fascinating. It reminds me of the play, Six Characters in
Search
>of an Author, where they actively want someone to write a coherent
plot
>for them to be in; they want their lives to have some meaning
instead of
>being random.
Except: these guys want you to *stop* reading because the sadistic
author keeps getting them to eat their fingers or other nasty stuff.
MEG:
>>It just gave me the feeling of complete inadequacy and impotence.
>>But I think that was the intention :-)
Tamar:
>You're being awfully sympathetic to a character that is just a
creation of
>the author. Perhaps the author meant you to feel empowered <g>
because
>your reading the book made the characters exist. Even if they were
a
>little embarrassed by being observed by the omniscient, all-seeing
Reader.
Yes, maybe and oh <g>
The way it was written, you'd be sympathetic. He was doing really
horrid stuff to them, you know. I'm sure the author meant for me to
feel both ways, sympathetic *and* empowered. I've never been
described as omnics.. onmins.. thingy before :-)
I like this discussion, thanks to all who've contributed.
[1] after, or before, (depending what mood I'm in) Granny
Weatherwax, Death, Vimes, CMOT.... YMMV
- MEG - Bishop of Rocky theology.
--
Afpianced to Miq {squi..x} & Rob Smiley, afppals of Heaven
"..the first son-of-a-bitch that says "hobbit" is a dead
man.." - Peter Trayne.
*****Reply address intact*******
Meg, the Magpie
<Mi...@kew1.demon.co.uk> said :
Small comment here:
You're both missing something. XXXXian culture is based strongly on
Australian culture, and part of Australian culture is the search for a
hero. We're a comparatively young nation (less than 100 years), we
haven't had enough time for heroes to evolve on their own, so we keep
looking for ways to create them. A big part of the Australian mythos
is that *anyone* can be a hero if they want to - all you have to do is
to try.
What this means in terms of Rincewind's story is that, quite honestly,
if he'd refused to try and escape, or not bothered with a desperate
last stand, the guards themselves, or the crowd, or both, would have
conspired to *make* him have a last stand. He was being fitted for
the role, both by the Trickster, and also by the population. If
"Rinso" (which, if I recall correctly, used to be a brand of washing
powder over here <grin>) *hadn't* tried to escape, one of the shearers
from Dijabringabeeralong would have ambled into town in time to see
the hanging, and told the story of his shearing, or Clancy and Remorse
would have wandered into town to sell horses, and tell the story of
his ride. Or, (she says, digging through her mental mythic archive)
someone would have come along and said that they'd seen him ride a big
white bull through Wagga, or that he'd had his dog do something
unmentionable in the tuckerbox a certain distance from another town,
or even that he'd managed to herd hundreds of lizards across a narrow
strait of water to a small island. It's inevitable. It's not the
Lady doing it, nor is it the Trickster. It's a facet of the need to
create a hero. Hells Bells, let's be honest, if he'd refused to
escape, he'd have probably created cricket, and *then* where would we
be?
Meg the Magpie (XXXXian to the core <grin>)
--
Meg the Magpie
email: mag...@megabitch.tm
Miq
>Miq wrote:
>> >H
>> > e
>> > r
>> > e
>> >
>> >T
>> > h
>> > e
>> > r
>> > e
>> >
>> >B
>> > e
>> >
>> >S
>> > p
>> > o
>> > i
>> > l
>> > e
>> > r
>> > s
>> >.
>> > .
>> > .
>> >
>> >Actually, there is an antagonist in TLC, unless you insist on
>> >having one in human form. It is the usual antagonist for
>> >Rincewind, to whit Fate, the world, and circumstance.
>>
[Miq]
>> Do you mean Fate with a capital F, as in the Lady's opponent in
>> IT?
[Richard]
>I mean fate with a small f; but on the D-W, this probably means
>Fate with a big F. Just because we don't see him doesn't mean
>he isn't involved at all; though perhaps this new continent has
>a separate Fate... tempting thought, that.
Hmmm... why would it? What with the old man, who's kind of
looking after the place. (Incidentally, have you noticed that
XXXX seems to be singularly un-religious, in terms of priests and
temples and things? It seems to go in more for a sort of magic/
mysticism, presumably based on Aussie aborigine magic. Do you
suppose Small Gods work differently here?)
>Maybe you're right with Divine Powers; but there needn't be any
>such. What I meant was not really that there is an active force
>fighting RW; much more that he is trying to struggle, uphill,
>against Circumstance.
Against his own destiny - yes. I see what you mean.
>It's much more a case of RW against the World, than the other
>way around, I think.
Yes, but that's a matter of RW's perception - his persecution
complex (which someone was likening to Yossarian in 'Catch 22' the
other week:
"You don't know who you hate."
"Whoever's trying to poison me," Yossarian told him.
"Nobody's trying to poison you."
"They poisoned my food twice, didn't they? Didn't they put
poison in my food during Ferrara and during the Great Big Siege
of Bologna?"
"They put poison in _everybody's_ food," Clevinger explained.
"And what difference does _that_ make?"
- this sounds very like Rincewind reasoning to me.)
>Yes... but they're not directly _his_ enemy. Death was after
>RW in TCoM; but RW doesn't fight Death throughout the book.
>Same for the Patrician.
True.
>And Astgfl actually uses RW during Eric,
>and doesn't become his adversary until RW enters his own domain,
>and then lets him go.
I think you're getting Astfgl mixed up with Vassenego, who was the
one pulling Rincewind's strings.
>Lord Hong, too, actually helps bring RW
>to Agatea; he's much more Twoflower's enemy.
But both Astfgl and Hong are 'adversaries' - evil figures who have
to be Dealt With somehow before the end of the book. There's no-
one like this in _TLC_.
--
Miq introduces his new .sig game: Place That Quote.
"Yes, now I see. But I still don't think I understand."
(not Pterry)
Carl J Lawley
Meg, the Magpie wrote in message
<36abad31....@news.can.interact.net.au>...
<rending of all spoilerish stuff>
>You're both missing something. XXXXian culture is based strongly on
>xxxx. We're a comparatively young nation (less than 100 years),
Okay, you got me. What _does_ bicentennial mean?
And who are the Aborigines?
Carl J Lawley
--
"Ranting and raving and carrying on,
Maybe they're right when they tell me I'm wrong" - D Leary
ca...@lawley7.spam.freeserve.co.uk
remove that spam!
Richard Eney
B
e
<snip>
>>I mean fate with a small f; but on the D-W, this probably means
>>Fate with a big F. Just because we don't see him doesn't mean
>>he isn't involved at all; though perhaps this new continent has
>>a separate Fate... tempting thought, that.
[infodhoekstra]
>Hmmm... why would it? What with the old man, who's kind of
>looking after the place. (Incidentally, have you noticed that
>XXXX seems to be singularly un-religious, in terms of priests and
>temples and things? It seems to go in more for a sort of magic/
>mysticism, presumably based on Aussie aborigine magic. Do you
>suppose Small Gods work differently here?)
[Tamar] We haven't seen enough of XXXX to know much about their religions.
No doubt some of them were brought along with the settlers. However, IMO
small gods would work the same. Bunyips and so on are not mentioned but
if they show up in a later book, they will probably have begun as small
gods.
<snip>
[Miq] >>It's much more a case of RW against the World, than the other
>>way around, I think.
>
>Yes, but that's a matter of RW's perception - his persecution
>complex
<snipsydoodle>
>>Yes... but they're not directly _his_ enemy. Death was after
>>RW in TCoM; but RW doesn't fight Death throughout the book.
>>Same for the Patrician. And
Astgfl^W Vassenego
>actually uses RW during Eric,
>>and doesn't become his adversary until RW enters his own domain,
>>and then lets him go.
Astfgl is RW's adversary as soon as he realizes RW has taken off with the
boy Astfgl wanted to ensnare; Vassenego is using RW and Eric and lets them
go at the end. I'd say Astfgl qualifies as a Villain to be overcome even
though RW doesn't know about him, and we only applaud Vassenego because
he's fighting Astfgl and because he lets RW and E go. RW in _E_ is being
a Mentor to Eric; the villain of the piece may actually be Eric's lack of
understanding, which RW combats fairly well.
[Miq] >>Lord Hong, too, actually helps bring RW
>>to Agatea; he's much more Twoflower's enemy.
[infodhoekstra] >But both Astfgl and Hong are 'adversaries' - evil
>figures who have to be Dealt With somehow before the end of the book.
>There's no-one like this in _TLC_.
In _TLC_ could it be that Rincewind is his own adversary? With the
wizards of UU as sort of henchmen. RW's arrival (due to the spell
actually cast by the UU wizards, despite the fact that it was altered by
The Lady) is the cause of the trouble because his arrival led to the UU
wizards' interference, which really caused the trouble. He has to undo
his own inadvertently 'evil' action, which caused the drought of all
droughts.
He has to fix it by recovering the bullroarer (which I think I miscalled
the boomerang earlier in this thread), and the method of doing that is to
find the cave and bring the pointy-headed ones into the present; then he
has to find and use the bullroarer to make the magic work. As usual he
does it without really knowing what he's doing, and is spurred to it by
fear of Death.
=Tamar
Jamie Crowther
> --
> Miq introduces his new .sig game: Place That Quote.
>
> "Yes, now I see. But I still don't think I understand."
> (not Pterry)
It sounds like its from Catch 22 somewhere. Is it Yossarian, responding
to Milo Minderbinder's explanation of his financial tactics? More
specifically, concerning Milo's purchase of eggs for seven cents, and
sale of them for 5, and his success in apparently making a profit
nonetheless. Am I right?
Jamie
David Brain
hea...@fanged.demon.co.uk (Heather Knowles) wrote:
> >(Personally I think all three books are well worth reading though,
> even if you >don't spot >the underlying devices, and they're not really
> "literary" novels.)
> >
> Hmmm... Not sure Mr Lodge would agree with you about their not being
> 'literary'.
That may be true (yes, I enjoyed those articles too) but compared to, say, Salman
Rushdie, they are a marvel of directness (not that I'm disparaging Rushdie - I really enjoy
his stuff but I can't read it on the train.)
But somebody who reads and enjoys Pterry's books wouldn't have trouble with
something like /Changing Places/ at all, whereas I wouldn't necessarily suggest that they
tried some Magical Realism...
in...@fdhoekstra.nl
> >Hmmm... why would it? What with the old man, who's kind of
> >looking after the place. (Incidentally, have you noticed that
> >XXXX seems to be singularly un-religious, in terms of priests and
> >temples and things? It seems to go in more for a sort of magic/
> >mysticism, presumably based on Aussie aborigine magic. Do you
> >suppose Small Gods work differently here?)
>
> [Tamar]
> We haven't seen enough of XXXX to know much about their
> religions. No doubt some of them were brought along with the settlers.
> However, IMO small gods would work the same. Bunyips and so on are
> not mentioned but if they show up in a later book, they will probably
> have begun as small gods.
[Richard]
Yes... though Fate isn't, strictly, a god, he's an anthropo-
morphic personification. Hang on, we've had this discussion
before, haven't we? Anyway, since there is a fate on XXXX,
there must, by DW rules, be a Fate. Perhaps the same as for
the rest of DW, perhaps not. We don't need to see him roll
the dice to know that he's there, somewhere.
> <snip>
> >>[Richard]
> >>Yes... but they're not directly _his_ enemy. Death was after
> >>RW in TCoM; but RW doesn't fight Death throughout the book.
> >>Same for the Patrician. And Astgfl^W Vassenego actually uses
> >> RW during Eric, and doesn't become his adversary until RW
> >> enters his own domain, and then lets him go.
>
> [Tamar]
> Astfgl is RW's adversary as soon as he realizes RW has taken off
> with the boy Astfgl wanted to ensnare; Vassenego is using RW and
> Eric and lets them go at the end. I'd say Astfgl qualifies as a
> Villain to be overcome even though RW doesn't know about him, and
> we only applaud Vassenego because he's fighting Astfgl and because
> he lets RW and E go. RW in _E_ is being a Mentor to Eric; the
> villain of the piece may actually be Eric's lack of understanding,
> which RW combats fairly well.
[Richard]
And RW himself, as you later suggest for TLC; or more properly,
the conscious part of RW is fighting against his own, well,
call it fate; or "tendency to get into trouble"; or, maybe,
against his own lack of capability as a wizzard, and his own
imperfections.
Rincewind as a symbol for humanity's struggle against its
own imperfections - that should serve as a nice theme for
a literary Ph.D.
> [Richard]
> >>Lord Hong, too, actually helps bring RW
> >>to Agatea; he's much more Twoflower's enemy.
>
> [Miq]
> >But both Astfgl and Hong are 'adversaries' - evil
> >figures who have to be Dealt With somehow before the end of the book.
> >There's no-one like this in _TLC_.
[Richard]
True; however, neither Astfgl nor Hong _is_ actually dealt with
by RW. Astfgl is promoted away by Vassenego, and Hong is killed
by the wizards through the Barking Dog. In neither case was RW
the main actor. True, he was in both cases involved; but not
consciously, or intentionally, nor even as the most important
player. In IT, he was the cause, but not the actor, in the move
that defeated Hong; in E, he was a mere pawn.
And from RW's point of view, neither Astfgl nor Hong _have_ to
be dealt with. He doesn't even know of Astfgl, any more than
he knew of Fate in TCOM; RW's adversaries are the troubles he
gets into thanks to Astfgl, but Astfgl is a direct enemy only
of Vassenego. He'd like Hong to be defeated, sure, but only
because that's better for his friends. He himself would've been
satisfied with a clear escape, I suspect.
> [Tamar]
> In _TLC_ could it be that Rincewind is his own adversary? With
> the wizards of UU as sort of henchmen. RW's arrival (due to the
> spell actually cast by the UU wizards, despite the fact that it
> was altered by The Lady) is the cause of the trouble because his
> arrival led to the UU wizards' interference, which really caused
> the trouble. He has to undo his own inadvertently 'evil' action,
> which caused the drought of all droughts.
> As usual he does it without really knowing what he's doing, and is
> spurred to it by fear of Death.
[Richard]
Again, an appealing theory, and a very strong symbol of RW as
personification of Humanity struggling against its own short-
comings.
However, on a higher level there is also a possibility, though
this is not inside the books. Since RW's main direct adversary
is, I still maintain, his environment, which has a distressing
tendency to run against him, and since this environment is
created by the writer of the books, could PTerry not be RW's
adversary? All other main characters tend to have more direct
opponents; only RW is in threat of just about everything.
Mr. Pratchett cast as DM, or, for those who love adventures, as
an Implementor, setting traps for RW, only so that he can
overcome them in the end, and have a nice run for it; as,
perhaps, a higher level of Fate, ruling over Fate himself.
Or am I being too fanciful here?
Richard
Richard Eney
Joerg Ruedenauer <j.rued...@usa.net> wrote:
>Tamar <dic...@radix.net> wrote:
>>MEG <M...@djilibeybiAnkh.free-online.co.uk> wrote:
>>>Tamar ("Richard Eney") wrote
>>>>Miq <Mi...@kew1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>>>>***************************************
Here be minor SPOILERS for <snip>
and now major spoilers for TLC
<more snips >
[Tamar]
>><g> What I meant was, he's been told that he's going to do something
>>that he's already done - but he still has to do it - he's just been
>>given that extra bit of information, that the reason he has to do it
>>is that he's already done it. Possibly he's been told that as a
>>further bludgeon to make him more willing to try?
[Joerg] >Or, if they know his mind, to make him more willing not to
>try, and thus to do it.
[Tamar] Subtle! And quite possibly correct, though I don't remember the
nomadic Creator saying anything to indicate he's actually read RW's mind.
The kangaroo/bird says something about (paraphrase) 'I've looked at him,
he's hopeless' but nothing about 'He doesn't think right', IIRC. But
observing RW's character, they wouldn't have to read his mind to figure
out how he works.
[Tamar] >>RW isn't destined to rescue a sheep from being stolen, that's
>>just one of the incidents along the way, set up by the nomadic Creator
>>to give his continent heroes. RW does seem to be destined (perhaps by
>>The Lady, perhaps by Fate, working invisibly) to have to do that final
>>magical bringing together of past and present by the exercise of his
>>own artistic creativity, in a way similar to the method of the nomadic
>>Creator.
[Joerg]
>It is interesting to combine that with the theory of parallel -
>universes. It seems that Rincewind must save the continent; so there's
>no parallel - universe in which he doesn't. But that's nearly the
>contrary of the theory, so either destiny or parallel - universes.
>Perhaps there's some mechanism that sorts everything out like this:
>Because the nomadic Creator went back in time, he caused all
>parallel - universes except the one he came from to collaps.
[Tamar]
I think the nomadic Creator exists outside time - it isn't
that he goes back through time but that he drops in where he chooses
to. But that could cause the same sort of collapsing together.
>More probable is IMO that Scrappy lies to Rincewind about this destiny.
>But the important point is that Rincewind thinks he knows his destiny.
[Tamar]
Oh wow. That hadn't even occurred to me! Even though I said Scrappy was a
trickster. It's true, I don't think the nomadic Creator says anything
about RW having to fix it - even when Scrappy said why use RW, you could
do it yourself, the nomadic Creator's real reason for using RW is that the
continent needs heroes. (Though presumably he doesn't object to Scrappy's
having told RW that it was his destiny.) That would add a poignant twist,
even though RW still tries to avoid it until the very last, when he's
confronted with the trapped wizards and the disappearance of the water.
He's not so much rescuing the wizards as he's trying to rescue the
continent (sheep and all, because of the covenant between men and
domesticated animals).
It's a big question: is RW's true destiny to be all the heroes (that's the
reason the nomadic Creator is affecting him at all - and incidentally the
reason RW is still being kept alive) or is it RW's true destiny to solve
the Time paradox and bring the water back to XXXX, which may be a lie
Scrappy told him? OR - could it be that the nomadic Creator does't
realize he's also a pawn in a larger story controlled by The Lady, and
Scrappy's lie is the Accidental Truth (happens a lot in Stories)?
Paradoxes within paradoxes!
[Joerg]
>But then again, perhaps he doesn't fight it because he knows it
>but because he thinks it is a bad destiny (though that may be caused
>by the knowledge :-) ).
[Tamar] RW doesn't like being made to do things. And in other books,
Granny Weatherwax is vehemently against people losing the choice of how to
live their lives (allowing for a little meddling by her, on the side) -
she generally allows people to make their own choice even to refusing to
give specific advice, unless asked very directly for help or unless the
larger situation affects her personally.
I take the example of GW as a possible indication that TerryOBE is using
that as a philosophical base, that people should have more free will and
less predestination. So any destiny imposed from outside is by definition
a bad one. However, if it's something _you_ did, then it's not imposed by
someone else! That's where TerryOBE has an excuse for RW's having a
destiny - it's a destiny based on something that was caused by RW's
presence. (It doesn't seem to matter that RW didn't personally cause
himself to be in XXXX except by choosing to go to IT instead of being
executed for impersonating a wizard; that choice was enough to make him
responsible for the results even though The Lady sent him to XXXX to keep
him alive because she never sacrifices a pawn.)
[MEG] >>>From the outside, I knew who the hero was supposed to be.
>>>Suddenly, so did the hero, but was somewhat reluctant - and wouldn't
>>>you be ? Who appreciates knowing that they are being used as a
>>>pawn ? Who, usually, appreciates that this is the case even ?
>>>My natural reaction to those situations is to rebel and try to
>>>change the outcome.
[Tamar]>>Mine too (I've been in pawn positions too). Trouble is, you
>>usually don't realize it until it's too late to change the outcome.
<snip>
>>I think my point here is that there is usually a difference
>>between Realizing you are a pawn, and Realizing you are
>>(potentially) the hero. In the larger sense, they may be the same.
[Joerg]
>I'd say Realizing you are the hero is a special case of Realizing you
>are a pawn.
[Tamar] Yes, this is also true for GW in Maskerade; at one point GW says
(paraphrase) "What I want don't matter". She is realizing there's
something she'll have to do, perhaps (though it isn't specified) she
understands the way Story works and she is seeing the workings of it
around her, sending her in a particular direction. But the difference
between GW and RW here is that GW, recognizing the workings, decides to go
along with it and do what she must, while still retaining the option of
making changes in the direction the story can go (in a scene in the opera
house, she says (paraphrase) 'it's going to be hard to make this one go
right, Gytha').
>>We are all heroes of our own stories,
>I think I know what you mean, but that sounds very dramatic. To add a
>counterpoint, I'll give one of my favorite quotations of Death (from
>SM):
>"You see the lighted windows and what you want to think is that there
>may be many interesting stories behind them, but what you _know_ is
>that really there are just dull, dull souls, mere consumers of food,
>who think their instincts are emotions and their tiny lives of more
>account than a whisper of wind."
[Tamar] That is the viewpoint from eternity, not from within the story,
which is in Time. ICBW but IIRC Death says that when Susan goes back and
talks to him before he has the experiences in RM that teach him about
humanity from the inside. He is also lecturing her about the Duty and
trying to make her less sympathetic. Yet in the same book he has the
experience of being Beau Nidle, and goes to the trouble of defending the
fort when if he felt the soldiers he helped to survive were of no more
account than a whisper of wind, he might not have bothered to interfere.
Within each human story, the person living that story and making the
choices is the hero by definition. (Perhaps you would prefer the term
"protagonist".)
[Tamar} >>but most of us don't have a magical being telling us so,
>> and we don't see the little alterations that make us take the
>>path we think we're choosing. Or we stumble over things that
>>ought to tell us we're going in the wrong direction, and firmly
>>ignore them. Rincewind actually has an advantage over us at that
>>point. He knows he's going to do it, he just has to figure out
>>_how_ while still staying alive long enough.
>But I think he doesn't want to figure out how but to figure out how
>not. Everything he does is to escape his "destiny".
He tries to escape until the climax when he is faced directly with
the situation of the loss of water (fires and mobs breaking into the
brewery for something to drink) and has just seen the ghost-wizard
shapes in the cellar. Then he decides something has to be done, as
he did finally in Sourcery.
And as in Sourcery, he first goes to find some 'real' wizards,
assuming they can do something about it and that he can't. And as
in Sourcery, the local chief wizard on the premises is found in or
near the Tower, and decides that something in RW is a necessary
element to the solution. While drinking with the local Archchancellor
who happens to have the same name, he explains about rain and the
Archchancellor decides that the combination of RW and beer might be
useful, and RW is kept just drunk enough to overcome his normal
fearful defensive reactions (such as the one about not eating meat
pie floaters) and let him release his creativity to make the magic
work.
So RW does stop trying to avoid his destiny when he sees the direct
effect of the Dry on the living creatures, humans and animals - but
especially when it got to where he would be personally affected soon.
It comes back to his being spurred by his fear of death.
=Tamar
Grymma
Jamie Crowther wrote in message <36ADAC...@durham.ac.uk>...
Nonono - it's me after having a local council official explain the
intricacies of my yo-yo-ing council tax bill to me.... :-))
Grymma
--
AFPiancée of XM & Chris H. ; AFPhaghag to Stewart ; TGONTS ; B.F. ;
AFPOh Goddess Of Hangovers; Giver of(frnchsd)Scottish *hugs*n*kisses*
ICQ 21729940 ; My page: http://www.howm.freeserve.co.uk
Miq
>Tamar wrote:
>> Miq <Mi...@kew1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> >On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, in...@fdhoekstra.nl wrote
Okay, I think the spoilers now apply to TLC, IT and Eric.
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>[Richard]
>... though Fate isn't, strictly, a god, he's an anthropo-
>morphic personification. Hang on, we've had this discussion
>before, haven't we? Anyway, since there is a fate on XXXX,
>there must, by DW rules, be a Fate. Perhaps the same as for
>the rest of DW, perhaps not. We don't need to see him roll
>the dice to know that he's there, somewhere.
[Miq]
But can we be sure that normal DW rules apply on XXXX? The whole
creation seems *different* in some ways. And what is the
Trickster - is it a god, an anthropomorphic personification or
what?
I get the feeling that XXXX doesn't work quite by normal Discworld
rules.
>> [Tamar]
>> Astfgl is RW's adversary as soon as he realizes RW has taken off
>> with the boy Astfgl wanted to ensnare; Vassenego is using RW and
>> Eric and lets them go at the end. I'd say Astfgl qualifies as a
>> Villain to be overcome even though RW doesn't know about him, and
>> we only applaud Vassenego because he's fighting Astfgl and because
>> he lets RW and E go. RW in _E_ is being a Mentor to Eric; the
>> villain of the piece may actually be Eric's lack of understanding,
>> which RW combats fairly well.
[Miq]
Rincewind as Mephistopheles to Eric's Faust... that's a comparison
that's crying out to be done...
>> [Richard]
>> >>Lord Hong, too, actually helps bring RW
>> >>to Agatea; he's much more Twoflower's enemy.
>>
>> [Miq]
>> >But both Astfgl and Hong are 'adversaries' - evil
>> >figures who have to be Dealt With somehow before the end of the book.
>> >There's no-one like this in _TLC_.
>
>[Richard]
>True; however, neither Astfgl nor Hong _is_ actually dealt with
>by RW. Astfgl is promoted away by Vassenego, and Hong is killed
>by the wizards through the Barking Dog.
[Miq]
Astfgl is dealt with by Vassenego using Rincewind as a decoy -
fine. In Hong's case you can't really credit the wizards with
killing him, since it was an entirely involuntary action on their
part. He was killed by 'chance', as much as anyone ever is on the
Disc...
If you must credit his death to an individual, the only real
candidate is the Lady. I'd rather say that he's killed by the
force of the story itself. It is *necessary* that he should die,
*because* he is the villain.
>> [Tamar]
>> In _TLC_ could it be that Rincewind is his own adversary? With
>> the wizards of UU as sort of henchmen. RW's arrival (due to the
>> spell actually cast by the UU wizards, despite the fact that it
>> was altered by The Lady) is the cause of the trouble because his
>> arrival led to the UU wizards' interference, which really caused
>> the trouble. He has to undo his own inadvertently 'evil' action,
>> which caused the drought of all droughts.
>> As usual he does it without really knowing what he's doing, and is
>> spurred to it by fear of Death.
[Miq]
Whoa - I don't think you can say that Rincewind has done anything
'evil', inadvertently or otherwise. He had no say whatever in
what happened to him at the end of IT, so he can't reasonably be
either blamed or credited for it.
If anyone has acted 'evilly', it's the Lady. Which raises an
interesting question about her:
She's known on Cori Celesti as the player who never sacrifices a
pawn. This suggests something more than simple economy. After
all, if it was obviously good tactics *never* to sacrifice a pawn,
one or two of the other gods would have worked this out and
adopted the same principle. So I suspect that there are times
when she sticks to this principle even at the cost of losing a
game.
Possibly she feels a real sense of obligation to Rincewind, or
possibly she's just a sentimental so-and-so...
Or maybe she just looks further ahead than the other players. So
perhaps she knew *exactly* what she was doing when she dumped
Rincewind in XXXX. As Meg has so illuminatingly pointed out
(thanks, Meg), the continent *needed* a hero. To have a hero,
there must be a problem to overcome. Rincewind's arrival provided
both the problem and the solution in one neat package.
So the whole story is manufactured *purely* to fill XXXX's need
for a Hero. The central theme of the book is then The Making Of A
Hero (In Spite Of Himself). As I started off by saying, the story
is *going* to happen, and nothing Rincewind can do will stop it;
Meg has explained *why* this is the case - not, as I first
thought, just to make a statement about the nature of books, but
to provide a hero.
>[Richard]
>Again, an appealing theory, and a very strong symbol of RW as
>personification of Humanity struggling against its own short-
>comings.
>However, on a higher level there is also a possibility, though
>this is not inside the books. Since RW's main direct adversary
>is, I still maintain, his environment, which has a distressing
>tendency to run against him, and since this environment is
>created by the writer of the books, could PTerry not be RW's
>adversary?
[Miq]
That's a formidable opponent... wow. What a thought.
*I* still maintain that RW's main direct opponent is the Book
itself. He wants nothing more than a quiet life - but as long as
he keeps appearing in books, that's precisely what he's not going
to get. What he's trying to do is run away from the story, thus
running out of the book.
So... yes, I guess you could say the author is his enemy. But
then you'd have to recognise that Terry writes about Rincewind, in
part at least, because his fans keep asking him to. So maybe
*we're* the real villains here... maybe Terry is Rincewind's ally,
shielding him from us by writing books about all these other
characters in between, giving him sometimes years at a time of
blissful boredom.
Perhaps his heroic dash into the Dungeon Dimensions at the end of
Sourcery was in fact an attempt to escape from the stories... that
would explain why it *seemed* so uncharacteristically brave.
That's mindblowing... I think I'll stop there.
--
Miq
"Did I deserve no more than a fool's head?"
Miq
>Miq wrote:
>> --
>> Miq introduces his new .sig game: Place That Quote.
>>
>> "Yes, now I see. But I still don't think I understand."
>> (not Pterry)
>
>It sounds like its from Catch 22 somewhere.
Correct - and that's as precise as I wanted, really.
But please delete abp from the newsgroups line, if you're not talking
about Pterry books in the same post... sorry if I've led you into
that...
Followups set.
--
Miq
Shim
[snip]
>It sounds like its from Catch 22 somewhere. Is it Yossarian, responding
>to Milo Minderbinder's explanation of his financial tactics? More
>specifically, concerning Milo's purchase of eggs for seven cents, and
>sale of them for 5, and his success in apparently making a profit
>nonetheless. Am I right?
>
>Jamie
Anyone actually figured this bit of C-22 out yet? I sat down with it, a bag
of pennies, and a pen for half an hour - and it seemed as though there was
sense in it *somewhere*...
--
-Shim, "realised a massive profit for signing his name twice". Now, place
that one, Jamie. (C-22 again)
RTC Political Officer, SPoKOS, UDIC, SEC and RFC member, CUT supporter.
Cath Lawrence
> Meg, the Magpie wrote in message
> >You're both missing something. XXXXian culture is based strongly on
> >Australian culture, and part of Australian culture is xxx xxxxxx xxx x
> >xxxx. We're a comparatively young nation (less than 100 years),
> Okay, you got me. What _does_ bicentennial mean?
Errr, since I _think_ this is a genuine question...
The bicentenary (200th year) of the First Fleet (convict settlement) was
1988. But the centenary of Federation, when we actually became a nation
rather than a whole lot of states as colonies, will be in 2001. So as a
white settlement we're older than we are as a nation.
> And who are the Aborigines?
Scientists disagree somewhat on how long Aborigines have been here and
where they came from. One estimate is 40,000 years ago. Via Asia.
cheers
Cath
Heather Knowles
<da...@atlan.cix.co.uk> writes
<snip agreement>
>
>But somebody who reads and enjoys Pterry's books wouldn't have trouble with
>something like /Changing Places/ at all, whereas I wouldn't necessarily suggest
>that they
>tried some Magical Realism...
>
What's that phrase? Foot... mouth....
--
lotsa luv, Heather xxxxxxx
I am in no need of your God damned sympathy. I ask only to be
entertained by some of your grosser reminiscences - Alexander Woollcott
francesco...@tafensw.edu.au
> <rending of all spoilerish stuff>
> >You're both missing something. XXXXian culture is based strongly on
> >Australian culture, and part of Australian culture is xxx xxxxxx xxx x
> >xxxx. We're a comparatively young nation (less than 100 years),
>
> Okay, you got me. What _does_ bicentennial mean?
>
White australians have not absorbed aboriginal myths into our mythology. So
Meg's original point still stands- but could be rephrased as - white
australian culture is still young, and is still looking for heros. From that
perspective TLC gets even better- A white forign hero(who has to perform an
aboriginal heroic act) is created for australians by an Aboriginal Creator.In
other words aboriginal myths do get adsorbed into the culture of XXXX. Terry
knows far far too much about australia.
Francesco
Francesco
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
francesco...@tafensw.edu.au
> [Tamar wrote:]
> >> However, because they [the wizards] did that [stole the bull-roarer],
> >> they self-created their own evolution by giving the idea to the God of
> >> Evolution.
>
> [Jamie]
> >I don't really have much to add to this, but I just want to ask about
> >one point: if the wizard's caused evolution 'cos of their meddling, how
> >come there were people already on the Disc beforehand? I'm asking this
> >cos the God of Evolution mentions his former worshippers, and you get
> >the impression that humans had been around a long time before them. Any
> >ideas?
>
There is no evedence that the God Of Evolution created humans on the DW. He
was last seen creating the cockroach.
in...@fdhoekstra.nl
>
> On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Richard (in...@fdhoekstra.nl) wrote
> >Tamar wrote:
> >> Miq <Mi...@kew1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
> >> >On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, in...@fdhoekstra.nl wrote
>
> Okay, I think the spoilers now apply to TLC, IT and Eric.
> >> Astfgl is RW's adversary as soon as he realizes RW has taken off
> >> with the boy Astfgl wanted to ensnare; Vassenego is using RW and
> >> Eric and lets them go at the end. I'd say Astfgl qualifies as a
> >> Villain to be overcome even though RW doesn't know about him, and
> >> we only applaud Vassenego because he's fighting Astfgl and because
> >> he lets RW and E go. RW in _E_ is being a Mentor to Eric; the
> >> villain of the piece may actually be Eric's lack of understanding,
> >> which RW combats fairly well.
>
> [Miq]
> Rincewind as Mephistopheles to Eric's Faust... that's a comparison
> that's crying out to be done...
[Richard]
Not quite... Mephisto was trying to get Faust's soul, wasn't he?
RW is trying to get out, and is helping Eric, apparently, because
he has to. But it _is_ a nice comparison.
> >> [Richard]
> >> >>Lord Hong, too, actually helps bring RW
> >> >>to Agatea; he's much more Twoflower's enemy.
> >>
> >> [Miq]
> >> >But both Astfgl and Hong are 'adversaries' - evil
> >> >figures who have to be Dealt With somehow before the end
> >> >of the book. There's no-one like this in _TLC_.
> >
> >[Richard]
> >True; however, neither Astfgl nor Hong _is_ actually dealt with
> >by RW. Astfgl is promoted away by Vassenego, and Hong is killed
> >by the wizards through the Barking Dog.
>
> [Miq]
> Astfgl is dealt with by Vassenego using Rincewind as a decoy -
> fine. In Hong's case you can't really credit the wizards with
> killing him, since it was an entirely involuntary action on their
> part. He was killed by 'chance', as much as anyone ever is on the
> Disc...
>
> If you must credit his death to an individual, the only real
> candidate is the Lady. I'd rather say that he's killed by the
> force of the story itself. It is *necessary* that he should die,
> *because* he is the villain.
[Richard]
Hrm... the villain of the book, he certainly is. In that sense,
Astfgl is also the villain of Eric. So is there a confusion of
terms here, between the main villain of the book, and RW's main
adversary? Even when RW is the protagonist, _his_ antagonist does
not have to be the story's main bad guy.
Point in case: Mort. In M, M is the protagonist; his antagonist,
when he has one, is Death. But Death is not the villain of the
book; in fact, it hasn't one. Opposite case, really, from what
I'm arguing for RW.
> >> [Tamar]
> >> In _TLC_ could it be that Rincewind is his own adversary? With
> >> the wizards of UU as sort of henchmen. RW's arrival (due to the
> >> spell actually cast by the UU wizards, despite the fact that it
> >> was altered by The Lady) is the cause of the trouble because his
> >> arrival led to the UU wizards' interference, which really caused
> >> the trouble. He has to undo his own inadvertently 'evil' action,
> >> which caused the drought of all droughts.
> >> As usual he does it without really knowing what he's doing, and is
> >> spurred to it by fear of Death.
>
> [Miq]
> Whoa - I don't think you can say that Rincewind has done anything
> 'evil', inadvertently or otherwise. He had no say whatever in
> what happened to him at the end of IT, so he can't reasonably be
> either blamed or credited for it.
[Richard]
Not evil in the sense of with bad intent, no. But it certainly
has bad consequences. He may be held to his actions even if
he didn't wilfully do them.
> >[Richard]
> >Again, an appealing theory, and a very strong symbol of RW as
> >personification of Humanity struggling against its own short-
> >comings.
> >However, on a higher level there is also a possibility, though
> >this is not inside the books. Since RW's main direct adversary
> >is, I still maintain, his environment, which has a distressing
> >tendency to run against him, and since this environment is
> >created by the writer of the books, could PTerry not be RW's
> >adversary?
>
> [Miq]
> That's a formidable opponent... wow. What a thought.
>
> *I* still maintain that RW's main direct opponent is the Book
> itself. He wants nothing more than a quiet life - but as long as
> he keeps appearing in books, that's precisely what he's not going
> to get. What he's trying to do is run away from the story, thus
> running out of the book.
[Richard]
Yes... but now we have moved the opponent from inside the
book to outside it. Does this, in a higher sense, concede
and/or beg the question?
> So... yes, I guess you could say the author is his enemy. But
> then you'd have to recognise that Terry writes about Rincewind, in
> part at least, because his fans keep asking him to. So maybe
> *we're* the real villains here... maybe Terry is Rincewind's ally,
> shielding him from us by writing books about all these other
> characters in between, giving him sometimes years at a time of
> blissful boredom.
[Richard]
Hmmm... I wouldn't call an Implementor, nor any of his users/
readers, the protagonist's enemy. Adversary, perhaps. Someone
who opposes him, but not maliciously.
Even so, the readers don't really come into it, I think. Before
TCoM, we didn't even exist as readers, there was just Terry as
writer. Even now, he could just stop writing about RW. Oh, we
would squeal, but why should that stop him?
Then again, maybe I'm just trying to protect my own conscience...
> Perhaps his heroic dash into the Dungeon Dimensions at the end of
> Sourcery was in fact an attempt to escape from the stories... that
> would explain why it *seemed* so uncharacteristically brave.
[Richard]
No... I agree with (Tamar? I think) that he doesn't know that
he's in a story. Maybe it was PTerry's attempt to get some small
respite from RW, à la Reichenbach Falls ;-) ; but probably he
suspected that, with the Sourceror still loose, and the Dungeon
Dimensions in a (presumably) highly unstable state, this was,
strangely enough, his most likely bid for (long-term) saftey.
Richard
David Brain
(Heather Knowles) wrote:
> I see. So Terry Pratchett readers aren't up to reading Real Books?
>
> What's that phrase? Foot... mouth....
Well, in my defence I will observe that I added the caveat "necessarily" to that sentence.
It depends who it is and what sort of things they have read. If the only other book they
have read in the past year is "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" (and let's face it, that's a pretty
high probablility just ATM ;-) or, a couple of years ago, "Bridget Jones Diary" then I rest
my case.[1]
--
David Brain
The Millennium Bug: An inability to spell the word "millennium" correctly
[1] Yes, I liked them both a lot too, so don't send me lots of rude e-mails :-)
Heather Knowles
<da...@atlan.cix.co.uk> writes
>In article <GwvNrYAj...@fanged.demon.co.uk>, hea...@fanged.demon.co.uk
>(Heather Knowles) wrote:
>
>> I see. So Terry Pratchett readers aren't up to reading Real Books?
>>
>> What's that phrase? Foot... mouth....
>
>Well, in my defence I will observe that I added the caveat "necessarily" to that
>sentence.
>
>It depends who it is and what sort of things they have read. If the only other
>book they
>have read in the past year is "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" (and let's face it,
>that's a pretty
>high probablility just ATM ;-) or, a couple of years ago, "Bridget Jones Diary"
>then I rest
>my case.[1]
>
I don't recommend placing your footnotes below your sig. separator -
most newsreaders (mine included) filter out anything below that.
Anyway - I do wonder at your motivation for making a comment (in your
previous post) like: 'But somebody who reads and enjoys Pterry's books
wouldn't have trouble with something like /Changing Places/ at all,
whereas I wouldn't necessarily suggest that they tried some Magical
Realism...'
Why not? What does this say about Terry Pratchett readers? We get enough
flak from supercilious reviewers without being sniped at by ng posters -
who, I would assume, are all roughly on the same side when it comes to
appreciating DW and the rest of the list.
I think that, like some of those reviewers, you're confusing 'popular'
with 'having no literary merit'. Simply because a book is popular, it
does not then follow that it is not literary - see the thread on TLC for
a good, meaty literary discussion. And vice versa, of course - a
literary book can be popular. People used to queue up for the next
instalment of Dickens' stories, much as vast numbers watch soap operas
today - and I doubt that you would like to advance the argument that
Dickens didn't write literature :)
As for Magic Realism, I would argue quite strongly that there are many
examples of Magic Realism in Terry Pratchett. Take Mort, for instance.
Here we have an ordinary lad, looking for an apprenticeship - and the
next thing he knows, he's on the back of a horse, galloping through the
night sky, sitting behind a skeleton with a black cloak and a fondness
for curry. Magic Realism is simply the term for the fantastic and
magical invading ordinary everyday life - and Mort's life is certainly
ordinary and everyday, even if he is living it on a mythical planet. DW
is no less 'real' than Dickens' London or Hemingway's Spain - none of
them are strictly documentary recreations of a real place. They are all
skewed and edited simply by virtue of being used as the setting for a
work of fiction.
Jamie Crowther
> -Shim, "realised a massive profit for signing his name twice". Now, place
> that one, Jamie. (C-22 again)
Ooooh, difficult. I read Catch-22 for the third time in late November,
but my copy is currently hundreds of miles away. But I'll give it a go
anyway.
It could be Major Major when in his office, bugged by interminable
paperwork, and finding a novel way of getting rid of it (I can't
remember the exact details)? Or is it anything to do with Captain
Black's loyalty oath crusade? Or, perhaps, Yossarian's censoring (vain
guess, I know)?
I dunno. Enlighten me...
And here's one for your perusal, Shim: 'You make him sick'
Jamie
Afpiance to mad little spoon maniacW^W^Charis,
Afpbro to Trina, Mad Purple Treasure, and member of Carol's untidy Heap!
Joerg Ruedenauer
>Here be minor SPOILERS for <snip>
>and now major spoilers for TLC
>and even a tiny one or two for RM and M!M
[Joerg] Sorry, I didn't express myself very good here. I didn't mean
they have to read his mind, I meant they have to know his character. I
don't remember know what Scrappy says about Rincewind, but if he says
something like 'I've looked at him', I think it's very probable that
he's seen that Rincewind doesn't want to be a hero.
<snip parallel - universes >
[Joerg]
>>More probable is IMO that Scrappy lies to Rincewind about this
destiny.
>>But the important point is that Rincewind thinks he knows his
destiny.
>
>[Tamar]
>Oh wow. That hadn't even occurred to me! Even though I said Scrappy
was a
>trickster. It's true, I don't think the nomadic Creator says
anything
>about RW having to fix it - even when Scrappy said why use RW, you
could
>do it yourself, the nomadic Creator's real reason for using RW is
that the
>continent needs heroes. (Though presumably he doesn't object to
Scrappy's
>having told RW that it was his destiny.) That would add a poignant
twist,
>even though RW still tries to avoid it until the very last, when he's
>confronted with the trapped wizards and the disappearance of the
water.
>He's not so much rescuing the wizards as he's trying to rescue the
>continent (sheep and all, because of the covenant between men and
>domesticated animals).
I see I've got to read that book again. Does he really plan to rescue
the wizards because he thinks they can save the continent, or does he
rescue them just to do something?
[Tamar]
>It's a big question: is RW's true destiny to be all the heroes
(that's the
>reason the nomadic Creator is affecting him at all - and incidentally
the
>reason RW is still being kept alive) or is it RW's true destiny to
solve
>the Time paradox and bring the water back to XXXX, which may be a lie
>Scrappy told him?
[Joerg]
I think his destiny (if that exists) is to bring the water back
(incidently, I don't see a time paradox in the story). But to do that,
he has to become a hero, like the Creator said (this 'got to have
heroes'). And simply waving a bullroarer isn't especially heroic, so
RW's made the hero of the other events.
[Tamar]
> OR - could it be that the nomadic Creator does't
>realize he's also a pawn in a larger story controlled by The Lady,
and
>Scrappy's lie is the Accidental Truth (happens a lot in Stories)?
>Paradoxes within paradoxes!
[Joerg]
Well, that's a bit brain - twisting. I think it is a bit far -
fetched. We have no hint that there is a larger story behind all this.
And why should the Lady control it? AFAIK, the Lady is a goddess, and
like the other gods only acts when playing a game. There's no reason
for her to cause this whole story. I think she just wanted Rincewind
to be somewhere safe. The easiest way was to make of the exchange a
triangle, and then only XXXX is available as an equidistant point.
>[Joerg]
>>But then again, perhaps he doesn't fight it because he knows it
>>but because he thinks it is a bad destiny (though that may be caused
>>by the knowledge :-) ).
>
>[Tamar] RW doesn't like being made to do things. And in other books,
>Granny Weatherwax is vehemently against people losing the choice of
how to
>live their lives (allowing for a little meddling by her, on the
side) -
>she generally allows people to make their own choice even to refusing
to
>give specific advice, unless asked very directly for help or unless
the
>larger situation affects her personally.
Hmmm. I'd be glad if I knew a specific situation where she takes that
point of view. After all, she's a witch, and witches always interfere.
And I know that in CJ, she definitely makes a choice instead of
another person because she doesn't want him to make the choice himself
and have the burden of the responsibility. I'm not sure if I agree
with that point of view, but that would probably be a theme for
another thread.
[Tamar]
> I take the example of GW as a possible indication that TerryOBE is
using
>that as a philosophical base, that people should have more free will
and
>less predestination. So any destiny imposed from outside is
bydefinition
>a bad one. However, if it's something _you_ did, then it's not
imposed by
>someone else! That's where TerryOBE has an excuse for RW's having a
>destiny - it's a destiny based on something that was caused by RW's
>presence. (It doesn't seem to matter that RW didn't personally cause
>himself to be in XXXX except by choosing to go to IT instead of being
>executed for impersonating a wizard; that choice was enough to make
him
>responsible for the results even though The Lady sent him to XXXX to
keep
>him alive because she never sacrifices a pawn.)
>
Ha! I think it does very well matter! IMO, RW isn't responsible in any
way for the dry. He doesn't do anything to get to XXXX, he doesn't
cause the illness of the Librarian (what does, BTW? I don't think a
common flu can be healed by a lightning), he doesn't make the wizards
search for him or steal the bullroarer. The Creator himself is much
more responsible because he himself paints his bullroarer into the
stone.
I don't remember if there's a bit in the book where someone tell's
Rincewind that it was all his fault, but if there is, he's probably
doing it to find a reason for pushing RW around.
<snip>
[Tamar]
>>>I think my point here is that there is usually a difference
>>>between Realizing you are a pawn, and Realizing you are
>>>(potentially) the hero. In the larger sense, they may be the same.
>[Joerg]
>>I'd say Realizing you are the hero is a special case of Realizing
you
>>are a pawn.
>
>[Tamar] Yes, this is also true for GW in Maskerade; at one point GW
says
>(paraphrase) "What I want don't matter". She is realizing there's
>something she'll have to do, perhaps (though it isn't specified) she
>understands the way Story works and she is seeing the workings of it
>around her, sending her in a particular direction.
I'm not sure of this. It's the bit where she's asked if she wants to
visit the opera. And there is the explanation that it doesn't matter
what she wants because 'witches are drawn to the edge of things'.
Well, you could say that it is the story that takes them there, but I
tend to believe that it's just the nature of witches. After all (I
don't know it exactly and cannot be sure) I don't think that witches
have a part in the 'phantom of the opera' story, and that would be the
story here, wouldn't it?
>But the difference
>between GW and RW here is that GW, recognizing the workings, decides
to go
>along with it and do what she must, while still retaining the option
of
>making changes in the direction the story can go (in a scene in the
opera
>house, she says (paraphrase) 'it's going to be hard to make this one
go
>right, Gytha').
>
Yes, that's during the first performance. She sees the story (IIRC,
'they beat him to death and throw him into the river' or something
like that) and finds it horrible.
[Tamar]
>>>We are all heroes of our own stories,
[Joerg]
>>I think I know what you mean, but that sounds very dramatic. To add
a
>>counterpoint, I'll give one of my favorite quotations of Death (from
SM):
>>"You see the lighted windows and what you want to think is that
there
>>may be many interesting stories behind them, but what you _know_ is
>>that really there are just dull, dull souls, mere consumers of food,
>>who think their instincts are emotions and their tiny lives of more
>>account than a whisper of wind."
>
>[Tamar] That is the viewpoint from eternity, not from within the
story,
>which is in Time. ICBW but IIRC Death says that when Susan goes back
and
>talks to him before he has the experiences in RM that teach him about
>humanity from the inside. He is also lecturing her about the Duty
and
>trying to make her less sympathetic. Yet in the same book he has the
>experience of being Beau Nidle, and goes to the trouble of defending
the
>fort when if he felt the soldiers he helped to survive were of no
more
>account than a whisper of wind, he might not have bothered to
interfere.
>
I don't think that Death takes that point of view. Susan says that she
didn't think so, and than Death says 'You may find that it helps.'. So
IMO Death also only wants to think like that, but cannot. That leads
to his problems in SM. But as Beau Nidle, Death isn't Death anymore
(that's Susan), or at least he's partly human. So it's only to be
expected that he has human thoughts.
I gave the quotation more because of the 'dull, dull souls' and less
because of the 'whisper of wind'. Even by the viewpoint of the story,
the creatures behind the windows can live very dull lives / stories.
>Within each human story, the person living that story and making the
>choices is the hero by definition. (Perhaps you would prefer the
term
>"protagonist".)
>
I know, and I know that you meant 'protagonist'. Only 'hero' has also
the second, more popular meaning.
[Joerg]
>>But I think RW doesn't want to figure out how to do it but to
figure out
>>how not. Everything he does is to escape his "destiny".
>
[Tamar]
>He tries to escape until the climax when he is faced directly with
>the situation of the loss of water (fires and mobs breaking into the
>brewery for something to drink) and has just seen the ghost-wizard
>shapes in the cellar. Then he decides something has to be done, as
>he did finally in Sourcery.
>
Yes, that's right. Although the situation is quite different: in
Sourcery he has to face an enemy, and a very powerful one.
>And as in Sourcery, he first goes to find some 'real' wizards,
>assuming they can do something about it and that he can't.
That's the question (s.a.). Does he think the wizards can make it
rain?
>And as in Sourcery, the local chief wizard on the premises is found
in or
>near the Tower,
You think the Librarian is the local chief wizard in Sourcery? Or was
there the overwhelming will to generalize?
>and decides that something in RW is a necessary
>element to the solution. While drinking with the local Archchancellor
>who happens to have the same name, he explains about rain and the
>Archchancellor decides that the combination of RW and beer might be
>useful, and RW is kept just drunk enough to overcome his normal
>fearful defensive reactions (such as the one about not eating meat
>pie floaters) and let him release his creativity to make the magic
>work.
>
Another difference: In S, RW knows what to do: Defeat the Sourcerer.
Similarily, in TLF: Defeat Trymon and speak the spells. But in TLC,
it's pure chance (Luck?) that he swings the bullroarer.
>So RW does stop trying to avoid his destiny when he sees the direct
>effect of the Dry on the living creatures, humans and animals - but
>especially when it got to where he would be personally affected soon.
>It comes back to his being spurred by his fear of death.
>
Joerg
Cliff
francesco...@tafensw.edu.au wrote in message
<78o702$smk$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>In article <78j0td$nam$1...@news4.svr.pol.co.uk>,
> "Carl J Lawley" <ca...@lawley7.spam.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Meg, the Magpie wrote in message
>> <36abad31....@news.can.interact.net.au>...
>> <rending of all spoilerish stuff>
>> >You're both missing something. XXXXian culture is based strongly on
>> >Australian culture, and part of Australian culture is xxx xxxxxx xxx
x
>> >xxxx. We're a comparatively young nation (less than 100 years),
>>
>> Okay, you got me. What _does_ bicentennial mean?
>>
Bicentennial - a word made of 3 elements Bicen (large mispelled fuzzy
hooved animals), ten (Two more than the number a Wizard dare not
say), and ial (sound made when most people read a joke like this).
>> And who are the Aborigines?
>
contraction of "Boring Engines"; i.e., engines that do not go. Think of
Yugos.
>White australians have not absorbed aboriginal myths into our
mythology. So
Meg, seriously though.
Would you, please, if you can, give me some good references on the
legends and mythos of Australia?
Any starting point would be appreciated. I would prefer to read the
tales in as close to original form as possible. This distinction is the
difference between reading the Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill stories of the
American South West in their original form as published in Collier's and
Harper's weekly magazines and in more recent versions.
Need something librarians can use in interlibrary loan.
--
Thank you,
Cliff
Anna1558
minor FOC spoiler?
>IMO, the Watch stories are Whodunnits, especially G!G! and M@A. But
>there's a bit there Vimes thinks something like "usually, you know
>whodunnit and want to find out howdunnit". Or was it "you've got to
>find out howdunnit to find out whodunnit"?
Aha - now we're veering into my specialist area...
In FOC Vimes says to Cheery something like 'You find out how it was done, and
I'll find out the who.' But the blurb on the paperback says 'He's not only got
to find out whodunnit, but howdunnit too. He's not even sure what they dun. But
as soon as he knows what the questions are, he's going to want some answers.'
Anna
--
Anna...@bigfoot.com, ICQ number 7292578
Be a MAN in the City Watch! The City Watch needs MEN! (and miscellaneous)
Join today at http://members.xoom.com/annacox/watch.html!
David Brain
(Heather Knowles) wrote:
> I think that, like some of those reviewers, you're confusing 'popular'
> with 'having no literary merit'.
Absolutely not. Indeed some of my most successful "evangelising" was with people who
said "Pratchett? Not worth reading."
We're simply talking at cross-purposes (as is traditional on ng's ;-) - I'm merely saying that
*some* writers (Pratchett, Lodge etc) have a more "accessible" style of writing that some
others (say, Rusdie or even James Joyce come to that).
This doesn't mean they are inferior writers, or even that they have no literary merit (or
even that the impentrable ones have any literary merit either...). Merely that they write
more accessible books.
Heather Knowles
<da...@atlan.cix.co.uk> writes
>Absolutely not. Indeed some of my most successful "evangelising" was with
>people who
>said "Pratchett? Not worth reading."
>We're simply talking at cross-purposes (as is traditional on ng's ;-) - I'm
>merely saying that
>*some* writers (Pratchett, Lodge etc) have a more "accessible" style of writing
>that some
>others (say, Rusdie or even James Joyce come to that).
>This doesn't mean they are inferior writers, or even that they have no literary
>merit (or
>even that the impentrable ones have any literary merit either...). Merely that
>they write
>more accessible books.
>
we'll sidle off here....
Richard Eney
even a tiny one or two for RM and M!M
<more snips >
[RW told he's already done it so has to do it]
[Joerg]
>>>Or, if they know his mind, to make him more willing not to
>>>try, and thus to do it.
<snip>
>[Joerg] Sorry, I didn't express myself very good here. I didn't mean
>they have to read his mind, I meant they have to know his character. I
>don't remember know what Scrappy says about Rincewind, but if he says
>something like 'I've looked at him', I think it's very probable that
>he's seen that Rincewind doesn't want to be a hero.
[Tamar] pp.48-50 h/cvr: The old man looks at RW and then goes way again.
Then Scrappy sings the magic for RW to be able to find food. Then Scrappy
tells the old man:" 'Him? What a wonga,' said the bird. 'I've been lookin'
at him. He's not even heroic. He's just in the right place at the right
time." The old man indicated that this was maybe the definition of a
hero. " I agree they've both examined RW in ways not clearly defined, and
they have estimated his character, but differently. The old man (nomadic
Creator) knows more than his Trickster assistant. Whether or not RW wants
to be a hero doesn't matter; he's in the right place at the right time,
and the old man wants the continent to have heroes.
The two tasks - (1) retrieve the bull-roarer and (2) become all the heroes
in XXXX - seem to be related: pg. 51 Trickster asks: Why not go and get
the thing yerself? and the old man answers: You've gotta have heroes.
Here I speculate: The old man could also be referring to the writing
level, on which an author says to self, 'it would be simple for the old
man to go get it and there goes my whole plot, besides a book has to have
a hero, so we'll make the old man want heroes and that puts RW on the
spot'.
<snip parallel - universes >
[Joerg]
>>>More probable is IMO that Scrappy lies to Rincewind about this
>>>destiny. But the important point is that Rincewind thinks he
>>>knows his destiny.
[Tamar]
Going back to get the bull-roarer would fix the problem, even without
rescuing the wizards; that much is implied by the Trickster's question to
the old man. But, the nomadic Creator's real reason for using RW is
that the continent needs heroes.
>>(Though presumably he doesn't object to Scrappy's
>>having told RW that it was his destiny.) That [RW's 'destiny' being
>> a lie] would add a poignant twist, even though RW still tries
>>to avoid it until the very last, when he's confronted with the
>>trapped wizards and the disappearance of the water.
>>He's not so much rescuing the wizards as he's trying to rescue the
>>continent (sheep and all, because of the covenant between men and
>>domesticated animals).
[Joerg] I see I've got to read that book again. Does he really plan
>to rescue the wizards because he thinks they can save the continent,
>or does he rescue them just to do something?
[Tamar]
RW has been led to the place where the wizards are trapped and
made to notice them. He knows there's something to be done - at
that point he doesn't know about the bull-roarer. He rescues the
wizards because he is now, finally, going with the events instead of
running from them, and because he hopes it will help end the Dry
somehow. He also knows that the local wizards haven't been able
to solve the problem of the increasing drought, and thinks maybe
the trapped ones would be able to help.
He doesn't know about the bull-roarer's magic until he randomly uses
it and it starts to work.
[Tamar]
>>It's a big question: is RW's true destiny to be all the heroes
>>(that's the reason the nomadic Creator is affecting him at all -
>>and incidentally the reason RW is still being kept alive) or
>>is it RW's true destiny to solve the Time paradox and bring the
>>water back to XXXX, which may be a lie Scrappy told him?
[Joerg] >I think his destiny (if that exists) is to bring the
>water back (incidently, I don't see a time paradox in the story).
[Tamar] The time paradox is the basis of the whole story: the fact that
one event can change events that had already happened. RW's arrival
suddenly made everything in XXXX change. The other time paradox is RW's
solution as proposed by Scrappy: RW has to solve the problem because RW
already has solved the problem. (This second paradox also can be found
in Eastern philosophy as the situation of a buddha who has to become one
yet as soon as he becomes one, has always been one.)
[Joerg] >But to do that, he has to become a hero,
>like the Creator said (this 'got to have heroes').
>And simply waving a bullroarer isn't especially heroic, so
>RW's made the hero of the other events.
[Tamar]
Whirling a bull-roarer after you already know it's got some weird
properties, in a high magical environment, takes some courage even if RW
does it mostly out of foolishness. The role of the person who whirls the
bull-roarer in aboriginal society is, I believe, a very important one.
[Tamar]
>> OR - could it be that the nomadic Creator does't
>>realize he's also a pawn in a larger story controlled by The Lady,
>>and Scrappy's lie is the Accidental Truth (happens a lot in Stories)?
>>Paradoxes within paradoxes!
[Joerg]
>Well, that's a bit brain - twisting.
[Tamar]
<g> Paradoxes _are_ a bit brain-twisting.
[Joerg]
>I think it is a bit far -fetched.
>We have no hint that there is a larger story behind all this.
>And why should the Lady control it? AFAIK, the Lady is a goddess, and
>like the other gods only acts when playing a game. There's no reason
>for her to cause this whole story. I think she just wanted Rincewind
>to be somewhere safe. The easiest way was to make of the exchange a
>triangle, and then only XXXX is available as an equidistant point.
[Tamar] No doubt she wanted RW somewhere safe. But making a triangle
wasn't necessarily the easiest way. Making a triangle _is_ the way to add
a dimension to the mathematics - from a line to a plane. So RW lands on a
plain. Terry could just as easily had RW land on another desert island.
No, the more I think about it, the more I think most of the XXXX
plot was already planned at the end of IT, and The Lady and Fate
are still playing that game, Fall of Empires. Maybe this is just
the end-game.
<snip>
[Tamar] RW doesn't like being made to do things. And in other books,
>>Granny Weatherwax is vehemently against people losing the choice of
>>how to live their lives (allowing for a little meddling by her,
>>on the side) - she generally allows people to make their own choice
>>even to refusing to give specific advice, unless asked very directly
>>for help or unless the larger situation affects her personally.
[Joerg]
>Hmmm. I'd be glad if I knew a specific situation where she takes that
>point of view. After all, she's a witch, and witches always interfere.
[Tamar]
It shows up mostly in Granny's relationship with Magrat. In Witches
Abroad, Granny consistently doesn't tell Magrat how to use the wand. GW
can use it perfectly well it herself, as is shown at the end of WA, but
she won't tell Magrat - because Magrat hasn't specifically asked her to.
Many other things GW and Nanny haven't told Magrat. GW will only say
that Magrat should work out how to make things happen for herself; she
finally says that in so many words, at the _end_ of WA, that Magrat went
around wishing instead of working out how to make it work.
[Joerg]
>And I know that in CJ, she definitely makes a choice instead of
>another person because she doesn't want him to make the choice himself
>and have the burden of the responsibility. I'm not sure if I agree
>with that point of view, but that would probably be a theme for
>another thread.
[Tamar]
Yes, that thread belongs in an analysis of CJ, which I haven't read
yet (my book is still lost in the mail). From what I gather, Granny
does that because she has been asked for help in the situation,
and she has taken on the responsibility for making those
decisions. It isn't meddling if they ask for your help; they made
the choice to ask for her help.
[Tamar]
>> any destiny imposed from outside is by definition
>>a bad one. However, if it's something _you_ did, then
>>it's not imposed by someone else!
>><snip> something that was caused by RW's presence.
>>(It doesn't seem to matter that RW didn't personally cause
>>himself to be in XXXX except by choosing to go to IT instead of
>>being executed for impersonating a wizard; that choice was
>>enough to make him responsible for the results even though
>>The Lady sent him to XXXX to keep him alive because
>>she never sacrifices a pawn.)
[Joerg]
>Ha! I think it does very well matter! IMO, RW isn't responsible in any
>way for the dry. He doesn't do anything to get to XXXX, he doesn't
>cause the illness of the Librarian (what does, BTW? I don't think a
>common flu can be healed by a lightning),
[Tamar]
I think the Librarian's illness is another side effect of the Lady's
interference in the calculations. Earlier in the thread I said that the
change that took speed (which is a combination of distance and time) away
from RW so he could land safely had to send some of that somewhere else,
and some of it hit the Luggage and sent it into the past in the same
continent where RW was sent in the present. I think some more of it hit
the Librarian. Remember the Librarian was the one who brought RW's hat to
Ridcully to explain who the Great Wizzard was, and RW used to work with
the Librarian. So the Librarian is responsible for identifying - giving
the name of - Rincewind to Ridcully. The Librarian then became very ill
with something that made him lose his shape - this introduces the theme of
morphogenic fields as a means of evolution.
The closer the Librarian gets to the source of the problem, the more
control he regains. On the island in the past (closer in Time), he loses
the fever and begins to shape himself into protective shapes - even
regaining his own shape occasionally when threatened with being sat on by
Mrs. Whitlow. When he gets to the correct continent (closer in Space), he
becomes young (Time) and stays young even when the other wizards return to
their usual forms; as a young creature (innocent), he steals the
bull-roarer.
>he doesn't make the wizards search for him
The Lady does that by making the Librarian sick. Just as the Librarian
gave Ridcully RW's name, RW is the only one who can give Ridcully the
Librarian's name. So the wizards search for RW, and while doing research
they "happen" to find the timetunnel.
> or steal the bullroarer.
[Tamar] The Librarian stealing the bull-roarer is the act that made
everything go wrong when RW arrived, and the Librarian is there because of
the Lady. I assume The Lady intended RW to be rescued and probably
intended the whole situation. She's still mucking around with Fate.
[Joerg]
>The Creator himself is much more responsible because he himself
>paints his bullroarer into the stone.
[Tamar] True, he's equally as responsible as RW, but he didn't know the
wizards had the bull-roarer when he did that. He's more responsible for
the requirement that RW solve the problem because the Creator is the one
who wants XXXX to have heroes; he uses RW at that point because RW has the
advantage of an outsider's viewpoint (as someone else pointed out).
>I don't remember if there's a bit in the book where someone tell's
>Rincewind that it was all his fault, but if there is, he's probably
>doing it to find a reason for pushing RW around.
Scrappy tells RW it's his fault: 'as soon as you arrived it had always
been wrong' (paraphrase).
<snip>
Switch to M!M comments analogy of GW being pawn/hero
[Joerg]
>>>I'd say Realizing you are the hero is a special case of
>>>Realizing you are a pawn.
>>
>>[Tamar] Yes, this is also true for GW in Maskerade; at one point GW
>says
>>(paraphrase) "What I want don't matter". She is realizing there's
>>something she'll have to do, perhaps (though it isn't specified) she
>>understands the way Story works and she is seeing the workings of it
>>around her, sending her in a particular direction.
>
>I'm not sure of this. It's the bit where she's asked if she wants to
>visit the opera.
She's recognizing a combination of three events: she has gained an
acquaintanceship, and some information that gives her power over,
an opera singer, she has been given tickets to the opera, and the
young woman whose welfare she will look in on (Agnes) is in the
opera. Therefore, there is a Story going on (threes are a good
indication that a story is going on), and whether she wants to
or not, GW is going to have to have something to do with the
opera situation.
<snip> [Joerg]
>tend to believe that it's just the nature of witches. After all (I
>don't know it exactly and cannot be sure) I don't think that witches
>have a part in the 'phantom of the opera' story, and that would be the
>story here, wouldn't it?
That's the basic form on which Terry is building the story of M!M, but not
the only one. There is also 'Svengali', and 'Cats!', and 'Frankenstein'.
The theme of M!M is the act of Creation itself, but on a different level
from the one in TLC. That also deserves its own thread.
As I said,
[Tamar]
>>But the difference between GW and RW here is that GW, recognizing
>>the workings, decides to go along with it and do what she must,
>>while still retaining the option of making changes in the
>>direction the story can go <snip>
[Joerg]
>>>But I think RW doesn't want to figure out how to do it but to
>>>figure out how not. Everything he does is to escape his "destiny".
[Tamar]
>>He tries to escape until the climax when he is faced directly with
>>the situation of the loss of water (fires and mobs breaking into the
>>brewery for something to drink) and has just seen the ghost-wizard
>>shapes in the cellar. Then he decides something has to be done, as
>>he did finally in Sourcery.
[Joerg] >Yes, that's right. Although the situation is quite different:
>in Sourcery he has to face an enemy, and a very powerful one.
>>And as in Sourcery, he first goes to find some 'real' wizards,
>>assuming they can do something about it and that he can't.
>That's the question (s.a.). Does he think the wizards can make it
>rain?
>>And as in Sourcery, the local chief wizard on the premises is
>>found in or near the Tower,
[Joerg]
>You think the Librarian is the local chief wizard in Sourcery?
>Or was there the overwhelming will to generalize?
[Tamar] _At that moment_ in Sourcery, the Librarian is the _only_
UU wizard left at UU; the others have all gone off to fight the
wizard war. The Librarian is therefore in charge. He is also
RW's immediate boss, and he shows RW that RW is indeed a wizard
to the core, and then indicates that it is RW's job to somehow
face and defeat the Sourcerer.
The LIbrarian in Sourcery, as I said, >> decides that something
>>in RW is a necessary element to the solution.
Similarly, in TLC, the local chief wizard decides RW is the key.
pg.251 "This one turned up very fast when we did the summoning,
so this is the one we need."
>>While drinking with the local Archchancellor who happens
>>to have the same last name,
and not so incidentally, the Archchancellor has the first name "Bill" -
which may allude to the use made of it in Eric and RM, "omething to
pay/a Demand made, and the emptiness of space before Creation, and the
name chosen by Death.
>>RW explains about rain
and mentions that there is something that has to be put right.
(pg. 256 h/cvr)
>>Archchancellor decides that the combination of RW and beer might be
>>useful, and RW is kept _just drunk enough to overcome his normal
>>fearful defensive reactions_ (such as the one about not eating meat
>>pie floaters) and let him release his creativity to make the magic
>>work.
>Another difference: In S, RW knows what to do: Defeat the Sourcerer.
>Similarily, in TLF: Defeat Trymon and speak the spells. But in TLC,
>it's pure chance (Luck?) that he swings the bullroarer.
[Tamar]
It's not chance that RW retrieves the bull-roarer from the past.
He begins to play with it and is sent outside by the wizards. He may or
may not have seen bullroarers used in his earlier experiences with the
aborigines in XXXX, mentioned earlier in the book - he'd get to know a
group, learn a few words, and chat about the weather, and they'd run off
and leave him. So it's possible that he knows that it is locally
considered important. He is surprised it was with the wizards -
he asks "What were you doing with it?"
pg. 268 On top of the tower, having agreed he won't reveal the
Librarian's name, RW begins to think about the fact that the whole
continent will die from the loss of water - the immigrants and the
aborigines and the animals and the plants. And himself. Then Death
arrives to tell RW that there's been a fight to the death over the
last bottle of beer. This stimulates RW to swing the bullroarer
menacingly, to threaten (as if it were possible) the (now-gone) Death.
The Librarian calls RW's attention to the fact that when RW swung the
bullroarer there was a scent of after-rain. RW begins to experiment,
realizes the bullroarer wants to be spun, and the Librarian agrees.
I think it is can be argued that RW deliberately uses the bullroarer
for reasons that are related directly to the problem of the drought.
He also keeps on doing it - pg. 270 "Letting go was unthinkable. He
wasn't even sure if he could" - which means he technically might have
tried to let go, but he knew better.
=Tamar
Miq
Spoilers for all Rincewind books
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>> [Miq]
>> Rincewind as Mephistopheles to Eric's Faust... that's a comparison
>> that's crying out to be done...
>[Richard]
>Not quite... Mephisto was trying to get Faust's soul, wasn't he?
>RW is trying to get out, and is helping Eric, apparently, because
>he has to. But it _is_ a nice comparison.
[Miq]
I think there's more to Mephistopheles than that... but that's
another thread. Just wait'll I can actually *find* my copy of
Marlowe...
[who or what was "responsible" for killing Lord Hong?]
>[Richard]
>Hrm... the villain of the book, he certainly is. In that sense,
>Astfgl is also the villain of Eric. So is there a confusion of
>terms here, between the main villain of the book, and RW's main
>adversary? Even when RW is the protagonist, _his_ antagonist does
>not have to be the story's main bad guy.
[Miq]
Yes, we've been getting the two things confused - or rather, I've
been conflating them without making it clear what I was doing.
Sorry about that.
My point is that, to bring the story to a satisfying end, these are
figures that have to be overcome. Because Rincewind is the hero in
each case, this 'overcoming' is going to involve him. But as
Marion pointed out, TLC doesn't have any comparable figure.
>> >> [Tamar]
>> >> In _TLC_ could it be that Rincewind is his own adversary?
>> >> He has to undo his own inadvertently 'evil' action,
>> >> which caused the drought of all droughts.
>> >> As usual he does it without really knowing what he's doing, and is
>> >> spurred to it by fear of Death.
>>
>> [Miq]
>> I don't think you can say that Rincewind has done anything
>> 'evil', inadvertently or otherwise. He had no say whatever in
>> what happened to him at the end of IT, so he can't reasonably be
>> either blamed or credited for it.
>
>[Richard]
>Not evil in the sense of with bad intent, no. But it certainly
>has bad consequences. He may be held to his actions even if
>he didn't wilfully do them.
[Miq]
But it wasn't 'his' action at all! That's like blaming a brick,
rather than the vandal who heaved it through your window.
Or, more topically: you might as well hold a crate of prawns to
blame, rather than the idiot who didn't secure it properly or the
fool who was trying to hoist it over the Senior Wrangler's uncle's
head. :o)
>> [Miq]
>> *I* still maintain that RW's main direct opponent is the Book
>> itself. He wants nothing more than a quiet life - but as long as
>> he keeps appearing in books, that's precisely what he's not going
>> to get. What he's trying to do is run away from the story, thus
>> running out of the book.
>
>[Richard]
>Yes... but now we have moved the opponent from inside the
>book to outside it. Does this, in a higher sense, concede
>and/or beg the question?
[Miq]
I don't think so. As Marion spotted, the lack of a personal
opponent is significant in this book. Rincewind is not trying
either to avoid or defeat an enemy, nor himself; he is trying to
escape from a story.
Tamar has pointed out his burst of heroism towards the end. I
think this is because he senses the end approaching, and knows that
now the easiest and quickest way out is to *finish* the damn story
and get it over with. He's already lived through the worst of it.
>[Richard]
>, the readers don't really come into it, I think. Before
>TCoM, we didn't even exist as readers, there was just Terry as
>writer. Even now, he could just stop writing about RW. Oh, we
>would squeal, but why should that stop him?
>Then again, maybe I'm just trying to protect my own conscience...
[Miq]
Some previous RW books have actively hinted at sequels. In S, it's
mentioned that he's left his hat behind; in IT, it's clear that TLC
is about to happen. TLF or Eric *could* have been the end of his
career, but fortunately for us, Terry had all these other great
ideas for him. TLC, again, ends on such a note that it could be
the last RW book - and if Tamar is right about self-realisation
being the death of a series, then it probably is.
Even in that brief scene at the end of IT, I think we can see, in
his reaction to being given the boomerang, a dawning awareness that
his life is being shaped and directed by a power that is far bigger
than any mere god. It recurs in his first conversation with
Scrappy: "And what's kangaroo for 'you are needed for a quest of
the utmost importance'?"
He knows that as soon as something takes an interest in him, his
life is going to become exciting, and he is going to achieve great
things - however hard he tries not to.
>> Perhaps his heroic dash into the Dungeon Dimensions at the end of
>> Sourcery was in fact an attempt to escape from the stories... that
>> would explain why it *seemed* so uncharacteristically brave.
>
>[Richard]
>No... I agree with (Tamar? I think) that he doesn't know that
>he's in a story.
[Miq]
Back then - yes, I agree. I was just getting a bit carried away.
But *now*, I'm more than ever convinced that he knows what's
happening to him. The words 'book' or 'story' may not have crossed
his mind, but he's had quite enough proof that he has absolutely
*no* control whatever over his own destiny.
[Richard]
>Maybe it was PTerry's attempt to get some small
>respite from RW, à la Reichenbach Falls ;-) ;
[Miq]
I don't think so - remember the comment about the hat? That's a
clear hint that he'll be back.
No, I think he goes at that stage simply because it's the right
thing to do. He was considerably braver back then.
On the other hand, if one really wanted to stretch a point, it
could be seen as foreshadowing the end of TLC, where he rushes
through the last, dangerous stretch just to get it over with.
I'll just get me dried frog pills.
--
Miq
"Oh dear, where _can_ I put my face?"
Psiogen
>
>>people who
>>said "Pratchett? Not worth reading."
>>We're simply talking at cross-purposes (as is traditional on ng's ;-) -
>I'm
>>merely saying that
>>*some* writers (Pratchett, Lodge etc) have a more "accessible" style of
>writing
>>that some
>>others (say, Rusdie or even James Joyce come to that).
>>This doesn't mean they are inferior writers, or even that they have no
>literary
>>merit (or
>>even that the impentrable ones have any literary merit either...). Merely
>that
>>they write
>>more accessible books.
We must always make sure we don't confuse pomposity with literary content.
Sylvan
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------
A rampant chicken teaser, cheese log poacher, grand piano stacker, projectile
vomiter, and stark raving pathological liar. You have been warned.
Chris Connelly
>
>Meg, seriously though.
>
>Would you, please, if you can, give me some good references on the
>legends and mythos of Australia?
>
>Any starting point would be appreciated. I would prefer to read the
>tales in as close to original form as possible. This distinction is the
>difference between reading the Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill stories of the
>American South West in their original form as published in Collier's and
>Harper's weekly magazines and in more recent versions.
>
>Need something librarians can use in interlibrary loan.
>
>--
>Thank you,
>Cliff
>
I would suggest starting with the "Dad and Dave" series, followed by
anything by Henry Lawson. His "The Loaded Dog" is a good starting point.
These only deal with the white side of things, as that's what I'm most
familiar with.
Heather Knowles
<psi...@aol.com> writes
>
>We must always make sure we don't confuse pomposity with literary content.
>
literary content and the use of literary devices simply because the
author has a readable style.
Thank goodness someone else has joined in... unless... unless.... David,
is that you posting from another address?? :)
in...@fdhoekstra.nl
>
> On Wed, 27 Jan 1999, in...@fdhoekstra.nl wrote
> >Miq wrote:
> >>
> >> On Tue, 26 Jan 1999, Richard (in...@fdhoekstra.nl) wrote
> >> >Tamar wrote:
>
> Spoilers for all Rincewind books
T
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> >> [Miq]
> >> Rincewind as Mephistopheles to Eric's Faust... that's a comparison
> >> that's crying out to be done...
>
> >[Richard]
> >Not quite... Mephisto was trying to get Faust's soul, wasn't he?
> >RW is trying to get out, and is helping Eric, apparently, because
> >he has to. But it _is_ a nice comparison.
>
> [Miq]
> I think there's more to Mephistopheles than that... but that's
> another thread. Just wait'll I can actually *find* my copy of
> Marlowe...
[Richard]
Yes; though I've never actually read it, just re-tellings; but
surely, at least, Mephisto is out to get Faust, and RW is never
out to get Eric, merely to get out.
> [who or what was "responsible" for killing Lord Hong?]
> >[Richard]
> >Hrm... the villain of the book, he certainly is. In that sense,
> >Astfgl is also the villain of Eric. So is there a confusion of
> >terms here, between the main villain of the book, and RW's main
> >adversary? Even when RW is the protagonist, _his_ antagonist does
> >not have to be the story's main bad guy.
>
> [Miq]
> My point is that, to bring the story to a satisfying end, these are
> figures that have to be overcome. Because Rincewind is the hero in
> each case, this 'overcoming' is going to involve him. But as
> Marion pointed out, TLC doesn't have any comparable figure.
[Richard]
Yes; in that case, you're right. This is from our POV; I think
from RW's POV, this is not at all clear; but from outside the
story, we can see the several strands that RW can not.
> >> >> [Tamar]
> >> >> In _TLC_ could it be that Rincewind is his own adversary?
> >> >> He has to undo his own inadvertently 'evil' action,
> >> >> which caused the drought of all droughts.
> >>
> >> [Miq]
> >> I don't think you can say that Rincewind has done anything
> >> 'evil', inadvertently or otherwise. He had no say whatever in
> >> what happened to him at the end of IT, so he can't reasonably be
> >> either blamed or credited for it.
> >
> >[Richard]
> >Not evil in the sense of with bad intent, no. But it certainly
> >has bad consequences. He may be held to his actions even if
> >he didn't wilfully do them.
>
> [Miq]
> But it wasn't 'his' action at all! That's like blaming a brick,
> rather than the vandal who heaved it through your window.
Mmm... yes, I think I agree with you ethically. However, in
real life this does happen. People who aren't really
responsible do get the job of fighting the fires. <fx: sigh>
This is what happens, characteristically, I'd say, to RW.
> >> [Miq]
> >> *I* still maintain that RW's main direct opponent is the Book
> >> itself. He wants nothing more than a quiet life - but as long as
> >> he keeps appearing in books, that's precisely what he's not going
> >> to get. What he's trying to do is run away from the story, thus
> >> running out of the book.
> >
> >[Richard]
> >Yes... but now we have moved the opponent from inside the
> >book to outside it. Does this, in a higher sense, concede
> >and/or beg the question?
>
> [Miq]
> I don't think so. As Marion spotted, the lack of a personal
> opponent is significant in this book. Rincewind is not trying
> either to avoid or defeat an enemy, nor himself; he is trying to
> escape from a story.
[Richard]
Ah, but in Eric, he wasn't trying to avoid or defeat anyone,
either. In fact, he wasn't even aware he had an enemy. He was
merely trying to get out of this eventful situation, and back
to a place where, even if things might be dangerous (whether
this is the DM or A-M), he at least knew basically what was
going to happen tomorrow.
The same, I think, goes for IT - from RW's POV, there is no
clear-cut enemy. It is only from outside the story that we
can see there is. _He_'s just running.
> Tamar has pointed out his burst of heroism towards the end. I
> think this is because he senses the end approaching, and knows that
> now the easiest and quickest way out is to *finish* the damn story
> and get it over with. He's already lived through the worst of it.
[Richard]
Not the story. The adventure. He does it for _his_ safety; that
it is beneficial for XXXX is an added bonus, but he is still the
same old coward he always was. He is merely trying to find the
quickest, safest way home. That he does, on occasion, look further
away than five minutes shouldn't surprise us; after all, he's good
at surviving, and not solely by Luck.
> >> Perhaps his heroic dash into the Dungeon Dimensions at the end of
> >> Sourcery was in fact an attempt to escape from the stories... that
> >> would explain why it *seemed* so uncharacteristically brave.
> >
> >[Richard]
> >No... I agree with (Tamar? I think) that he doesn't know that
> >he's in a story.
>
> [Miq]
> Back then - yes, I agree. I was just getting a bit carried away.
> But *now*, I'm more than ever convinced that he knows what's
> happening to him. The words 'book' or 'story' may not have crossed
> his mind, but he's had quite enough proof that he has absolutely
> *no* control whatever over his own destiny.
[Richard]
Has anyone? I can decide what I want to do, but there are always
forces greater than me that will decide that I will pay taxes,
whether I want to or not. And I could have accidents, whatever...
I can take measures against this, and ensure I have no _more_
accidents than strictly necessary, but there just is no guarantee.
It shouldn't surprise RW that on a world so much more "interesting"
than ours, the Powers That Be are also much more direct in their
approaches.
Richard
Psiogen
>> >> >> In _TLC_ could it be that Rincewind is his own adversary?
>> >> >> He has to undo his own inadvertently 'evil' action,
>> >> >> which caused the drought of all droughts.
All right, this is getting ridiculous, this thread is up to 5 carrots now, has
anyone _not_ read this 4 times yet? :-)
Sylvan
------------------------------------------------------------------
in...@fdhoekstra.nl
> >>It's a big question: is RW's true destiny to be all the heroes
> >>(that's the reason the nomadic Creator is affecting him at all -
> >>and incidentally the reason RW is still being kept alive) or
> >>is it RW's true destiny to solve the Time paradox and bring the
> >>water back to XXXX, which may be a lie Scrappy told him?
>
> [Joerg] >I think his destiny (if that exists) is to bring the
> >water back (incidently, I don't see a time paradox in the story).
>
> [Tamar] The time paradox is the basis of the whole story: the fact that
> one event can change events that had already happened. RW's arrival
> suddenly made everything in XXXX change. The other time paradox is RW's
> solution as proposed by Scrappy: RW has to solve the problem because RW
> already has solved the problem. (This second paradox also can be found
> in Eastern philosophy as the situation of a buddha who has to become one
> yet as soon as he becomes one, has always been one.)
[Richard]
And also - and I think PTerry knows this perfectly well -
the one and only solution to the going-back-in-time problem
of "killing your own grandfather", and theings like that;
/vide, e.g./ "A sound of thunder". Rincewind not only _has_
to solve the problem, he _will_ solve it, because he already
has.
> >I don't remember if there's a bit in the book where someone tell's
> >Rincewind that it was all his fault, but if there is, he's probably
> >doing it to find a reason for pushing RW around.
>
> Scrappy tells RW it's his fault: 'as soon as you arrived it had always
> been wrong' (paraphrase).
[Richard]
That's not the same thing as "It's your fault", it merely informs
RW that his arrival caused the wrongness. If RW's arrival wasn't
his own doing, it would not be his fault, even if he caused it.
Nevertheless, RW _would_ parse "Your arrival caused it" as "It's
your fault".
Richard
Anna1558
In article <78p5pf$475$1...@library.lspace.org>, "Cliff" <j...@Nospam.us.net>
writes:
>>> And who are the Aborigines?
>>
>contraction of "Boring Engines"; i.e., engines that do not go. Think of
>Yugos.
What's a Yugo?
Giles
Thomas Johnson
Giles wrote in message ...
disagree with this last point as well !!
Thomas Johnson
Joerg Ruedenauer
>Tamar wrote:
>>
>> In article <78o3tp$lrh$1...@library.lspace.org>,
>> Joerg Ruedenauer <j.rued...@usa.net> wrote:
>>
>>> [Joerg]
>>>incidently, I don't see a time paradox in the story [of TLC].
>>
>> [Tamar] The time paradox is the basis of the whole story: the fact that
>> one event can change events that had already happened. RW's arrival
>> suddenly made everything in XXXX change.
But it didn't change RW's arrival (s.b.), and the things in XXXX had always
been like this from that point on.
>> The other time paradox is RW's
>> solution as proposed by Scrappy: RW has to solve the problem because RW
>> already has solved the problem.
So where's the paradox? - AFAIK, a paradox exists when there are two
contradictory facts (though that isn't a definition).
>> (This second paradox also can be found
>> in Eastern philosophy as the situation of a buddha who has to become one
>> yet as soon as he becomes one, has always been one.)
>
I don't understand this. Is this 'one' 'a buddha', so a buddha has to
become a buddha?
Or is the 'one' meant as a number, so 1 buddha has to become 1? Or is that
a special buddhist term that I don't know?
>[Richard]
>And also - and I think PTerry knows this perfectly well -
>the one and only solution to the going-back-in-time problem
>of "killing your own grandfather", and theings like that;
>/vide, e.g./ "A sound of thunder". Rincewind not only _has_
>to solve the problem, he _will_ solve it, because he already
>has.
>
Yes, exactly. And that's why there *isn't* a paradox. A paradox would be
there if e.g. the arrival of RW changed the events in a way that he
wouldn't arrrive or if RW would solve the problem so that it had never
existed.
But the way things are, everything makes perfectly sense: The wizards cause
the problem, and many years later RW solves it without changing the past
there. The only bit that could be paradox is that the wizards possibly
exist twice at one time, but they are in the stone and shouldn't cause
problems.
Jamie Crowther
>
> =Tamar wrote in message <78guvc$51p$1...@saltmine.radix.net>...
> <snip something to feel good about>
> >Not that I'd want to be in RW's position (I don't fancy eating
> grubs and
> >I can't run, I'm more the wizardly shape).
>
> I dunno, if push came to shove, I think I could eat grubs as long as
> they didn't wiggle any more. I could run if given sufficient
> incentive and I'm more the Rincewind shape - chin and all (no beard
> though !).
>
> As an observation, I don't believe Rincewind is the archetypal
> wizard shape is he ? I don't think he could have ever got close
> enough to the table to eat any really satisfying dinners.
Nope - he isn't the archetypal wizard shape. But he *is* the one and
only wizzard shape, wouldn't you think? ;)
Sorry, I'm a little bit drunk - I'll just get me fleece...
Jamie
Joerg Ruedenauer
major spoilers for TLC and IT
[Tamar]
>>> OR - could it be that the nomadic Creator does't
>>>realize he's also a pawn in a larger story controlled by The Lady,
>>>and Scrappy's lie is the Accidental Truth (happens a lot in Stories)?
[Joerg]
>>I think it is a bit far -fetched.
>>We have no hint that there is a larger story behind all this.
>>And why should the Lady control it? AFAIK, the Lady is a goddess, and
>>like the other gods only acts when playing a game. There's no reason
>>for her to cause this whole story. I think she just wanted Rincewind
>>to be somewhere safe. The easiest way was to make of the exchange a
>>triangle, and then only XXXX is available as an equidistant point.
>
>[Tamar] No doubt she wanted RW somewhere safe. But making a triangle
>wasn't necessarily the easiest way. Making a triangle _is_ the way to add
>a dimension to the mathematics - from a line to a plane. So RW lands on a
>plain. Terry could just as easily had RW land on another desert island.
>
Oh, yes Terry certainly could. The question is if the Lady could. The Lady
is confronted with the discworld as it is, and we get to know that the two
points that form a equilateral triangle with A-M and Hunghung are somewhere
in the Rim Ocean and on XXXX.
I think making a triangle was the easiest way because
- the Lady did it
- it was only necessary to put a blob of nectar on a point in/near Hex
- the Lady would have IMO difficulties to use a complicated way because she
can only use chance and for a complicated way, the odds would be very much
against her (and not necessarily a million to one). E.g. there could've
been a sudden tornado that carries RW out of the way and kills Lord Hong,
but that would be much more improbable than a butterfly leaving a blob of
nectar.
>No, the more I think about it, the more I think most of the XXXX
>plot was already planned at the end of IT, and The Lady and Fate
>are still playing that game, Fall of Empires. Maybe this is just
>the end-game.
>
No, I don't think so. At the end of IT, they sit back, the other gods
relax, and Fate conceds that the Lady has won in Hunghung. So the game is
quite definitly over. Also, in TLC, there's no Fall of Empires or Great
Houses. And also no destiny of a nation hanging by a thread, because XXXX
isn't a nation but a continent, and RW has already saved it.
[Tamar]
>>><snip> something that was caused by RW's presence.
>>>(It doesn't seem to matter that RW didn't personally cause
>>>himself to be in XXXX except by choosing to go to IT instead of
>>>being executed for impersonating a wizard; that choice was
>>>enough to make him responsible for the results even though
>>>The Lady sent him to XXXX to keep him alive because
>>>she never sacrifices a pawn.)
Now I think of it.... The Lady had won in Hunghung because Cohen's the new
emperor. So Mr Saveloy surely was a piece of the Lady. OK, she didn't
sacrifice RW, but he definitly isn't a pawn. And didn't she sacrifice Mr
Saveloy?
>
>[Joerg]
> IMO, RW isn't responsible in any
>>way for the dry. He doesn't do anything to get to XXXX, he doesn't
>>cause the illness of the Librarian (what does, BTW? I don't think a
>>common flu can be healed by a lightning),
>
>[Tamar]
>I think the Librarian's illness is another side effect of the Lady's
>interference in the calculations.
Oh, come on. You really think so? What does you make think so? Why the
Lady?
>Earlier in the thread I said that the
>change that took speed (which is a combination of distance and time) away
>from RW so he could land safely had to send some of that somewhere else,
>and some of it hit the Luggage and sent it into the past in the same
>continent where RW was sent in the present. I think some more of it hit
>the Librarian.
So, some speed, distance or time hit the Librarian. Ergo he get's a sneeze
that makes him loose his shape?
>Remember the Librarian was the one who brought RW's hat to
>Ridcully to explain who the Great Wizzard was, and RW used to work with
>the Librarian. So the Librarian is responsible for identifying - giving
>the name of - Rincewind to Ridcully. The Librarian then became very ill
>with something that made him lose his shape - this introduces the theme of
>morphogenic fields as a means of evolution.
>
And where's the connection between identifying RW and getting ill?
>The closer the Librarian gets to the source of the problem, the more
>control he regains.
That's right at last. But perhaps it's not causal but only a coincidence,
and he regains control because he's getting better because of other things,
perhaps his immune system.
>On the island in the past (closer in Time), he loses
>the fever and begins to shape himself into protective shapes - even
>regaining his own shape occasionally when threatened with being sat on by
>Mrs. Whitlow. When he gets to the correct continent (closer in Space), he
>becomes young (Time) and stays young even when the other wizards return to
>their usual forms; as a young creature (innocent), he steals the
>bull-roarer.
>
What's innocence got to do with it? And why is he cured by the Lightning?
>>he doesn't make the wizards search for him
>
>The Lady does that by making the Librarian sick.
But why sould she?
>Just as the Librarian
>gave Ridcully RW's name, RW is the only one who can give Ridcully the
>Librarian's name. So the wizards search for RW, and while doing research
>they "happen" to find the timetunnel.
>
>> or steal the bullroarer.
>
>[Tamar] The Librarian stealing the bull-roarer is the act that made
>everything go wrong when RW arrived, and the Librarian is there because of
>the Lady. I assume The Lady intended RW to be rescued and probably
>intended the whole situation. She's still mucking around with Fate.
>
s.a.: I don't see a game, the Lady or Fate involved in any way in TLC.
>[Joerg]
>>The Creator himself is much more responsible because he himself
>>paints his bullroarer into the stone.
>
>[Tamar] True, he's equally as responsible as RW, but he didn't know the
>wizards had the bull-roarer when he did that.
Well perhaps he knew and did it on purpose...(s.b.)
>He's more responsible for
>the requirement that RW solve the problem because the Creator is the one
>who wants XXXX to have heroes; he uses RW at that point because RW has the
>advantage of an outsider's viewpoint (as someone else pointed out).
No, more probable is that the illness is caused by the nomadic Creator.
This makes sense if you've got the POV that RW's got to save the continent
so that XXXX has a hero. Then the Creator could make the Librarian ill, so
the wizards come to XXXX. There, the creator turns him into a baby, so he
can't be blamed for stealing the bullroarer, that leads to the need of a
Hero to save the continent, and thus gives RW something to do. And when the
task is done, the Creator makes a lightning that cures the librarian again.
Another theory will be in another post of mine.
Joerg Ruedenauer
Tamar wrote:
spoiler space for WA and CJ
>In article <78o3tp$lrh$1...@library.lspace.org>,
>Joerg Ruedenauer <j.rued...@usa.net> wrote:
>>Tamar wrote:
>>>[Tamar] RW doesn't like being made to do things. And in other books,
>>>Granny Weatherwax is vehemently against people losing the choice of
>>>how to live their lives (allowing for a little meddling by her,
>>>on the side) - she generally allows people to make their own choice
>>>even to refusing to give specific advice, unless asked very directly
>>>for help or unless the larger situation affects her personally.
BTW, in the books, the larger situation almost always affects her
personally - or at least, she'll see it that way.
>
>[Joerg]
>>Hmmm. I'd be glad if I knew a specific situation where she takes that
>>point of view. After all, she's a witch, and witches always interfere.
>
>[Tamar]
>It shows up mostly in Granny's relationship with Magrat. In Witches
>Abroad, Granny consistently doesn't tell Magrat how to use the wand. GW
>can use it perfectly well it herself, as is shown at the end of WA, but
>she won't tell Magrat - because Magrat hasn't specifically asked her to.
>
Oh! I've never thought of that. I was always sure that GW also doesn't know
how to use the wand until the end. I certainly don't remember a hint that
she does know. But now I don't seem to remember a hint that she doesn't,
either. Well, that's a very good reason to reread WA.
But even if GW does know how to use the wand, that's a point for my
opinion. She doesn't give Magrat the ability to choose whether she wants to
use the wand and how she wants to use it. GW decides that using the wand
would be no good. Who knows w
that Magrat had done if she'd known how to use it?
>Many other things GW and Nanny haven't told Magrat. GW will only say
>that Magrat should work out how to make things happen for herself; she
>finally says that in so many words, at the _end_ of WA, that Magrat went
>around wishing instead of working out how to make it work.
>
So the only choice GW lets Magrat is the choice of working out how to make
it work or not using the wand. It's true that Granny doesn't give Magrat an
advice how to use it, but that's only to prevent her using it.
>[Joerg]
>>And I know that in CJ, she definitely makes a choice instead of
>>another person because she doesn't want him to make the choice himself
>>and have the burden of the responsibility.
>
>[Tamar]
>From what I gather, Granny does that because she has been asked for help
in the >situation, and she has taken on the responsibility for making those
>decisions. It isn't meddling if they ask for your help; they made
>the choice to ask for her help.
>
I see I've got to tell the story: There's a birth and things go wrong. So
GW is called to help and she sees that there's only the possibility to save
one life: either that of the mother or that of the child. She's not been
called to make that choice, but to save someone or even both of them.
Nethertheless, she chooses to save the mother instead of letting the choice
to the father (and probably advising him to let the baby die). She does
that because she knows it would be very, very hard for the father to make
that decision. As things go, he'll never even know there had been a choice.
On p.33, GW thiks: 'You made them [the decisions] so that others didn't
have to, so that others could even pretend to themselves that there _were_
no decisions to be made [...], that things just _happened_.'
That's the contrary to your thesis that GW 'generally allows people to make
their own choices".
Joerg Ruedenauer
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Having read all the thread now, another theory came to me: Could it be that
TLC is a parody of the other RW books? Several things seem to indicate
that:
- Like in the other RW books, RW is a hero. But it is the first time that
he knows it from the start, and the first time that he tries to escape his
destiny conciously.
- Also, like in many other RW books, RW has to perform a major task: Saving
the world (TLF and S), saving the world as we know it (IT), saving a
continent (TLC). But it's the first time that everyone knows he'll do it
and succeed in doing it right from the start.
- Like in many other RW books, as Miq pointed out, RW is used by a greater
power as a tool (BTW, was there mentioned that RW was in IT not only the
tool of the Lady, but also the tool of Lord Hong, though that went wrong?).
But TLC is the first story where RW knows who's using him.
- It's also the first books where the traps and problems for RW are made
deliberatly by a figure of the book so he can solve them and become a hero
(and not only made by the author?) --> other theory, perhaps that goes too
far: Is Scrappy a parody of the author of the other RW books?
- In earlier RW books, he runs away 'just' to save his live. Now, as Miq
showed, he also runs away to get out of the story
- The cause of the problems is even more ridiculous than in the earlier RW
books. Earlier, it was a stupid tourist with no fear (TCoM), the stupidity
of wizards (TLF, S) or a game of the gods (IT). Now, it is an illness of
the Librarian no one knows where it came from, or perhaps the need of XXXX
to have a hero (really a good reason to make the continent dry for several
thousand years :-) ).
Just a thought and sadly I've no time to find more evidence, but I'm sure
you will (or will not, because ICBW).
Psiogen
Actually, Rincewind realized he was part of a story in IT as well... (digs out
book)
"What he needed now was a cave or a handy--
He paused
'Oh, no,' he said. 'No, no, no. You don't catch me like that. I'll go into a
handy cave and there'll be a little door or some wise old man or something and
I'll be dragged back into events...'" --from IT, p240 Merkin Hardback
Rincewind clearly understands what's going on here in terms of his own
'pawnship'.
Meg, the Magpie
Okay, so on Mon, 25 Jan 1999 23:57:05 -0000, "Carl J Lawley"
<ca...@lawley7.spam.freeserve.co.uk> said :
>
>Meg, the Magpie wrote in message
><36abad31....@news.can.interact.net.au>...
><rending of all spoilerish stuff>
>>You're both missing something. XXXXian culture is based strongly on
>>Australian culture, and part of Australian culture is xxx xxxxxx xxx x
>>xxxx. We're a comparatively young nation (less than 100 years),
>
>Okay, you got me. What _does_ bicentennial mean?
>
>And who are the Aborigines?
>
Australia *as a nation* has only existed since 01 January 1901. That
was when the independent nation of the Commonweatlh of Australia was
created as a federation of the six states and the Northern Territory
(the ACT came along later, when the national capital was built in
Canberra in about 1921). Prior to that point, Australia, per se, did
not exist. Instead, there were the colonies of New South Wales,
Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, and
Queensland, each of which was officially administered by the
government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain. The federation of
the Australian States into a Commonwealth is what created Australia as
a nation.
The "Bicentennial" was the 200th anniversary of the colonisation of
New South Wales, or to be more precise, the area around Sydney in New
South Wales. It shouldn't have been celebrated as a bicentenary of
anything else, despite all the hoohah to the contrary.
The aboriginal nations (yes, there were many of them) *have* been
living in Australia for a long time. However, they are not recognised
as a current political entity (ie a separate national body).
Care to correct me further?
Meg the Magpie (Who *does* know her Australian history,
thankyewverymuch).
PS: If you're pedanting, say so. If you're being sarky, add smileys.
--
Meg the Magpie
email: mag...@megabitch.tm
Ben Thomas
<snip all but the salient point (to me)>
> I see I've got to tell the story: There's a birth and things go wrong. So
> GW is called to help and she sees that there's only the possibility to save
> one life: either that of the mother or that of the child. She's not been
> called to make that choice, but to save someone or even both of them.
> Nethertheless, she chooses to save the mother instead of letting the choice
> to the father (and probably advising him to let the baby die). She does
> that because she knows it would be very, very hard for the father to make
> that decision. As things go, he'll never even know there had been a choice.
> On p.33, GW thiks: 'You made them [the decisions] so that others didn't
> have to, so that others could even pretend to themselves that there _were_
> no decisions to be made [...], that things just _happened_.'
> That's the contrary to your thesis that GW 'generally allows people to make
> their own choices".
>
I agree that GW doesn't really let ppl make choices, she lets them
make the ones they can/should[1]. She was asked to help and thus did
everything she could, i.e. making the decision that only she could make.
This particular choice to me isn't a difficult one, it is impossible,
whoever makes this choice (even if you do) you[2] will hate forever.
This is a theme of CJ, GW dealing with her relationship to those around
her, they respect her but that is all. Being respected alone is a
terrible thing, I can see how tempting the bad would be.
[1] From her POV, OC.
[2] Gross generalization but it is the one of the few things I've ever
felt very strongly about.
P.S. Oh to be able to write a paragraph that didn't need major revision,
someday I'll learn... or find a real excuse.
--
Ben <b...@cottagecomputers.com.au>
Richard Eney
Joerg Ruedenauer <j.rued...@usa.net> wrote:
>Richard wrote:
>>Tamar wrote:
back and forth
spoilers for TLC
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about The time paradox (es)
[Tamar] >>> RW's solution as proposed by Scrappy:
>>>RW has to solve the problem because
>>> RW already has solved the problem.
[Joerg] >So where's the paradox? - AFAIK, a paradox exists when there
> are two contradictory facts (though that isn't a definition).
The paradox is that, at the same time, RW has solved the problem
and yet he hasn't solved the problem. All time travel stories contain this
paradox. Because of the time travel, the solution has already happened,
yet it hasn't from the point of view of the main character.
>>> (This second paradox also can be found
>>> in Eastern philosophy as the situation of a buddha who has to
>>> become one yet as soon as he becomes one, has always been one.)
>>
>I don't understand this. Is this 'one' 'a buddha', so a buddha has to
>become a buddha?
>Or is the 'one' meant as a number, so 1 buddha has to become 1? Or is that
>a special buddhist term that I don't know?
Well, I meant it as 'one' = 'a buddha', meaning a buddha has to become a
buddha. The other possible meaning was a happy accident and I decided to
let it stand, since the immediate topic was paradox.
[Joerg] >... that's why there *isn't* a paradox. A paradox would be
>there if e.g. the arrival of RW changed the events in a way that he
>wouldn't arrive or if RW would solve the problem so that it had never
>existed.
>But the way things are, everything makes perfectly sense: The wizards cause
>the problem, and many years later RW solves it without changing the past
>there. The only bit that could be paradox is that the wizards possibly
>exist twice at one time, but they are in the stone and shouldn't cause
>problems.
RW _did_ change the past. Before he got there, XXXX wasn't totally dry.
The repercussions of his arrival led to major changes in the past of XXXX,
which took a while to reach the present because they were so major, yet
they had always been different. The wizards only arrived there to cause
the problem because RW arrived there.
The thing with paradox is that there's no solution to them.
NB: The wizards existed twice at one time for their whole lives, even if
one of those existences was locked in stone. That's _another_ time
paradox.
=Tamar
Richard Eney
Joerg Ruedenauer <j.rued...@usa.net> wrote:
>Tamar wrote:
>major spoilers for TLC and IT
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>>[Tamar] No doubt she wanted RW somewhere safe. But making a triangle
>>wasn't necessarily the easiest way. Making a triangle _is_ the way to add
>>a dimension to the mathematics - from a line to a plane. So RW lands on a
>>plain. Terry could just as easily had RW land on another desert island.
[Tamar] My point in the above is that Terry, using The Lady, wanted to add
another dimension in a story that uses the Time-Space dimensions very
specifically.
[Joerg] <snip> >I think making a triangle was the easiest way because
>- the Lady did it
>- it was only necessary to put a blob of nectar on a point in/near Hex
>- the Lady would have IMO difficulties to use a complicated way because she
>can only use chance and for a complicated way, the odds would be very much
>against her (and not necessarily a million to one). E.g. there could've
>been a sudden tornado that carries RW out of the way and kills Lord Hong,
>but that would be much more improbable than a butterfly leaving a blob of
>nectar.
[Tamar] The Lady has done more improbable things before. Besides, she
_controls_ the odds.
Though I admit you (Joerg) are right that "At the end of IT, they sit
back, the other gods relax, and Fate concedes that the Lady has won in
Hunghung. So the game is quite definitely over." However, Fate is about
to crow over The Lady's having lost a pawn, and she says that she never
sacrifices a pawn, and sends RW to XXXX. It's a final move in the same
game, at this point she is not so much playing "fall of empires" as "beat
Fate". The game of Fate vs The Lady is on-going and probably never really
ends.
> Also, in TLC, there's no [...] destiny of a nation hanging by a
> thread, because XXXX isn't a nation but a continent
Here I differ.
[Tamar] >>>>The Lady sent him to XXXX to keep him alive
>>>>because she never sacrifices a pawn.)
>Now I think of it.... The Lady had won in Hunghung because Cohen's the
>new emperor. So Mr Saveloy surely was a piece of the Lady. OK, she didn't
>sacrifice RW, but he definitly isn't a pawn. And didn't she sacrifice Mr
>Saveloy?
Mr. Saveloy was killed as a sideeffect of the cannon shot that killed Lord
Hong. His death may have been caused by Fate rather than The Lady.
RW is specifically referred to as a pawn; pawns are often underrated when
they can, in the right position, be very powerful pieces. Pawns that
checkmate a king are still pawns.
[Joerg] >>>cause the illness of the Librarian (what does, BTW?
>>>I don't think a common flu can be healed by a lightning),
[Tamar]
>>change that took speed (which is a combination of distance and time) away
>>from RW so he could land safely had to send some of that somewhere else,
>>and some of it hit the Luggage and sent it into the past in the same
>>continent where RW was sent in the present. I think some more of it hit
>>the Librarian.
>So, some speed, distance or time hit the Librarian. Ergo he get's a sneeze
>that makes him loose his shape? [...]
>And where's the connection between identifying RW and getting ill?
The precise effect could have varied; it was only necessary to make him
sick enough so that the wizards would feel a need to find out his name.
RW is the only one who has worked closely enough with the Librarian to
know his name. Virtually everyone else who was closely involved with UU
faculty in those early days before the Librarian got his current shape is
dead now. RW survived partly by not being there and partly by not being
involved in politics or having a job anyone wanted.
There may have been other ways to get the wizards to find the time tunnel
but using the Librarian was a reasonably efficient one.
The loss of shape introduces the concept of morphogenic fields which have
been seriously proposed as a means of rapid evolution.
T:>>The closer the Librarian gets to the source of the problem, the
>>more control he regains.
J:>That's right at last. But perhaps it's not causal but only a
>coincidence, and he regains control because he's getting better
>because of other things, perhaps his immune system.
T: Generally, on the DW, magical (and thematically related) explanations
are a better bet.
T:>>as a young creature (innocent), he steals the bull-roarer.
J:>What's innocence got to do with it?
T: As an innocent infant, the Librarian can't really be blamed for theft.
So there's no reason to feel that he has to be punished somehow. If an
adult, wizard or otherwise, had deliberately stolen the bullroarer, there
would be an implied necessity for punishment of the act (on the writerly
scale anyway; the book doesn't take place in A-M so the legalized theft
situation doesn't apply).
J:>And why is he cured by the Lightning?
We don't know he was cured by the lightning. That is a speculation RW
makes, IIRC. He may have been cured by the rain which was final solution
of the problem; the lightning was just a special effect.
>>>he doesn't make the wizards search for him
>>
>>The Lady does that by making the Librarian sick.
>But why sould she?
Because she wants the wizards to search for RW. If RW is left on XXXX
with all the results of his rescue from IT, he will die of the Dry. He
still needs to be rescued - sending of him to XXXX at the end of IT is
the beginning of the rescue, not the whole of it. The butterfly on the
boomerang at the end of IT indicates that The Lady has influence there
too.
[Joerg] re the nomadic Creator:
T:>> the Creator is the one who wants XXXX to have heroes; he uses
>>RW at that point because RW has the advantage of an outsider's viewpoint
>
>No, more probable is that the illness is caused by the nomadic Creator.
>This makes sense if you've got the POV that RW's got to save the continent
>so that XXXX has a hero. Then the Creator could make the Librarian ill, so
>the wizards come to XXXX. There, the creator turns him into a baby, so he
>can't be blamed for stealing the bullroarer, that leads to the need of a
>Hero to save the continent, and thus gives RW something to do. And when the
>task is done, the Creator makes a lightning that cures the librarian again.
>Another theory will be in another post of mine.
If the nomadic Creator arranged the whole thing so that the continent has
a hero, why did his Trickster not realize this and ask 'why don't you go
get the thing yerself?" I think the Creator was just using handy
materials (RW); he could have made other XXXXians be the heroes. If he had
planned the whole thing he would not have needed to put up with the
wizards annoying him, he could just have put them all in stone as soon as
the Librarian took the bullroarer out of his pouch. Also, I think
TerryOBE spcified that the Creator didn't miss the bullroarer at first,
which implies that he didn't know it was missing.
=Tamar
Richard Eney
Joerg Ruedenauer <j.rued...@usa.net> wrote:
>Because this has become really big, I'll split the thread now.
>
>Tamar wrote:
>spoiler space for WA and CJ
I've added some more spoiler space for CJ, which is dicussed a bit at the
end of this but not during the WA section.
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[Tamar]
>>>>Granny Weatherwax is vehemently against people losing the choice of
>>>>how to live their lives (allowing for a little meddling by her,
>>>>on the side) - she generally allows people to make their own choice
>>>>even to refusing to give specific advice, unless asked very directly
>>>>for help or unless the larger situation affects her personally.
J: >BTW, in the books, the larger situation almost always affects her
>personally - or at least, she'll see it that way.
[Joerg] >>>she's a witch, and witches always interfere.
[Tamar]
>>It shows up mostly in Granny's relationship with Magrat. In Witches
>>Abroad, Granny consistently doesn't tell Magrat how to use the wand. GW
>>can use it perfectly well it herself, as is shown at the end of WA, but
>>she won't tell Magrat - because Magrat hasn't specifically asked her to.
J:>I was always sure that GW also doesn't know
>how to use the wand until the end. I certainly don't remember a hint that
>she does know. But now I don't seem to remember a hint that she doesn't,
>either. Well, that's a very good reason to reread WA.
T: It's not entirely clear whether GW knows how to use the wand at the
beginning; she may have taken about 30 seconds to figure out how, right at
the end when she twists things a bit and then uses it. But my mai npoint
is that even if she never touched one before then, she didn't try wishing
for something first - GW examined it and twiddled things to see what they
did, then she had worked out how to use it.
J:>But even if GW does know how to use the wand, that's a point for my
>opinion. She doesn't give Magrat the ability to choose whether she wants to
>use the wand and how she wants to use it. GW decides that using the wand
>would be no good. Who knows what Magrat had done if she'd known how to use it?
T: I believe GW is letting Magrat learn by experience that just wishing
isn't going to give her control over the wand. GW's method of training in
witchcraft, at least when dealing with people over the age of 8, is to let
them observe her, and learn by their own experience. She makes the point
at the end that the young princess, despite having been raised without any
training in ruling a city-state, will have to learn how to be a ruler by
herself. The princess might be good at it or bad at it, but the point is
she gets the chance to do it herself, to make her own mistakes, and to
only get advice if she asks for it specifically.
J:>So the only choice GW lets Magrat is the choice of working out how
>to make it work or not using the wand. It's true that Granny doesn't
>give Magrat any advice how to use it, but that's only to prevent her
>using it.
T: GW doesn't prevent Magrat from using the wand. If GW had taught M to
use the wand properly, it would have prevented a lot of uncomfortable
adventures that GW didn't enjoy at all. But the principle, that M was
supposed to make her own mistakes and learn from them, was more important
to GW than her own comfort was. You are partly right in that there is
also another principle GW holds to, and that is the principle that using a
magic wand is 'too easy' and leads to laziness. If you don't know how to
do something magical without a wand, you'll be in deep trouble when the
wand isn't handy.
spoiler space for those who don't really want to read spoilers for CJ
Re: _CJ_
T:>> GW has been asked for help
>in the situation, and she has taken on the responsibility for making those
>>decisions. It isn't meddling if they ask for your help; they made
>>the choice to ask for her help.
By the way, I have just read CJ now.
J: > GW [..] sees that there's only the possibility to save
>one life: either that of the mother or that of the child. She's not been
>called to make that choice, but to save someone or even both of them.
T: If possible. GW's been called in the hope that she could save both;
she does save one. If she had chosen to save the child, the child would
almost certainly have died anyway because its mother would have been dead
(and no nearby wet-nurse was available - Magrat's child didn't have one
available yet), and the child was very badly injured and probably would
have been crippled if it lived. The only realistic way to save even one
was to the save the mother.
J:>Nethertheless, she chooses to save the mother instead of letting the
>choice to the father (and probably advising him to let the baby die).
>She does that because she knows it would be very, very hard for the
>father to make that decision. As things go, he'll never even know there
>had been a choice. On p.33, GW thinks: 'You made them [the decisions] so
>that others didn't have to, so that others could even pretend to
>themselves that there _were_ no decisions to be made [...], that things
>just _happened_.' That's the contrary to your thesis that GW 'generally
>allows people to make their own choices".
I did say "generally". And in this instance, GW has been asked to help,
as a specialist, in a situation that is beyond the usual midwife's
situation.
GW says (about life) 'it's all about choices and making them.' GW as a
witch has the job of making choices and doing things when asked to. She
normally doesn't go around offering help. When you ask someone to make a
choice for you, you give up the choice yourself. In CJ, GW was brought in
by the midwife, who could tell the situation was beyond her; the midwife
already had been given the responsibility for the choice by the parents,
and she passed the choice on to GW.
Terry makes the point in the description that midwives often had this sort
of choice to make for the parents. So he could have had the midwife make
the choice (which in this case would probably have been to ask the husband
to choose between his wife and his son; that decision could easily have
destroyed both parents). Terry brings in GW to make the choice because it
is necessary for a reason that has to do with the larger theme of the
book, which has a lot to do with life vs death, children in general, and
the kind of secrets that are not to be revealed except to those very few
who can deal with them.
From a literary point of view, the situation with two infants (Magrat's
and the farm wife's) parallels part of the Phoenix theme. When there is
need, the Phoenix will lay two eggs. (and when an author must kill off a
sympathetic character as part of a literary theme, often the author will
create two similar characters so that one can 'live' and one can 'die'.)
One of the Phoenix eggs falls into a bad situation and the chick dies from
its natural tendency to burn in the presence of evil. The other survives
but takes a form to hide in; despite the presence of the eagle in the
falconry, it takes the form of a relatively harmless bird, the wowhawk or
worrier. Later the worrier (the name resonates with the way several
characters worry a lot) becomes a warrior.
However, CJ is a very complex book and deserves its own entirely separate
thread. I believe it would be a disservice to discuss it intensely until
more people have had the chance to read it.
=Tamar
in...@fdhoekstra.nl
>
> In article <78uqg9$11i$2...@library.lspace.org>,
> Joerg Ruedenauer <j.rued...@usa.net> wrote:
> >Tamar wrote:
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> J:>And why is he cured by the Lightning?
>
> We don't know he was cured by the lightning. That is a
> speculation RW makes, IIRC. He may have been cured by the
> rain which was final solution of the problem; the lightning
> was just a special effect.
He may just have been cured from natural causes; i.e. the illnes
may just have passed, just in time for the end of TLC. That both
the illness and the adventure it causes just happen to have an
equal duration needn't surprise us on the DW...
Richard
David Brain
> > Spoilers for just Eric now
IIRC the King of Hell (Astfgl?) was trying to tempt Eric, which is why Eric is Faust. RW
just comes into it because by a strange coincidence[1] he is able to go through the portal
opened by Eric instead of the Demon assigned to go there.
(everything else cut)
[1] Oh look, we're back to The Lady again :-)
--
David Brain
London, UK
Jo Depreitere
>
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> IIRC the King of Hell (Astfgl?) was trying to tempt Eric, which is why Eric is Faust. RW
> just comes into it because by a strange coincidence[1] he is able to go through the portal
> opened by Eric instead of the Demon assigned to go there.
>
> [1] Oh look, we're back to The Lady again :-)
No, at first it seemed as if RW was at the right time, the right place. But later on, it
became
clear that one of the Lords of Hell (I forgot his name) used RW as a pawn to overthrow
Astfgl.
So, it's not The Lady this time...
--
mailto:j...@elis.rug.ac.be | http://www.elis.rug.ac.be/~jdp
"The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head."
(Hogfather - T. Pratchett)
in...@fdhoekstra.nl
> >- Also, like in many other RW books, RW has to perform a major task: Saving
> >the world (TLF and S), saving the world as we know it (IT), saving a
> >continent (TLC). But it's the first time that everyone knows he'll do it
> >and succeed in doing it right from the start.
No; he's been told so, he doesn't necessarily believe it.
> >- The cause of the problems is even more ridiculous than in the earlier
> >RW
> >books. Earlier, it was a stupid tourist with no fear (TCoM), the stupidity
> >of wizards (TLF, S) or a game of the gods (IT). Now, it is an illness of
> >the Librarian no one knows where it came from, or perhaps the need of XXXX
> >to have a hero (really a good reason to make the continent dry for several
> >thousand years :-) ).
Hm, no more ridiculous than a silly turf-sized creature losing
a ring, methinks.
> Actually, Rincewind realized he was part of a story in IT as well... (digs out
> book)
>
> "What he needed now was a cave or a handy-- He paused 'Oh, no,'
> he said. 'No, no, no. You don't catch me like that. I'll go
> into a handy cave and there'll be a little door or some wise
> old man or something and I'll be dragged back into events...'"
> --from IT, p240 Merkin Hardback
>
> Rincewind clearly understands what's going on here in terms
> of his own 'pawnship'.
Yes; but this doesn't necessarily mean he knows he's in a
story. Just that there is someone controlling his fate who
is more powerful, more capricious and more bitchy than him.
He's known this, I think, all along, and I doubt that in IT
he's put a name to that someone. He just has the experience
that such things tend to happen to him.
Richard
Joerg Ruedenauer
>In article <78uqg7$11i$1...@library.lspace.org>,
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>> are two contradictory facts (though that isn't a definition).
>
>The paradox is that, at the same time, RW has solved the problem
>and yet he hasn't solved the problem. All time travel stories contain this
>paradox. Because of the time travel, the solution has already happened,
>yet it hasn't from the point of view of the main character.
>
the time from the POV of RW, where RW hasn't solved the problem, and the
time from the POV of Scrappy and the reader, where RW has already solved
it. A paradox would be created if Scrappy would prevent RW from solving the
problem.
>[Joerg] >... that's why there *isn't* a paradox. A paradox would be
>>there if e.g. the arrival of RW changed the events in a way that he
>>wouldn't arrive or if RW would solve the problem so that it had never
>>existed.
>>But the way things are, everything makes perfectly sense: The wizards
cause
>>the problem, and many years later RW solves it without changing the past
>>there. The only bit that could be paradox is that the wizards possibly
>>exist twice at one time, but they are in the stone and shouldn't cause
>>problems.
>
>RW _did_ change the past. Before he got there, XXXX wasn't totally dry.
>The repercussions of his arrival led to major changes in the past of XXXX,
>which took a while to reach the present because they were so major, yet
>they had always been different. The wizards only arrived there to cause
>the problem because RW arrived there.
>
I said, RW didn't change the past *there*, i.e. he didn't change the past
by stopping the dry. His former changing the past by coming to XXXX didn't
create a paradox because it didn't prevent him from coming there and
changing the past. Mostly, these time paradoxes are endless loops like "He
went there, that changed the past, so he didn't go were, so the past wasn't
changed, so he went there,...". In TLC, there's only one loop with a clear
enter and exit.
>The thing with paradox is that there's no solution to them.
>
Yep, but here we don't have a paradox.
>NB: The wizards existed twice at one time for their whole lives, even if
>one of those existences was locked in stone. That's _another_ time
>paradox.
Yes, they existed twice until they went through the time - tunnel. But that
doesn't create a paradox because they don't interfere with themselves, one
incarnation being locked in the stone. What's the problem with existing
twice?
BTW, in P, there's nearly a paradox when the Ptaclusps encounter themselves
in another time loop. They start entering the loop only just in time, IIRC.
Joerg Ruedenauer
>>- the Lady did it
>>- it was only necessary to put a blob of nectar on a point in/near Hex
>>- the Lady would have IMO difficulties to use a complicated way because
she
>>can only use chance and for a complicated way, the odds would be very
much
>>against her (and not necessarily a million to one). E.g. there could've
>>been a sudden tornado that carries RW out of the way and kills Lord Hong,
>>but that would be much more improbable than a butterfly leaving a blob of
>>nectar.
>
>[Tamar] The Lady has done more improbable things before. Besides, she
>_controls_ the odds.
>
the more probable way, and I think that's the main reason why she sent RW
to XXXX.
<snip>
>The game of Fate vs The Lady is on-going and probably never really
>ends.
>
Well, probably. But still that's no reason to assume that the Lady causes
the illness of the Librarian, thus the dry etc. You could also think Fate
created it to let Rincewind not get away and die of thirst.
>[Tamar] >>>>The Lady sent him to XXXX to keep him alive
>>>>>because she never sacrifices a pawn.)
>
>>Now I think of it.... The Lady had won in Hunghung because Cohen's the
>>new emperor. So Mr Saveloy surely was a piece of the Lady. OK, she didn't
>>sacrifice RW, but he definitly isn't a pawn. And didn't she sacrifice Mr
>>Saveloy?
>
>Mr. Saveloy was killed as a sideeffect of the cannon shot that killed Lord
>Hong. His death may have been caused by Fate rather than The Lady.
Ah, that'd be a very fast reaction from Fate. The Lady has planned so
carefully throughout the book, why shouldn't she have anticipated that
reaction? Besides, I think the cannon already pointed in the direction of
Mr Saveloy, so there wasn't anything to do for Fate. IMO it's quite clear
that The Lady accepted the death of Mr Saveloy caused by her cannon shot.
So she quite clearly sacrificed him.
I don't know why she's telling the lie that she would never sacrifice a
pawn; probably to confuse Fate - he's the one who always does that.
Or did you mean that Fate let the cannon shoot? - No, can't believe you
did.
>RW is specifically referred to as a pawn; pawns are often underrated when
>they can, in the right position, be very powerful pieces. Pawns that
>checkmate a king are still pawns.
>
But Rincewind isn't a pawn. Fate calls him the Lady's "most valuable
piece", and I, too, am quite sure that he's got some special qualities that
make him very usable for the purposes of the Lady. I don't think she could
do all that with any other person; they would probably do the wrong thing
sooner or later and get killed (e.g.). But it's one of the most important
attributes of a pawn that he's replaceable, that there are many of his
kind.
<snip how the illness of the L. leads to the problems>
>T:>>The closer the Librarian gets to the source of the problem, the
>>>more control he regains.
>J:>That's right at last. But perhaps it's not causal but only a
>>coincidence, and he regains control because he's getting better
>>because of other things, perhaps his immune system.
>
>T: Generally, on the DW, magical (and thematically related) explanations
>are a better bet.
>
But not in the Rincewind books :-).
Well, I don't know why he's getting better. That's my problem here. I think
we can agree that he's ill because that's needed to cause the dry; but we
can only guess who / what is causing it. Why should the Lady have an
interest in creating a hero for XXXX?
>>>The Lady does that by making the Librarian sick.
>>But why sould she?
>
>Because she wants the wizards to search for RW. If RW is left on XXXX
>with all the results of his rescue from IT, he will die of the Dry.
:-). After your theory, the Dry is caused by the Lady. So she causes the
Dry to rescue RW from the Dry?
Well, we could speculate that things would be going really bad for RW if
there hadn't been a Dry, but we can't know anything about that possibility.
>He still needs to be rescued - sending of him to XXXX at the end of IT is
>the beginning of the rescue, not the whole of it. The butterfly on the
>boomerang at the end of IT indicates that The Lady has influence there
>too.
>
Well, as a major goddess, she's got influence on the whole disc. And she
likes RW.
What's bothering me is that she isn't mentioned anywhere in TLC. And so you
can't find a hint that she's involved in that story.
<snip my theory about the nomadic Creator causing the Dry on purpose>
>If the nomadic Creator arranged the whole thing so that the continent has
>a hero, why did his Trickster not realize this and ask 'why don't you go
>get the thing yerself?" I think the Creator was just using handy
>materials (RW); he could have made other XXXXians be the heroes. If he had
>planned the whole thing he would not have needed to put up with the
>wizards annoying him, he could just have put them all in stone as soon as
>the Librarian took the bullroarer out of his pouch. Also, I think
>TerryOBE spcified that the Creator didn't miss the bullroarer at first,
>which implies that he didn't know it was missing.
>
Damn. It was a good theory, I thought. Making sense, explaining the facts
etc....
But you're right, it doesn't look like that in the part where the Creator
makes the continent.
So I think there's no character in TLC left with the power to create all
the problems.
So we can all have our own theory: Perhaps it was Fate, perhaps it was the
Lady, perhaps it was some other god, perhaps it was nobody, but it just
happened, perhaps it was Terry because he was searching a reason for the
story.
Joerg Ruedenauer
>In article <78uqgc$11i$3...@library.lspace.org>,
>Joerg Ruedenauer <j.rued...@usa.net> wrote:
>>Tamar wrote:
>>spoiler space for WA and CJ
>>>It shows up mostly in Granny's relationship with Magrat. In Witches
>>>Abroad, Granny consistently doesn't tell Magrat how to use the wand. GW
>>>can use it perfectly well it herself, as is shown at the end of WA, but
>>>she won't tell Magrat - because Magrat hasn't specifically asked her to.
>
>
>J:>But even if GW does know how to use the wand, that's a point for my
>>opinion. She doesn't give Magrat the ability to choose whether she wants
to
>>use the wand and how she wants to use it. GW decides that using the wand
>>would be no good. Who knows what Magrat had done if she'd known how to
use it?
>
>T: I believe GW is letting Magrat learn by experience that just wishing
>isn't going to give her control over the wand. GW's method of training in
>witchcraft, at least when dealing with people over the age of 8, is to let
>them observe her, and learn by their own experience.
since I read it, and besides, she could've learned from the faults she made
there.
But I believe that you're generally right. There's a bit at the end of M!M,
where she says something like 'I won't teach you, but maybe you'll learn
something'. That's nearly what you're saying.
But still, she generally makes the choices for other people. If you want to
talk about teaching, she let's the others see what choices she makes (e.g.
not using the wand), so that they learn what the right choices are. She
doesn't let Magrat do major harm with the wand, there's only some
inconvenience at the waterfall (s.b.).
<snip>
>J:>So the only choice GW lets Magrat is the choice of working out how
>>to make it work or not using the wand. It's true that Granny doesn't
>>give Magrat any advice how to use it, but that's only to prevent her
>>using it.
>
>T: GW doesn't prevent Magrat from using the wand. If GW had taught M to
>use the wand properly, it would have prevented a lot of uncomfortable
>adventures that GW didn't enjoy at all.
GW does prevent M to use the wand for other things then turning something
into a pumpkin. I think if M knew how to use it properly, she would
probably have become very excited, feeling herself as the great fairy
godmother and would have run around giving people what they wanted. GW knew
that and didn't let her. Only at the end, when she saw that M had come to
her senses and had taken GW's opinion about fairy godmothering and wands,
she shows her how it works. And she's right again, because M throws the
wand away (despite knowing how to use it), what she would never have done
at the start of the book.
And she didn't have the experience of how much harm she could do with the
wand.
> But the principle, that M was supposed to make her own mistakes and learn
from
> them, was more important to GW than her own comfort was.
But Magrat didn't make the big mistake with the wand, that would be giving
the people what they want. She's only unlucky with the boat, and at the
time, she'd probably seen it like that: If she'd known how to use the wand
properly, the accident would never have happened.
If Magrat learned from someones mistakes, then from the mistakes of Lilith.
> You are partly right in that there is also another principle GW holds to,
and that is the > principle that using a magic wand is 'too easy' and leads
to laziness. If you don't
> know how to do something magical without a wand, you'll be in deep
trouble when the
>wand isn't handy.
>
IIRC, it's in the dwarf mine where she says that wands wouldn't be proper
witching and it looked wizardly to her. Perhaps her animosity comes from
ER...
>
>spoiler space for those who don't really want to read spoilers for CJ
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>Re: _CJ_
>T:>> GW has been asked for help
>>in the situation, and she has taken on the responsibility for making
those
>>>decisions. It isn't meddling if they ask for your help; they made
>>>the choice to ask for her help.
>
>J: > GW [..] sees that there's only the possibility to save
>>one life: either that of the mother or that of the child. She's not been
>>called to make that choice, but to save someone or even both of them.
>
>T: If possible. GW's been called in the hope that she could save both;
>she does save one. If she had chosen to save the child, the child would
>almost certainly have died anyway because its mother would have been dead
>(and no nearby wet-nurse was available - Magrat's child didn't have one
>available yet), and the child was very badly injured and probably would
have been >crippled if it lived. The only realistic way to save even one
was to the save the mother.
I don't have the book here, but IIRC there's Death again and it is made
clear that one of them will live and one of them will die. The story is
pretty senseless if it's only a choice between saving the mother and saving
noone, because it is there to show how hard the decision are that GW must /
wants to take
>
>J:>On p.33, GW thinks: 'You made them [the decisions] so
>>that others didn't have to, so that others could even pretend to
>>themselves that there _were_ no decisions to be made [...], that things
>>just _happened_.' That's the contrary to your thesis that GW 'generally
>>allows people to make their own choices".
>
>I did say "generally". And in this instance, GW has been asked to help,
>as a specialist, in a situation that is beyond the usual midwife's
>situation.
>
>GW says (about life) 'it's all about choices and making them.' GW as a
>witch has the job of making choices and doing things when asked to. She
>normally doesn't go around offering help. When you ask someone to make a
>choice for you, you give up the choice yourself. In CJ, GW was brought in
>by the midwife, who could tell the situation was beyond her; the midwife
>already had been given the responsibility for the choice by the parents,
>and she passed the choice on to GW.
>
No, I don't see it like that. I think the parents don't know there's a
choice, so they can't pass it to the midwife. The midwife wanted to give
the choice to the father, but GW prevented that. So the midwife was forced
to pass the choice to GW.
Granny takes the choice away from the father without him asking her to do
it. But I don't call that wrong; it 'feels' morally wrong, but is right if
you're not a pure idealist.
<snip excellent and very interesting part about the phoenix, but you're
right, it deserves another thread>
But I see that we're getting nearer to a common opinion. We both know that
in some situations GW let's other people make their own decisions, and in
other situations, she makes the choices for them. The difference is that
you think it's generally the first and I think it's generally the second.
Unfortunately, we haven't got her Book of Life and can't count through. And
there's also the possibility that it is changing throughout the books.
I'd say she let's other people make the choices if she thinks they are
capable of making them and will make the right ones. And I think that she
judges most people as not capable. Even if you're right about Magrat, she's
a witch and should be able to make the (right) choices.
Miq
>Tamar wrote:
>>In article <78uqg9$11i$2...@library.lspace.org>,
>>Joerg Ruedenauer <j.rued...@usa.net> wrote:
>>>Tamar wrote:
>>>major spoilers for TLC and IT
o
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[Tamar]
>>The game of Fate vs The Lady is on-going and probably never really
>>ends.
Ummm - I don't see how that conclusion is warranted. We saw them
meeting in IT, but Fate had been playing someone else just
beforehand. Ergo, there are times when they aren't playing one
another.
[Joerg]
>Well, probably. But still that's no reason to assume that the Lady causes
>the illness of the Librarian, thus the dry etc. You could also think Fate
>created it to let Rincewind not get away and die of thirst.
I don't see any reason to believe that either of them had anything
to do with it.
IMHO, the Lady transported Rincewind to XXXX simply to keep him
alive. Everything that follows from that is a byproduct, which
she'll follow through because it's her business, but I don't think
she planned it from the start.
[Joerg]
>>>Now I think of it.... The Lady had won in Hunghung because Cohen's the
>>>new emperor. So Mr Saveloy surely was a piece of the Lady. OK, she didn't
Again, why? Mr Saveloy was not particularly fortunate. He left a
(relatively) safe job and went out in search of adventure. That's
the very opposite of the approach that The Lady favours. And
having found adventure, he died at virtually the first
opportunity. That's not what happens to Her pawns.
>I don't know why she's telling the lie that she would never sacrifice a
>pawn; probably to confuse Fate - he's the one who always does that.
>Or did you mean that Fate let the cannon shoot? - No, can't believe you
>did.
Her statement "I never sacrifice a pawn" comes just minutes after
Mr S's death. And more gods than just Fate are present, and none
of them points out Mr S as a counterexample. Ergo, he wasn't her
piece.
[Tamar]
>>RW is specifically referred to as a pawn; pawns are often underrated when
>>they can, in the right position, be very powerful pieces. Pawns that
>>checkmate a king are still pawns.
>
[Joerg]
>But Rincewind isn't a pawn. Fate calls him the Lady's "most valuable
>piece", and I, too, am quite sure that he's got some special qualities that
>make him very usable for the purposes of the Lady. I don't think she could
>do all that with any other person; they would probably do the wrong thing
>sooner or later and get killed (e.g.). But it's one of the most important
>attributes of a pawn that he's replaceable, that there are many of his
>kind.
No, it's one of the most important attributes of a pawn that it's
*not* replaceable. In the general case, it's *impossible* to get
a second pawn onto a square from which one has just been taken.
And a pawn that's near the end of the board is an extremely
powerful piece - as a rule, an opponent will take any steps
necessary to stop it.
[Joerg] - talking of the Librarian:
>Well, I don't know why he's getting better. That's my problem here.
Good grief, folks: we've had a detailed description of the weather
in Ankh-Morpork and the conditions in UU. Do we really need to
*explain* the fact that the Librarian has a particularly stinking
cold?
Then he spends several days in the fresh open air, with sunshine
and as many fresh bananananas as he can eat. Is it really so
surprising he recovers?
[Tamar]
<the nomadic Creator causing the Dry on purpose?>
>>If the nomadic Creator arranged the whole thing so that the continent has
>>a hero, why did his Trickster not realize this and ask 'why don't you go
>>get the thing yerself?"
The Trickster, whatever he is, is only the Creator's sidekick.
Like Watson to his Holmes. You wouldn't expect him to be
completely au fait with the Creator's designs.
So far, we have:
1. The Lady sends RW to XXXX to save him from the incompetence of
the other wizards.
2. As an indirect result of (1), the wizards stumble through a
time tunnel and create the Dry.
3. The Creator employs RW to remove the Dry, in the process
creating a hero.
>I think the Creator was just using handy
>>materials (RW); he could have made other XXXXians be the heroes. If he had
>>planned the whole thing he would not have needed to put up with the
>>wizards annoying him, he could just have put them all in stone as soon as
>>the Librarian took the bullroarer out of his pouch.
But the Creator is more subtle than that. He plays by the rules;
he forces RW to be a hero because the continent needs heroes, but
he *could* have simply retrieved the bullroarer himself and set
RW, or anyone else for that matter, up to take the credit.
>So I think there's no character in TLC left with the power to create all
>the problems.
>
>So we can all have our own theory: Perhaps it was Fate, perhaps it was the
>Lady, perhaps it was some other god, perhaps it was nobody, but it just
>happened, perhaps it was Terry because he was searching a reason for the
>story.
My vote still goes to 'the Story'.
--
Miq, still blissfully afbpetrothed to the beautiful MEG,
brilliant Supermouse and bashful Heaven
- old .sig takes another bow
in...@fdhoekstra.nl
> >>>Now I think of it.... The Lady had won in Hunghung because Cohen's the
> >>>new emperor. So Mr Saveloy surely was a piece of the Lady. OK, she didn't
>
> Again, why? Mr Saveloy was not particularly fortunate. He left a
> (relatively) safe job and went out in search of adventure. That's
> the very opposite of the approach that The Lady favours. And
> having found adventure, he died at virtually the first
> opportunity. That's not what happens to Her pawns.
[Richard]
Neither does everybody who agrees with RW have to be on his
side; they may happen to be facing the same way. Mr. Saveloy
is a member of Cohen's horde; and Cohen has several times
threatened to do damage to RW. That he hasn't is not because
he is also the Lady's piece, but because it has never been
necessary (from Cohen's POV). Saveloy just happens, temporarily,
to be on RW's side in that battle; but he's not the Lady's.
Remember, the Gods aren't playing something simple like chess;
it's probably rather more like Diplomacy, with alliances and
treacherousness running rampant.
> [Tamar]
> >>RW is specifically referred to as a pawn; pawns are often underrated when
> >>they can, in the right position, be very powerful pieces. Pawns that
> >>checkmate a king are still pawns.
> >
> [Joerg]
> >But Rincewind isn't a pawn. Fate calls him the Lady's "most valuable
> >piece", and I, too, am quite sure that he's got some special qualities that
> >make him very usable for the purposes of the Lady. I don't think she could
> >do all that with any other person; they would probably do the wrong thing
> >sooner or later and get killed (e.g.). But it's one of the most important
> >attributes of a pawn that he's replaceable, that there are many of his
> >kind.
>
> [Miq]
> No, it's one of the most important attributes of a pawn that it's
> *not* replaceable. In the general case, it's *impossible* to get
> a second pawn onto a square from which one has just been taken.
>
> And a pawn that's near the end of the board is an extremely
> powerful piece - as a rule, an opponent will take any steps
> necessary to stop it.
[Richard]
But only then. During most of the game, you've got several pawns
(7a in chess, but this isn't), and they cover each other, so that
when one is taken, often another _can_ take it's place. It's only
during the endgame that every pawn counts.
I doubt that RW would be so easily replaced (or even covered - he
runs too fast :->); I think the Lady would have serious trouble
finding another piece with quite the same characteristics as RW.
Then again, with her luck... <fx:covers mouth: Oh bugger, what did I
say now? Right, I'm off to break a few mirrors.>
And there are quite a lot of situations where the Lady helps RW
even during earlier stages of the game. He does seem to be more
valuable than average. Then again, maybe she just meant "I don't
even sacrifice a pawn, so why would I sacrifice this big piece?"
> [Joerg] - talking of the Librarian:
> >Well, I don't know why he's getting better. That's my problem here.
>
> [Miq]
> Good grief, folks: we've had a detailed description of the weather
> in Ankh-Morpork and the conditions in UU. Do we really need to
> *explain* the fact that the Librarian has a particularly stinking
> cold?
>
> Then he spends several days in the fresh open air, with sunshine
> and as many fresh bananananas as he can eat. Is it really so
> surprising he recovers?
[Richard]
No, but it's apparently surprising that this happens at the
same time as the end of RW's adventure. I blame synchronicity,
myself; and on the DW, synchronicity is not surprising.
[Miq]
> So far, we have:
> 1. The Lady sends RW to XXXX to save him from the incompetence of
> the other wizards.
[Richard]
1,5. The Lady, to get RW off XXXX, gives the Librarian a cold,
foreseeing (2).
(Since he is just a tool and not one of her pawns, she doesn't
need to heal him; he recovers from natural causes, I'd say.)
> 2. As an indirect result of (1)
and (2)
> , the wizards stumble through a time tunnel and create the Dry.
> 3. The Creator employs RW to remove the Dry, in the process
> creating a hero.
[Joerg]
> >So I think there's no character in TLC left with the power to create all
> >the problems.
> >
> >So we can all have our own theory: Perhaps it was Fate, perhaps it was the
> >Lady, perhaps it was some other god, perhaps it was nobody, but it just
> >happened, perhaps it was Terry because he was searching a reason for the
> >story.
>
> [Miq]
> My vote still goes to 'the Story'.
[Richard]
So does mine, from outside the book; reasoning within the
story, I don't think there has to be one adversary; all
the story needs is several starters for the several threads.
These don't _have_ to be the same, and in TLC, they aren't.
After all, when, in RL, has an important bit of history
(say, the War of the Roses) had one starting point? tWotR,
too, had a complete convolution of family feuding. Why
shouldn't a DW story? To someone within TLC, it would just
appear lucky that RW arrived to be the XXXXian hero.
Could've been anyone; but it was him.
Richard
Dan
exist in this >space then any thing could have happened. Can a paradox only
exist in a single >timeline but if past/future events are changed by some
external variable then a new >timeline is created.
>Or is it that all future events cease to exist at the moment RW and Others
went >back in time. Remember the future is only present within the memories of
RW and >the others.
Dan
Joerg Ruedenauer wrote:
> Tamar wrote:
> >In article <78uqg7$11i$1...@library.lspace.org>,
> >Joerg Ruedenauer <j.rued...@usa.net> wrote:
> >>Richard wrote:
> >>>Tamar wrote:
> >back and forth
> >
> >
> >
> > spoilers for TLC
> >1
> >2
> >3
> >4
> >5
> >6
> >7
> >8
> >9
> >0
> >1
> >2
> >3
> >4
> >5
> >6
> >7
> >8
> >9
> >0
> >
Dan
Dan
Psiogen
>the
>> >>>new emperor. So Mr Saveloy surely was a piece of the Lady. OK, she
>didn't
>>
>> [Miq]
>> Again, why? Mr Saveloy was not particularly fortunate. He left a
>> (relatively) safe job and went out in search of adventure. That's
>> the very opposite of the approach that The Lady favours. And
>> having found adventure, he died at virtually the first
>> opportunity. That's not what happens to Her pawns.
>
>[Richard]
>Neither does everybody who agrees with RW have to be on his
>side; they may happen to be facing the same way. Mr. Saveloy
>is a member of Cohen's horde; and Cohen has several times
>threatened to do damage to RW. That he hasn't is not because
>he is also the Lady's piece, but because it has never been
>necessary (from Cohen's POV). Saveloy just happens, temporarily,
>to be on RW's side in that battle; but he's not the Lady's.
>Remember, the Gods aren't playing something simple like chess;
>it's probably rather more like Diplomacy, with alliances and
>treacherousness running rampant.
Surely, Saveloy and the Silver Horde are all the Lady's pawns?* Take, for
instance, the diversion created by Mr. Saveloy, which had the perfect timing
for Rincewind. It seems obvious that this was engineered by the Lady.
Sylvan
*<Pre-emptive Pun Defense>I'll break your legs if you say 'Don't call me
Shirley'</Pre-emptive Pun Defense>
Joerg Ruedenauer
That's only what she's saying. And he died after the Lady had won, and
wasn't necessary for her any more.
>
>[Richard]
>Neither does everybody who agrees with RW have to be on his
>side; they may happen to be facing the same way. Mr. Saveloy
>is a member of Cohen's horde; and Cohen has several times
>threatened to do damage to RW. That he hasn't is not because
>he is also the Lady's piece, but because it has never been
>necessary (from Cohen's POV). Saveloy just happens, temporarily,
>to be on RW's side in that battle; but he's not the Lady's.
>Remember, the Gods aren't playing something simple like chess;
>it's probably rather more like Diplomacy, with alliances and
>treacherousness running rampant.
>
[Joerg]
The way I see it, the aim of the game is to gain control over the Empire.
That means, the player whose pieces have control over the Empire, in this
particular situation, whose piece becomes emperor, wins. We know that Cohen
becomes Emperor and we know that the Lady wins the game. If she'd won the
game only because Lord Hong hasn't become emperor, the game wouldn't be
fair: it's much easier to prevent someone from getting on the throne than
to get a specific person to become emperor.
So, logic tells us that Cohen was the piece of the Lady. And Mr Saveloy
plays a major part in Cohen's winning, so it's very probable that he's a
piece of the Lady, too.
I don't think that the Lady must like all her pieces or that all pieces of
the Lady must be lucky. She would be a much worse player if that was so,
because she would loose many possibilities.
>> [Tamar]
>> >>RW is specifically referred to as a pawn; pawns are often underrated
when
>> >>they can, in the right position, be very powerful pieces. Pawns that
>> >>checkmate a king are still pawns.
>> >
>> [Joerg]
>> < about Rincewind not being a pawn, because he's special >
>>
>> [Miq]
>> No, it's one of the most important attributes of a pawn that it's
>> *not* replaceable. In the general case, it's *impossible* to get
>> a second pawn onto a square from which one has just been taken.
>>
>> And a pawn that's near the end of the board is an extremely
>> powerful piece - as a rule, an opponent will take any steps
>> necessary to stop it.
>
>[Richard]
>But only then. During most of the game, you've got several pawns
>(7a in chess, but this isn't), and they cover each other, so that
>when one is taken, often another _can_ take it's place. It's only
>during the endgame that every pawn counts.
[Joerg]
Besides, when you're starting a game of chess, you've got only one Queen
and one King and you know their places. But you've got 7a pawns, and you
can interchange them as you like.
I was not only referring to pawns like in chess, but also to pawns in the
general saying (though that comes from chess). There, it is important that
the pawn isn't a very valuable piece, and that you can use any pawn, not a
specific. You can say 'I never sacrifice the queen', but 'I never sacrifice
the pawn' isn't very good.
[Richard]
>I doubt that RW would be so easily replaced (or even covered - he
>runs too fast :->); I think the Lady would have serious trouble
>finding another piece with quite the same characteristics as RW.
>Then again, with her luck... <fx:covers mouth: Oh bugger, what did I
>say now? Right, I'm off to break a few mirrors.>
>And there are quite a lot of situations where the Lady helps RW
>even during earlier stages of the game. He does seem to be more
>valuable than average. Then again, maybe she just meant "I don't
>even sacrifice a pawn, so why would I sacrifice this big piece?"
>
That's probably what she meant, yes. But it's still not true.
[Miq]
>>Her statement "I never sacrifice a pawn" comes just minutes after
>>Mr S's death. And more gods than just Fate are present, and none
>>of them points out Mr S as a counterexample. Ergo, he wasn't her
>>piece.
[Joerg]
I don't think that's a good 'ergo'. Perhaps the gods themselves haven't
spotted it (several of them aren't too bright), perhaps they don't want to
break the atmosphere, perhaps they were too eager to see what happens,
perhaps they are afraid of the Lady,...
>> [Joerg] - talking of the Librarian:
>> >Well, I don't know why he's getting better. That's my problem here.
>>
>> [Miq]
>> Good grief, folks: we've had a detailed description of the weather
>> in Ankh-Morpork and the conditions in UU. Do we really need to
>> *explain* the fact that the Librarian has a particularly stinking
>> cold?
>>
>> Then he spends several days in the fresh open air, with sunshine
>> and as many fresh bananananas as he can eat. Is it really so
>> surprising he recovers?
>
Oh, how literal. Why don't you let us have our fun searching a reason :-) ?
Still, you're probably right. I was a bit fooled by the coincidence of the
lightning and the healing.
>[Miq]
>> So far, we have:
>> 1. The Lady sends RW to XXXX to save him from the incompetence of
>> the other wizards.
>
Not to save him from the other wizards but to save him from immediate death
by too fast (negative) acceleration. Or did you mean that?
>[Richard]
>1,5. The Lady, to get RW off XXXX, gives the Librarian a cold,
>foreseeing (2).
Ah, that's what we're discussing here. Why should the Lady get RW from
XXXX, if not because of the Dry - that was caused by the cold of the
Librarian.
>> 2. As an indirect result of (1)
>
>and (2)
at least and the cold, but we don't know what caused that.
>
>> , the wizards stumble through a time tunnel and create the Dry.
>> 3. The Creator employs RW to remove the Dry, in the process
>> creating a hero.
>
>[Joerg]
>> >So I think there's no character in TLC left with the power to create
all
>> >the problems.
>> >
>> >So we can all have our own theory: Perhaps it was Fate, perhaps it was
the
>> >Lady, perhaps it was some other god, perhaps it was nobody, but it just
>> >happened, perhaps it was Terry because he was searching a reason for
the
>> >story.
>>
>> [Miq]
>> My vote still goes to 'the Story'.
>
Do you mean 'the Story needed the cold, so Terry inserted the cold' or do
you mean 'the Story (like stories described in WA) needed the cold, so it
created the cold'. The last one would lead to the interesting question if
stories can create their own beginning.
Cross - reference to another thread: that could lead to a paradox
Jonathan Ellis
<SNIP>
>You can say 'I never sacrifice the queen', but 'I never sacrifice
>the pawn' isn't very good.
<SNIP>
Losing a piece in chess isn't always a sacrifice. Often there's a fair
exchange (say, one pawn for another) - or an unfair one (if you catch the
opponent's queen and lose only a bishop in exchange, then it's a very unfair
exchange, but an exchange rather than a sacrifice nevertheless... and of
course it is very unlikely that one will ever win a game of chess without
having lost any pieces or pawns at all.) Mr Saveloy for Lord Hong - now
*there's* an unfair exchange for you. Obviously the Lady couldn't keep *all*
her pieces over the course of the whole game, but Mr Saveloy was less
important [1] to her than Rincewind, Twoflower or Cohen. If indeed he was
one of her pieces at all.
[1] Though, unlike Fate, *all* her pieces are important to her - but see
above.
Jonathan.
Miq
Major spoilers still for TLC and IT
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[Mr Saveloy as the Lady's pawn?]
>>> [Miq]
>>> Again, why? Mr Saveloy was not particularly fortunate. He left a
>>> (relatively) safe job and went out in search of adventure. That's
>>> the very opposite of the approach that The Lady favours. And
>>> having found adventure, he died at virtually the first
>>> opportunity. That's not what happens to Her pawns.
[Joerg]
>That's only what she's saying. And he died after the Lady had won, and
>wasn't necessary for her any more.
[Miq]
But none of the assembled gods contradicted her. Why not, if she's
blatantly lying?
>[Joerg]
>The way I see it, the aim of the game is to gain control over the Empire.
I don't think so. Note what Fate says at the end of the game:
"A draw," he announced. "Oh, yes. You have appeared to win in
Hunghung _but_ you have sacrificed your most valuable piece, is
that not so?"
From this, I infer (a) that Cohen is *not* her piece, because he'd
surely be more valuable than Rincewind, and (b) that the control of
Hunghung, though it might be narrowly defined as the aim of the
game, is not what they are actually playing for. After all, what
would either of them actually *do* with it?
The aim of the game is simply to beat the other player. When the
game is over, another pair of gods can play a completely different
game in the Empire. That's why they call it a game - neither of
them really *cares* what happens to the Empire, it's just an
amusement for them.
So I can't accept the rest of your argument, based on that premise.
I still don't believe that either Cohen or Saveloy are her pieces.
Maybe they're no-one's pieces.
>[Joerg]
>Besides, when you're starting a game of chess, you've got only one Queen
>and one King and you know their places. But you've got 7a pawns, and you
>can interchange them as you like.
>I was not only referring to pawns like in chess, but also to pawns in the
>general saying (though that comes from chess). There, it is important that
>the pawn isn't a very valuable piece, and that you can use any pawn, not a
>specific. You can say 'I never sacrifice the queen', but 'I never sacrifice
>the pawn' isn't very good.
[Miq]
But 'never sacrifice the queen' isn't a principle - it's a rule of
thumb for inexperienced players. Good players know that no piece
is sacred, and sacrificing the queen may be just as good a strategy
as sacrificing anything else, but inexperienced players will be too
terrified of making a mistake to try this (potentially dangerous)
approach.
But 'never sacrificing a pawn' - that's a principle that makes the
game more interesting, because it means your play is significantly
different from most others.
>>[Miq]
>>> So far, we have:
>>> 1. The Lady sends RW to XXXX to save him from the incompetence of
>>> the other wizards.
>>
>Not to save him from the other wizards but to save him from immediate death
>by too fast (negative) acceleration. Or did you mean that?
>
>>[Richard]
>>1,5. The Lady, to get RW off XXXX, gives the Librarian a cold,
>>foreseeing (2).
[Joerg]
>Ah, that's what we're discussing here. Why should the Lady get RW from
>XXXX, if not because of the Dry - that was caused by the cold of the
>Librarian.
[Miq]
Yep - I don't buy this step either. The 1, 2, 3 I put in were what
I thought was common ground - things we all agree on - no?
>>> 2. As an indirect result of (1)
>>
>>and (2)
>at least and the cold, but we don't know what caused that.
>>
>>> , the wizards stumble through a time tunnel and create the Dry.
>>> 3. The Creator employs RW to remove the Dry, in the process
>>> creating a hero.
[Joerg]
>Do you mean 'the Story needed the cold, so Terry inserted the cold' or do
>you mean 'the Story (like stories described in WA) needed the cold, so it
>created the cold'. The last one would lead to the interesting question if
>stories can create their own beginning.
[Miq]
I don't really see the difference between these two options. Terry
used the cold as a plot device to trigger the wizards' adventure.
Without the cold, there would be no book. So you could say that
the cold was triggered by Terry's wish to write the book, and hence
by the book itself... but that's starting to get a little too self-
referential even for me...
>Cross - reference to another thread: that could lead to a paradox
Paradoxes - just say "aaaaaarrrghnononononono!!!!"
--
Miq
"Whenever I sit down to my solitary meal of an evening, I am put in mind
of the many obscure Irish peers who are sitting down to theirs."
Psiogen
>
> "A draw," he announced. "Oh, yes. You have appeared to win in
> Hunghung _but_ you have sacrificed your most valuable piece, is
> that not so?"
>
>From this, I infer (a) that Cohen is *not* her piece, because he'd
>surely be more valuable than Rincewind,
I certainly don't agree with that. Rincewind is definitely more valuable than
Cohen.
>and (b) that the control of
>Hunghung, though it might be narrowly defined as the aim of the
>game, is not what they are actually playing for. After all, what
>would either of them actually *do* with it?
>
>The aim of the game is simply to beat the other player. When the
>game is over, another pair of gods can play a completely different
>game in the Empire. That's why they call it a game - neither of
>them really *cares* what happens to the Empire, it's just an
>amusement for them.
>
>So I can't accept the rest of your argument, based on that premise.
>I still don't believe that either Cohen or Saveloy are her pieces.
>Maybe they're no-one's pieces.
How could Cohen and Saveloy not be the Lady's pieces? The object of the game is
to have one of your pieces become emperor, which the Lady did with Cohen. we
can see that the paths of Rincewind and the Horde crossed in extremely lucky
ways... such as the explosives that helped Rincewind to be the Great Wizzard.
Andrew Eremin
Ah, but you're assuming the game has to be fair. Might the Lady (or Fate or
indeed
any other Gods) not be inclined to play games that weren't fair? The Lady's
stock in
trade is, after all ,probabilities, and almost all probabilities are by
definition not fair
(in the mathematical sense of fair - equally likely).
>
> So, logic tells us that Cohen was the piece of the Lady. And Mr Saveloy
> plays a major part in Cohen's winning, so it's very probable that he's a
> piece of the Lady, too.
> I don't think that the Lady must like all her pieces or that all pieces of
> the Lady must be lucky. She would be a much worse player if that was so,
> because she would loose many possibilities.
>
> >> [Tamar]
> >> >>RW is specifically referred to as a pawn; pawns are often underrated
> when
> >> >>they can, in the right position, be very powerful pieces. Pawns that
> >> >>checkmate a king are still pawns.
> >> >
> >> [Joerg]
>
> >> < about Rincewind not being a pawn, because he's special >
> >>
> >> [Miq]
> >> No, it's one of the most important attributes of a pawn that it's
> >> *not* replaceable. In the general case, it's *impossible* to get
> >> a second pawn onto a square from which one has just been taken.
> >>
> >> And a pawn that's near the end of the board is an extremely
> >> powerful piece - as a rule, an opponent will take any steps
> >> necessary to stop it.
> >
> >[Richard]
> >But only then. During most of the game, you've got several pawns
> >(7a in chess, but this isn't), and they cover each other, so that
> >when one is taken, often another _can_ take it's place.
Well, yes another can often take its place, but you're talking about exchange
not sacrifice (as Jonathan says later in this thread). Although now I think
about
it, it's not entirely clear where the line is drawn between the two. Is a pawn
exchange (or an excahnge of any piece for any other of equal or greater value
-
perhaps here I should say nominal value, as we've already established that
true
value depends not juts on the piece but the context)a sacrifice? From the
point
of view of the pawn, I'd guess so; from the point of view of the player
normally
not, but you _could_ argue that you sacrificed the pawn to capture your
opponent's
piece. On the other hand, sacrificing a piece for no immediate return to
spring a
specific trap a few moves down the line, or to gain some more general
positional
advantage, while normally regarded as sacrifice, _could_ be considered
exchanging
the piece for that advantage.
> It's only
> >during the endgame that every pawn counts.
Even at the beginning of the game you know that there _will be_ an endgame,
and that every pawn will count, and therefore not sacrificing them now will be
valuable later.
Andy
Andrew Eremin
No, I have to agree with Miq here - getting one of your pieces on the throne is
not really
the object of the game it's beating the other player. I don't even necessarily
think both
players have the same definition of what constitutes beating the other player.
I'm pretty sure there's a quote about this in one of the earlier Rincewind books
about the
Gods not playing dice.
Andy
(sorry Sylvan, I think I accidentally emailed you this reply as well just now)
Typoman
Dieties are known to be able to percieve many things at once,
presumably, Fate and the Lady are canstantly in conflict, but it is
onlywhile they play that they are focusing in eachother.
> IMHO, the Lady transported Rincewind to XXXX simply to keep him
> alive. Everything that follows from that is a byproduct, which
> she'll follow through because it's her business, but I don't think
> she planned it from the start.
That is inherent in her nature.
> [Joerg]
> >>>Now I think of it.... The Lady had won in Hunghung because Cohen's the
> >>>new emperor. So Mr Saveloy surely was a piece of the Lady. OK, she didn't
>
> Again, why? Mr Saveloy was not particularly fortunate. He left a
> (relatively) safe job and went out in search of adventure. That's
> the very opposite of the approach that The Lady favours. And
> having found adventure, he died at virtually the first
> opportunity. That's not what happens to Her pawns.
>
> >I don't know why she's telling the lie that she would never sacrifice a
> >pawn; probably to confuse Fate - he's the one who always does that.
> >Or did you mean that Fate let the cannon shoot? - No, can't believe you
> >did.
Saveloy was in a position of power, dangerous for obvious reasons,
that's no pawn, rook or knight maybe.
> Her statement "I never sacrifice a pawn" comes just minutes after
> Mr S's death. And more gods than just Fate are present, and none
> of them points out Mr S as a counterexample. Ergo, he wasn't her
> piece.
>
> My vote still goes to 'the Story'.
>
The ultimate explination.
> --
> Miq, still blissfully afbpetrothed to the beautiful MEG,
> brilliant Supermouse and bashful Heaven
>
> - old .sig takes another bow
Typoman, Not Dead Yet