Hermaeus Mora Has Found His Way In.

Book #179 - Thud! by Terry Pratchett

(I'm dizzy. If I think too long about it I start bawling.)

This is one of the best takedowns of war, millenia-spanning cross-cultural conflicts, the weaponization of religion for authoritarian or jingoistic purposes, historical revisionism, cultural isolation, the entire concept of intercultural historical grudge-keeping, war.... that I think I've ever seen.

"... and fools made fools of us all as we fought to stop a war, until the disgusted sky washed us away. And yet we say this. Here in this cave at the end of the world peace is made between dwarf and troll and we will march beyond the hand of Death together. For the enemy is not Troll, nor is it Dwarf, but it is the baleful, the malign, the cowardly, the vessels of hatred, those who do a bad thing and call it good."

The enemy is not people. The enemy is in the heads, it is the thing feared yet venerated as it worms its way into minds, seeths and spits and whispers evil into the hearts of men, snarls its hatred until people become things, and things become violent. It warps the light around reality until all that is left is a funhouse mirror filled with monsters, and its symbols, glowing red with wrath and blood- The enemy is the Summoning Dark, and it is always near, just one speech of hate, one call to arms away.

And because that is very heavy, here some sweet little things from this book that I absolutely adored:

- Colon's and Nobby's conversation about Tawnee and her profession. It is both hilarious, and unironically the most wholesome and least offensive conversation about sex work I have read maybe ever.

- Vimes, just, as a whole. Because I love how Vimes, with his unhealthy, workaholic, probably insomniac life, is so dogged about being a good dad. We all have seen the "And if you did it for a good reason, you'd do it for a bad one" quote, and it's very good, but I feel that I have to remind you that in the original context, the "it" he is referring to is missing bedtime storytime with his son. 'nuff said.

- Speaking of bedtime storytime, I adored the scene where they're on an evening walk to the inn at Koom Valley and it's storytime and the entire Watch squad joins in on the animal noises. I am legit tearing up thinking about it, it is so adorable.

- Everything about the girls' night out. Hilarity of the century.

- The fact that "casual DID rep" is an accurate description of one scene in this book.

- Brick, somehow? Like, I did not expect to get the not-very-bright-kid-becomes-incompetent-goon pipeline presented to me with actual heart and a heartfelt acknowledgement and effort to get him clean from his drug use, and give him a future? Like, Brick's subplot is so touching?? And how dare it?? I wasn't ready for this, what the hell!

Happy birthday, Deltarune. As a celebration, I wanted to send a meme I made.

If you know Doctor Who series 3 and Life on Mars, you might get it:

Here come the drums, drums!

Is he [[living in a goddamn garbage can]], [[50% off]] his mind, or has he [[HYPERLINK BLOCKED]]?

“Everybody secretly hates me” factoid actually just statistical error. average person does not hate you. You yourself, who has a mean brain, is an outlier and should not have been counted

EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP SCIENTISTS AT THE SCHMIDT OCEAN INSTITUTE HAVE FOOTAGE OF A LIVE COLOSSAL SQUID FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

🦑‼️🦑‼️🦑‼️🦑‼️🦑‼️🦑

He also gave his kids a goblin themed (the North Polar Bear comes up with it based on goblin cave art) writing system to decipher, it's legitimately good.

If you can get a copy of the book, I seriously recommend you do. It's such a good read.

I know everyone talks about how Tolkien infused his war ptsd into LOTR but did you know he wrote letters to his kids from 'santa' and they include a full on war with goblins to save Christmas?? And polar bears and elves (the shelf kind) getting injured and starving like this man could never be chill he had to have a battle and I love that for him

I am solitary lights in an empty city.

I do hate kids. I hated them when I was one and I hate them now.

I'm a dedicated hater because so many of them are sociopathic and they need to learn some damn empathy. I once thought adults were too worried to be cruel, turns out growing up means you have to learn how to care.

You make some excellent points, I hate some of those things also. I just don't like unpredictable goblins in my general vicinity. Individuals are fine, but not the group.

you don't "hate kids," you hate being forced into a caretaking role.

you don't "hate kids," you hate censorship passed off as family values.

you don't "hate kids," you hate the constrictiveness of the nuclear family.

you don't "hate kids," you're just not used to occupying fully age diverse spaces so you're not used to the noise or the many different kinds of needs.

you don't "hate kids," most public spaces just aren't built for kids, and so the few kids you see are always uncomfortable and distressed.

you don't "hate kids," you hate the intense social rules assigned to kids and anyone who interacts with kids.

You don't "hate kids," you hate how society reproduces its most restrictive elements and how kids are powerless to resist it.

That probably explains why I write magic the way I do.

Honestly, the fact that terry Pratchett has experience around nuclear power makes so much sense once you realize what magic is standing as a metaphor for in the discworld. Like, look at this fucking quote from going postal:

"That's why [magic] was left to wizards, who knew how to handle it safely. Not doing any magic at all was the chief task of wizards—not "not doing magic" because they couldn't do magic, but not doing magic when they could do and didn't. Any ignorant fool can fail to turn someone else into a frog. You have to be clever to refrain from doing it when you knew how easy it was. There were places in the world commemorating those times when wizards hadn't been quite as clever as that, and on many of them the grass would never grow again."

Like... It feels incredibly obvious what he's talking about once you know the context.

here’s every transparent Aurora png I’ve edited. if you even care (I really needed something to post ☹️) IGNORE KENDAL’S PARALLELOGRAM OF A SWORD I DIDN’T GET THE FULL THING IN THE ORIGINAL SCREENSHOT AND I SOMEHOW DIDN’T REALIZE UNTIL I WAS 90% DONE REMOVING THE BACKGROUND OKAY