Surreal Artworks by Akexander Rommel

This is the sort of art I’d love to one day have on my walls.

on Big Deal Moments in Discworld

Guards! Guards! has one of the first Big Deal Discworld moments for me, and I’m not very good at articulating what that means.

The moment I’m thinking of is the dragon’s speech to Wonse – “we were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But…we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.” That’s a passage that always makes me stop and reread it a couple of times. And it’s a small moment – it’s the only time we hear the dragon speak at all, and it’s a speech that has no bearing on the rest of the story. It could have been taken out of the book entirely and nothing would feel like it was missing. But the fact that it’s there is a Big Deal moment. The great big monstrous antagonist’s judgment of humanity is unavoidable in its accuracy.

And the Discworld series is full of moments like that. Sometimes it’s just one line, sometimes it’s a full scene, and most of the book is so full of shenanigans coming so quickly one after another that you don’t always see the Big Deal moments coming. We think of Pratchett as a humor/satire writer and yes, the books are hilarious, but in between the jokes are these Big Deal moments that casually rearrange our perspective and stick with us even after we think we’ve forgotten.

Then there are the other Big Deal Moments, that are Emotional Meteorite Strike Moments (e.g. the phrase “that is not my cow” can now instantly put me in the fetal position) but I’m having a hard enough time describing this one as it is so I’ll probably go on a tirade about those ‘round about that One Part in Feet of Clay. (You know the one.)

Suggestion: Reblog this with your favorite Big Deal Moment.

YES. It’s so fun hearing everyone’s Big Deal Moments! (although choosing just one is so hard…)

I think my favorite one changes, but right now it’s in Feet of Clay:

@copperbadge

All my Discworld books are packed, and usually I’m a City Watch guy, but the first moment like that for me, and still I think my favorite, was in the first Discworld book I read, Small Gods, where Didactylos the Ephebian philosopher is brought before the militant evangelist Omnian priest, Vorbis. 

Vorbis demands that Didactylos recant his claim that the world travels through space on the backs of four elephants who stand on the back of a giant turtle (which in Discworld is true). Vorbis insists that Didactylos agree that it is a sphere, as the Great God Om intended.

To all appearances, Didactylos easily and happily recants, saying something like “Sure, let it be a sphere” and Vorbis – for whom this is as much about humiliating Didactylos as it is about what’s “true” – decides to let him go. Didactylos gets all the way to the doorway before he turns, throws the lantern he carries into Vorbis’s face, and yells “NEVERTHELESS…THE TURTLE MOVES!” before legging it. 

I was thirteenish at the time and wrestling with religion, and I was familiar with Galileo and eppur si muove, but it’s never as satisfying for there to be a myth of a whisper when you want there to be a legend of a roar. Didactylos bashing Vorbis on the head and screaming the truth before beating feet was much, much more satisfying. And as someone who has never borne fools in power easily, it was an object lesson in how to do the thing. 

There is so much I sympathize with, when it comes to Moist Von Lipwig, but if I had to cite a “big moment”, it’s when he’s deconstructing the idea of currency.

“But what’s worth more than gold?“ “Practically everything. You, for example. Gold is heavy. Your weight in gold is not very much gold at all. Aren’t you worth more than that?”

When you get your head around the idea that something’s worth is based on a subjectively agreed upon set of standards, it can rock your capitalist-based worldview right to the core.

He was also the first character to articulate what has kind of become a guiding philosophy for me:

“Make the change happen fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.”

There are so many for me, but the one that jumpstart out is death and Susan talking at the end of hogfather about the importance of believing in morality and goodness.

“Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.”

I want to add one more, because I just finished reading Raising Steam.

The bit where Moist literally throws himself under a train to save a pair of children had me in absolute tears.

A lot of that book is really good to be honest. This line is also really good. “That’s the trouble, you see. When you’ve had hatred on your tongue for such a long time, you don’t know how to spit it out.”

One of the top ones for me is one that crops up a couple times and a quote/comment that I use in conversation frequently. I always remember it from in I Shall Wear Midnight;

But of course it’s also in this conversation in Carpe Jugulum

•People as things•

I always loved the line from the Hogfather mentioned above, but one that usually sticks out more to me from the same book is Susan’s reminder that “Someone should do something” isn’t at all helpful if you’re not gonna end it with “and that someone is me” because nothing gets done if everyone just sits around thinking “someone should fix this” but no one actually gets up and tries to fix it I’ll also add another one of my favorites from Feet of Clay which is “Someone’s got to speak for them that have no voices” [I’m probably misquoting slightly but that’s the core of it] and on a larger scale is that the same book gives a voice to one of those voiceless- instead of JUST speaking for [over] them, one of the voiceless gets a voice of their own and a platform to speak from which is so important on so many levels

Just like that, in one angry  line, Commander Sam Vimes defines what a police officer is and by extension how they should act. A watchman is not a soldier, and therefor can (should) never act like one.

X-Men: Days of Future Past, written by Simon Kinberg. 2014.

Order the Shit Rough Drafts book here!

"Welcome to Supernatural, the straightest of straight shows with absolutely no homoerotic subtext whatsoev- "

"Well, I mean, maybe that’s just coincid-"

vertical/photo

WHO GAVE YOU THE RIGHT

NOOOOO

things they don’t show you in porn:

things they also don’t show in porn:

so don’t ever compare yourself to porn thank you

This is the best

this twitter account is golden silver and will accomplish great things

Obama on gay adoption 

yeah totally ruining this country what a horrible guy

Even if that reblog did cost me a few followers I’m still gonna post this as it is because I love it.

why dont yo just send him to hell!?

"Don’t say you hate your fam-" No.

"Omg you should love your fami-" No.

"Be grateful they’re your famil-" No.

If you have been bullied, hit, teased, put down, hurt, lied to, or hated by your own family; you don’t need to justify how you feel. You don’t need to explain yourself. You are allowed to hate a family member or dislike a family member if they’ve given you a reason to.

This is so fucking important.

Twitter is currently doing something like Mishapocalypse except with Will Smith

Everyone changed their icons

look

at 

this

twitter

is 

a

mess

right 

now

I

am 

done

Submit Confessions Here

THIS WILL ALWAYS BE ONE OF MY FAVOURITE SUPERNATURAL SCENES AND NO ONE WILL EVER TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME

#gee wonder why bobby hated john

I can relate to Bobby on so many levels it scares me.

This scene was everything

um, guys?

guys

GUYS

(x)

This speaks to me

kmr (disastrous-heartache)