Originally Posted by Buzzfloyd

what are folks' opinions on the whole angua/sally/girls' night out thing? for me, that just didn't work. it was bizarre. and what was with all the scenes of nude young women? is pratchett having a mid life crisis? did he take a dare with someone to include an angua mud-wrestling scene? it felt like there was something he was trying to do with the young watch women, but for me, he just didn't pull it off.

Originally Posted by Hsing

I still feel there's an overall theme I didn't get - not in the entire book, but in the "girl's" storyline. When they had their small talk in the bars, I thought it was all a "Sex and the City" (and related series) parody. But the "mud wrestling" scene and all the stuff together... as said on board, it doesn't quite want to fit to the rest of the book and its mood. Even though someone intelligently pointed out how it did... I still have the overall feeling I am missing a reference, maybe they are too obvious, or it was a tiny little bit over the top.
One of the reasons why those scenes didn't work for me, though, was that Sally never came to life in my head. (Please, no "undead" comments now. You know what I mean.)

Originally Posted by Garner

thud combines many many themes that we've seen in earlier pratchett novels. most of the time this works well, like beethoven reweaving so many of his previous themes into the 9th symphony. no one would call *that* derivative claptrap! but, in places throughout Thud, these recurring themes seem less like a revitalization of something important to pratchett, and more like a recycling of something convenient.

now, we have to keep in mind that he still tries to write the books to be 'stand alone' novels. thus, places where he's effectively cut-and-pasted descriptions from other books is ignorable.

but things like Sally... let's take elements of susan, angua, sacchrissa, spikey, and even that bobbi character from thief of time who remains one of my most hated pratchett characters, distill bad qualities from each of them and reassmeble them according to the same map and you get sally. not only is she less than the sum of her parts, not only were the parts not very good to start with, but they don't work well together. put the chick in there nekkid, and it still doesn't work. normally, no one tries to spot the plot hole when there's boobilies in the way, but it was just tacking on an unnecessary element to a character who was BUILT from tacked on and unnecessary elements.

the coffee vampire from monstrous regiment worked a bit better, and that was tailor made to appeal to goth teens for crying out loud.

Sally was one of two or three nadirs in an otherwise fine book made of mostly zeniths.

Originally Posted by Electric_Man

The 'women' scenes were annoying, but I think that it was Sally that made them so. She is possibly the worst character that Terry has ever written, she seemed to be there merely to be a vampire in the watch and someone to put Angua on edge. She added nothing to the story, when it was 'revealed' that she was a spy, I just thought, "Yeah and?" and that was basically what Vimes said too.

Originally Posted by Garner

we see angua as less of a tough blonde chick with big tits in this book. i mean, she's shown us some emotional depth before, but this time we see her as having weaknesses.

sally's just a load of rubbish though. 'angua's body with sacchrissa's manners with spikey's demeanor with middle-susan's social awareness and adaptability' i suppose the only thing to be thankful for is that she didn't have late-susan's rod up her assy.

Originally Posted by Roman_K

Bobbi's from Night Watch, and she was Vetinari's aunt, if I recall correctly. She was fully intended to be a b-rated, flat and uninteresting character, and she worked as such. Sally, on the other hand... I kept expecting depth that wasn't there. Sally is a horrible character, and my most hated one to this date.

As for the whole 'girls' night out' thing... and the mud-wrestling thing... and the Angua-bath thing...

It was like bits of completely unrelated books were pasted in to fill space.

Originally Posted by Garner

right right... nightwatch... that's what i meant.

did pratchett say that he intended bobbi to be insignificant? because it doesn't read that way at all. bobbi was to certain female readers what granny is to others. 'here is an idealization of how we see ourselves and we LOVE pratchett for it'. it guarantees a readership.

imagine if gaiman started writing happy stories about how lovely it is to see a field of flowers blossom and maybe take a picnic in that field if you're careful not to break any flower stems when you put your blanket down, and the little bunnies in the field do NOT get killed by anything or rot away with maggots.

most of his readership would melt away.

the problem with Bobbi was that she neutered Vetinari even while filling in some (new, unnecessary, and contradictory) background elements for his character. She offered precious little, and what little she offered could have been delivered far better through a different character. Bobbi reminds me a great deal of any number of southern women from a certain class that have had a healthy element of vetinari's character tacked on to make her more potent a force to be reconed with.

the girls night out thing just wasn't a girl's night out. pratchett took male conversation and tried to remake it into female conversation. behaviors, too. the mudfight was... odd. the bath scene was a bit better, but where pratchett used to be bashful about angua's boobilies, i think we're lucky that we JUST avoided him including a scene where Sally compliments, in great detail, the shape and boyance of said boobilies during their shower together.

ah well. as has been said, sally was a character where even vimes had to say 'yeah... nothing worth getting excited about there'

Originally Posted by Roman_K

Bobbi didn't read like anything beyond a 'let's explain winder's death without too much effort' character. Not sure if she was intended as such, but I feel that she worked as such. Like Ms. Palm, I think she was there just for scenery. She's not memorable, whereas Sally is. Whenever I shall remember Sally, I shall shudder.

Originally Posted by Garner

Bobbi was an effort to explain vetinari, and has precious little to do with winder's death. she was the macheveli who helps organize the errosion of support from winder, but an unnamed assassin is the one who kills him (Vetinari's up in the rafters at the time, unless i totally misread that scene) once her plan works. she's the one who teaches vetinari politics, raises him to the political monster that he'll become.

she's possibly his mother.

there was a lot of hope and weight for that character, but she ultimately fails through bad planning and poor writing.

pratchett's not perfect.

i was thinking, moist von lipwig falls flat a few times in going postal. the gusto with which he throws himself into his forced role is a bit odd, but the 'must... redeem... self... completely... without... movitation!' bit where he confesses he's the one who forged the bank drafts that got spikey fired is probably the weakest.

even susan, a character who's most definately not intended to be a one shot deus ex machina gimmick, has grown into a flat, uninteresting, b-rate character devoid of any reasonable emotion or motivation. the only bits about her that WORKED in thief of time were eating the chocolate covered esspresso bullets and the bits that were cut and pasted from earlier books.

Originally Posted by Roman_K

So being the planner behind the loss of support and eventual death of Winder doesn't constitute her as the reason?

A grand conspiracy is a much better way to explain away his death than just 'someone kilt 'im'. In that manner, she worked. In being the one that taught Vetinari all that he knows, Terry barely tried.

Originally Posted by Garner

mm. i didn't read it that way in your previous email, but yes, you have a point.

anyway, bobbi was a bad character. we see precious little evidence of her organizing the conspiracy, but we DO see some of it. when vimes is in the back room at a party, we see rosie palm and bobbi when they're off stage to the people being conspired upon. much like rosencrantz and guilden stern are dead, where we see the characters from hamlet when they're off stage and in an entirely different light, the story of hamlet is there but you have to already know it to see it. Stoppard gets away with it because we ALL know hamlet.

pratchett fails with it because not only do we NOT know what happened with winder, but he's retconning discworld with every new novel.

slant lost his head due to snapcase, yes? now, how old is slant? i'm sure somewhere he's supposed to be hundreds of years old. but suddenly, snapcase is there just before havelock. in vimes' lifetime. it doesn't wash, but because pratchett can write each book as a stand-alone, he DOES have some freedom and liberty with dreaded continuity.

Originally Posted by Hsing

Hm, I'm just trying to remember Winder's assassination in "Night Watch"... isn't it that it's decribed from his point of view -which explains the "namelessness" of the assassin in that scene? And he doesn't get stabbed, as the assassin intended to, but dies of a heart attack at the sight of an assassin coming that close to him (I remember the assassin tigging his "bloodless sword away").

I always thought it was Vetinari, because he appears out of the shadows on his aunt's demands a scene later (same location) and is sent after Vimes; above all though, the assassin answered to Winder's question "Who are you?" - "Think of me as... the future.".

Originally Posted by Garner

hmmm... but, he comes in from the door, yes? and exits the door? it bears a re-read, either way

Originally Posted by Roman_K

It was Vetinari. His task of killing Winder is referred to in several places, from the way he tracked that Bleedwell chappy to where he died, and then gained entry through there when the second guard left with Bleedwell's body, to the comment, to the fact that his aunt arranged it all.

Originally Posted by Garner

i recalled the scene as always being described from vetinari's vantage point, but i forgot it switched to winder's for the murder itself.