Originally Posted by Cynical_Youth

I think Rincewind means in terms of intelligence. Also, in game terms the Trolls are slightly easier to play (at least in the beginning, not sure about later on), but because you switch sides that doesn't matter.

Originally Posted by Cynical_Youth

In practical terms that still means they are stupid. Intelligence is only a relative term, it is not an absolute. I'd say even processing speed factors into it.
Also, in terms of what Pterry is trying to prove, that it is a cultural thing rather than a battle of wits, it doesn't really matter as long as you accept that there is a difference between the two species.

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.

Originally Posted by Saccharissa

About the girls' night out.

The reference here is probably the hen nights of british girls. There was an article about a year ago in a magazine about girls who go out and get smashed in liquor.

Before you badger me, hear me out.

Just because the present company consists of ladies with self respect, that doesn't mean that your compatriots have as glorious a track record. Every person I have spoken to, who had been in England as a student, was horrified at how drunk the english youths were setting out to be and a girl had remarked on the women who went out in the freezing night in the middle of the winter, in skimpy clothing and predatory attitude.

Brits are also embarassing themselves in greek resorts. They walk around drunk and the girls lift their shirts at passers-by. There was even a brit fellatio contest on the beach in Rhodes, planned and executed by brits, all in broad daylight.

So, I read that bit as "Girls of Britain, going out and getting smackered a good time does not make. See how Angua, Cheery and Sally, all empowered women, are bored out of their brains?"

Originally Posted by Garner

british social repression, along with british economic stagnation, along with a general decline in puritanism exacerbated by generations of drug and alcohol abuse has produced the anti-brit. welsh, scots, northern irish, and even a few traitorous english who will go abroad and not be polite to each other.

both of these are anathema to the True Brit. (a true brit, of course, being one who is English.)

british binge drinking is worse than most american binge drinking in terms of a social epidemic. british culture encourages it and in some cases possibly forces it on some people (or at least, i'm sure they see it that way).

however, i do not think that 'oy, lushies, quit getting your te-hawts out at the greeks!' was the message evident in the 'girls night out' scene in Thud.

when i was taken down to brighton for a 'stag night', there was a hen party at a table near us in the restaraunt we patronized. the women in this group were loud, uproarious, drunk, and bafoonish. however, despite being lushibly drunk and out for a good time (assumptions about predation being irrelevant here, as this was a pre-wedding party), they did NOT behave like 'the lads', which is how the coppers behave when they're out with poledancer girl. tawny was it?

it was basicly a bloke's binge night done in drag, as it were. that's how it seemed to me, from the way grace was reading it to me. but i suppose she *was* slurring pretty badly by then and threatening to fall out of her chair and hit me if i didn't refill her pint glass with gin...

*sigh* lousy british...

Originally Posted by Buzzfloyd

it's not just hen nights. pterry might have been parodying the archetypal british girls' night out. but if so, he did it very badly. you don't need to explain to us how young british people behave when they go out and get drunk - we know! the point is that the women *don't* behave like angua et al did. to me, it read like what an older man with only half a clue might imagine young women get up to when they go out. and it seems unlikely to me that the point of inserting the episode was simply to moralise at young brits - in which case, what was the point?

Originally Posted by Garner

there was a deleted scene where, while drunk, angua and sally took tawny back to the showers...

mrs. pratchett threatened to bash him over the head with a turtle if he didn't delete it, but he left the hen night preamble to fill space

Originally Posted by Cynical_Youth

I re-read bits of Thud! this morning (student!), trying to find out what is "wrong."

Here's what I came up with:
The earlier Discworld novels seem to have a very clear persona (implied voice of the author). Through poetic descriptions, footnotes and comments directed at the reader Pratchett creates a voice that connects Discworld with Roundworld.

In Thud!, this voice seems distorted. The story is told through the characters and it takes on the sober feel of a real story. I miss the footnotes, the little jokes and the descriptive passages that are Pratchett. The connection with the reader. In Thud!, Pratchett seems to retreat into fantasy. His criticism of society only adds to this. In fact, I see it as a form of "negative merging".

I don't see the seperation between fantasy and reality (a line that has always been blurred anyway). It's almost as if Pratchett is trying to copy our world in Discworld.

That is what is wrong with the girls' night out. It is not Discworld. It is reality crudely inserted into fantasy.

I have an another example that I think is indicative of the problems in Thud!. I don't know if it works for everyone.

The turtle and the elephants. I can't rhyme these with Thud!. They seem too ridiculous to fit.

Pratchett has always used fantasy to convey certain aspects of reality in hyperbole and sometimes subtlety. Thud! is not subtle, because Thud! doesn't use fantasy as foundation. It works fantasy into reality.

Well, hope that makes sense to everyone. I actually did like Thud!, but I thought it was nowhere near as good as what he can write.

Sally wasn't really a complete character to me, but she didn't bother me much to be honest.

Originally Posted by Buzzfloyd

I agree with the first bit - that the narrator's voice is not as clear in this book - but I'm afraid I completely disagree with the rest! the imitation of this world has been happening in DW for ages - take small gods, for example, one of the finest books of the entire series.

being too real is precisely not what is wrong with the girls' night out. there are two things wrong with the girls' night out. one is that it is NOT realistic - the behaviour is realistic, yes, but the speech patterns and the way the girls relate to each other are all wrong. the second is that there appears to be no purpose to the episode. I'm still looking for a reason *why* he included it.

Originally Posted by Garner

i'd been primed to be wary of sally, so i dunno what i might have thought of her without that. probably just mentally filed her under 'wtf? check with others.'

something i didn't mention yet... the 'ancient Devices' business... grace said that pratchett HAS to introduce something new, but it's rather... bad. i mean, we're hitting one of the tritest cliches of the genre, one he used to take the pissy out of. 'ancient progenitor race left behind these neat things that we can use for BIG HAPPY YIFFTASTIC FUN!' oh, except this one. take this one and bung it in a volcano, or an underground river, or something.

in some ways, the book can read too real, as coppe says, and in others i think it's gone too far from 'fantasy parody/real satire' into 'real fantasy/parody satire'

Originally Posted by Tephlon

The device also reminded me of the "Thing" or black box in the Diggers/Bromeliad trilogy.

Isn't there a whole series of books about an ancient race giving several races/worlds a "leg up"?

I'm going to guess there will be a quest to destroy one of the devices.
Lord of the Things...

Originally Posted by Buzzfloyd

actually, who says that some ancient race made these things? you're just assuming that.

Originally Posted by Garner

no, see, that's the cliche. proginitor race cliches also include earlier incarnations of the current civilization. Forgotten Realms includes five (i think) creator races. one of em's human. the chief human instance of a 'creator race' is the netherese empire, which used powerful magics beyond that which men can use today to create wonderful Artifacts that we can't make now, no one knows how they work, but they're yifftasticly potent. but, *gasp*, the greatest human mage of netheril accidentally killed the god of magic and the next god of magic made it so that no one can ever use such powerful magic again!

and let's face it, if it's being used as a staple in a D&D setting, it's GOT to be cliche.

Originally Posted by Buzzfloyd

yes, I know what the cliché is. I'm just saying that you don't know that's what pratchett plans to do with DW.

Originally Posted by Saccharissa

A source of seemingly unbound energy...

...Looks like Nuclear to me

Originally Posted by Tephlon

hmm, that would make a bit of sense, seeing that Terry worked for a Nuclear plant.

Originally Posted by Electric_Man

In a couple of books time, Leonard is going to invent Nuclear Fission

Originally Posted by Garner

oh? hadn't considered that angle. maybe he's gonna do the book about covering the nuclear board now?

Originally Posted by Buzzfloyd

surely we already have nuclear power in dw. that's what the high energy magic building is.

Originally Posted by Garner

true... but i didn't think i was suggesting that he was.

i won't be terribly surprised at this point if there WERE ur-dwarves and ur-trolls. 'discworld, the Tak years', or some such.

Originally Posted by Rincewind

Eh? What is this about? My memory is failing me, is it the thing carrot found down the mine? Also, do you think pterry has got bored of carrot, that he doesn't know who to use him.

Originally Posted by Garner

that was the case back with Guards! Guards!, really... but they've openly acknowledged that Carrot is King now. it's not being left to doubt. that was interesting.

Originally Posted by Rincewind

still, in feet of clay he had stuff to do. And in t5e. I think after that, when he acknowaged that Carrot *isn't* Mr Nice Guy Simpleton it wa sthe end of carrot.

Originally Posted by Buzzfloyd

I liked it. I don't think it's going to be all 'ladidah, we're all friends now', the point is just that what was supposed to be an archetype of racial hatred was really meant to be a peace treaty. trolls and dwarfs were having to work together to shore up the area to protect the bodies of their cultural heroes, but that doesn't mean everything's going to be perfect straight away.

also, as bhrian bloodaxe recorded in the cube, the reason they couldn't escape the caves was that they had been practically beaten to death by the water and rock when they got washed down there.

I was unsure about the troll king too, but when trolls die of exhaustion, I imagine they simply move slower and slower until they just stop and turn to dead rock.

Originally Posted by Rincewind

Too be honest, I'd rather if things *wheren't* as resolved at the end. I think it wrapped up too neatly 'Look dwarves and trolls are really friends.' I'd of rather it be that they still didn't get on, because the hate had nothing to do with koom valley anymore. Also, on a padantic level, I don't see why the trolls couldn't of sirvived down in the caves. Or the dwarves with there axes couldn't of tunneled out. And there was definatly no way the troll kind would of died mid thud game.

Originally Posted by Buzzfloyd

I actually thought carrot was revitalised a bit in this book. I think what you're saying used to be true, but carrot is having a niche carved out for him now because pterry's stopped writing him as such a superhuman.

Originally Posted by Electric_Man

Yeah, I was surprised that people were saying that he didn't have much to
do in this one, because, especially in the first two-thirds or so, he was
very prominent.

Originally Posted by Garner

mm. perhaps. i mean, it was being hinted at for ages that he wasn't just mr. simple, but to come right out and say 'yes he is the king, and the people who matter most know it as truth', to me that's the biggest leap forward in carrot. well, biggest leap, anyway.

Originally Posted by Rincewind

I don't think he did much there though, more beening used to give vimes angua or sally something to do. After, T5E I thought we'd see more of this new, more interesting Carrot but he hasn't really been used.

I think one of the problems is the watch is to powerful now. Angua can smell anyone. Sally can tell the heartbeats of everyone for miles around. Both of them are almost impossible to kill. Detruis can beat most people up...etc, no many people with the skills to defeat most enemies. I never get the feeling that they're going to lose. I did like the way we seen more of detrius in this one. About time his character got to expand.

Originally Posted by Garner

the watch is terry's favorite, and he's not detached enough to be fair to them. it's requisite for a watch novel that they must get some new recruit or something. think in terms of comptuer games. ooh, we have found the new vorpal sword of butty stomping. ahhh! we have gained the services of a helpful cleric who will heal our party. yay! we've gained level 5, now we can get a new bonus, I know, let us take SUPER POWER X!

this time, vimes got THREE recruits. sally, who shouldn't have been retained, pessimal who's there only to show vimes can thwart vetinari, and brick, who fulfils the spirit of the watch best. a down-and-out no-hoper who'll become something better now that he's getting whipped into shape by der watch.

Originally Posted by Buzzfloyd

carrot was, as usual, the means of revealing an awful lot of information especially about mine sign and dwarf mythology. without carrot, the watch could not have discovered as much as they did in the mines - ardent would not have been cowed into opening the door for them, and the fact that there really had been a troll in the mines would not have been discovered, therefore stopping the plot from ever moving on. carrot was pivotal in several ways in this book.

I agree with you about the power of the watch. that's why I liked that carrot was *less* of a superhero in this book. pratchett needs to find ways to tone down the watch's power or there will not be enough conflict to elicit many more good stories. I *loved* seeing more of Detritus - he's been one of my top five favourites for a long time now, and I wasn't disappointed with his showing in thud. I was very happy to see more of troll culture generally, too, something I feel was long overdue.

Originally Posted by pmsurrey

I just had a terrible thought. Could DiscWorld be growing up? Good Lord, I hope not.