Tessa  0:23  
Welcome to nanny ox book club a Discworld podcast. Join us as we read through all 41 of the fantastical and outrageous Discworld novels. I'm Tessa and I'm Nigel. This is Episode 11, which is abroad, which is abroad is the 12th Discworld novel published in 1991. It is the third novel in the witches series set after the events of Weird Sisters. After the death of desert durata hollow, a witch and fairy godmother her wand is delivered to magret garlic with two very specific instructions. One she needs to travel to Genua to stop Ambarella from marrying the prince, and to Under no circumstances are Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg to accompany her, however, to no one's surprise, these instructions make both witches determined to assist her in her magical roadtrip, especially when granny realizes that Amber's other fairy godmother is a sinister figure from her past. Happy Endings haven't got anything on Granny Weatherwax All right, so you know that I love this book, but I'm curious to know what your first reaction was.

Nigel  1:37  
I really liked it. My first impressions I don't know. The book set it off in a weird note for me, I was very uncertain of what the vibes were meant to be. I really liked the book by the end.

Tessa  1:49  
Like it doesn't start with quite the beginning that Weird Sisters does were Weird Sisters is like this is Macbeth. This is Shakespeare it kind of starts more like some of the other books we've read like the Rincewind books where it starts by talking about the Discworld specifically, and then sort of honing in on linker and the witches. I do love that the dedication to this book is specifically references Weird Sisters. I don't know if I've ever actually read the dedication to all of these books and so it's been kind of fun going back through and reading them. But this dedication is dedicated to all those people and why not who after the publication of Weird Sisters dilute the author with their version of the words of the hedgehog song deary Deary me I'm thinking about Terry Pratchett receiving fan mail with different versions of what is a supposed to be a very dirty song that Nanny Ogg sings when she's drunk and I don't know why I found that charming that people would send like fanfiction of the hedgehog song

Nigel  2:56  
there's no dedication and Reaper map. No, I

Tessa  2:59  
don't believe that there is I only think some of them have dedications

Nigel  3:03  
Yeah, so let's see. The light fantastic, has no dedication moving pictures is dedicated to the wonderful people who made this book possible. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'll then source sorcery. Many years ago I saw in Bath Yeah. So what about the how the luggage came to be? Yeah, so some of them do.

Tessa  3:30  
Some of them do. Some of them don't. I think guards guards guards is the one about the stereotypical guard trope in fantasy novels who are doomed to be like beaten up or killed by the main character in the first 10 minutes of the film. I know that there's one about aerospace and Terry Pratchett or sorry, aerospace and Neil Gaiman, but I don't remember which book that is. I know I mentioned it at the time, but I don't remember which one. Let's talk a bit about which is abroad. So I'm really actually happy and I did not plan it this way. Really glad we read this one after moving pictures because I feel like one of the main threads of this book, which is we were doing Shakespeare and Weird Sisters. Now we're moving on to fairy tales. One of the main threads in this book is sort of an inversion of what we were talking about in moving pictures, because Victor and moving pictures is able to harness the power of narrative of movie narrative of cinema narrative in order to defeat the things from the dungeon dimensions. But in this book, The Power of narrative is being used for evil right the the villain Lilith is using the power of fairytales and happy endings in order to sort of force people to live the way that she thinks that they ought to live. And Granny is sort of the anti narrative like she's the one who's who's coming in and trying to disrupt the narrative. She has A lot of thoughts about narrative and predestination and, and trying to make people into characters instead of letting them make their own choices. I just think that's a really interesting contrast. So I'm really happy that I reread this one after we read moving pictures. So let's go ahead and start there. What did you think about the sort of the fairy tale themes in this book,

Nigel  5:20  
I'm not a big fan of fairy tales on their own. But when they're bled like I like when they're blended into something to a narrative, you know, what I mean? Where or where they bring in, like a mythological tradition have that be the backbone of like a story that's a sort of modern day or whatever. So it was a bit I was a bit reticent going in not reticent, but like hesitant, being like, Oh, is this is going to be fairy tales. But I like the way that it's how little where they're all happening at once. And the problems that are associated with a quote from very near the end of the book, but it's literally, like, at the top underneath the 12 level on the back of my book, the one that Granny Weatherwax says things have come to an end. See, that's how it works. When you turn the world into stories, you should never have done that. You shouldn't treat people like they was characters like they was things but if you do, then you've got to know where the story is. So I like that. And I like, like you said, I think it's an interesting it's an interesting continuation on what happened in the pictures, you know, where you have to obey the rules, the logic of, of cinema, you know, and in this one, Lily was Weatherwax. Once the, to follow the logic of the stories, but Granny Weatherwax you know, is like, Well, no. People got to make their decisions for themselves and that's head ology.

Tessa  6:55  
What's interesting is that Lilith sees stories as so important that when she's obviously in charge of Genoa, I definitely want to talk about Genoa as a location. But I think it's interesting how she basically kills anyone in the city who doesn't fit into their role as a part of the story. She calls it crimes against narrative expectation. Yeah. And so it's this idea of like, if you're a toy maker, you need to be jolly and fat and tell stories to children. You know, if you're a baker you need to sing you know, while you're baking, like, all of these things are like tropes from fairy tales, but the idea is that they're invested with power. If you don't fit into it, then she sees that as a threat to her power. We can talk about Lilith because I think she's a fascinating villain. We are introduced to her at the beginning her name she's we're told that her name is Lilith, which is an interesting reference to some Jewish mythological traditions. But she is very powerful. She's the other godmother, right like you're supposed to get to. And so Ambarella who's clearly a reference to Cinderella is she has her two godmothers and one of them is desta Radha and the other one is Lilith. But Lilith is the one who is convinced that she needs to marry the prince she needs to perform this story. And she has basically taken over the city of genuine in order to make this particular story along with a couple of other stories because she likes to blend them together. Like you said, she wants this all to happen. And we find out about halfway through the novel, that her name is actually Lily Weatherwax and that she is Granny's older sister who was kicked out as a teenager. What are your thoughts on Lilith? Lilith, Lily?

Nigel  8:51  
I thought she was an okay, Vela. I mean, like, not by any means the worst villain we've had series in the series so far. But also, I think she's a better antagonist specifically to Granny Weatherwax than she is like an antagonist in the novel. Like I was more invested in this like dichotomy between them, especially the fact that they were like, everyone gets to the good on the bad one. On this idea of duality, how things are meant to be

Tessa  9:25  
and Lilla thinks she's the good one yeah, they both do it's interesting cuz she she insists that she's the good one, because she's the one making the story happen and who would stand in the way of a story like that must make you the bad one.

Nigel  9:39  
Yeah, I think gets into an awful lot of like, really good ideological discussion. You know, where like, when they're deciding to you know, get all the the coachmen drunk to to tear up the dress that umbrella was going to wear Whether we're like, oh, well, it must be okay. Because we're the good ones. And if we do this in service of a just cause then, you know, our actions are there by fuse. Whereas, you know, like ideologically Lilith is doing what she thinks is good because she's giving people what they want but it's like, what is it the granny says when she is going to do or she's going to duel with Mrs. Goggle? Yeah, here it is said what you hate godmothers mistress Weatherwax. gargoyle were the other kind. So Granny, we're the kind of gives people what they know they really need, not what they think they ought to what, you know.

Tessa  10:53  
Yeah, and you have to like read that a couple of times to like, work it out. And they, the narrator makes kind of a joke about that about how much of a mouthful that is, but it's it is kind of true that granny has thought out the consequences of using magic in this way and knows that it doesn't go anywhere good. Like, this is a theme throughout all the witches books where she says you know, witches being in charge is bad. That's not a good thing to have, which is in charge. You don't use magic to rule you can use magic to prevent bad things from happening, but you can't make things out of magic in that way or it'll go bad immediately. There is the sense that perhaps granny has thought through this a little bit more clearly than Lilith has I also like the idea that there's this constant theme about how a Weatherwax never loses or Weatherwax is don't like to lose but one of them is going to learn Yeah, and this narrative i that it seems very western to me like you know the to the duelists or the the gunmen right that are like they never lose, but one of them is going to learn how to tonight there's even kind of a scene where she's like, facing off against Lilith where she kind of like freeze her hands like they're going to actually dual. I think that that's really interesting.

Nigel  12:12  
Yeah, but it's also like with that if you're the fastest gun in the West, then you're also the slowest gun because everyone else is dead. Right but is it Time now for a very early in the episode Nigel cooks now

Tessa  12:24  
of course, it's always time.

Nigel  12:28  
Whether works never loses but one of us is going to have to learn tonight. It reminds me of the sound black pear tree which came off of an early 2000s EP that they did with kaki King, quite a heartbreaking song, which is about like getting out of a toxic bad relationship. And it's framed in like growing this black pear tree from a seed. Yeah, so I sat there I set the sapling in the hole started gently tamping down the dirt. I saw the future in a dream last night, somebody is going to get hurt, somebody is going to get hurt. I hope it's not me, but I suspect it's going to have to be, which I mean, if you want to like really apply it to the novel. You know, Granny Weatherwax, ends up with consoler opened on her arm, basically in a coma from trying to get to Lily after she goes mirror. But then, yeah, at the end, I think is the most uncompromising one. So it goes on when it's time came, I could see it happen. Blossom was black and sweet as Texas crude. I saw the future flowering like a ruptured vessel, somebody is going to get screwed. They won't be me. Someday I am going to walk out of here free. And what's interesting with that song, is that the way the rhythm goes, because normally they do the like the double line where they go, like somebody is going to get hurt, somebody is going to get hurt, but they just go somebody is going to get screwed. And then there's a pause between that and it won't be me where you can infer a line which rhymes seminar Lee screwed. So you know like it's going to be you then the narrator's focusing on just getting out of there for themselves. Which, again, if we're going to apply it really to the text, which I suppose is the point of these segments, you know, it's like Mrs. Gabel says to Byron Saturday, you know, but it's just not of the kind that anyone thinks is going to happen.

Tessa  14:23  
Right? And this idea I like the idea of like, I hope it's not me but it might be because there's this really great line there's a lot about winning and losing and how which is win and how they lose in this book. But there's a line at the very end where nanny OG as she's stitching up Granny, you know, her arm all these cuts on her arms where she says, Oh, as May as may you do take winning hard. And this idea of like granny always wins, right? Like that's like part of her Her Mystique her power, right? Yes, she always wins. But winning for her comes at a cost. And this time it's her sister. And she doesn't want to lose her sister even though she her sister stands for everything that she hates. And she knows that she has to win. In this particular situation, she still tries to give her all of the options out. At the beginning, like she says, you could just come back with us, you could be a witch and lenker You know, we need more witches. And then she tries to save her from the mirror when Lewis mere magic catches up with her. So like this idea of like taking winning hard, like you win, but you also lose like you have to sacrifice in order to win.

Nigel  15:42  
Yeah, but it's also like deliberately hurtful. That love gets sucked into the mirror because she breaks the mirror only on one side causing this cascade effect to ripple through the many mirrors. All right, you know, so you have to, you have to also think that maybe she does blame herself.

Tessa  16:04  
Granny Weatherwax is so uncompromising, and it comes off as arrogance. We've talked about that before. Sometimes it comes off as like narcissism a little bit or self absorption in other ways. But I think it's really telling, I think about the scene a lot when I think about Granny Weatherwax where Lilith is stuck in the mirror. And death tells her while you're stuck between life and death, and the only way out is when you find the reflection of yourself. That's the real one. And so she's like running through these reflections trying to find it. But granny Oh, first cells same. Yeah. And

Nigel  16:41  
I have to find the mirror. That's real.

Tessa  16:45  
No, she has to find the reflection of herself. That's real. Oh, she's running through all the reflections trying to find the real one. But when Granny Weatherwax is presented with the same choice, she immediately looks down at herself and says this one. And I think that that is Granny Weatherwax. In a nutshell, like, we talked about this with Reaper man, this whole idea of like, there's no like, there's no real right or wrong only places to stand. Granny Weatherwax knows exactly where she stands. And she knows that it's not always easy to be herself, or to do the things that she does. And I don't think she would necessarily say she's not like Lilith in the sense that she says, Well, I do this for the good of everybody else. But she has to do something. And so this is what she chooses to do. And she stands by those choices.

Nigel  17:36  
But it's also like, regardless of whether or not it was the correct answer, before, like, her answer kind of made us the correct answer by her answering. Yes, you know, like, you have to choose something. Yeah, exactly. And Granny Weatherwax is that uncompromising in what she believes that therefore, it must be true? I thinking more about me thinking you had to find the mirror that was the real one out. I think that's an interesting reading of it. Because Lily instantly like, because she's so disconnected from what people actually want and how people actually are and doesn't know had ology that she tries and just finds a literal mirror. Whereas like, Granny looks at herself, and says, It's me. You know, like, she's a mirror. She's the mirror of Lily.

Tessa  18:30  
Yeah, that is the other thing. They are adorable as well, because we're told Lily looks exactly like her only better because she's evil and evil people always look a little bit better than the good people. Yeah. Because evil gets to go home on Friday, early on Friday. That was one of my favorite lines. Evil always gets to go home early on Fridays. There's a lot about witches and mirrors like mirrors as a source of magic has been that's that's an idea that's been around for a long time. I mean, think about Snow White, which is not a fairy tale that gets referenced in this. But the idea is the mirror is the magic mirror is from Snow White. There's also like a lot of other fantasy books that delve into this idea of using mirrors as portals are using them as as sources of power. You would hate this book, Nigel, because I know you don't like romances. But there is a really wonderful romance book for those of you who do like romances called very luridly wicked deeds on a winter's night by kresley Cole, and they really explore the idea of this witch named Mira Cata, who is a she's like a chosen one scenario, like she's like the witch that's gonna like grow up and save all the witches and etc, etc. But her magic specifically comes from mirrors. And the idea is that she is so powerful because she's able to draw on this mirror magic, but she can't look at a mirror for too long or she'll get fixated by her own reflection, and like go into a trance. And so like I like the idea that that is perhaps I mean, that obviously came out long after which is abroad, but the idea of like mirrors stealing part of your soul or not getting in between two mirrors because the reflection of a reflection like that can that can stretch you a little bit too thin. There's only so much of you to go around,

Nigel  20:25  
broadening what magic is because we have the kind of duality between head ology and geometry basically the wizard is, although in the last fill, or in the last film, in the last book, we did moving pictures. senior faculty use head ology when they go to the cinema by putting like, bits of wire around their beards to make them look fake. But this one, like introduced this mirror of magic, which I thought was cool. And then also like, a surprisingly not racist depiction of Udaan. So um, yeah, I really liked it like mirror magic is always cool. But what I really liked was the granny was wary of it from the start, you know, and this whole like superstition, and before you even knew the, the twists, that Lily looked like her because she was her older sister. You know, this whole not trusting the face you see in the mirror? Because it keeps saying the face was heard. Yeah, so like, you know, they're playing the pronoun game to get you to feel vague, but like it, I think it's an interesting choice when it's mirror magic, getting caught between two mirrors. But in this case, it's two people.

Tessa  21:43  
There's a lot about granny and lilius relationship that is the the two paths, the two different paths taken. Because there's a lot in this book about how if granny was bad, she'd be worse than Lilith. Because she's, she understands people perhaps better or she's more powerful or something like that. And the idea that Nanny Ogg brings it up at one point and then Granny Weatherwax confirms it in her showdown with Lilith where she says, you know, you left and I had to be the good one. And I'll never forgive you for that. Like the idea of, you know, she, Granny Weatherwax is not a nice person. And she is not a good person by inclination, but she has to be good in order to because she's so powerful that she knows if she was anything else, it would just destroy her and everyone around her.

Nigel  22:33  
It's explicitly what nanny or what I'm Granny Weatherwax is against because Granny Weatherwax is like making people see hopefully, what they need to do. So they can make that choice themselves. But she never got a chance to make a choice. Right. You know, her role was kind of Lilith made it predestined for her by choosing the only other option.

Tessa  22:55  
You can also say a lot about like siblings and the ways in which like, when you have a sibling who's really irresponsible or making bad choices, a lot of times, the parents will sort of like swing too hard in the opposite direction with like the younger sibling, like the idea of like, oh, well, she's the bad one. So you have to be the good one. You have to be the responsible one. And so I think that there might be a little bit of fat going on here as well. But yeah, like this idea of not she like doesn't have a choice and yet I'm trying to find where nanny OG talks about it because it's great. Where she says, Alright, this is when Malgrat is like really angry at granny. She hardly ever does real magic. What good is being a witch if you don't do magic? Why doesn't she use it to help people? Nancy peered at her through the pipe smoke, because she knows how good she'd be at it. I suppose. She said. Anyway, I've known her for a long time. known the whole family all the Weatherwax is is good at magic. Even the men they've got this magical streak in them kind of like a curse. Anyways, she thinks she can't help people with magic not properly. It's true to that what good nanny prodded at the pipe with a match. I seem to recall she come over and helped you out when you had that spot of plague in your village. She said worked around the clock I recall never known her not to treat someone ill who needed it even when they you know were pretty Uzi. And when that big old troll that lives under broken mountain came down for help because his wife was sick and everyone threw rocks at him. I remember it was as May that went back with him and delivered the baby. Ha and then we'll chicken wire Hopkins through a rocket as May a little while afterwards. All his barns were mysteriously trampled flat in the night. She always said you can't help people with magic but you can help them with skin by doing real thing she meant. I'm not saying she's not basically a nice person. magret began. Hi, I am you'd have to go a long day's journey to find someone basically nastier than SMA. So Danny OG and that's me saying it she knows exactly what she is. She was born to be good and she doesn't like it. Like this idea of like Knowing that you're a good person, but knowing how much easier it would be not to be a good person.

Nigel  25:05  
Yeah, definitely. That's like, I don't know, it's weirdly I thought of the Stormlight Archive. Because it's the like the tenants that Caleta has to learn to accept, where it's like, you got to look after everyone, no matter who they are. This is the realization that he comes to after Cavalera gets murdered, you know, where he's kind of like, well, he's a bad ruler, so we need to take him out. But then the realization is that he you have to look after everyone, no matter their morality, because it's your own inner morality. And so like, I think that's what Granny Weatherwax is doing. And it's interesting as well, to go back because Brinson is another person who when it comes down to it, you know, he'll pay you back with skin, you know, he's got skin in the game, for better or worse. And it's what Granny Weatherwax says, near the very end to, to not a goggle or to Mrs. Goggle, to Lily, you know, this isn't head ology skin.

Tessa  26:12  
Unlike so I think you're right to compare her to rinse when because some of the humor that comes from Rincewind as a character is the fact that he's a main character, but doesn't want to be the main character. I think that this situation is very similar to granny who is a main character because she's so powerful because she understands head ology so well. But unlike rents wind well like rents when she doesn't want to be the main character, she kind of she wishes she could live a less stressful life, I think. But she knows that she is and she's accepted it in a way that I think rents went hasn't up until maybe the end of sorcery. And so she accepts that that's who she is. And that's her place in the world. And that's where I think a lot of her overweening competence comes from. Yeah, but she hits it.

Nigel  26:59  
To that, um, to continue with the comparisons where it's like, as well, Granny Weatherwax loses her hash. Yes, I want to say, and they talk about, well, what's uh, you know, like, wizards aren't really wizards, if they don't have a hat, which then goes back to, you know, ruins one's belief that he needs to have a heart and it needs to display through the use of it be written on the fact that he's a wizard, because that's who he is. And he doesn't know who he'll be outside of it. And then it says, like, you know, you always see wizards with witches too, as well. But then, with the whole, changing things to something that they weren't originally, you know, where shape is this kind of memory of what things settlers mode, and the only way to truly change shape would be through sorcery.

Tessa  27:50  
To go back to what you said earlier to about like the different kinds of magic in this. There is a really fun place in this where they're talking about Granny Weatherwax and how she knows the whole thing about like how stories want to be told, and they want to follow certain patterns. And it really highlights the difference yet again, between head ology and geometry, which is the wizards magic, Granny Weatherwax wouldn't know what a pattern of quantum inevitability was, if she found it eating her dinner. If you mentioned the words paradigms of spacetime to her, she just say what, but that didn't mean she was ignorant. It just meant she didn't have any truck with words, especially jibberish, she knew that there were certain things that happen to continually in human history, like three dimensional cliches stories. And I like this idea that like, in this particular case, the wizards would also know what was going on here. But they would have a completely different paradigm for understanding it. Because their magic comes from a place of geometry, or science, or whatever it is you want to call it. Whereas she comes from a place where it's like, it doesn't matter what it's called, but I know what it is.

Nigel  28:58  
Yeah, but also like, I mean, the wizards are not going to go out and fix this problem in January, because that would require them to go out places out far. Yep. Which I know is a problem with the witches, though. Like, I mean, the whole point is that they're like, the witches are old women and the wizards are all old man. You know, like, they're the old. No, but like, with the exception of that I've written to and just comparatively young as well. They said, hey,

Tessa  29:26  
yeah, and of course, people like ponder Stebbins are pretty young, but they're like, postgrads,

Nigel  29:31  
but like, they're our main point of entry. For a lot of, for a lot of like getting into them, because like, they're kind of the outsider to this cast nearly. So they're, they're, they're very much representing. I know, we talked we talked about how, like, the wizards are just emblematic of the sexless upper British, you know, upper class British regime. And it's the same thing here, you know, we're talking about like, oh, I don't want to eat any food. It's when I go on holidays because they're foreign. And that kind of thing. You know, you see that all the time? It would British people arguing. Here we go another staple of the podcast me.

Tessa  30:12  
I'd say that about Granny, but I'm not sure I'd say it about nanny nanny seems pretty fascinated by

Nigel  30:19  
what she's always been. She's always been the more open minded of the two.

Tessa  30:25  
And I would definitely not describe her as sexless. For sure. But I've

Nigel  30:29  
only ever said that about the wizard. Don't

Tessa  30:32  
I see, okay,

Nigel  30:34  
let me hawk has always been more. Not sexually open, but sexually frank with the people around her and how she is especially like how she was when she was younger. And she seemed far more tolerant of new belief. Especially like in this book, she seems less harsh on Margaret learning, or Magra learning self defense from a book that is made does

Tessa  31:03  
she has a very live and let live attitude towards life.

Nigel  31:07  
Yeah, I mean, like, everything is made better by something was banana as a Roman

Tessa  31:14  
she knew how to start spelling it, but she didn't know when to stop. That is that is a really great job. I love the relationship between Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg and like you said, equal rights doesn't feel like a witches book because it doesn't have Nanny Ogg in it. There's this great line near the beginning, and it comes up again later. Where they're talking. It's when the witches are having their meeting their their meeting on the mountains, right? And they're talking about all the witches, and but they're specifically talking about how witches don't like each other, because they're like, they're like cats. They're solitary. They are non hierarchical. They only really meet up when they have to. And so they're talking about how these meetings are pretty are pretty rare. Granny Weatherwax looked at her sister witches gamer brevis she couldn't stand the old woman taught to school on the other side of the mountain and had a nasty habit of being reasonable when provoked. An old mother does maths was probably the most useless Sybil in the history of or ocular revelation. And granny really couldn't be having it all with Nanny Ogg who was her best friend. I love that line. She couldn't be having it all with Nanny Ogg who was her best friend. This she says it again later where she describes Nanny Ogg as a disgusting baggage and Eddie Agus like that's me. Yeah, like they just they're so they're they're so good together as a duo.

Nigel  32:40  
Yeah, like the same or they have to share a bed. And now that has like a whole other connotation in the fanfic era of like, they go to a hotel, but Oh, no, there's only one bed. Yeah,

Tessa  32:54  
it's called one bed. Yeah.

Nigel  32:56  
But like that's not the case of this because they're not meant to be shipped. I think if you ship gift, the organism a whether whether you're, you're a fucking weirdo.

Tessa  33:06  
I think they have a queer platonic relationship. Yeah, exactly. Like there's, there's no of course I also think that Granny Weatherwax is Ace but that's a whole different thing.

Nigel  33:16  
Like I'm not saying you can't have interpretations but like it's explicitly not what their character dynamic is. And I don't think it ever they ever would not because they're like, homophobic internally or externally. They're just not interested in one another that way. No, but that like, comedic moment where Danny OG just goes out like a light and is snoring like a chainsaw. Great weather keeps hitting any org being like, I swear, I swear I could hear a noise you know, it was really really loud that that was it? Well, I didn't hear anything.

Tessa  33:54  
Yeah, I just I love all their interactions. I loved nanny getting both of them drunk at the village with the the running of the bowls. That was just so funny to me like these three, like women, slightly odd women like just completely disrupting this festival because they just don't understand what's going on. And I I just love their relationship. What about Malgrat we actually get her back in this book too. They don't spend a lot of time in linker so we don't get to see Vernice or any of the other really Castle characters in this. But it's obvious that she's really struggling with understanding her relationship to Burness and her her kind of her self identity because she wants to establish herself as a independent person who has her own identity. But she's still clearly very under the shadow of the other two witches as well. What do you think about her in this book?

Nigel  34:53  
Yeah, I was kind of disappointed that she didn't end up with violence in the end, or at least for the moment cuz that seemed like a done deal. Now obviously, like, I'm not saying that she should have gotten together with him, I'd stayed like that if she said she, you know, she felt like a sex object. But like I thought there were, it was a genuinely okay relationship, her character arc towards being a more empowered like modern woman you know, you know how we said in Reapers how red curly is kind of like the 80s father of a nuclear family who gets really into like, you know, that sort of like power yoga style, I think, yeah, by that token, like migrant is the female equivalent of like young women in the 80s. Kind of, you know, coming out of the shadow of the 50s and 60s into this more liberal, like, obviously, no time has ever been a good time for women. We live in a male led, you know, society, and that's where the brunt of the privilege is. But it was a more liberating time, there was less kind of societal pressures on them. Obviously, there was still some, but you know, like, you had that they would go to exercise and this whole like self defense class things seems very, like in keeping with that,

Tessa  36:22  
did you notice who wrote her self defense book instruction? Man? Yes.

Nigel  36:26  
A certain Lobsang Dibbler. Yeah, again, we have a reference to the Gibler. Cloud. And again, it seems very weird that Dibbler is his last name. And it's the thing which is shared with other people.

Tessa  36:43  
I assumed it was Dibbler, taking on a name that he thought was more like, in line with someone who would write a martial arts manual.

Nigel  36:52  
Yeah, but see, here's the thing in Guards, guards, they explicitly make reference to a different person called lob sang, that Dibbler is buying from. And so it's only he's only ever referred to as lob Sai. But I think he's a monk which would make sense with the slight path of the Scorpion thing. And they're going to a temple. Or that's what magret suggests near the end of the novel. And so they only ever refer to him as love sang in Garrett's cards. So the relationship wasn't clear. But also, maybe, maybe it is. But it would be very weird for this, for there to be two people called luvside.

Tessa  37:33  
Maybe it's like a co written book, and they just put their names together, like Lapsang did the book but Dibbler does the marketing. I feel like you're reaching me maybe maybe I just think it's interesting that Lapsang Dibbler is the the author the listed author of, of the book that Malgrat is learning a self defense from

Nigel  37:54  
now just another thing about names and how, like even the men are cursed with either the men or curse with magic and the Weatherwax. I feel like that explains Galder Weatherwax in Book Two,

Tessa  38:05  
yeah, I forgot to mention that when I brought that up, I took that as a direct reference to Galder Weatherwax that he is a distant relation of hers. There may or may not be more discussion of that in later books. Okay, it will tell what are the main internal conflicts of this book is between Malgrat and Granny, which is something that we're going to see throughout the series is that often whether it's magret or someone else, Granny because of the way that she does things, because she is just so much herself. And she knows her role in the world. And she's not a particularly nice person. She's not nice to Malgrat in this book, she often will clash with especially younger members of the trio. And so whether it's magret or another character that comes along later that takes Bakradze place in this trio, or even other witches that she mentors and other books, we often get this sort of clash between what they think magic should be and what she in what she does, which is the head ology she calls Malgrat a wet head at one point and it really hurts Margaret's feelings. How did you feel about this sort of conflict between granny and Malgrat

Nigel  39:18  
I didn't like it or why I don't know because it was like this. It felt like unnecessary tension almost to a point but then kind of with the reveal that Lily was it kind of a it kind of like focus that in of it because she has a link to this other godmother so dearly comes across it like she's trying to make sure that Margaret doesn't end up like Lily in the same like in in Granny Weatherwax his own particular way. You know,

Tessa  39:53  
which is not an easy way. No at all.

Nigel  39:55  
It's very much like it's very much like my way or the highway Hmm, yeah,

Tessa  40:01  
yeah. And like makrut She had a moment where she thought about this and Weird Sisters and we talked about it a little bit then. But she has another moment in this book too, where she's like, Granny Weatherwax just expects everyone to operate at the same level that she does. And when you don't, she gets very disappointed and huffy about it. And so, it Yeah, it does tend to lead up to these types of conflicts, especially because I think nanny has since learned how to manage granny. Because nanny is the nanny is clearly not the leader of the group. Granny is clearly the leader. But nanny has learned how to like work around granny. And she does still pretty much does what she wants when she thinks it's important. But MACRA hasn't really learned how to manage granny. Yet. She just has this very head on approach to her conflicts with Granny which causes all these arguments. I did think it was interesting that when granny and Malgrat were fighting, nannies, like I love the image of them on the road where one of them is like, really far ahead. And the other one's really far behind. And nanny is just in the middle with creepo. Yeah, just she's like, I'm not taking anybody's side. So yeah, we also get a some more insight on why Magaret name is Malgrat. It turns out her mother didn't know how to spell. And that is why she tried to name her Margaret, but didn't know how to spell and so she ended up naming her Malgrat and Malgrat blames her name for her personality. She thinks if she'd been a Margaret, she would have been a someone with more of a backbone. The other thing I really loved about this book, and I think about it a lot is that even though she has these conflicts with Granny even though granny doesn't do magic, the way that Magaret thinks that maybe it should be done. She's obviously learned a lot from Granny because there's this really great scene where it says that Malgrat is a collector of magical knives and that she believes a lot of magical knives, but that she had learned from Granny that actually the best knife is a bread knife because you you can do anything you could do with a magical knife with a bread knife, and then you can cut bread afterwards. So like the idea is that even though Magritte does have these like Spats with Granny, she's clearly learned a lot about head ology from Granny.

Nigel  42:26  
Yeah, I mean, I suppose on the thoughts of name, like personalities, again, like Margaret, her whole character is self discovery in this book, that's her whole character. Yes. And learning to accommodate the, you know, like the help from like, migrant needs to learn to take advice. Granny Weatherwax needs to learn that sometimes people don't need her advice all the time.

Tessa  43:05  
That doesn't sound like granny. Yeah,

Nigel  43:07  
she needs to learn it. But like, I mean, will she? Cuz

Tessa  43:12  
it's a great question. Because I think like,

Nigel  43:15  
I think Discworld does very good at like, putting forward a character arc and being like, this is where the character needs to get to. They'd be like, okay, but like, why? You know, because it's like, that's what the story wants them to do. But like, is it what the character wants to do? So, like, it's just really interesting in this book, especially because it's the meta commentary on how stories work, you know, to have a character be resistant this what Renson does, as well. He's resistant to the idea of being the protagonist. I think the Granny Weatherwax is resistant to the idea of character development in a way. Yeah, like, she definitely grows as a character, but she doesn't develop as a character because she, she's a character who knows exactly who she is. And she's just waiting for the world to like, catch up.

Tessa  44:13  
Right? I mean, she's always gonna be the person that looks down and says, this one's the real one. So, you know, she knows exactly where she stands and exactly who she is. Yeah. And then we also get a great seat in this where she lets magret borrow some of her self confidence when she when they trick her. Well, they don't trick her but when they put have her go to the ball in Ember Ella's place, and she's completely afraid and petrified about pretending to be Ambarella and Granny gives her some of a boost of self confidence.

Nigel  44:45  
Yeah, that was fun. That was very fun.

Tessa  44:49  
I like the idea where she's like, maybe granny feels like this all the time. Which I just maybe one of the other things I really loved was the this whole metaphor About the stepsisters. So umbrella has these two stepsisters who are snakes, they are literal snakes that Lilith has transformed into humans, or they're snakes that still think they're snakes, but they look human. And that's terrifying. By the way, the descriptions of the stepsisters in this especially when one of them is chasing after granny with her mouth open is like one of the most terrifying images, I think in this book. But I love the showdown between them and Malgrat. Because the implication is, is that Malgrat is kind of she has like the personality of like a small rodent. And so they're like, attracted to her because she seems like something that something that could be prey, right? But it turns out that she's actually a mongoose, right, like the road that you thought was going to be prey is really a mongoose.

Nigel  45:48  
I mean, it goes back to the whole thing that everything has to have a double. I suppose that's the point of this whole book is about mirrors, you know, and so you have the mirror between, between Lily and Granny Weatherwax because they're nearly identical sisters. But also then the tween Lily and first considerada now magret as fairy godmothers and then the fact that like the stepsisters who are with Ambarella are kind of paralleled with the three like those three as a unit are parallel to the three fairies like Sleeping Beauty, you know, the original Disney with the ones that are green, blue and red.

Tessa  46:31  
Very hedgehog fairy Daisy, and fair. I don't remember what's McGrath's name fairy?

Nigel  46:38  
I don't remember.

Tessa  46:40  
Oh, gosh, it's funny. I just remember that.

Nigel  46:43  
Yeah, it's a fun, I really like the the whole cuz it goes back to equal rights with how Ekaterina was going to borrow the mind of an eagle and then ended up nearly becoming, this is the reverse, we then can warp the mind which knows one or it once knew, just being an animal, and now you've trapped it in a shape and a mind that doesn't belong to us. You know? So it's like, Yeah, that one's like the wolf. Oh, my God, that seems the wolf where it's so hideous, and I was like, I don't know where this is going. And then they just mercy killer like they just be head that motherfucker.

Tessa  47:31  
It's been caught between being a wolf and human for too long. She can't fix it. She can't push it back towards being a wolf. And so it's like starving to death because it can't. The reflexes and the single minded focus that a predator needs in order to kill its prey is not really compatible with all of the synapses that a human has all the random thoughts ping pong off of each other. And so it literally can't hunt. Yeah, it's a it's a very sad scene, like this idea that she like, Lilith really mangled this animal in order to make it fit into the Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale. Yeah, is basically what happened.

Nigel  48:12  
I mean, she's willing to kill him.

Tessa  48:15  
Oh, yeah, she feeds. She says she feeds stories, people.

Nigel  48:18  
Yeah, but she also just, like, kills that toymaker for not knowing how to sing. Yeah.

Tessa  48:25  
It's so it's very hedgehog fairy Daisy and fairy to lip. Ah, yeah, yeah. So we get this middle section in the book now that we've started kind of talking about it where granny and the nanny granny nanny and magret run across sort of the first experiments that Lilith did with storytelling and making people fit into these stories. So we get they, they run across a Little Red Riding Hood story. They run across a sleeping beauty story where there's this woman, this this girl who's been put to sleep in a tower. They run across the three bears in the three pigs or somebody tells them a story about the three bears and the three pigs in a nearby village. There's also a Wizard of Oz reference because the farmhouse falls on nanny dog's head and her new hat saves her life. But then you get all these dwarves who are suddenly singing around the house and they don't know why they're there. Yeah, they're

Nigel  49:24  
singing the dingdong song, which is so funny because there's a song in Peppa Pig. That's called the Bing ball song. And as somebody who has so many younger siblings, I have been subjected to the Bing Bang song time without and

Tessa  49:41  
there's also a Rapunzel reference as well, because Granny Weatherwax says that this has happened before that there is another witch named Black Alice, who was considered one of the most powerful witches ever to ever to exist, who also got really involved with playing roles in fairy tales, and it's implied that she died Because of Hansel and Gretel like Hansel and Gretel killed her and that was the end of black Alice black Alice is a character who we never actually see in the Discworld, but who is famous in the lore of the Discworld she will be referenced many times, especially in the witches books, but this is the first time that we hear about her luck Amis

Nigel  50:17  
is a is a creature or witch from like actual mythology, or from like folk mythology, not specifically any kind of Pantheon, especially around like the British Isles.

Tessa  50:29  
I don't know much about her. I know that that's a thing but I don't know much about like the mythology itself.

Nigel  50:35  
Yeah, there's a really good portrayal of black Alice as a character in the Skulduggery pleasant book.

Tessa  50:41  
Okay. I've read those. So I would know,

Nigel  50:45  
I think you'd really like them.

Tessa  50:47  
I probably would. I think I've had them on my list, and she mentioned them. Black Alice

Nigel  50:50  
is a bogeyman figure in English folklore. She's imagined as blue faced hag or witch with iron claws and a taste for human flesh. She is set to halt the countryside of Leicestershire living in a cave in the Danehill, the great oak tree. It's interesting as well, the fact that like she became in trance, or she became enthralled in too many stories. And that's what led to her and the legend around black Hannah, the character of Jack in the Graveyard Book, you know, where there's all of this, so many Nursery Rhymes and folks that have this character Jack in them, you know, and it's solved by like the jack, the jack of all trades. And then you have the mind jacket that goes after the well. I don't remember the protagonist name in the Graveyard Book. But

Tessa  51:40  
yeah, it's it's bad. Because it's after nobody, which is reference to the Odyssey. But yes, names bod.

Nigel  51:48  
Yeah. So, you know, I think it's an interesting one, because then the Counter Strike that they leave man, Jack Alo, you know, as the last jack stand next to you that he's the jack of all the stories,

Tessa  52:01  
the way that they talk about stories, and this is fascinating and the ways in which they want to repeat and then they're attracted to a world like the Discworld because of the way that it's sits on this edge of reality. There is also because a any book written in the 20th or 21st century can't help but do this if it's talking about fairy tales. There's also a reference or what I would like to call a pot shot at Disney. If this because Granny is reading the book that dust Harada wrote about the situation in Genua. And she writes, now Elle rules the city as the power behind the throne and spare an s they say has been killed, drowned in the river. He was a wicked man, though not not I think as wicked as L. Four. She says she wants to make it a Magic Kingdom a happy and peaceful place. And when people do that, look out for spies on every corner. And no man dare speak out for who dare speak out against evil done in the name of happiness and peace. Little little pot shot at Disney there. She wants to make a magic kingdom.

Nigel  53:10  
Yeah. I mean, like they're right, they're dead. Right? This book, this book, I think is the first one it feels like there's actual POV as you know, between because in other books. In other books, like I'm thinking, especially sorcery, the way it would switch between the wizards at the university. Like obviously, this happens in pretty much every Discworld book, where there's a couple cast of characters who you see what's happening to them. But like in sorcery, you know, where it goes between wizards who are at the university with Colleen, and then you have Nigel, you know, all this, but they always feel like very caught off point. You know, where they're like, this is this and then there's like, a harsh break, and you go to that one. But the the switcher of POV is between the three witches and in this book feels very organic. And I really, yeah, I really liked the way that they do with the letters, you know, like it feels organic that way. Yeah, NeoX letters, how they give like an insight into this instead of just having it be a thought like, you know, there's no reason for them to put the letters in. They could just say that manioc is writing. You know, obviously, this is a travel book so it makes sense that letters are being written back home being like Kui look where I am. It's so far Oh my god. It's too much. I'm sorry. That's a phrase have started saying from my friend Shay. She keeps saying that. She keeps saying that now. Now I've just

Tessa  54:48  
I like how she always draws the picture and then puts an x where they are in the picture.

Nigel  54:52  
Well, here's the thing your old mum doing time in prison again. I'm an old like, you'll have to send me a cake with a file and she'll have little arrows My clothes just my joke. This sketch of the dungeon. I'm putting an act where we are which is inside. magret is shown wearing a posh dress she has been acting like a courgette also including as make getting fed up because she can't get the lock to work, but I expect it will all be okay. Because the good ones when in the end, and that's awesome. But I love that. Where are we in the dungeon? Oh, we're inside of it.

Tessa  55:24  
We're just inside. Yeah, and she's writing to her son, Jason OG, which I can't remember if they introduce Jason in Weird Sisters. But Jason OG is definitely one of the more prominent members of the OG children. He's kind of your

Nigel  55:43  
Yeah, that reference had their reference, where they're talking about like our Jason or whoever.

Tessa  55:48  
And he's the the big burly blacksmith of a badass, which is the town where they where they live, and he knows the secret of the Horseman's word, which he passes on to Granny Weatherwax he can shoot anything that that lives because he knows the the Horseman's word. Yeah, I think that that's interesting. I like the idea to where he asked magret, he says, You know, I, you know, I heard that there's a lot of people who leapt out at other people in foreign parts and tried to rob them. And Matt writes like, Oh, don't worry, I'll take care of them and, and he says, Oh, I just know that some of the those things are endangered. Because he knows that grainy and nanny don't really need anyone to take care of them. Which I think is great.

Nigel  56:30  
Yeah, I also I really like so I love the laoise concept, the law kind of the Pantheon associated with the the high Isha.

Tessa  56:45  
Is that how you pronounce the I think it's Haitian? Yeah, Haitian from Haiti,

Nigel  56:50  
Haitian. I'd like to think of Hawaii, but I think its height is how it's actually pronounced. I may be wrong. But the diaspora from Haiti, this is associated with their voodoo religion is the lot. It's kind of crept into Louisiana, of voodoo as a healthy dose of respect for the law. But it's really interesting seeing depictions of them. And this one is generally quite positive, in the way like, they're talking about fat afternoon, which is obviously a reference to it's so weird, because Genua is this kind of like Italian city almost in some aspects in the way that it's presented. And it sounds kind of like to know, and also the word genuine, which is what it's trying to sell. But then also, it's like Louisiana, it's New Orleans. Yeah, it's also like Louisiana as a state with the swamps. And then January is New Orleans, you know, with Fat Tuesday, being the literal translation of Mardi Gras, obviously, you know, like, fire on Saturday is a clear reference to the lower bar and Sandy, who was also weirdly the villain in a landfill.

Tessa  58:07  
Yeah. It is not as respectful as this one.

Nigel  58:11  
No, and then the black cockroach legba is a reference to Papa legba, who is also a law specifically says Hi, et I thought as well because I had to learn about this in I was doing the wasteland by TS Eliot the the use of cockroach in like, it's it's interesting that they're like that it's a cockerel. Yeah, they talk about it. Because in the way side in Section five, what the thunder said. They talk about like a rooster crowing. And like there's this whole legacy of roosters, chickens being used in sort of like pagan, Voodoo practices. There's a really interesting I think, I can't find there's a whole book written about chicken and their use in like spiritual belief.

Tessa  59:15  
I think it's interesting because like you said, this book does a lot to expand some of the magical traditions that we've seen because so far we've only seen had ology and geometry and then sorcery. And now we get to see Lilith, mere magic, which we've talked about, but then also voodoo. So there's this great scene when Nanny Ogg meets Mrs. Gogle. And they're kind of like seeing what will happen between the two of them if like they can be trusted. They're sort of sizing each other up. Where do I come from? We call it witchcraft said nanny under her breath. Where I come from, we call it voodoo, said Mrs. Gogle. Nannies wrinkled forehead wrinkled still further. Ain't that all messing with dolls and dead people and stuff? She said eight witchcraft all running around with no clothes on and sticking pins and people said Mrs. Gogle. Lovely. Said nanny, I see what you mean. She shifted uneasily. She was fundamentally an honest woman. I've got to admit though, she added sometimes, maybe just one pin. Mrs. Gogol nodded gravely. Okay, sometimes maybe just one zombie, she said, but only when there's no alternative. Sure, when there's no alternative. What do you know, people ain't showing respect, like when the house needs painting. I think that's such an interesting like introduction of witchcraft versus the Voodoo witch, Mrs. Gogle is a practitioner of and there's this idea as well, that a lot of voodoo is manipulating belief, which is something that we have also seen in the disc world before.

Nigel  1:00:48  
Yeah. Like, at the end there is when Granny Weatherwax is laid out on the bed, Mrs. Google asks, you know, could she she could just summon a whole pantheon of gods? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I found it here. So the book is by Paige Smith and Charles Daniel, the chicken book being an inquiry into the rise and fall use and abuse, triumph and tragedy of Gallus domesticus. As the image of a cock stood on a roof tree and a flash of lightning is evocative of early Christian, Jewish and rostering traditions which revered the rooster as a creature which can ward off evil omens. And it's interesting that this one is the only thing that Grieco seems to be afraid of. directly, directly linked to a laoire, one of the law, the devoutly religious within the Kayani and period on my route, and quote, how to caulk to guard him and ward off all evil spirits.

Tessa  1:01:54  
Yeah, and then it he's also very instrumental in the empowering of Mr. Saturday, who we learned is actually Baron Saturday, who was the original ruler of the city who had been killed by Lilith and the duck, who is the the prince in question. And also that he is m Burrell, his father and Mrs. Gogol is her mother, which is they never actually tell Ambarella this information, but it's fairly obvious from the text itself. What did you think of Mrs. Gogol and Baron Saturday,

Nigel  1:02:28  
obviously, the robot thing kind of being the subtext to us, but I liked the idea of him just being a zombie worker. And it's interesting as well, because you get a Robinson Crusoe reference, which is like this is Saturday, and they say, oh, man, Saturday, like Man Friday, and Robinson Crusoe. But it's interesting because of a link to more. I wonder, did you or not two more sorry, to Renson I wonder, did you pick up on that?

Tessa  1:03:00  
I don't think I did pick up on it. Yeah, so

Nigel  1:03:03  
it's like the whole plot of the start of the color of magic is the you know, like is that ring swing is trying to escape from that. Death is always like, Oh, I'm going to collect yourself here but rents when defies that Safar Phyllis in, like at the rim of the Discworld and stuff. Yeah. Mrs. Gogo on the Baron turned around death put down string can step forward, Byron Saturday straightened up, I ready to go with you. He said Deathstroke Ready or not, you seem to indicate was all the same to him. But I held to off the Baronet. And for 12 years, he put his arm around or Zulia shoulders, when they killed me and threw me in the river we still life from you. You stopped living? You never died. I did not come for you, then. You did. I had an appointment with you tonight. You know, so like everyone else. Even when they die, they're not dead, just stop living. Whereas run swim, when he has an appointment to die he continually missed. Right. And then like to go back to another meeting of the Windell tunes fan club. You know, like he's dead. But then at the end when all of it is fixed, only then does that show up. And I know death has been removed. of the new death is building up. But it seems to be that like only when Windell has come to terms with the fact that he's dead and the role that he has to play, which is being dead. What he's had to do to stop them all from becoming a thing and Moorpark only then does DEF CON. You know, like that's when his appointment was?

Tessa  1:04:52  
Absolutely. I mean, in the case wide open. Yeah, I think there's a really interesting discussion to be had about Death and when he comes from people and when he doesn't, and does he actually know when everyone's gonna die? Is Rincewind a strange exception to this? Or is it like, I don't know, this is a really good question.

Nigel  1:05:13  
But it's also like the fact that people who are, you know, who are practitioners of magic are, you know, are able to see death. But it's so funny that, like, so many of them don't recognize death. Like they have this belief that like, because they know when they'll die, that they're not afraid of death, but then they never recognize it. He's always a stranger in a crowd. Or like when he goes past Malgrat and Nany. org on the stairs to Lily's appointment. You know that they go like, Oh, God, he's got you know, like, he's got great costume on then they realize,

Tessa  1:05:52  
yeah, it's just fascinating because Rincewind always recognizes staff whenever he sees him.

Nigel  1:05:58  
Yeah, like that's his trying to be subtle when he he meets him in the market. And more important, like the very first time they be in Color Magic wrenches like, no, stop, stop your death. No, not today. Thank you very much.

Tessa  1:06:12  
That's this is a great question. I would be fascinated to know how this unfolds as we as we continue with the series, the missus goggle and voodoo thread in this also brings up a really interesting thing about race in the Discworld. Because, as we are told, these are the first black people that Nanny Ogg specifically has ever met in this city and the city pre seems pretty diverse racially. But a lot of the culture that we're being given is explicitly black, especially the food, the food is very New Orleans, but it's very, very black food as well, the idea of people making delicious food out of stuff that their betters have discarded, like, this is the only stuff you can eat. And so we're gonna make like, really good food out of it. That this is all the history of black cuisine, especially in the south in the US, is this idea of, well, we don't want, you know, the crop, the crawdads, or whatever. So you can have that, but then they make it something delicious, right? And then, of course, by that point, white people are like, Oh, it's delicious. So we were we actually wanted it the whole time, which is absolutely not true. That's a whole different podcast if we wanted to talk about that.

Nigel  1:07:25  
Yeah, cuz you have the footnote that like this is the first plug people they meet, but like it's very, yeah, oh, I managed to open it on the exact right page, what the fuck, racism was not a problem on the Discworld. Because what with trolls and dwarfs and so on Sheezus was more interesting. Black and white lived in perfect harmony ganged up on green. It's a nice thing. Like, it's nice and funny. But also you have to remember that this is a white author writing about and he's writing about a specific, like diaspora with the, like, the lewat unbelief in them is a closed practice. And really, he shouldn't be writing about them. But he's also writing about a specific diaspora. And he always kind of have to like, be like, well, it's a white person who's writing this.

Tessa  1:08:11  
Because I go back and forth about this. I feel like it is very respectful what he's doing here. And obviously, neither of us is black. So I would be very interested to know what a black reader thinks of the way that he is portrayed them here. However, I'm not sure I agree that only I'm not sure. I think that white authors shouldn't write people of color in their books, because we wouldn't ever have any people of color. In no fancy.

Nigel  1:08:37  
Obviously, that's not what I'm saying. But it's like you, you just you need to be aware of when reading, I think right, especially in the way that he's depicted this that like he's a white person writing about a significantly disenfranchised diaspora, right people. And that's like, it's just something that you need to be conscious of. That's all I'm saying. Like, yeah, obviously Own Voices is preferable, but like, if, you know, look, if White people can do it and not be offensive, then like, Yeah, go on.

Tessa  1:09:10  
Yeah, no, I just I think that there are people I think there's enough about black people not being in fantasy like that. I just I enjoy it every time I see it, as long as it's not overtly racist. Because like, I just, I just want a fantasy world in which it's very diverse and that you have a lot of different traditions being being shown in it. I also think that what what gives him the advantage in this too, is that he actually specifically says that voodoo as a practice is something that exists across the multiverse. And so I think that he says that specifically to give this character in this portrayal of voodoo, some flexibility. So that way, he's not trying to say this is how voodoo works on planet Earth. This is how voodoo works on the Discworld. Now, he is still obviously portraying A specific cultural practice by calling it voodoo. So we can argue about whether it's supposed to represent voodoo or not. But I honestly when I read that I was like, oh, yeah, that's him trying to say like, I'm not trying to make claims about this, I'm trying to, like, integrate it into this particular community.

Nigel  1:10:18  
Like, it's a representation of aspect of voodoo that, you know, like, the Terry Pratchett is perceived, or whatever the problem was saying that things are bad rap. Is that like, it's a depiction of a certain it's a representation of a certain form of something. And so therefore, you're nearly or raising that. So like, if it's not explicitly offensive, like, like JK Rowling, and her writing in like triple blood on trans characters. That's harmful. That's not representation. Right. Right. But like, are

Tessa  1:10:51  
ones which are caricature? Yes. Jewish stereotypes?

Nigel  1:10:55  
Yeah. Or the only Irish character being obsessed with blowing stuff up by obviously, no, this is not a racial thing. But it's like, you know, it was written in the early 90s. And having the only Irish character, be obsessed with blowing things up is very, very on the nose. Joe is an extremely common form of autism. And so to then, like, say that that's not representation is kind of taking away from who it doesn't represent. I'm sorry, I need to like also, I need to also say that like, if people say that it's a harmful like it's perpetuating harmful stereotypes, of course, but David Levinson's books are,

Tessa  1:11:33  
there you go. That's a good yeah.

Nigel  1:11:35  
David Levin's books are portrayal of the gay experience, but not the modern gay experience, their portrayal of someone who was gay in the 80s and 90s, basically. And he's, yeah, he's writing that. And so it feels out of touch to modern gay readers, because it doesn't represent their experience is one novel where it's kind of like narrated by like ghosts of old gay men. So it makes sense. Yeah, yeah, something like that, where there is a disconnect between the author and what they're trying to represent some benevolently on the actuality of the world that the representation is going into.

Tessa  1:12:14  
I completely agree that that definitely makes sense. Why does

Nigel  1:12:18  
that a goggle also just have a Baba Yaga house. It's so strange. Like

Tessa  1:12:23  
her. This is Gogol? Yeah.

Nigel  1:12:25  
She has Yeah, she has a house with duck feet, I mean, walks around. And it's very much like the the Baba Yaga from an her house, which is chicken legs in Eastern European folklore. And obviously, like, you know, you can go back to this, this idea of like, stories reiterating, and be there being different versions of things. But it's very strange. The fact that this is meant to be a swamp community, and like a Baba Yaga house,

Tessa  1:12:52  
I'd be interested to know if because I don't again, I don't know very much about this particular tradition. I'd be interested to know if there is a parallel in this tradition, and that's where we're Pratchett's drawing from. But to kind of go back to the the thing about race and Genua. I think it's interesting the ways in which the people who live there the people who support Mrs. Gogol, the people who are resisting Lilith are the people who have been gentrified, right by Yeah, by Lilith because it the idea is that this city used to be more like the people who lived in the swamp. But since Lilith moved in, it's become more European. It's become more fairy tale ish. And there's a scene where she is when she's like, empowering, barren Saturday, all of these people show up. Mrs. Gogo could feel them among the trees, the homeless, the hungry, the silent people, those forsaken by men and gods, that people have the Miss and mud whose only strength was somewhere on the other side of weakness and whose beliefs were as rickety and homemade as their homes. And the people from the city, not the ones who lived in the big white houses and went to balls and find coaches, but the other ones, they were the ones that stories are never about. Stories are not on the whole interested in swine herds, who remain swine herds and poor and humble shoemakers whose destiny is to die slightly poorer and much humbler. These people were the ones who made the magical kingdom work, who cooked its meals and swept its floors and carted its night soil and where its faces in the crowd and whose wishes and dreams, undemanding as they were were of no consequence, the invisibles and I thought this was so fascinating because this idea that the stories, there are people out there that stories are not about, but you need those people to make the stories work. It's their labor that makes the Magic Kingdom work, which you could say is like another pot shot at Disney right and their labor practices. But it's also like the idea of you need people to be in a lower class to make the dreams of the upper class happen. Yeah, and it's very racialized and Yeah, mostly black people in a swamp.

Nigel  1:15:03  
Yeah, in the swamp. And then like, the, there's a quote when they when Granny Weatherwax is going, and she sees like the mirrors, she sees Lily being their nanny OG, you know, she realized that there are witches in here and that they're at the top. There's a quote that's, you know, like there's two cities here, you know, the one that is the one that's presented to the public and the one that's been gentrified, basically into oblivion, to pave the way for this.

Tessa  1:15:35  
Yeah. I also think it's fascinating that Ambarella who is our Cinderella stand in his black, right? Again, but make sense in this city that she would be black, but people tend to have really weird reactions to casting black actors, black. People in these roles, which they keep insisting are European, even though Black people have been living in Europe for hundreds and hundreds of years. So it's just it's really, really interesting to me that even in the early 90s, to Prach, it was saying like, No, this character can be black.

Nigel  1:16:08  
Yeah. And it's interesting as well, because like they have cast there for the upcoming Little Mermaid live action adaptation where Daveed Diggs plays Sebastia to cast an actress of color. As Ariel, all her name is Hayley. Holly.

Tessa  1:16:26  
It's Holly. She's part of a really, really good pop r&b duo.

Nigel  1:16:31  
Okay. Yeah. You know, we're the have that, but then it's interesting as well, tying back into our discussion on motion pictures, in the last episode, the quote from Peter Dinklage, because here we have also Cassidy moonda, who is the dwarf? And then you know, like, where's the quote from Peter Dinklage about the Snow White seven dwarfs film where they're saying that they're progressive for casting? A Hispanic actress as Cinderella, right? Yes, yeah. And then also perpetuating this harmful stereotype. All, you know, of these dwarves that he's spent his whole life trying to raise awareness on and that they haven't. So it's interesting in this the Cinderella analog Ambarella is a person of color.

Tessa  1:17:20  
Yeah. And when she when she takes control because the at the end, they put her in charge, although granny has the duel with Mrs. Gogol about whether or not Mrs. Gogo gets to be involved in umbrellas rule, because she says you can make her you could make her queen. But once you start making choices for her like that's when it's going to get bad again. So it's interesting that the first thing Ammeraal wants to do is go to the Mardi Gras, right. She wants to connect back with that culture of the city, instead of following in lilius. More, gentrified footsteps.

Nigel  1:17:58  
Yeah. Although I thought it was very funny how everyone leaves the room because they realize what happens when a ruler says that something isn't strictly mandatory.

Tessa  1:18:07  
Yeah, this isn't strictly mandatory. You better go.

Nigel  1:18:10  
Yeah, it's an interesting is it just like, it's an interesting, like, if you didn't in the lens of like, a trauma response, you know? Yeah. Like, it's very sad where they spent their whole, I don't know, how long was it that 12 years? You know, from between why Oh, yeah, cuz yeah, 12 years are barren. Saturday has been dead for 12 years. So Lilith has been kind of holding power for 12 years. There's not a whole thing, you know, like, afraid to express themselves. So then when the new, like lawfully appointed ruler comes in and wants to express herself that they don't know what to do with this.

Tessa  1:18:47  
Yeah, that's absolutely true. What did you think about the duel between Mrs. Gogol and Granny Weatherwax?

Nigel  1:18:54  
Oh, it was so cool. It's so cool. When she puts her hand into the fire and the dollar goes on fire. And then Mrs. Google is like, how did you do that? And then 90 August, just like she didn't do that she made you think, to do it. Because that's what hydrology is.

Tessa  1:19:12  
It's Mrs. Goggles belief that the doll is Granny Weatherwax that allows her to stick it with a pin. And so Granny, Granny Weatherwax is just reversing it. Yeah,

Nigel  1:19:25  
because the doll was meant to be Lilith. And then all of a sudden, she changes it to be right. Granny Weatherwax because they're similar. But yeah, like, it's already ceding this possibility that, you know, like, a belief in objects is kind of malleable, you know, or like the stories that things can be changed, or really like the line where they're talking about how the they've severed the story by smashing the shoe and turning the clock at that. Like, it's sever like This is wound around the Discworld and gets severed in like the story doesn't know what to do and it will latch on to anything it can, you know, and then everything becomes more malleable so that the lily doll becomes the resume doll becomes or becomes on fire. That's not a sense, but you know what I mean?

Tessa  1:20:21  
Yeah. Becomes on fire. Yes. I mean, it's technically not wrong. Yeah, yeah. So they go to the ball to prevent umbrella for marrying the prince, the duck, who is actually a frog because Lilith is trying to do more than one story here. Right? Yeah. Because Lilith is very interested in making animals believe that they're human or taking the shape of a human, which we know that granny has actually done as well. Because when people cross her, sometimes she turns she makes them think that they're a frog instead of turning them into a frog.

Nigel  1:20:56  
Like when when Lily says, Oh, you would have done the same, you know, to get this to get to this position. And Granny Weatherwax says, No, I would have thought it but wouldn't have done it.

Tessa  1:21:07  
It always wears off when granny does. Because the implication is that she did make someone think they were a frog once for like, a couple of days. And then they were off. But he had it coming.

Nigel  1:21:18  
And it's interesting that they like this is kind of an nearly like, as explicit as possible. Reference to bar to borrowing from Equal Rights, which is a separate form of hedge ology. Which they kind of then just forget about, like, because

Tessa  1:21:36  
it's not been forgotten about. It's just not in this book.

Nigel  1:21:40  
No, between between then and now, they like this. No, there's no other references to borrowing. Well,

Tessa  1:21:46  
we'll see. We'll see. What do you mean? Well, it does. Right? She does. It does say that she can recognize the minds of like, she can ride that minds of animals better than she can ride the minds of people, which is how she's able to immediately identify the the sisters and then she does go into the mind of the wolf.

Nigel  1:22:07  
Yeah. And they talk about how like, simple it is the mind of a carnivore or the mind of a predator where it or the mind of an ant is very simple. It has one logical chain of thought which is go here, you know, carry carry carry, go here, get in the sandwiches.

Tessa  1:22:28  
So yeah, there is that and and we will see more about borrowing later. It's maybe not in this book, but they have certainly have not forgotten about it.

Nigel  1:22:35  
Yeah, well, I said up to this point, like between when it was introduced, between when it was introduced, and this reference in which is abroad, there's really not the

Tessa  1:22:44  
right thing that isn't, there isn't? You're absolutely correct.

Nigel  1:22:49  
I think borrowing is a bit like Hmong in the Joe Joe's franchise where they had it in parts one and two, and then they were like, No, punching ghosts are much more interesting. And then they just more interesting. Yeah, they just never do anything with it ever again. Have you seen Joe Joe's?

Tessa  1:23:05  
I haven't, but I've heard so much about it for a lot of people.

Nigel  1:23:09  
Yeah. I don't think he's like,

Tessa  1:23:13  
of course, all this shape shifting culminates in there. No transform. libo. Human, a human shaped cat. No,

Nigel  1:23:23  
I tell it like

Tessa  1:23:25  
you didn't like it. I laughed so hard in lots of parts of this.

Nigel  1:23:30  
Why did they have to come sexy? No,

Tessa  1:23:33  
because? Because he is sexy. He's just cat sexy. Yeah,

Nigel  1:23:37  
but then. Okay, but like, why did they have to make it seem like Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax were attracted to him. That was very weird. I did not that make me extremely uncomfortable. Like if they had other characters. You know, who did not know that? Rebo was originally cash. How's that reaction then? That would have been okay.

Tessa  1:23:58  
But I think it's more like shock that he's attractive. More than like, I mean, because like they're not neither one of them. Like come on to him or anything. It's more like they're shocked that he looks that way

Nigel  1:24:09  
to have a hello sailor moment. Yeah, yeah. Or Hello, Nurse moment if you're a fan.

Tessa  1:24:18  
Greta was clearly a cat like he thinks like a cat. He obviously has problems with his new body at times. But what did you think about his shenanigans?

Nigel  1:24:34  
He's just a madman wandering around in cars care off. Like, I love that for him. He's in his like, he's in his just insane era. I love that for Yeah, but again, I didn't like that. They made him sexy. Because Griebel is kind of like yeah, he's cat sexy, but we've never really been presented his POV to the extent that we know that he's cat sexy we just get like a narrative that said he's had sex with pretty much every cat in the local area. Right? The narrative the narration makes him seem like a very ugly betel monstrous cat

Tessa  1:25:17  
but he's he's ugly sexy it's like Adam driver or like somebody who can have an attractive

Nigel  1:25:23  
job come up bring the phrase ugly sexy to me and expect me to take it seriously. I'm not like vomits like

Tessa  1:25:31  
ugly sexy is a real thing. No it's a real thing Name one

Nigel  1:25:34  
person who's ugly sexy Adam Driver he's not a trusted

Tessa  1:25:38  
see Oh he's so attractive boasts of the internet disagrees with you on this

Nigel  1:25:46  
Ewan McGregor real thing is a man has a track.

Tessa  1:25:49  
Yeah, but he's not ugly. Sexy. No.

Unknown Speaker  1:25:53  
No, the thing. Oh,

Tessa  1:25:55  
yeah, it is toe is very ugly, sexy. Sexy. No,

Nigel  1:26:00  
no, they're just attractive.

Tessa  1:26:03  
No, no, I'm gonna disagree with you on that one. No,

Nigel  1:26:06  
but is this the first disagreement of the podcast? Is this our first fight this is our first our first slide so for Ugly sexy ugly listeners right in whether you think ugly sexy is a thing or not. And I'm probably I know I'm probably going to lose because y'all are a bunch of fucking weirdos on the internet. Actually, I'm gonna ask a lousy right now.

Tessa  1:26:29  
A lot to back me up.

Nigel  1:26:31  
Oh, fuck you.

Tessa  1:26:33  
It's true. I'm just gonna tell you that right now that lacI is not your go to backup I think on this one. No, but like be Ron.

Nigel  1:26:42  
Laci is the only person that I've really spoken to about things that have happened on the podcast so lousy just saying his ugly sexy a thick asking for nanny OG really

Tessa  1:26:58  
seems like an odd question to just come out of the blue at some point

Nigel  1:27:01  
so we're gonna leave it there I don't know whether he's online or not. No, no, no, he just came online obviously got a notification that he's typing he said law in all caps

Tessa  1:27:16  
that's not an answer. Yeah, answer be.

Nigel  1:27:22  
Typing I feel like this. This is lousy his first guest appearance on the podcast like we shouted him out last episode, but like now he's basically on this episode.

Tessa  1:27:35  
He's basically on this episode. He is like our call a friend.

Nigel  1:27:39  
Yeah, we're gonna we're gonna list the episode of episode 11. Which is abroad featuring la-z Featuring la-z In what context? He says scumbag sexy is kind of ugly, sexy. I don't know. What's the context? I don't hold

Tessa  1:27:57  
on. I'm actually messaging him. I said Rebo that's the context.

Nigel  1:28:01  
No, no, no, it's not about Griebel I'm contending that it's not a thing at all.

Tessa  1:28:07  
Okay, does it think ugly sexy is a thing

Nigel  1:28:13  
I'm gonna put Griebel Adam Driver Willem Dafoe. Tim Curry is a strange list that seems like it'd be the list for like a like a fuck marry kill list. But like you've got an extra day though

Tessa  1:28:25  
that I would watch this movie whatever movie this is that the Dreamcast? Is Adam Driver. Willem Dafoe and Tim Curry.

Nigel  1:28:32  
It will be so bonkers. Yeah. Yeah, I think we've settled on a middle ground is that we've watched this film. We would watch

Tessa  1:28:41  
this film. We just disagree about the attractive kind of attractive.

Nigel  1:28:45  
Oh, he said, lol. I agree though. In that list. I'm like, that's not an answer. And he said yes, I think it is.

Tessa  1:28:51  
Oh, yeah, I told you. He was gonna back me up. All right, now that we've got that settled. I also love how after the through all these things, all these adventures I love that he wears the ginger cat mask, which is clearly made for a lady, but he like wears it because he always wanted to be a ginger cat. That was great. His visit to the kitchen with Mrs. Pleasant is wonderful where he like laps the milk and eats the fish heads under the table and then curls up in front of the fire. Yeah, and I love that even though he is like this giant, sexy, ugly sexy, man, whatever you want to call that. That Nanny Ogg still is like so for you. I love that when he shows up to save them from the guards that nanny August like Oh, I knew he wouldn't go very far from his mommy. Like she still sees him as a little kitten. I love their relationship. It's great. Do you have any other thoughts about Rebo? No. Did I break you accidentally? Yes. I am apologize, I apologize

Nigel  1:30:06  
I've run so many Twitter polls in the last couple days

Tessa  1:30:14  
Well, the magic does wear off greed but does go back to being a cat. So or back to being cat shaped, I should say he was always a cat. And that's part of the point of the transformation. There were two other things I wanted to talk about before I got into some of the references here. One of them is that this book also besides expanding the types of magic that exist in the Discworld, it also expands the witches mythology, we get the first mention here of the three witches dynamic, the mother, the maid in the Crone, which they were like the the mother, the maid and the other one because they don't want to call granny wax Granny Weatherwax, a crone to her face, although Lilith then does call her the crown later. That's important because even though witches are non hierarchical, and they don't like each other, the natural number of witches when they are together is three, and they have to be three and that's very specific configuration.

Nigel  1:31:12  
I thought about it because it's like, this whole idea of the popular conception of witches being this column. And being this Coven, and then like them dancing naked, and I had to watch the witch recently for class. Till directed by Robert Iger, the vich. Even would sound like to live deliciously. Such a funny line. You know, like this whole idea of what, what is and what isn't actually witchy. And what's popular conception but yeah, I think in a narrative, which is about stories, stuff, the idea of the mother, the mother, the maintenance Pro, is a nice interesting, like, mythological thing, because there's a lot of triumvirate goddesses like hacker t, in Greek mythology, is a goddess who takes three forms. And also you have like, triple goddesses, like Eru unfold in Irish mythology, and then also the mark and the Bob and the Maka, which I think would be more witches. Like hacker T and the margen are more close to what this book on the idea of three witches? Is there an Arab button photo? Yeah. Like it's on an episode of angiography can bring up the fact that I'm Irish.

Tessa  1:32:33  
Haha, yeah. And like a lot of that is in this right? And the idea that women whether you see this as misogynistic or not women go through a lot of different titles throughout their lives. Or they can go through a lot of titles throughout their lives, the maiden, the mother, and the Crone, right that as women age, the idea is that there's expected life events that happen. Whereas men don't really go through those things, or at least societally, they're not framed that way. And so there's that as well, which I think is really interesting. But yeah, I also love the I loved the meeting at the beginning with the witches MACRA. It's not there, but granny and nanny are and we get to meet some of the other witches who live in linker and they're arguing about how there's not many of them left and we get to meet old mother does maths who is someone who will be referenced many times? In future wish books? We I think we only see her a few times, but she's like a minor character. I love old mother does maths.

Nigel  1:33:30  
Well, she's the senior witch because she's the oldest right?

Tessa  1:33:33  
She's the oldest one and she has unfixed or ocular vision, because her second site basically got detached and so it's impossible to know exactly where she thinks she is or what conversation she thinks she's having. And the best you can do is just say what you need to say and hopefully she'll get it the next time she passes through. So it's she's a funny character because she's having a clearly a very different conversation from the rest of them at any given moment.

Nigel  1:34:01  
She's a bit like, the lady, and I forgot her name in Reaper, my missus has her. Yeah, this is Kate who has her second sight or as or foresight on constantly. She's, she's asked her questions before you ask.

Tessa  1:34:18  
But old mother does maths isn't as focused as that like she's not answering questions before you ask them. She's just somewhere else in time or she's seeing somewhere else in time. Yeah, it could be in the past or future. So you just don't really know. But yeah, no, that is very similar in a lot of ways. I thought that was fascinating. And I liked it. Apparently neat. Granny Weatherwax is so good at cards because she's been playing old mother does maths. And once you play someone like that, you can play against anybody. So that was really cool. I also this was the first time I had noticed this actually, as I was reading it this time. There's a lot we talked a lot about pay parallels and a lot about doubling in this book. There is a lot in this book about the ox as a family. Nanny, often like they talk a lot about nanny and the way that she's like the matriarch of her family, and the ways in which the numerous numerous branches of OGS all like have all this infighting against each other how it's always like they don't like there's all these family feuds and any kind of encourages them indiscriminately. But if an outsider says anything bad about an OG, they'll all turn on the outsider, because you just you can't say anything about family, right? I remember reading about that the first time, but I didn't notice until this book, the ways in which the OGS are contracted with the weather waxes as a family, because, Nanny, she understands the fighting between granny and Lilith as a family matter. But she struggles a bit to understand the ways in which her family is different from the Weatherwax family and how they have a different dynamic. Did you notice any of that in this book?

Nigel  1:36:11  
She's definitely sympathetic. Oh, yeah, thing. I think that's the like, that's the key distinction between her Granny Weatherwax and situations. That nanny OG is sympathetic to this an understanding whereas as a as much more like, she's much more of a matriarch in the traditional British sense, where she has to be like, stern and provide or suppose like the family head, not necessarily the matriarch because obviously, there's the gendered perception that a mother must provide and do the cooking and the cleaning. But she's definitely more of the head of a family in the traditional sense. Yeah. In the Regal, like, she's like the queen, you know, except I don't think any of granny Granny Weatherwax his relatives are quite like Prince Andrew. So

Tessa  1:37:07  
I think that's fascinating, because Danny OG does like, pull a lot of matriarchal ideas on their head, because she doesn't she is not associated with domesticity, all that much. She has other people to do that for her, namely, other members of her family. But it is interesting the ways in which her family bickers and fights and has these feuds, but at the end of the day, they're their family, right? They're all there for each other. But Granny's family is not there for each other, like one of them's going to lose tonight. Right? So it's, it was just a really interesting parallel, because I didn't notice I think the first time how much they talk about the OGS in this book.

Nigel  1:37:46  
Yeah, for a book that's explicitly about the relationship between the Weatherwax sisters, there's a lot of a lot about the especially. Yeah, these letters that are the gift those sending back, Jason, you know, there's, there's so many of them. It's not just a once off thing,

Tessa  1:38:03  
right? And then it shows this genuine connection and this genuine. Yeah, they're a very dysfunctional family, but they love each other. Whereas Granny's family is dysfunctional in a way that can't be fixed. Yeah. And then there's also the difference, because like, they're like, oh, yeah, she got kicked out of the house, because she was like, so wanton. Right. And nannies like, well, I, you know, I was wanting, you know, when I was a teenager, she's like, but you didn't use magic, right? You didn't, you didn't force anyone to do something they didn't want to do. Yeah. So that that was really interesting as well. There are a lot of different references to things in this book. We've already mentioned lob Singh Dibbler. There's, I was surprised that they actually do mention the granny went to ONC more pork before. I did not remember really, if they talked about equal rights all that much in these later books. But apparently, we do get this reference to equal rights in which she talks about having gone to a big city, like ONC morepork. And they often ask her when they get to Genua. They're like, is this what a big city is like, but Jenny was like, very different than Ogmore porque. So she doesn't have all of the she thinks it's going to be like Ogmore porque, but it's not. So it's the we do get that reference to equal rights. We also get a very, very brief reference to the city watch where she talks about, at one point, she talks about the how different the genuine guards are from the City Watch of Ogmore porque, and how they're like in these smart uniforms, and they seem like they actually belong together, unlike the City Watch, who are just kind of this disreputable bunch. So we get that as well. When Granny is going to the Card Sharks, both MACRA and nanny are worried that she's going to use magic to win. And nanny actually says, but using magic it's tempting fate and Magaret response No, not fate. And I believe that that is a reference to the lady from the color of magic. So I just thought that was a really interesting color of magic callback. We also get the first reference, I believe to dwarf bread in this book,

Nigel  1:40:13  
I think is really funny. Because it's a direct riff off let's spread the Elven bread from Lord of the Rings that you know, like, you'll never go hungry. When when you have landless because it's so filling but with dwarf bread, you'll never go hungry because it makes you realize how much else you could feasibly palace

Tessa  1:40:34  
before you would eat the dwarf bread. Yeah, so dwarf bread that's going to be an on running joke in the Discworld, the dwarf bread and but this is the first reference we get here, we get other Lord of the Rings references as well, because when they run across the dwarf mine, there's the reference to the mines of Moria like the Speak, friend and enter, but they can't find the magic runes. So they're just like, open up, you know, on the, and they're like, we paid a lot for those magic runes.

Nigel  1:41:01  
A minor moment for the book, which isn't in the film, is the Gollum is tracking through the Moria. And assuming after we get it in this, you know, where they knock him off before they go off on their broom.

Tessa  1:41:16  
Yeah, so we get we do get a golden reference. And what's interesting is that I think it's more subtle than the other references because like the fairy tale references are very obvious references to those fairy tales. This one unless you've read that section of Lord of the Rings, or you're familiar with Gollum as a character, you wouldn't necessarily get it.

Nigel  1:41:37  
Tessa? I went to find this thing and I opened the book up on the right.

Tessa  1:41:42  
This is like a magical day for you.

Nigel  1:41:45  
Yeah, someone's following US History my graph. The two pail glows are appeared at the edge of the lamp light. Eventually they turned out to be the eyes of a small gray creature vaguely frog like paddling towards them on a lock. It reached the both long and clammy fingers grab the side lugubrious face arose level with natty OG. Oh god, I'm gonna have to do you have two gallon boys? Allow it said let's smoke both. All three of them stared at it for a while thing Granny Weatherwax picked up an oar and hid it firmly over the head. There was a splash and it just horrible little booger said Granny, as they wrote on looks like a troublemaker to me. Yeah, synagogue. It's the slimy ones you have to watch out for. I wonder what he wanted? said my graph. And it's like, isn't it doesn't he say in The Hobbit that it's his birthday? To Bilbo?

Tessa  1:42:38  
Yes, it does. Yeah. Because it's a birthday present. Yeah. The references are really great in this. We haven't even talked about the fact that Malgrat has her wand that she could only turn things into pumpkins with which is a fun inversion when she turns the carriage into a pumpkin instead of the other way around

Nigel  1:42:57  
the whole scene with the child who's supposed to be a Little Red Riding Hood, or it's like I bet you 100 million billion trillion squillion dollars, you can't turn that into a pumpkin. It's like I've turned everything else into a pumpkin. What's it? Like? Why do you think this would be different? It's like, maybe it will be, which I think maybe will be Yeah, like that's the whole point of this novel is the thing. Things don't have to be what they are. Maybe at the end of the day, this will be different. You know, like the ending of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King where nothing is accomplished. The whole cycle is a story about failure. But then at the end, Roan, Ronan and Gilead has the whore. And so there's the implication that this cycle will be better because he already has.

Tessa  1:43:42  
All right, this will be maybe the last one. Yeah. Which I

Nigel  1:43:45  
think, look, I'm willing to stand by the ending of the Dark Tower here. I really like it,

Tessa  1:43:50  
too. Yeah, Sam hates it, but it's one of the sources of contention in our literary discussions.

Nigel  1:43:56  
Hi, Sam. I'm sorry, it says on this one.

Tessa  1:44:02  
I'm glad I'm glad we're not fighting anymore about this. I didn't realize this the first time but I got it this time. Somebody knew it, Mort, which is the last day of Mardi Gras in Genua. That Saturday night death which is obviously an inversion of Saturday Night Live. Totally went over my head the first time first few times I read this because I've read this book more than once.

Nigel  1:44:27  
I got that book because I tried to tackle that literally. You know, somebody and we more where I was like what does this because I don't know what's worse. This is a question I keep posing myself. I don't know what's worse. The fact that I used to be for the fact that I used to be fluent in French, like properly fluent, or the fact that I no longer

Tessa  1:44:48  
Well, you have a much better accent than I do. So I would take that as a win.

Nigel  1:44:51  
Yeah, that's the one thing that's kept over the fact that I could actually do a proper accent. I could probably like if I went to France, I could probably like decent really hold the conversation but I'm no where near as fluent as I used to be. But then I was like, that doesn't make sense. Like, Saturday night. Dead, dead Saturday night. And then I was like, oh, yeah, like I said that.

Tessa  1:45:15  
Did this Saturday night death. Yeah. I've never seen SNL. Oh, yeah. Well, it's probably there are some good sketches out there. But it's probably not worth really watching. Unless you're into that kind of humor. There's a lot more bad than there is good.

Nigel  1:45:30  
How long do you think it took Terry Pratchett to write a Discworld book?

Tessa  1:45:35  
I don't know. But by this point, he was having multiple come out a year.

Nigel  1:45:39  
Okay. Yeah. So it was probably fairly quick turnaround between him starting the book and it getting released, right? Yeah. Oh, I can't find an actual date for when it was released. It just says 1991. I wonder if I go into the Wikipedia page? Will it give me first published because I thought I thought it would be just something that I like the parallels. But then when I Googled when this thing came out, is also it was early 1991. So I'm like, oh, because it's kind of like a It's kind of like a stereotypical CDC and a lot of things but the scene where granny learns to play poker, or what number she learns to play poker but where she pretend hard? Yeah, where she pretends not to and then wins back all the money that's been lost is like the scene in the bank shot episode of Fresh Prince of Bel Air where wills uncle whose name I don't know, because I've only ever seen three scenes from scenes my do not seasons, not episodes only ever three seats, the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. But he goes on he pretends not to know how to play pool wins back all the money that will have lost like 90 ark has. And so then he keeps, he loses and then goes no, no, I think I can get this, you know, and then gets them to raise the stakes. And why don't we play for you know, like real big stakes. And then he goes to the butler and says like, bring out Lucille Lucille this has prize pool cue that he's won loads of games, and then proceeds to annihilate them. I saw that as a tick tock. But the look, the fact that it came out that episode aired on February 25 1991 is really suspicious to me. That it's you know, like that it's a direct reference, maybe?

Tessa  1:47:36  
Uh, well, I think that this is a pretty like, I think Grady Weatherwax is tapping into a story, right? And the story is, is that you if you have a bunch of Card Sharks, or somebody who thinks they're going to get somebody else, like take advantage of somebody else, eventually there will come along somebody who pretends to not know what they're doing, but secretly will take them for all they're worth.

Nigel  1:47:56  
Yeah, because they need to learn to lose, but it's it's just it's so strange to me that they came out in 1991. Both

Tessa  1:48:03  
in the same year. Yeah,

Nigel  1:48:05  
I'm feasibly. Because this came out at the end of February. There's feasibly a time period that it could have like influenced pressure, more writing. I mean, because also Fresh Prince of Bel Air is a sitcom. It seems like the type of thing the press would watch because it's akin to a lot of the things in his books is the sitcom kind of humor.

Tessa  1:48:28  
Yeah, that is absolutely true. All right, there are a lot of sightings in this so there's let's see. 1234567 There are seven death sightings in this because he's like out and about Genua near the end of the book, but the first one is when he comes for desk durata so Desperado knows exactly when she's gonna die because she's a witch. And so she makes you know, she puts everything together. She even digs her own grave or has someone dig her own grave and then fill it in afterwards. So she has a whole conversation with death, who does not fundamentally seem to understand to the point of fairy godmother ring, but there you go. And then the next reference to him is when nanny and Granny are at Mardi Gras. They're passing a jug around and it's just a really quick reference where she passes a jug to a tall figure on her left and you see the all caps thank you and like you said she doesn't really recognize him she says you know them bones are paid on really good but then she sort of realizes it afterwards that some like that or something not quite right about that interaction but it's never actually we'll always see are the caps though it we don't have more than that in that particular interaction. And then he we see him as a another guest stock pass the Butler at the beginning the ball where he tells the butler who asks about the ticket, I'm here incognito again all in caps. That's that's really cool. And I like that nobody recognizes him appears because a lot of people are dressed up as skeletons. So he really is there incognito because people just think it's a costume. We get a another one at the buffet at the ball, where a nanny again, nudges him as he's helping himself to some lobster. And she says some place a very nice, good mask you've got there. Thank you. So again, the whole thing about people just not recognizing that it's not a costume, even witches Whoo, normally would. The next one is the one that you've talked about before where he has the conversation with Baron Saturday about having an appointment with him tonight. And he takes bear and Saturday then. And then he the other one, you've also mentioned where he passes nanny and Matt Gray on the stairs on his way up to the mirror room to take Lilith. And when they're talking that it's funny, because they're talking about our one and only sort reference actually in the scene, because they're arguing about the sortie and knee. They're like, it's a body part. And it's a hero, and that was his only weakness and what is it it's gonna but it's gonna be nagging me all night, and then death actually tells them that he'll right. Oh, thanks any time. So there's another death reference there as well as the sort reference. That's a two for two for one. Yeah, sword and death. And then finally, I counted this all is one even though it's on separate pages, he is in the mirror with Lily. And he says, you know, you have to find the one that's real. You're somewhere in between death and life. And then he says the exact same thing to granny. Only she knows exactly who is real. So those are all of our death references or death sightings in this book.

Nigel  1:51:50  
I like the little bar, just like out drinking, because really, there's no reason for him to be there.

Tessa  1:51:54  
That yeah, he's just there. He's just hanging out. He decided to come early for the party. He just likes the lobster. That's what he was here. Therefore, get some lobster. And I like that he's so helpful to tell them that it's the heel the sortie and he'll not the sortie and knee very helpful death is. So the first footnote again, that was our only sort reference in this but our first footnote is on the very first page and I laughed so hard at this footnote. So I am going to read the whole thing. But then they're talking about the Discworld. Once upon a time, such a universe was considered unusual and possibly impossible. But then, it used to be so simple once upon a time, because the universe was full of ignorance all around and the scientists Panthro it like a prospector crouched over a mountain stream, looking for the gold of knowledge among the gravel of unreasoned, the sand of uncertainty and little whiskery eight legged swimming things of superstition. Occasionally, he would straighten up and say things like hurrah, I've discovered Boyle's third law, and everyone knew where they stood. But the trouble was that ignorance became more interesting, especially big fascinating ignorance about huge and important things like matter and creation. And people stopped patiently building their little houses of rational sticks in the chaos of the universe and started getting interested in the chaos itself, partly because it was a lot easier to be an expert on chaos, but mostly because it made really good patterns that you could put on a t shirt. And instead of getting on with proper science, footnote, like finding that bloody butterfly who's flapping wings because all these storms we've been having lately and getting it to stop, scientists suddenly went around saying how impossible it was to know anything, and that there wasn't really anything you could call reality to know anything about and how all of this was tremendously exciting. And incidentally, did you know that we're possibly all these little universes all over the place? But no one can see them because they're all curved in on themselves. Incidentally, don't you think this is rather a good t shirt? I thought that was great. I think that that says a lot about the state of science right now and I liked the reference to the the butterfly the butterfly flaps its wings and that causes a chain reaction of events that causes a storm. Yeah, good stuff. What was your favorite footnote?

Nigel  1:54:15  
I am going to go with Oh yeah, I like this kind of a commentary. So some way down river from the waterfall which was the second highest anywhere on the disk have been discovered the year of revolving crowd by the noted explorer guide a yo yo. Of course, lots of dwarfs trolls native peoples trappers hunters merely by the last discovered it on an almost daily basis for 1000s of years. But there weren't explorers didn't camp.

Tessa  1:54:45  
Yeah, I like the idea that like stories often warp our perception of things like oh, it was discovered by this person because that's a good story. But we don't think about all the other people, all the other people and

Nigel  1:54:56  
also like the indigenous people who lived there before like Yes, this is not something that's discovered. It's something that like other people go to.

Tessa  1:55:05  
Yeah. How can you actually discover something that's been there forever? Like, yeah, I get it. My favorite footnote is the one about spelling which becomes a running joke throughout the book. Where and this actually kind of fits into what you were saying because of the Bear Mountain. And it was because it was a Bear Mountain, B, A R E mountain, not because it had a lot of bears on it, but it's spelled B E, A R. And so a lot of people who are not from the village come in and, and, and buy a bunch of bear a pair of paraphernalia, and the native guides to lead them to the bears and so on. And so like, it's so lucrative that nobody corrected the spelling because they actually made a lot of good money off of it. But there's a footnote, that spelling can be lethal. For an example the greedy saref of all UB was once cursed by a badly educated deity, and for some days, everything he touched turned to GLAAD, which happened to be the name of a small bore from a mountain community hundreds of miles away, who found himself magically dragged to the kingdom and relentlessly duplicated some 2000 clods later the spell wore off. These days, the people of Al UB are renowned for being unusually short and bad tempered. I like the GLAAD joke. I think the GLAAD joke was funny every single time that it happens in this book, like how they keep accidentally turning things into GLAAD, the princess who spins Hey, declawed. And like could you imagine how miserable it would be to be GLAAD this work that keeps like getting wrapped up in these stories.

Nigel  1:56:40  
I mean, I thought like, I mean, misunderstanding from spelling or or misinterpretations. Kind of, like, it's the oldest form of just that this is a sex or like, poop joke. You know? Like, it is, like, so much of Shakespeare has built on this that like, yes, it's funny, but I'm also like, it doesn't elicit much of a response for me, because it's like, I expect this kind of world wordplay. But what's funny is just the image of a miserable glob.

Tessa  1:57:11  
Oh, yeah, that's what's funny is to me is this idea of this like dwarf like just being duplicated relentlessly, like, I don't know. Like, it's just it's incongruous with the actual story that we know, right? Like, this is Midas and the golden touch. And so it's like this, like getting it slightly wrong. Which I appreciate that kind of humor. What's something that made you laugh out loud?

Nigel  1:57:37  
Both these moments have been brought up before but either the moment where Granny Weatherwax plays cars with the car chair, or the bit where the door dropped the house on that? EOG?

Tessa  1:57:48  
Yeah. Her hat saves her life.

Nigel  1:57:54  
Yeah, but I'm just thinking specifically, like, just the fact that they drop the house off.

Tessa  1:57:59  
Yeah, were they and they want her shoes. Like, they're like, can we have our shoes? And they're like, why? And they don't really know. All this Rebo stuff made me laugh. But also, there's someone we haven't talked about yet, who I've mentioned before as being important. And then we actually get to see him in this book. But Kassa nuda, the Discworld second greatest lover? I think this character is hilarious. But I also love when they ask him like, Are you really the disc World's Greatest Lover? And he's like, No, I'm number two. But I try harder. That that I thought was funny and weary. They're like, Are you a liar? And he's like, Oh, I'm a liar. And like, is that true? No. I think that that is it's he's a very funny character. And this is not the last time that we'll see him. And I love how interested he is the nanny OG, like, Who is this? Like, I mean, the idea of nanny OG is that she's past the prime of her life. Right? Like, she's, she's not young anymore. And whenever she talks about, you know, all of these sexual dalliances, she's usually talking about her youth. But here's actually someone who is very interested in her. And I think that that's, I think that's great. And I think it's funny, and not in not in a mean spirited way. Just to know like, I think it's just funny, because these are two funny characters who were attracted to each other.

Nigel  1:59:18  
I didn't care. I didn't. I didn't care for that. But what I thought was funny was, they're talking about how this slipper fit. Oh, yeah. Danny OG and how she'd have to get married to the princess and he's like, or to the prince. And it's like, Oh, if you want to go with a frog, yeah, I'm fine with an open relationship. Like

Tessa  1:59:38  
when when she actually storms up to put the shoe on, he's like, that's my friend. Like he actually says that he's like, that's my friend. Like, I know her. Ah, yeah, I just think he's funny. What's the thing that made you think in this book?

Nigel  1:59:53  
I'm gonna go with where there be where they've been locked up. By With been locked up by law, so it stopped locking us up said that I'd have had us killed. That's because you're basically good said Bagrat the good or innocent create justice, the bad or guilty, which is why they invent mercy.

Tessa  2:00:14  
I had that listed down as one of the things to like this idea that like and this is this is another theme that will come up again, I'm thinking very specifically of a watch book that brings up this theme. The idea that like good people, like someone who who thinks that they're truly good and who are good people will often not hesitate to eradicate evil. Whereas bad people invent mercy, right because there's this idea that like they feel guilty or they want to be saved themselves. Although Nene disagrees with her and says it's because she wants us to know that they're that we've lost, which is a big part of the book to this idea of witches need to not kill each other because they they want the other person to know that they've lost. Mine is actually only a page later. So they're still imprisoned. And magret says that she sees Lily's point. If it wasn't for the frogs and everything. Then you're nothing but a daft godmothers snapped grannies still fiddling with the lock. You can't go around building a better world for people, only people can build a better world for people otherwise, it's just a cage. Besides, you don't build a better world by chopping heads off and giving decent girls away to frogs. But progress Malgrat began, don't talk to me about progress. Progress just means bad things happen faster. I love that because I like the idea that you can't build a better word world for people, people have to want a better world. They have it's that skin, right? You can't force people into a narrative because you think it's what's best for them. They have to decide to make their world better to make their society better. Utopia can't be from the top down. It has to be from the down up. And I like the idea that she's like progress. Progress is just another narrative, right? It's saying that things will get better or they have to get better. That's just another narrative. And it doesn't necessarily mean anything. So that that was like a really big thinker for me in this book. Alright, we've covered a lot of things in this book. Next episode we are going to Omnia and also returning to a Phoebe in small gods. We're going to talk about religion. Whoo, whoo. Where can people find you online on their headphones Nigel?

Nigel  2:02:37  
They can find me mainly on Twitter at spicy Nigel where I'd ask who neoliberalism and then I also post six tweet long rant about the new pyrophyllite because they annoy me. You can

Tessa  2:02:51  
find me on Twitter at suela. Tessa Swehla is spelled SW eh LA. You can also find me on my other podcast monkey off my backlog at monkey backlog. And you can also on that same font podcast find our second weekly episode. Currently I'm watching last so it's called Tessa watches last. I'm almost done with the third season. I'm scared. You can find this podcast at nannies book club on Twitter. And you can find us on Instagram at nanny ox book club. Please rate review and subscribe on iTunes. Follow us on Spotify, Stitcher, Amazon podcasts, Google podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. Read us out Nigel.

Nigel  2:03:36  
In one of the center of this book said my grandma. She said that there's a very interesting thing about seeing elephants. She says that on the sto plane. When people say they're going to see the elephant. It means they're simply going on a journey because they're fed up with staying in the same place. It's not saying in the same place that's the problem. So Danny, stop letting your mind wander. I'd like to go towards the hub of said Minecraft to see the ancient temples such as are described in chapter one of the way of scorpion. They teach you emison You don't know already what they said Danny with the usual sharpness Magritte cleanser granny probably not. She said he could. Well said that he wants it to be as are we going home or are we off to see the elephant? Granny's Boomstick turn gently in the breeze. You're disgusting old baggage. Get the OG say granny. That's me said that he cheerfully Magritte garlic. I know said magret overwhelmed really. I'm a wet head. Granny looked back towards the hub, the high mountains. Somewhere back there was an old cottage with the key hanging in the privy. All sorts of things were probably going home cooking was probably going to wrack and ruin without her around people on the right track. It was her job. There was no telling what stupid people will get up to if she wasn't there. And he kicked her red boots together idly well I suppose there's no place like home. She said, No. So granny was still looking thoughtfully. No, it was a billion places like home, but only one of them is where you live. So we're going back said McWrap. Yes, but they went a long way and saw the elephant. The end

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