Tessa 0:22 Welcome to nanny ogs 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 Two weird sisters. So last episode we started our Discworld read through. I keep wanting to call it a rewatch, but it's not that's not what we're doing. We're doing a read through. And we started with mort, because I believe it's one of the best entry points in the series. We're going to follow it up with weird sisters, which is still not the first book in the series, but it is earlier in the series. It was published in 1988. It's the six Discworld novel, and the second which is novel after equal rights. The reason I picked this one to read next for our book club, is because I believe it introduces the characters of the witches much better than equal rights does. It really equal rights really revolves around one concept which doesn't really feature any of the Hallmark tropes of the witches books, except for the character of granny weatherwax. And this book does a much better job of introducing that character or reintroducing that character. This book is also a loose parody of Macbeth and Hamlet, which provides I think, a better entry point to the witches series and to these characters. There have been three adaptations of this novel, including a play an animated series, and a channel for film, I have seen none of those adaptations, so I cannot speak to them. But I can speak to the novel which I have read many, many times. So just a quick summary of the premise of the book again, we are going to be talking about spoilers. Because this is a book club, we expect that you've read the book coming into this or you don't care about spoilers at all. Either way it works. But this book itself very loosely, as I said, follows a similar plot structure to Macbeth from the perspective of the three witches, granny weatherwax nanny Ogg, the namesake of our podcast, and magaret garlic in the small kingdom of lynker. When King Virtus is murdered by his cousin Duke Fellman after his ambitious wife persuades him to do so. The Witches must smuggle the heir to the throne out of the kingdom, and wait for him to fulfill his destiny, which just happens to be in the company of a traveling group of theatre players. But when the Duke reveals himself to be anti Witch, and the kingdom itself begins to wake up, the witches must take matters into their own magical hands, or broomsticks, as the case may be. So, Nigel, just what are your first impressions of this second Terry Pratchett book that you read? Nigel 3:26 I liked it. I don't know whether I liked it more or less than what well, I read it at higher on Goodreads than I did more, I gave more four stars. And I think I gave weird sisters five stars. Which it's like because Goodreads doesn't, you know, use a half star system like letterbox does. So it's like a solid four and a half stars. I think you have a better like you get a better grasp of the humor straight on in than you do. And more definitely, because like, like you say, it's kind of like a Macbeth party. And so it starts off with the When shall we three meet again. There was a pause. Finally another voice said in in far more ordinary tones. I can do next Tuesday. So Tessa 4:11 yeah, it's straight up tells you what it's going to be at the beginning of the novel. Hmm, Nigel 4:19 yeah, it does. It does a nice little bait and switch where it sets you up thinking Oh, it's gonna be this brooding self serious Shakespeare style thing and there's definitely no shortage of people who takes Shakespeare and they're like, yeah, this is definitely what I'm gonna do. You know, things like the Queen's of initially or is called the one that's like King Lear. But gender flipped. And then if we were villains by ml Rio, where it's like, I've taken the serious murdery part of Shakespeare and I'm running with it. Whereas Terry Pratchett's on the side of like, you know, the dick jokes and all that. Tessa 4:54 Exactly. I also think of 1000 acres which is a retelling of King Lear. Jane smiley so often heard of them yeah it said an Iowa like during a like on like farms in Iowa which is really interesting. Nigel 5:10 It's nice that they came up with like a fictional place to put it in. Tessa 5:13 Yeah, I will doesn't really exist. We all know this. It makes sense. Nigel 5:18 Yeah, it's entirely made out of corn that feels distinctly just Discworld the Tessa 5:28 rice in the Discworld. Well actually that brings me to my first question for you. So in wart, we really got introduced to a couple of different locale of the Discworld we got to see death's kingdom, the the black and white kingdom. And we got to see sto lat which is outside of aguar pork, and we got to see encore pork itself which ogmore pork is like the famous city of the Discworld. A lot of books take place in morepork, even though the two that we read so far have not really taken place at nog morepork. This book introduces us to a new locale, which will be really important for the witches books going forward, which is the kingdom of lenker. Do you want to give our audience a short description of linker as you sort of saw it from reading the book? Nigel 6:18 Like or I don't know, it seems, it seems like your bog standard almost medieval type town, right? This is like this is exactly what you would expect in a way where morepork is kind of this bustling, steampunk kind of like techno crap place, whereas lunker is it's the place where a Shakespeare parody would happen if you know what I mean. Tessa 6:41 Yeah, it is like a tiny little kingdom. It's maybe like a few towns in the mountains. It's very rural. The people are really used to magic which I think is a really funny gag like the there's a section and I didn't Mark what page it was. But there's a section in the middle of the book where they talk about how there's all these importance all the time in linker and people just like like the wait like something will wake them up in the middle of the night. And they're like, Oh, it's just another bloody portant and goes back to sleep again. Like it's this kingdom that's like very, very quiet in some ways. And yet a lot of mystical so many mystical things happen that the citizens have sort of developed this, like no nonsense attitude towards magic. Yeah, Nigel 7:27 it's just like really again. And so that's kind of the kind of really drives the like, kind of really drives it because when the king is like, No, actually I hate witches and I think that we should arrest them and everyone's like, we can't really do that Tessa 7:40 they're witches. Right? Which is pretty funny. Like the the attitude towards witches in linker is very much that witches are just sort of part of life. They sort of occupy this, like they're wise women, but they're also like healers, but they're also sort of adjudicators of justice in some ways or or at least have disputes. It's it's very interesting, the place that which is holed in linker, and it's the it's all introduced here. So what did you think of the humor of this book, you pointed out that it sort of gets into the humor right away on that first page? How did you feel like this, that how Terry Pratchett's humor translated into this particular novel, Nigel 8:26 I think did work really well because I'm a sucker for cantankerous old people. I think like old people are my favorite subset of the population. I feel like this is like, if people don't know me, this is a weird thing to hear me say out of context. Whereas like, if people know me, they're like, Oh, yeah, Nigel, she, she likes old people. She likes babies. She doesn't like children. So I like I think old people are really fun and cool, and sort of bickering old people, not sour old people, though. And so you've got this. I know you've got a really fantastic dynamic between nanny Ogg and granny weatherwax with her for all intents and purposes like a bickering old married couple. Like there's a quote where it's like granny weatherwax was you know, was never lost. She always knew where she was the only problem was she didn't know everything else was Tessa 9:17 so perfectly. Yeah. Nigel 9:20 I don't like I'm not entirely sure what part of the book that's in because I don't I don't have any markers of quotes, but that was stuck with me. I'm like, okay, that's her in a nutshell. Tessa 9:30 Yeah, I mean, I guess we should talk about the witches before we go very much further. So really, there are the three witches which are supposed to be like stand ins for the Macbeth witches. However, these three witches continue to be main characters in the future book so it's like the witches live on past the end of Macbeth, right? Like they have their own things that they have going on. So there's granny weatherwax who's really like, there's a there's a sentence in here where it's like, of all the leaders, the witches Didn't have she was the most respected one like she, she's really the leader of the witches but which is also don't have leaders because they're very non hierarchical. So that also tells you something I think about this character. And she's old, like we don't, I think get a lot of old women protagonists in in books, but she's very elderly. She's seen a lot. We get nanny og, who is the kind of, she cracks me up. She's like the dirty old lady who has been married three times, although, like you said, the most important relationship in her life seems to actually be with granny weatherwax even though she has all of these children and grandchildren, she's just like the matriarch of this like little tribe, within linker. And you know, she's constantly getting drunk. She's the owner of the most evil cat alive. greenco, who we should definitely talk about here in a little bit. And then we have malgrat, which there's a joke with her name that's made in a later book, so I won't spoil it for you. But that that is her name. malgrat. And she is like the young witch. She's the apprentice, sort of like she's a witch in her own right, but she's much younger than the other two, and she's still sort of learning from them. So what did you think about this dynamic between the three witches? Nigel 11:23 I, I enjoy obviously, like I, I there's nothing. There was nothing that I found, like, the put me off of the witches as dynamic like, I didn't like film it, but I think you're not meant to like film it, obviously. You know, I was kind of ambivalent towards veyrons as a ghost. I really like Tom john. I like the fool. But I think the witches were kind of my favorite part of the book, which, again, I think is the point. But I feel like they treated magret very unfairly for a lot of the book, just because she's not as old. She's not as old and not as experienced. And there's that quote, where it's like, you know, where they rescue, they do the rescue in the dungeons. And it's like, well, you know, what makes a real witch? Well, you might start becoming one now, right? They say to her, Tessa 12:12 and she keeps making these comments because magaret has this very specific idea of what what witchcraft is what being a witch is, she thinks that it's very, like spells and potions and wearing a cult jewelry and looking a certain way. And the other two witches don't think that that's what witchcraft is about. They're very much more about head ology, which we'll talk about in a little bit as well. So she's sort of dealing with this sort of, like her way of doing witchcraft is very different from the way that they do witchcraft. And they sort of looked down on her for the first half of the book for the way that she thinks witchcraft ought to be. Nigel 12:51 Yeah, because they proposed the idea of joining a coven and nanny Ogg and granny weatherwax seem to be kind of like they think it's almost anathema because like you said, witches don't have leaders. Whereas our kind of popular conception of witches seems to be that they you know, they're all in covens of like 13 and all this kind of thing, whereas they're like, no, Tessa 13:12 yeah, so they're very not interested in having any other witches besides the three of them, right? Nigel 13:18 And even then, Tessa 13:21 yeah, and even then they get into a lot of arguments and Macron is really the one who like makes the meat right like every month she's the one who's like we have to meet we have to have a cup of tea we have to talk about things. There's a there's a section where so this happens later in the book and well I'm we're gonna talk about the time travel in this book a little bit as well. But there's a section where malgrat gives granny some power while they're on their brooms. And granny takes all of it and magret is like, well, leave me a little bit so I can get all the way down to the ground safely. And Granny's like well, you know, that's your problem, you'll figure it out. And there's this really great moment where malgrat she says, as she plunged towards the forest roof in a long shallow dive, she reflected that there was possibly something complimentary in the way granny weatherwax resolutely refused to consider other people's problems. It implied that in her considerable opinion, they were quite capable of sorting them out by themselves, which that also to me told me a lot about granny weatherwax because she does kind of come off as being a little disc empathetic and a little selfish, in the terms of the ways in which she thinks about the world around herself. And the way she just assumes other people can take care of themselves. And I really appreciated that magaret realizes it's, it's actually kind of a weird compliment, like this idea of, Oh, well, you can just take you you'll you'll figure it out. Like you're a witch you can figure it out. And that doesn't really jive with Margaret's view of the world. And so it is actually Testing to also see mag rats conception of what witchcraft is grow over the course of the book. Nigel 15:05 Hmm. Like it kind of is like a hallmark of older generations where either they expect you to do something or they just believe you can because they had things easier and things were handed to them and you know, there wasn't so much competition, but at the same time, it is kind of a bit problematic to assume everyone will be able to do the same things that you're able to do because not everyone is but at the same time, granny weatherwax just believe you'll find a way when it's hope it's hopeful like you know Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park life finds away Tessa 15:40 you'll find your way yeah it's very it's it's it's an overwhelming sense of competence in herself but also in the people around her mm hmm Nigel 15:51 is it Do you think it's necessarily narcissistic because she couldn't give you know two shits about what found that is doing up until the point when until like the land starts crying out because he he won't respect the land and he won't respect the kingdom and stuff. But it's like everyone around her because they're around her she thinks Oh yeah, they'll be able to do what they need to do and get shit done. They you know do you think it's just like oh yeah, cuz they're around me and I'm you know, I'm so staunch and imbue everyone with this kind of like utilitarian know how Tessa 16:27 perhaps she also seems to her even though she doesn't get along with many of the witches she also seems to still respect which is in general. Yeah, so that might be part of it as well. I don't know I think that's a great question is granny weatherwax narcissistic that's definitely something that I think will develop over the course of the other books as well this theme of like is she narcissistic or is she just really hopeful or competent? Nigel 16:57 Yeah, I think it'd be an interesting point of comparison when we read the Tiffany Aching books because those are ones I have read in the past where you know Greg granny weatherwax is still in the picture but she's not the focal point so Tiffany Aching you know you got you got her direct opinion of what the elder witches are like. So whenever Yeah, Tessa 17:19 Yeah, it does. Tiffany Aching definitely gives a different perspective on granny weatherwax as well. So we'll continue to sort of explore that character. What did you think of nanny Ogg? Nigel 17:31 I yeah, nanny Ogg. She definitely has that like, dirty old woman feel but it's like that bit where they're talking about what to do with found that my phone is here on page 173 of my granny weatherwax stalked through the passages of lenker Castle like a large angry bath to Dukes laughter echoing around her head. You could give him boys or something. Said nanny Ogg hemorrhoids are good that's allowed. It won't stop him ruling it just means you'll have to rule standing up always good for a laugh that were piles. Granny weatherwax said nothing if fury were heat her half would have caught fire. Mind you that probably make him more said nanny running to keep up same with to fake. She gave a sideways glance at Granny's twitching features unique and fresh. She said they didn't do anything much but thanks anyway. I ain't worried about you get that og snap granny weatherwax or snap granny only came along because magret was threatened which I say is if a witch can't look after herself she's got no business calling herself a witch I read on there because I knew actually you would tie back into the point of you know if she can't look after herself. She's no business being a witch. Tessa 18:41 Yeah, there there is a lot of like witches. There are certain things certain character traits that make people witches. It's not necessarily the magic that makes people a witch it's like certain certain qualities in their personality like self sufficiency, independent thinking stubbornness, that there seems to be certain things that make certain people witches. Nigel 19:09 Yeah, so nonionic is just like the officers like can we just Can we just do these things and get done whereas granny weatherwax seems to be focused on like how can we how can we cause problems and make things fun while at the same time still not breaking any rules you know and let me let me find the lyrics Yeah, I like it just reminded me then of the madness song baggy trousers which is all I learned at school was how to bend not break the rules Tessa 19:46 in regards to nannies suggestions, Nigel 19:49 yeah. Her to yeah to Granny, by the way, where it's like, we're not doing anything that would get us in trouble, per se. But we're getting you know, we're getting our own backlog. Our little tit for tat here. Tessa 20:02 Yeah, I thought that was really interesting that the witches, at least for the first good two thirds of the novel, really are resistant to the idea of direct meddling in politics. And granny says that's because if you meddle in politics, if you kill a ruler with magic and then replace him with another ruler, you have to keep using magic, right? Like you have to, you would have to keep using magic to rule you couldn't just metal and then get out of it, which I think is really interesting, this idea that these witches are clearly powerful enough. I mean, they're they're clearly powerful enough to take over the kingdom if they wanted to, but they don't want to and they actually think it would be pretty dangerous for them to rule in any sort of capacity. Nigel 20:48 Hmm, there's a what's the quote? I'm trying to find it now the one where they show up with young Tom john, and they find the crown. Like at the beginning. Yeah, that's a really good quote. Tessa 21:03 Where granny weatherwax puts it on her head. Yeah. Right. Yeah, she puts it on, and she you know, just to see if it fits, and then she says she smiled grimly. This is on page 27 in my book, and froze as she heard the screams and the thunder of horses and the deadly whisper of arrows and the damp solid sound of Spears in the flesh. Charge after charge echoed across her skull sword met shield or sword and bone relentlessly. Yours streamed across her mind in the space of a second. There were times when she lay among the dead or hanging from the branch of a tree, but always there were hands that would pick her up again and place her on a velvet cushion granny very carefully lifted the crown off her head it was an effort it didn't like it much and laid it on the table. So that's what being a king for you. Is it she said softly I wonder why they all want the job. This idea that like she doesn't want to be in charge even though I mean she wants to be in charge but she wants to be in charge as a witch not as a ruler. Nigel 22:07 Yeah because then like slightly further down they have the line crowns call out like it's like the the nine rings in a way in Lord of the Rings where you're fine and then you put them on and you have this like craving this desire to rule and you know to be in power and dominate all that's around you Tessa 22:28 right and they seem to have this attitude towards ruling where it's like ruling shouldn't be done by people who are actually clever like it should be done by people who are just gonna go through the motions and they're gonna do what they want and they're just going to kind of keep their pettiness You know, they're going to focus on petty things not on clever things because it's the clever people who end up being like corrupted by power and evil and doing all these terrible things. Nigel 22:56 Yeah, that's it's an interesting point then when you get to the end where the person who's supposed to get the crown Tom john is like I don't want to be the king right? He has the he has the moral fortitude almost to disagree and to say no, because he wants to be an actor because dammit it's my it's not a dream. It's my life. Tessa 23:16 Right? Yeah. And Nigel 23:17 as per every horse girl film Tessa 23:21 Yeah, so it's interesting that at the end, the person whose life is most shaped by destiny, the person who is supposed to be king Tom, john doesn't end up being king. But then the person who does become king is the fool who never thought that he would be king right? Like his it turns out destiny was shaping a different person's life the whole book. Nigel 23:43 Hmm. Actually, when you bring that up as well, because Margaret is dating the fool who then turns out to be king and I think it forms like a really interesting companion piece to morph. At the end, we're more gets married. And it's like, well, we can't make you a king straightaway and you have that like that wedding scene. And so weird sisters wraps up in a way which feels not similar, but perhaps concurrent to how more ends up Tessa 24:12 well and interestingly enough and this is this is maybe looking ahead a little bit, the romance between malgrat and the fool King Virtus because he's now the king. It doesn't end like eight sort of ends on a note here the book ends on a note where she's like still in love with him and he's still in love with her but they don't quite they're not on the same page. They he ends up the last we see of him he falls asleep in her cottage and she's out still out on the you know, in the, on the Moore's in the in the open with granny weatherwax and nanny Ogg and they all get drunk together, right? So it's, it's interesting that it sort of ends the book, they're on this really unresolved note whereas with mort the everything's resolved, right? Like He's with Isabel and Kelly is with cut well and it's all just sort of like wrapped up neatly even though as we mentioned in the last episode there wasn't a lot of foreshadowing of either of those relationships. Nigel 25:12 Yeah, I think definitely the relationship between the fool and magra was like I vied with it more I know I don't particularly vibe altogether that much or believe love stories and fiction. But I thought this one was relatively well developed I could appreciate you know, because they actually did the whole life courting phase and the awkwardness of like young first love, which I thought was really you know, it was really nice to see Tessa 25:39 90% of true love is sheer embarrassment Nigel 25:43 Yeah, and the other 10% is acute embarrassment. Tessa 25:47 Yeah, they both are like instantly attracted to each other even though the, the weight of both characters are described as not particularly flattering, at least not physically. And but they but they're both very attracted to each other. They're both very awkward around each other. Although by the end I really appreciated mag Gratz like she's trying to make him work for it. But she also legitimately gets mad at him at one point and she's like, I'll be washing my hair. And she's He's like, well, when will that be? Whenever like it's this crazy. It's this great moment between the two of them. Yeah, I guess we're gonna have to continue reading the witches to see if this if they ever do get in the same place at the same time. Nigel 26:31 God I hope I hope it works out for them. Tessa 26:34 The other question I was going to ask you about the witches before we move to some of the other characters is really the way that magic and head ology are introduced in this particular book, which those are two themes that will continue throughout the witches books. So unlike the wizards because we got to see cut well, and some of the other wizards from the unseen University and mort who seemed much more interested in spells and magic. Granny weatherwax is actually kind of resistant to spells to spell casting. She's clearly very powerful. In the very few situations that we see her wield magic, and malgrat wields magic at one point, very powerful magic as well when she opens or when she causes the the door to explode into a tree basically, in the dungeon. But it seems like granny weatherwax is very resistant to that idea. And she prefers what she calls head ology, which is sort of a Applied Psychology, like understanding people and getting them to do what you want them to do. How do you how do you feel like that compares with the wizards that we saw in mort, Nigel 27:48 I think it's quite interesting as someone who comes from so I don't want to be very presumptive about American culture and stuff. But I realized when I started the sentence, you you probably have no idea where it's going. Tessa 28:01 Not at all. I'm excited, though, to find out where it goes. Nigel 28:04 I think America doesn't really have a good tradition of like, women in the long run, like, obviously, you get Tessa 28:14 there, and it would work. Yeah, Nigel 28:17 obviously, you know, you kind of have like, American folk heroes, which, like, you know, you think of Betsy Ross and stuff, and you think of sacajawea but she's, you know, she's one of the native people there that got her land stolen and stuff. So an awful lot of the strong women, at least in the historical legend of America, which you know, it's a very young country aren't really American. Whereas like in Ireland, you have a lot of you have a lot of traditions of like healing women and stuff and you know, it's really interesting because the word for which is qajaq, but it also translate it's also a translation for a veiled woman or nun. So you got you know, it's kind of depressing at one stage because you're like, oh, they've demonized women who would employ head ology and they've made them witches, but at the same time, it's you know, you got this nice link where maybe it's not mysticism maybe they're just, I don't know, employing empathy goddamnit fucking men. Tessa 29:21 Yeah, so there was Carrie Pratchett actually gave a speech at NOVA con in 1985. So shortly before he wrote weird sisters, and it was called why Gandalf never married. And the speech is about kind of the difference in the traditions of like wizards and witches and why wizards are tend to be like, celebrated like you got wizards like Merlin, you have like the druids, and you know these types of mythological male practitioners of magic but on the other hand, witches are usually burned or they're thrown out or they're sort of, you know, the magic They do is not considered as important as like Nigel 30:02 the evil like Searcy Yeah, it's Tessa 30:05 either or it's like, not as powerful. Hmm. One I wanted to read a short quote that he said about this from the from the speech where he said, Now you can take the view that of course this is the case because if there is a dirty end of the stick than women will get it. anything done by women is automatically downgraded. Magic According to this theory is something that only men can be really good at. And therefore any attempt by women to trespass on the sacred turf must be rigorously stamped out. Women are regarded by men as the second sex and their magic is therefore automatically inferior. There's also a lot of stuff about man's natural fear of a woman with power. Witches were poor women seeking one of the few routes of power open to them. And men fought back with torture, fire and ridicule. And so obviously, that's still kind of a binary view of gender. But it does sort of make sense in the way that we think about fantasy and the way that witches and wizards are portrayed. He also says there's not really a male version of witches, like wizards are actually a separate category from witches. He does say like, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, warlocks, whatever. But that's not really this. It's not really the same thing as what you were talking about when you were talking about like a healer. And so I do think that the fact that he's created two different systems of magic, one that's primarily done by women, and it seems more communal, almost like head ology is communal. It's an understanding of people. And it's an understanding of community. Versus like, the more like, ritualized magic, I guess, that the men do at unseen University more bureaucratic magic, almost. Nigel 31:49 Yeah. So I think it's really, I think it's an interesting point you bring up as well, because like Terry Pratchett's paper was on why Gandalf never married. But, you know, you see it alter a fantasy, like the Wheel of Time as well, you have a magic system, which is divided along the gender binary, with cidara inside in, and a lot of the practitioners of the female side of the magic are aligned with healing like nynaeve, as you know, and the eisah die, all of their rules are around, you know, helping people or not, don't you know, don't strike anyone down unless they're attacking you. Whereas all of the male magic is specifically like aggression based and the taints that was put on the magic made them go crazy using it and just like, fuck shit up. So it really is prevalent in fantasy in a way Tessa 32:46 Yeah, and there's a there's a scene later in weird sisters because granny is famously just brilliant at head ology, where she is when she confronts the Duchess, and she like removes all of the like little compartmentalised boxes in the Duchess's mind so she can see who she is as a person. And she says, This is simply the worst I can do. It's all right and proper to a witch should act like that, you know, there's no need for any dramatic stuff. Most magic goes on in the head. It's head ology. Nigel 33:20 Hmm, I don't want to I don't want to, like try and turn this into some sort of proselytizing for radical empathy. But it really does feel like that a lot of the time. Tessa 33:32 Yeah. Where she, she just understands how people work. And so she's able to sort of manipulate them into doing what she thinks is best for them or into being a better community, which I think is interesting. Yeah. All right. Let's talk a little bit about some of the other characters and some of the other things that happen in this novel. So obviously, this is very Shakespearean, right? It is very loosely, Macbeth and Hamlet, although it does have other Shakespearean elements in it. So they even have like a Shakespeare analog who Well, the dwarf, who is sort of the playwright he is it's explained that he has these like bursts of inspiration that kind of just come shooting through the air and they all hit him basically. And so he's constantly shown writing and he writes a lot of like, very close to Shakespeare, but not quite Shakespeare lines, but he also gets inspiration for other types of Les acting theatre, film, things as well. What did you think about the Shakespeare elements in general and the well character in particular? Nigel 34:41 I like I mean, I'm an English student. I'm an English nerd. I really like Shakespeare. I started reading Shakespeare when I was like, comparatively very young. I really enjoyed it. And you know, you have that kind of presumption when you're doing it where it's like, oh, Shakespeare, oh, the English is and like how we Be so it must be boring. Gosh, but it's really good and I really enjoyed while might I be permitted to read like a bit of a long extract from the book, of course it's one of my it's one of my favorites and it involves Tom john and well it's the scene in the pub. I yeah, I didn't mean he began. In fact, calling for silence was a sufficiently rare event in the middle of a tavern brawl that silence was what Tom john Gosh, and silence was what he filled Quels started as What is it? wells? It says there anyway, well started as he heard the boy's voice ring out full of confidence and absolutely first class projection brothers, and yet May I call all men brother for on this night. The dwarf craned up to see Tom john standing on a chair, one hand raised in the prescribed declamatory fashion. around him, men were frozen than the act of giving one another right seeing their faces turned to his darna table top height, Wells lips moved in perfect synchronization with the words is Tom john went through the familiar speech, he received another look, the fighters straightened up, pulled themselves together, adjusted the hang of their tunics last apologetically at one another. Many of them were in fact, standing to attention. Even well filter fism is blood. And he'd written those words. He'd slaved half a night over them years ago, when vidler had declared that they needed another five minutes and act three of the kings of ONC scribbled something with a bit of spirit and he'd say, a bit of zip and sizzle, you know, something just summon up the blood and put a bit of backbone and our friends in the heap and he seats just long enough to give us time to change the sash. He'd been a bit ashamed of that play. At the time, the famous bottle of more pork, he strongly subsisted about cheating the swamp and a cold wet day, hacking one another into oblivion with rusty swords. What would the last king Ivanka have said to a pack of ragged men who knew they were outnumbered, outflanked and out General, something would bite something with edge something was a drink of brand new to a dying man, no logic, no explanation, just words that would reach right down through a tired man's brain, pull him to his feet by his testicles. Now he was seeing its effect. He began to think the walls had fallen away, and there were was a cold mist blowing over the marbles. It's choking silence, broken only by the impatient cries of the carrion birds and his voice. And he'd written the words they were his no half crazed King had ever really spoken like this. And he'd written all this to fill a gap so that a castle, made of painted sacking stretched over a frame could be shoved behind the curtain. And his voice was taking the coal dust out of his words and filling the room with diamonds. I made words well thought, but they don't belong to me. They belong to him. Tessa 37:54 Yeah, and of course like this is reflecting the the gifts that I think it was nanny Ogg gave him because each of the witches bless Tom john with a gift which is very fairy tale it's very Sleeping Beauty right? And she gives him the he'll always remember the words which Yeah, because like Nigel 38:14 he is a child until he comes out with full fledge monologues. Tessa 38:21 That's right, I forgot about that. But yeah, I mean, it is clearly supposed to be very Shakespearean well is is very much like Shakespeare in that he's writing these things. And I love that excerpt that you that you read because to me, that is the best description of Henry five, which is clearly what that monologue is based on that Yeah, I've heard Nigel 38:43 her like you've got all these like little funny little dialogue Hot Tips in a way that, you know, point to things in Shakespeare. And like as well, the fool feels very much King Lear. So you've got a nice little smorgasbord of Shakespeare going on even the theater where they're in the disc. I wonder what that could be a reference to? Tessa 39:06 Yeah, the disc, which is Yeah, reference to the Globe Theatre, famously, famously built by Shakespeare. I also really appreciated the other inspirations that kept sleeting into wells brain that keep getting jumbled in with the Shakespeare as well. So we get references to The Importance of Being Earnest. We get references to Waiting for Godot, which I thought was very funny. And even Charlie Chaplin, the Marx Brothers get a reference in there there's a bunch of different things I mean, I didn't even get all of them I I believe that if you go on Google and you Google like ref metal references in weird sisters, you can find any number of Reddit threads dedicated to tracking down Nigel 39:52 like all of the rat this one felt like Ulysses, almost where it's like there's so much packed into it. The You wouldn't need another book, just to do the annotations, Tessa 40:05 just for just to figure out what references the hotel character is making, because it almost does read like a meta commentary on playwrights and inspiration and the different different things that have come out of those types of tours. Nigel 40:22 I like I'm hesitant. I'm always hesitant to use the word autour when I'm describing someone, and that's mainly because of like, what my stances in relation to the literary canon, but like, I think I can afford Shakespeare that I think I can afford Shakespeare that title. Tessa 40:43 I think for me, it's I guess I also am very much against autour theory because of the way it disenfranchises certain people, but I think it almost fits in the case of well be just because he he's clearly a character that's supposed to be an amalgamation of different playwrights and different creators. So that that's why I use that specific word when Nigel 41:04 all together and draws it into one neat little bow almost What did Tessa 41:10 you think about the Macbeth elements of the text film it and Lady film, it's the Ghost King vernis. And then of course, we get the hamlet with Tom john who leaves and then comes back. And he's also in a play that shows the the death of the old king, it's sort of mixing those two plays together. Nigel 41:29 It was surprisingly well done for a book like that attempts to blend, two, almost, like wildly disparate. Shakespeare plays together. Like I enjoyed what they were doing with the Macbeth stuff, I think that like, because you got Terry Pratchett sort of email trademark humor, where they're like, Oh, no, he fell down the stairs on his sword, and it was quite clearly an accident, kind of away. Tessa 41:58 And it's a catching accident. Exactly. You can catch it. If you talk too much about it. Nigel 42:04 You know, it seems to heavily imply the large murder spree that Macbeth ends up going on in the original play. Like it's very smart with how it plays fast and loose with the texts. Tessa 42:17 Right? I mean, it's willing to take like the biggest hallmarks of both of those texts and parody them without feeling like it's trapped by those texts. Because like film, it is clearly insane. Like the book makes that very clear. And even the lady film that is supposed to be our analog to Lady Macbeth film, it is the one who feels like he has blood on his hands for the entirety of the book. And the joke is, is that he keeps trying to wash the blood off. But he keeps using more and more abrasive materials to try to wash the blood off. And it ends up making him actually bleed because of the materials that he's using, like sandpaper and like a wire scrub brush, is he's sort of taking the stuff from Lady Macbeth and moving it over to the more Macbeth like character. But it's also played as a joke, huh? Nigel 43:08 Like, yeah, all of the sort of domineering aspects of Lady Macbeth are in lady Falmouth, but any kind of remorse or, like even perturbation to do with the crime they just committed is given over to foulness instead of having Lady Macbeth be somewhat sympathetic, I suppose I kind of don't like that. Because I thought it was it's a really nice, it's a really nice parallel in the original text, where Lady Macbeth before she dies, is worried about the guilt in her spot. And you you know, you don't really have a full kind of you don't you don't sense that they really love one another, that it was almost like a marriage of opportunities. And she's like our damn spot. But when Macbeth's when Macbeth hears about her death, he really does show his emotion and he part he paraphrases that with our brief candle. So by giving by giving all those all of the softer moments to found that I feel, I feel almost a bit disappointed, because you don't like be the evil person. Whereas Lord felanitx is like what was it? They say about his mind? It's like a clock. It's what wound up like o'clock and sometimes it goes cuckoo. Yeah. So in that sense, I don't like that. The way they went about that, but I understand why they did it. Because they need to have Lady fellmeth. Be the person that the witches take the task really at the end of the book by breaking up all the little compartments in her head. Tessa 44:54 Right, which she immediately bounces back from and it's just like, yeah, I'm a bad person. So yeah, like, which I actually appreciated because I have actually always thought that MC best one real flaw as a play is that the Lady Macbeth from the first half of the play and the Lady Macbeth from the second half the play seemed like two different people. And I have never completely understood how the Lady Macbeth from the first half of the play gets to the Lady Macbeth, who basically commit suicide at the end of the play. Have you ever seen the film Lady Macbeth? Oh, it's directed by William Oldroyd. It stars Florence Pugh? Nigel 45:37 I have not but I'm willing to watch anything for interview isn't. Tessa 45:41 It is quite excellent. It is not about the Shakespeare play. Like it's not not directly about the Shakespeare play. It's not like retelling it from her point of view or anything. But it is indirectly about that character, like the main character played by Florence Pugh is supposed to be a Lady Macbeth like character. And it really gives a better insight, I think into what that character would be like. So I would recommend it. Nigel 46:08 You definitely like you definitely need to show that change. I'm thinking of like denna Thor and Lord of the Rings. Especially when you can see john noble play him where it's like, he doesn't give a shit about faramir you know, faramir he wishes faramir died and barmer had lived but then when fermier he thinks is dead. He's you know, he's like, Well, fuck, I mean, like, I I'm really actually upset over the death of my last song on the line of stewards is over. So we need to we need to all die. Tessa 46:38 Yeah, but that to me made sense. Like and especially like you said, with john noble playing that character. I could see where we got from the first part to the second part, whereas in the play, it almost seems like he got a different wife somewhere halfway between between the first part of the play Nigel 46:53 Yeah, which you know, is unrealistic because if there's anyone getting a new spouse in that play, Lady Macbeth is getting a new husband, not the other way around. She definitely wears actly Tessa 47:03 Exactly. And that's clearly what's going on with Lady helmet and, and film it, Duke film it in this play. I don't know like i i thought that they worked pretty well in the Macbeth and Lady Macbeth roles, but I honestly was kind of floored by the Ghost King furnace. storyline. Like I get that it's supposed to be like a parody of the ghost of Hamlet's father. But to me, it just seemed more like a bit than an actual plot point. Nigel 47:39 Yeah. But also, like you do have the ghost of bunk comes back to haunt Macbeth. But that's not until later in the play. So it doesn't analogue with King Duncan, who, you know, King barons gets murdered like King Duncan does, but he plays the role of Hamlet's father on bunco. Which it like, it doesn't really match up one to one so you've got this a little bit of a dissonance, almost. Tessa 48:12 He could have caught perhaps you could have caught all of those scenes out and it still would have worked as a book. Like the ghosts don't really do anything besides maybe adding some Shakespearean flair to it, which I mean, might be the point, I guess. But to me, it just I was, I just wasn't as impressed with the scenes with the ghosts as I was with the scenes involving quell or the witches. Nigel 48:38 Yeah, I did think it was nice that the witches took a bit of the the castle with them so that he could roam around and not be confined to the place where he died. Can I give Can I give a shout out? I don't know whether they'll actually listen to this. Shout out to William A. Wellman of the Hello from the Hollywood's podcast because it's exactly what Percy who is a ghost that's bound originally to a piano happens the like degree graves breaks the piano. And they take a little key of the piano with them. So that person can go along with them. And it's really adorable, because that's a love story. Whereas in weird sisters, it's just like, Terry Pratchett really wanted the ghosts to be around for some reason. Tessa 49:26 He reminds me of well, who they keep asking him if he really needs the ghost in the play. And he keeps saying the bit with the ghost is the best thing I've ever written. It stays. I wonder if that was an actual conversation Terry Pratchett had with this editor. Nigel 49:39 Now that you mentioned, I didn't put that together when I was reading it. But it makes an awful lot of sense. Because Terry Pratchett would be exactly the person to write kind of a meta commentary like that, where he'd be like, Oh, you have this criticism of my book. Well, now I'm just well now I'm just going to I'm going to include that. And therefore, it's like it's rationally sound. Tessa 50:06 Yeah, see, I can make it work, I can put you in the book. So just a couple of other points I wanted to hit on. So what did you think of the time travel element of this book because I thought if I had forgotten that they traveled in time, or that they moved the entire kingdom around time, as as the book puts it, as the narrator puts it. And I actually found myself thinking as I was rereading the first half of this book, wait a minute, doesn't this book have to skip ahead like 15 years in order for Tom john to be the right age from what I remember the end of the book, and sure enough, granny weatherwax decides to move the entire kingdom of lenker 15 years into the future so that way, Tom, john can come back sooner rather than later. Nigel 50:53 To be honest, I don't have an opinion on it, because I kind of couldn't care. Like I understand why they did it. This is another one where it's like, I understand why they did it. But at the same time, if they just did a time skip in the book, like you know, the way that in more Pratchett draws attention to the cinematic pan that he does, you could do that without like, because from what I understand, time and life in Discworld are very important and the speeds at which they move are very important, not, not just in like thief of time, but they specifically draw attention to how fast disk light moves and more. So I feel like, you're more, you're more likely to fuck with things that maybe don't need to be fucked with. I don't know. I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other. Tessa 51:45 But it seems like peak granny weatherwax that she would basically be like, this isn't going fast enough and like, move an entire kingdom with magic to get things to be the way that she thinks that they ought to. Yeah, Nigel 51:59 she's like problems. I have I've coined a term for this. Are you aware of the Sherlock Holmes video games like the devil's daughter, and crimes and punishment? Tessa 52:09 No, I had no idea. I Nigel 52:12 really recommend a video game for PlayStation, which I know you have. I don't know whether they do them for Xbox, which I think you have Sarno was this will make it into the final one meet doxing. Your console's they're made by a is the developer of them. And it's really cool because you get like, you get all these different disparate clues. And then you go into like sherlocks mind palace, and they appear as blobs and you got to like link them together and see whether they fit. But I came up with a term for it, because I used to just brute force my way through them sometimes, right? Do every possible combination. I think it applies a lot to this kind of problem solving, which is picking a lock with a sledgehammer. Yeah, so you could move the entire kingdom around time by 15 years and get the problem solved sooner, instead of trying to figure out any other subtler way. Tessa 53:05 Well, and I love that like there are very little consequences to what she does, like linker is such a rural kingdom and the people there are so used to strange things happening, that there's just been like, basically, by the end of the book, there's just been a couple of remarks that some travelers look a little older than they should. Like that's it. That's the only consequence to what happened. Nigel 53:28 I think, though, in a way that's kind of justify that there's no consequences because they specifically draw attention to how the land is crying out, because found that it is going to mistreat it. So I feel like you know, they got some sort of wiggle room to move it forward to fix this problem because the land will be made right again, once Valmet is out of power. Tessa 53:52 Right and we get we get a glimpse here, the land is very interesting the kingdom as an entity that's like a mind almost that's made up of smaller minds. That's something that's going to come up in Pratchett a lot these ideas of different things that we wouldn't normally think of as having anthropomorphic qualities as sort of having them and this idea that granny weatherwax can reach out and touch other minds she often a becomes a joke in later books, and we can talk about that when we get to it, but she can, like reach out and touch other minds, even things that you wouldn't think of as having a mind the scene where she's sitting out in front of her cottage and all of the animals show up because they're all sort of possessed by this like, mind of a kingdom that's deeply unhappy with Fellman as a ruler. I just thought that was such a like eerie awe inspiring scene and by I'm talking about like the Gothic Yeah, definition of that word religious All right, like the like terrifying. All right. You're seeing something that's just like almost beyond your ability to understand. What did you think of the whole kingdom awakening or the kingdom like malgrat calls it like a large dog like it doesn't actually have a sense of right and wrong it just wants something yeah what are Nigel 55:17 they what is it that they he's exercising his dog that's in your like his right, which is a French phrase. Yes. Bizarre that exists on the Discworld as is, but he's exercising his right to lordship. If I'm remembering my French Rex, I think the Lord of the Rings in French is listen your design yo. Alright, I know I did I forget how you pronounce the French word for ring. So I think it's a really cool way of visualizing it because an awful lot of fantasy stories you'll hear things like Oh, the land is crying out. Tessa 55:54 Like she even thinks about like, maybe the heartbeat of the land is only once a year what you know in the spring like what you know, like she starts to think about the ways in which a kingdom might have other systems that make up a body. Also, yeah, the the phrase that they use, it's another phrase, it's a French phrase for premier noctus which is the right of a ruler to sleep with the wife winch on her foot on the first night of a wedding, which is like a weird medieval tradition for some kingdoms. And so like part of the joke is is that like, he is the father of the fool because he exercised his right to prima noctus even though she was like married to someone else. It's just it's fascinating. Nigel 56:38 Yeah, so really the takeaway is for that, Royal should not exercise. Tessa 56:45 And then last but not least, I wanted to bring up another reoccurring character from the witches books, because we will be talking about this character even more in the next book that we read, I believe, or at least the next chronological book that we read Grieco, the most evil cat who is described in like the as like the nastiest cat that just is, like mostly scar tissue. He's like missing an eye. By sheer dint of effort. He is the father of like all generations of cats in the in linker, like he doesn't get along with anybody except for Danny og, who still treats him like he's like a little baby kitten. How did you feel about greenco as a character, even though he's just like this cat. Nigel 57:33 I liked creatbot I like greenco is a cantankerous old man in the body of a cat is sort of a way I could put it. Tessa 57:43 Yeah, he's like a he's like a cantankerous, lecherous old man. Nigel 57:47 Yeah, which is a horrifying string of words to put together but he really is and it's me of Buttercup the cat in the Hunger Games the prim has because that like it's just an absolute monstrosity of just being locked up. It's true but also like you know where your loyalties have to lie with this cat at the same time because there's that like when death goes to collect variances so he you know, he says that he doesn't like cats and I find the quote now I have I have this one actually saved and I can use I can use my death voice so I hate cats. Deaths face became a little stiffer if that were possible. The blue glow in his eye sockets flickered red for an instant. I see he set the tone suggested the death was too good for cat haters. I want to know now what what pets if any did Terry Pratchett have did he have cats because you get the feeling when you're reading Discworld that anytime a cat comes up? You like it's on the side of rice? Tessa 58:57 Yes, I think that that is definitely true although they're not nice like he doesn't portray them as being cute little kittens you know or or like animals that like they're always like, Oh yeah, happy even his we're gonna definitely see some characters that are dogs in later books. And they're even his dogs are very scrappy, like you said fucked up, like, you know, just like these messed up animals that are also somehow really endearing. Nigel 59:26 Yeah, I've met like, nice in the sense that are not committing acts of villainy. Right. Tessa 59:33 Although I don't know greenco does sort of commit some acts of villainy. Nigel 59:37 Yeah, I will say like, you have the whole argument of like, animals just do their own thing because they're animals and they don't have a conscious will have their own really like humans do. They have no conception of right and wrong, blah, blah, blah. But at the same time, all the cats and Terry Pratchett are portrayed as intelligent beings, who are you know as smart if not smarter than most of the humans around them. Most of the time, you never see any kind of like, senseless animals. Tessa 1:00:06 Yes, it is. But I also think I love though that greenco like everybody in the town hates greenco because he's always like messing with like their cats or, you know, like randomly attacking them or something. But nanny augs still loves him because the book says she still sees him as like the tiny fluffy kitten that he was when she first got him and I feel like that's true for a lot of pet owners even with of animals that are like really messed up is that they like it's their baby. And so like they're always gonna have like a soft spot for that animal. And I just I love that. That's the distinction is that nanny Auguste his mom, and he behaves for her, but not for anybody else. Nigel 1:00:48 Yeah, definitely. Although, I think, like an interesting parallel that would have not parallel, but like plotline that they could have done, which feels strange, because these books are like, what, 30 years old, at least, like the earlier Discworld books. Yeah, this is Yeah, this is like 33 years old timer recording. So it's strange to go, well, project could have done this because Pratchett unfortunately, is dead. And so it would have been really interesting if greenco was a stray, or, you know, like a shelter cat, who had, you know, like, a really hard life. I'm one of those ones where it's like, oh, you know, no one will ever love him because he's so like, anti human. And then, you know, he can be rescued and have a nice life when an owner that actually cares about it, because he does feel like a shelter cat, one of those ones that's like, has definitely been through the wars. Well, and Tessa 1:01:45 we always think about, I think that part of this too, is that like, he's an outdoor cat, which I don't think that letting your cat Outdoors is very ethical. But that's a very, that's a very different podcast. Nigel 1:01:56 Hello, and welcome to letting your cat outdoors podcast. Tessa 1:02:00 Yeah. But the truth of the matter is, is that like a lot of people, especially rural areas, let their cats outdoors and unfortunately, life outside is not particularly kind to small animals. And so I think that even though he's not like a rescue in the truest sense of the word, he has, you know, fought a lot of battles been through some shit. He's had to survive outdoors and lenker like the most magical place in the desert. Yeah, Nigel 1:02:29 so we have that we have the plotline, in a way, not the most direct way. It's definitely taken a detour on the narrative motorway. Tessa 1:02:37 And I will tell you greenco has an arc. He has a real arc in the witches books. Yes, screamo character. So before we get to the our end stats for this particular book, I do want to mention two characters that briefly show up who are important in other books because this is something that Terry Pratchett does a lot of where you'll see like a glimpse of a character who is like a main character in a different book, or at least an important character in in weird sisters. In the scenes that are in ONC morepork. In the mended drum, we do see the librarian, who is the librarian of the unseen University, who was magically changed into a Ranga Tang, at some point in the rinse wind books and refuses to be changed back. He actually ends the fight almost before it begins in weird sisters. So we see a brief glimpse of the librarian. We also on page 219, in my book, here, the name Leonard have corm mentioned and Leonard aquarium we are going to see him in other books as well. But he is a Leonardo da Vinci stand in, he's the one who invented the machine that they use for the waves on in the disk theater. So that that's like a fun little shout out there. Oh, right. Nigel 1:03:54 So kind of like how rincewind appeared when they went to the unseen Academy and more where he was just there. And he was like, you know, go do this, go do that. But it was wind that was there. The star hub is the star of his own series of books, Tessa 1:04:08 right? Yeah. Terry Pratchett loves to do this, where he'll just have like a random character from a book show up in and sometimes they have a lot to do like you'll have there's a later book in the witches series where an important character is actually like part of the plot. But a lot of times it's just like this where they'll just be in one scene or they'll just be mentioned. But of course, we have to do our death sightings. There are two death sightings in weird sisters. The first one is fairly close to the beginning of the book, like you mentioned Nigel, on page six. In my book, he shows up to collect the soul of vernice, but realizes that vernice is actually destined to be a ghost which really annoys him, which I found very funny. He also shows up on page 265. For the whole scene, he actually placed himself in the play that Tom john and the rest of the stage players are putting on She gets a little stage fright, which I found to be very funny as well. So there are two death sightings and of course, he then goes on to collect the soul of Duke Fellman. Nigel 1:05:09 I think the play was a particularly like, because death ends up getting stage fright. It's like the play that goes wrong in a way where you've got this character playing another character who happens to be a version of himself. Yeah, I really like that play at the end because everything kind of just like, just goes to shit. Like, this is the scene. Like where everything goes to hell in a handbasket where all of the plots come together all of the Shakespeare Shakespeare's I'm using Shakespeare as a verb now. Tessa 1:05:44 All the Shakespeare's Yeah, and then, like the witches, like take the place of their counterparts, and they make everybody forget the words of the play, and instead, like what really happened to come out of their mouths. And so we get like actual lines from Macbeth here, which is really great. Yeah, it is a really cool scene, the which is sort of the climactic part of the book. So the first footnote of the book actually takes place on page 10. I'm going to read the first footnote. So the first the first book footnote comes when Virtus is thinking about banquets and how he's gonna miss them. He says like he he liked a big noisy banquet and had coughed many pints of good ale. There's a little footnote on the word quaffed. And coughing is like drinking but you spill more, which is definitely a joke that repeats several times in the book. Nigel 1:06:35 coughing I think it's funny because like that is an old word, just for like drinking and stuff. It came up in an episode of QA where I first saw it, so I was like, Oh, yeah, I know what coughing is, which is which is a strange like piece of knowledge to go into a book with where you're like, Ah, yes, I know what coughing is. But they used to call like, time or whatever they used to call it cough tide, which I think is very fun. Cough tide. Tessa 1:07:01 Cough tide. I like that. I also it makes sense like this definition of drinking but you spill more it just the word coughing sounds like that. It sounds like you're spilling things on the floor. It kind of brings to mind like sticky, like pub or bar floors. Nigel 1:07:16 Yeah. And then as well you have that like later on in the fight in the bar scene where Kyle and Tom john, they're like so this is what roistering is. Tessa 1:07:27 Yes, the mended drum, and then they go to the dwarf bar and they're all singing about gold. This is really the first book that we get an insight into a species other than human. We get well as a main character who was a dwarf. And so he talks a lot about like, how dwarfs are obsessed with mining and they're obsessed with gold and he doesn't really fit in, which will become a theme in later watch books especially Nigel 1:07:50 Alright, I'm just waiting to break out like at the right moment to break out my Gimli impression, where he says they call it a mine from Lord of the Rings. Tessa 1:08:01 Well, we'll have a countdown to your your best Gimli impression. I'm excited. But what did you think the best footnote was, I Nigel 1:08:08 think possibly this one from page 270 of my addition, which is another one of the double footnote ones. Because of the way time was recorded among the various states kingdoms and cities after all went over an area of 100 square miles the same year is variously the year of the small Bob an anticipated monkey the hunting cloud, fat cows, three bright stallions and at least nine numbers of recording the time since the sort of Kings profits and strange events were either crowned born are kidnapped and each year has a different number of months and some of them don't have weeks and one of them refuses to accept the day as a measure of time the only thing it is possible to be sure of is that the good sex doesn't last long enough and so you've got a second footnote says the cat the calendar of the theocracy of MONTH tab counts down not up no one knows why but it might be a good idea to hang around and find out and then the third footnote to be sure is the good sex doesn't last long enough is except for there's a bingo tribal the great snafu Of course. So it's like what does that mean? You know, we're just expected to know what the bingo tribe is doing. Tessa 1:09:14 Right? Yeah, it's this is like the first example I think that we get of a triple footnote which happens a few more times in his books. And yeah, by the time you get to the third footnote, it becomes like almost not understandable. Like it's almost just like what what, like what is happening here? Like I remember reading that footnote like three times but also laughing not being sure why I was laughing. Nigel 1:09:37 Yeah, definitely. What was your favorite footnote, Tessa, so mine Tessa 1:09:41 is also a little long. Mine was on page 201 in my book, and this is another example I forgot to mention of him mentioning a character from another book who's important, but it's the one where they're an ONC morepork and Tom, john and wells tried to stop some thieves from stealing from the fool They explained the thieves without Yeah, like the little business card and the footnote. Yeah, the little business card and the the footnote explains. amore porks enviable system of licensed criminals owes much to the current patrician Lord vetinari. He reasoned that the only way to police a city of a million inhabitants was to recognize the various gangs and robber guilds, give them professional status, invite the leaders to large dinners allow an acceptable level of street climb, and then make the guild leaders responsible for enforcing it on pain of being stripped of their new Civic honors along with larger areas of their skin. It worked. criminals that turned out make a very good police force. Unauthorized robbers soon found for an example that instead of a knight in the cells, they could now expect an eternity at the bottom of the river. However, there was a problem of apportioning the crime statistics. And so there arose a complex systems of annual budgeting, chits and allowances to see that a, the members could make a reasonable living and be no citizen was robbed or assaulted more than agreed number of times, many foresighted citizens in fact arranged to get an acceptable near minimum of theft, assault, etc. Over at the beginning of the financial year, often in the privacy and comfort of their own homes, and thus be able to walk the streets quite safely for the rest of the year. It all ticked over extremely peacefully and efficiently demonstrating that once again, a court that compared to the patrician of ONC, Machiavelli could not have run a whelk stall. And that, first of all, Lord vetinari is a character that's really important in the watch books. And so that that's a reference to that. But I just I love the system that ONC more pork has for crime, like the idea that they have these guilds, and the guilds control crime, and so it's actually more peaceful and more well thought out than if you just had criminals running around because they sort of police themselves. I just I thought that was hilarious. And I also find the idea of, like Machiavelli is that a character that exists in the Discworld, but the, but the narrator knows about Machiavelli, like, there's a lot of like, the narrator understands references to Earth, without the characters themselves being able to understand those references. Nigel 1:12:22 Yeah, was this well, it sort of brings to mind obviously now I'm not getting into all the complexities and stuff of Michel Foucault's idea of the panopticon where it's like, you don't know whether you're being observed because it's a circular prison. So everyone keeps their behavior in check. Because the fear of being observed almost, so it's like, they're committing their crimes, and making sure that everyone meets the quota of like, acceptable crime, because they don't want to lose skin and end up in the bottom of the Tessa 1:12:55 river. Right, exactly. And they like and the idea is, is that it's all a portion, right? Like you could get stolen from at the beginning of the year, and then like, be completely safe the rest of the year, which, yeah, is not necessarily a bad system. I think that's interesting. Nigel 1:13:12 Yeah, just can't just get robbed before you get really rich. Yeah, exactly. Tessa 1:13:16 Exactly. So what was the thing that made you laugh out loud while reading this book? Was there a moment that actually made you physically laugh? Nigel 1:13:24 I'm gonna have to go with the play at the end, pure unbridled chaos or like, all this kind of chaos, all the characters are showing up and they're doing their own little thing and it feeds into everything that happens at the end. So yeah, I think the I think the play at the end was the funniest scene in the book. Tessa 1:13:42 Yeah, so one of the ones I laughed a few times in this book, but one of the ones that just like I actually had to stop because I was laughing so much for a moment when the Duke so the Duke has ordered his soldiers to go and arrest granny weatherwax but then they come back with out her and the Duke is talking about like, Oh, she like put a spell on you, or like so should dark fascinations and forbidden raptures. Like that kind of thing. And so it's like Don't change the subject man snap the Duke pulling himself together a bit admitted she offered you hedonistic and licentious pleasures only known to those who dabble in the carnal arts Did she? The sergeant stood to attention and stared straight ahead. No sir He said in the manner of one speaking the truth come what may she offered me a bud abun Yes sir. I had current senate film it set absolutely still well he fought for internal peace finally all he could manage was and what did your bed do about this? They hadn't been to Sir all except young Roger who isn't allowed fruit sir on account of his trouble. And like I just laughed so hard at that because it's just like Yeah, she gave me a button like I wasn't going to arrest her like and you know we all had a button and it was just it's such a like on like the fury of film it is so undercut by the matter of factionist The soldier their Nigel 1:15:01 wishes in this book, definitely you can definitely tell that most of what was written about Agnes Nutter in good omens came from Terry Pratchett. Oh, yes, Tessa 1:15:10 I could definitely see that. 100% All right. Was there a scene in the book that made you think? Nigel 1:15:17 Yeah, it's another one of the quotes that I had actually saved is due to doom. Also, there was a few. So they're very short, though. Only in our dreams. Are we free the rest of the time? We need wages. Tessa 1:15:32 Yes, Nigel 1:15:34 I love that. And then destiny is important. See, but people who go wrong when they think it controls them, it's the other way around. Tessa 1:15:43 That's a good one, too, because there's so much about destiny and its shape in this book. Nigel 1:15:48 It definitely brings to mind like levels one F, which is currently coming out now. And one of the episodes it's like, what shapes your destiny? Is it? who you are? Or is it like the circumstances of your world? Or you know, like, what makes you you in the grand scheme of the multiverse? Tessa 1:16:04 Yeah, it's it's really interesting, the way that Pratchett kind of balances between like, social and magical forces and individual forces. Yeah. So the ones that I had written down were actually this is a quote that I think about a lot like I've thought about it a lot since the very first day I read it, but it's from the first page actually of the novel, where the narrator says, it would be a pretty good bet that the gods of a world like this probably do not play chess. And indeed, this is the case. In fact, no Gods anywhere play chess, they haven't got the imagination. Gods prefer simple vicious games where you do not achieve transcendence that goes straight to oblivion. A key to understanding all of religion is that a God's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with bronze. Which, that is a great description of what I think a lot of about I mean, I'm not religious personally, but like, I just thought that was an amazing description of a lot of different religious ideas. Nigel 1:17:11 Yeah, cuz on the one hand, you've got like Albert Einstein's God does not play dice with the universe or whatever. But then, at the same time, you've got, like monopoly on this, like, you know, almost the King Lear of we're to the gods as flies to wanton boys, they kill us for their spores. Tessa 1:17:30 Yeah, it's very much like this idea of like, if you actually look at what's happening, like the gods don't actually play chess, which is a game that requires more imagination and more planning. It's more vicious than that it's more mean spirited, and a lot of ways. So the other one that I had was near the end of the book when granny is watching the play, and she realizes the power of theater and the power of words specifically. So it's on page 246, granny subsided into unaccustomed troubled silence and tried to listen to the prologue, the theater worried her, it had a magic of its own one that didn't belong to her one that wasn't in her control. It changed the world and said things were otherwise than they were. And it was worse than that. It was magic that didn't belong to magical people. It was commanded by ordinary people who didn't know the rules, they altered the world because it sounded better. And I just love that description of the power of language and the power of art to really shape the way that we view history, the way that we view certain things and the danger that lies in that. Nigel 1:18:45 Yeah, to touch on it briefly. It's like wb Yeats, who I don't like, but I understand his like, impact on the Irish poetic cycle and tradition and stuff. But he wrote an awful lot of like, poems, sort of impelling people toward LA and an anger and this kind of thing. And then when he was older in years, he sort of he wrote another poem being like did my words send them out to fight did my words get them killed, and the poet pole mode that pole Muldowney, I think is his name, how to wit with he kind of two line aphorism type thing about it, which runs us. If gates had saved his pencil lead with certain men have stayed in bed. It's a really complex topic, which we don't have the time to get into. But yeah, like those words definitely had an impact on those people. Tessa 1:19:36 Right. And that is very much at the heart of certain parts of weird sisters. And really Pratchett in general. There's a lot of themes of his about how words shape perception and how that can be really good, but it can also be really bad in the way that it can kind of control certain certain ideas, certain ways that we view history. There's the scene near the beginning. The fool says like he gestures at the picture. sure if this monarch who's like called the good and he says what was he good at? We'll never know. But he will always be remembered as the good. Nigel 1:20:06 Mm hmm. And like what is a prophecy if not a bunch of words that everyone takes very seriously? Tessa 1:20:12 That is true. That is absolutely true. All right. Is there anything else that you want to talk about about weird sisters before we wrap up? Nigel 1:20:22 Not really. I think we hit an awful lot of what I wanted to discuss here. Tessa 1:20:25 We covered a lot of ground from Shakespeare to like, the philosophy of words. We did a lot. Yeah, for sure. Next episode we are going back to the very beginning and meeting rinse wind and the luggage in the color of magic. Feel free to read along with us or listen in to get a feel for Pratchett's books or to remind yourself of why you love the Discworld so much in the first place. Where can people find you online and on their headphones Nigel? Nigel 1:20:54 Okay so many places you can find me my podcasts hyper fixations on archive admirers on Spotify under those names, hyper fixations is on Instagram. At hyper fixations pod on Twitter hyper fixations p archive admires his admirers archive on Twitter. You can find me on Twitter at spicy Nigel where I'm tweeting every single drange thought that comes into my head you'll see me just posting if I get an A new idea for another podcast. It will just go up as a tweet into the ether. You know, just make of them what you will. Yeah, that's maybe where you can find me. Tessa 1:21:31 Woman of many podcasts. Yes, Unknown Speaker 1:21:32 that's me. Tessa 1:21:36 All right, you can find me on Twitter and letterbox at suela Tessa Swehla is spelled sw EH la You can also find me on my other podcast monkey off my backlog. That podcast is on twitter at monkey backlog. Alright, Nigel, do you want to read us out? Yeah, I do have a selection to read for Nigel 1:21:55 us. Yeah, I'm gonna read from the end of weird sisters here. So open it up now. Okay. Right, then said granny. Anyway, look at it like this royalty has to start somewhere. It might as well start with him. It looks as though he means to take it seriously, which is a lot further than most of them. Take it he'll do. Margaret knew she had lost. You always lost against granny. weatherwax the only interest was in seeing exactly how, but I'm, I'm surprised that the two of you I really am. She said, You're witches. That means you have to care about things like truth and tradition and destiny, don't you? That's where you've been getting an old Rome say granny destinies important See, but people go wrong when they think it controls them. It's the other way around. Boga destiny. Agreed nanny granny glared at her. After all you've never thought about being a witch was going to be easy, did you? I'm learning send my aggression. She looked across the more where a thin rind of dawn glowed on the horizon. I think I'd better be off she said it's getting early. me to send nanny Ogg our show frets if I'm not Oh, when she comes to get my breakfast. Granny carefully scuffed over the remains of the fire. When shall we free me again? She said. The Witches looked at one another sheepishly. I'm a bit busy next month said nanny birthdays and such. And the work has really been piling up with all this Hurly burly, you know, and there's all the ghosts to think about. I thought you sent them back to the castle. So granny? Well, they didn't want to go said nanny vaguely to be honest. I got used to them around the place. They accompany have an evening. They hardly scream at all now. That's nice. So Granny, why are you Magritte? There always seems to be such a lot to do with this time of year, don't you find said Magritte. quite sad granny weatherwax pleasantly it's no good getting yourself tied down to appointments all the time, is it? Let's just leave the old question open, shall we? They nodded. And as the new day wound across the landscape, each one busy with their own thoughts, each one of which alone they went home. footnote. There's a school of thought that says that witches and wizards can never go home. They went though just the same. The End Transcribed by https://otter.ai