in seriousness, if you liked good omens, give discworld a shot. terry pratchett was a remarkably observant and funny writer who excelled at character design, world building, and processing his anger at the world’s many injustices into some of the most compassionate stories I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. It’s one of those things I recommend to anyone who’ll listen.
Something Vimes had learned as a young guard drifted up from memory. If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you entirely at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you’re going to die. So they’ll talk. They’ll gloat.
They’ll watch you squirm. They’ll put off the moment of murder like another man will put off a good cigar.
So hope like hell that your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word.
- Terry Pratchett, Men at Arms
No one knows why Death started to take a practical interest in the human beings he had worked with for so long. It was probably just curiosity. Even the most efficient ratcatcher will sooner or later take an interest in rats. They might watch rats live and die, and record every detail of rat existence, although they may never themselves actually know what it is like to run the maze.
But if it is true that the act of observing changes the thing which is observed, it’s even more true that it changes the observer
Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
The world was blessedly free of honest men and wonderfully full of people who believed they could tell the difference between an honest man and a crook.
Going Postal, Terry Pratchett (via thefankid)
Ankh-Morpork, alone of all the cities of the plains, had opened its gates to dwarfs and trolls (alloys are stronger, as Vetinari had said). It had worked. They made things. Often they made trouble, but mostly they made wealth. As a result, although Ankh-Morpork still had many enemies, those enemies had to finance their armies with borrowed money. Most of it was borrowed from Ankh-Morpork, at punitive interest. There hadn’t been any really big wars for years. Ankh-Morpork had made them unprofitable.
Thousands of years ago the old empire had enforced the Pax Morporkia, which had said to the world: ‘Do not fight, or we will kill you.’ The Pax had arisen again, but this time it said: ‘If you fight, we’ll call in your mortagages. And incidentally, that’s MY pike you’re pointing at me. I paid for that shield you’re holding. And take my helmet off when you speak to me, you horrible little debtor.’
Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
“He’d tried to introduce Ephebian democracy to Lancre, giving the vote to everyone, or at least everyone “who be of good report and who be male and hath forty years and owneth a hosue worth more than three and a half goats a year,” because there’s no sense in being stupid about things and giving the vote to people who were poor or criminal or insane or female, who’d only use it irresponsibly.”
- Terry Pratchett - Lords And Ladies
“I’m very happy at the Post Office, you know,” said Moist, and realized that he sounded defensive.
“I’m sure you are. You make a superb postmaster general,” said Vetinari. He turned to Drumknott. “Now I’ve finished this I’d better deal with the overnights from Genua,” he said, and carefully folded the letter into an envelope.
“Yes, my lord,” said Drumknott.
The tyrant of Ankh-Morpork bent to his work. Moist watched blankly as Vetinari took a small but heavy-looking box from a desk drawer, removed a stick of black sealing wax from it, and melted a small puddle of the wax onto the envelope with an air of absorption that Moist found infuriating.
“Is that all?” he said.
Vetinari looked up and appeared surprised to see him still there. “Why, yes, Mr. Lipwig. You may go.” He laid aside the stick of wax and took a black signet ring out of the box.
“I mean, there’s not some kind of problem, is there?”
“No, not at all. You have become an exemplary citizen, Mr. Lipwig,” said Vetinari, carefully stamping a V into the cooling wax. “You rise each morning at eight, you are at your desk at thirty minutes past. You have turned the Post Office from a calamity into a smoothly running machine. You pay your taxes and a little bird tells me that you are tipped to be next year’s chairman of the Merchants’ Guild. Well done, Mr. Lipwig!”
Moist stood up to the leave, but hesitated. “What’s wrong with being chairman of the Merchants’ Guild, then?” he said.
With slow and ostentatious patience, Lord Vetinari slipped the ring back into its box and the box back into the drawer. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Lipwig?”
“It’s just that you said it as though there was something wrong with it,” said Moist.
“I don’t believe I did,” said Vetinari, looking up at his secretary. “Did I use a derogatory inflection, Drumknott?”
“No, my lord. You have often remarked that the traders and shopkeepers of the guild are the backbone of the city,” said Drumknott, handing him a thick file.
“I shall get a very nearly gold chain,” said Moist.
“He will get a very nearly gold chain, Drumknott,” observed Vetinari, paying attention to a new letter.
“And what’s so bad about that?” Moist demanded.
Vetinari looked up again with an expression of genuinely contrived puzzlement.
“Are you quite well, Mr. Lipwig? You appear to have something wrong with your hearing. Now run along, do. The Central Post Office opens in ten minutes and I’m sure you would wish, as ever, to set a good example to your staff.”
-Making Money, Terry Pratchett
Sergeant Colon owed thirty years of happy marriage to the fact that Mrs. Colon worked all day and Sargent Colon worked all night. They communicated by means of notes. They had three grown-up children, all born, Vimes had assumed, as a result of extremely persuasive handwriting.
Sergeant Fred Colon moodboard
Discworld characters: (29/40)
Characters’ moodboards: (196/?)
(image description: a moodboard for Fred Colon. In the center is an image of a cleanshaven, stocky, smiling man. Going clockwise around the center from top left: a man on a stone bridge with large statues in the fog, metal tankards hanging on hooks, a grilled cheese sandwich, a blackened but polished breastplate worn over a chainmail tunic, a simple interior view of a room with a green couch, beige walls and washing hung on a line, seven large wine barrels stacked up, a quiver of arrows and a plain long bow on a wood surface, and a seven pointed Ankh Morpork Watch badge, with an owl on the top clutching an ankh and the city seal.)
ginyia