Discworld/Unseen Academicals/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
Jump to navigation Jump to search

  • Fridge Brilliance: If the orcs seem over-designed for their racial purpose as a cannon fodder slave race, remember that their creator was most likely assisted by an Igor. Igors have a tendency of exceeding expectations, and when the mathter decided to create a race of superior soldiers, his Igor probably put more thought into what makes a good soldier than he did.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight: An American distributor (apparently due to a complete lack of understanding of Morris dancing) once claimed Lords and Ladies was about a football team in its synopsis, to which Pratchett's response was that football was one subject he would never write a Discworld book about...
    • Maybe he meant American football.
      • Sorry, no. The quote specifically mentions Association Football.
    • Although somewould argue that it isn't about football, football is just a device to help the story along.
      • Well, the thing about football, the most important thing about football, is that it's never just about football.
  • Older Than They Think: If the book was intended as a subversion of Tolkien's conception of Orcs, in fact some of Tolkien's late writings move along remarkably parallel lines, considering that orcs might have free will when apart from their evil masters and being made from ruined men rather than elves. He died before he could finally decide on one definite origin story and cosmic fate.
  • What an Idiot!: The Librarian eating the poisoned banana.
    • Justified - considering the Librarian's reputation and how everyone else regards him, who would be stupid enough to try poisoning him with even a sedative?
    • And also foreshadowed, much earlier, when it's mentioned that unlike men, who waste a lot of time asking questions like "I seem to see a banana, but could my senses be deceiving me?", an orangutan will just eat the banana.
  • The Woobie: Nutt, most of the time. At least before he tried auto-hypnosis quasi-Freudianism.
    • A Woobie, for sure, but of the iron kind.