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Book:Small Gods/Annotations

2016-11-28T14:24:41Z

Cerddaf: Death by Falling Tortoise

'''''Monk, or Sweeper?'''''
The interesting (possible contradiction) here is that when the character of Lu-Tze first appears in {{SG}}, (ref '''''Corgi Paperback p.8'''''), he is introduced thus:-

''The 493rd Abbot... addressed Lu-Tze, one of his most senior monks.''

He is still a History Monk on pp 376-377, at the end of {{SG}}.

Here, Lu-Tze is a fully-fledged and acknowledged History Monk who while in the field adopts the guise of a humble sweeper. It is only in the later books, {{TOT}}, {{NW}}, that the reverse is emphasised: here, the story is the Lu-Tze never graduated as a monk nor was selected as one at all. What he has learnt has come from years of sweeping up, unobtrusively, in classrooms where the monks are trained. To add further confusion, on p317 he is identified as being six thousand years old, which contradicts ages given in other places and sets up further contradictions.

'''''Harper paperback p8'''''

''Brother Nhumrod, who had a nervous habit of squinting at the speaker's lips and repeating the last few words they said practically as they said them.''

One of the frequently-cited symptoms of schizophrenia is echolalia: repeating the words of another person. The best-known is auditory hallucinations. Brother Nhumrod has both.

'''''Corgi Paperback p40'''''
Note Om-as-Tortoise's desperate curse on Brother Nhumrod. Compare it to the notes on the statue of Fedex in {{GP}} (Doubleday hardback p47) - ''"Your sexual organs to sprout wings and fly away!"

'''''Harper paperback p49'''''

''Then he scratched the dust with a claw. "I...remember a day...summer day...you were...thirteen..."''

Oh, now this is quite clever. From context, it's clear that Om is referring to some sin of Brutha's, but the fact that he is referring to a sin, at least here, is not specified. In the Gospel of John ({{wp|Pericope_adulterae#Authorship|though not necessarily written by him}}), there is an account of a woman who is about to be stoned as an adulterer. Local religious authorities take her to Jesus, who begins writing with his finger on the ground, saying, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone." This causes the accusers to leave. The writing bit is fairly nonsensical without the explanation of tradition, which states that Jesus was writing their sins. So similarly, we have Om writing on the ground with his claw while talking to Brutha about one of his sins without actually explaining in the text that he's confronting Brutha about his sins.

'''''Corgi Paperback p50'''''
"sometimes there are very big waves." Fri'it said, thoughtfully. "Nothing would stop them. But if you ride them, you do not drown...the trick is to judge the strength of the wave."

Drunah caught the glint in his eye.

"Ah. How wonderful of the Great Om to put such instructive examples in our path... and what happens to the ones who cannot {ride it}?"

"They drown. Often. Some of the waves are very big."

"Such is often the nature of waves, I understand."

This dialogue between General Fri'it and the priest Drunah is very suggestive of a tsunami wiping a tropical island clean, together with all its people, history and traditions.

Terry Pratchett returned to this theme much later with a second book that explored the nature of social community, social history and religious belief, this time set on a tropical island where a handful of survivors are rebuilding things after a tsunami. ({{N}}) Is this a foreshadowing, that even then TP was exploring an alternative way a book like {{SG}} might have been written?

'''''Corgi Paperback p67'''''

''most Gods find it hard to walk and think at the same time'' - originally said about a god-like figure, President Gerald Ford of the USA, who famously stumbled and fell on the steps out of an airliner. He was chewing gum at the time, apparently.

'''''Corgi Paperback pp.81-82'''''

''"That sounds dreadful!" said the woman... "I wonder what passes through the poor little creature's head when he's dropped?"''

''"His shell, madam!" said the Great God Om...''

Om is being uncharacteristically delicate here. In the variation of this joke usually told on Roundworld, the last thing to pass through the mind/head of any creature dropped from a great height is usually its arsehole.

'''''Corgi Paperback p.85-86'''''
The [[million-to-one chance]] makes an appearance: "Landed on a pile of dirt in your ''garden''. That's eagles for you. Whole place made of rock and paved with rock and built on a big rock, and they miss."

Omnianism is a reference to Catholicism. The original meaning of "Catholic", before becoming synonymous with only one sect of Christianity, was "universal". "Omni" means "all", ie universality.

A small error occurs when Brutha is counting the flashes from the ship. He counts seven, and then four flashes, while talking to the captain; but when reporting to Vorbis, he claims there were 6, 8, then 2 flashes. (HarperPrism edition, mass paperback: pp. 115, 120) --[[User:Neddy|Neddy]] 19:39, 14 April 2006 (CEST)

'''''Corgi Paperback p.100'''''
''I have to walk that lonesome valley/I have to walk it all alone'' These are lines from a fundamentalist Christian hymn which occur in the book when Brutha has to confront the idea of walking through the Desert (both on the physical Discworld and when ushered by Death into the Afterlife). It's certainly popular: a lyrics site lists sixty different recordings, perhaps the most prominent of which was by Elvis Presley:-[http://www.sing365.com/music/Lyric.nsf/Jesus-Walked-That-Lonesome-Valley-lyrics-Elvis-Presley/E0768A015892B53F482568740o35BEA5]

The hymn recurs throughout {{SG}}, and is seen here when General [[Fri'it]] is contemplating the assassination of [[Vorbis]].

In Robert Anton Wilson's '''''Illuminatus!''''' trilogy, the same verse of the same hymn is used when two of the principal characters are forced to question, challenge, and finally reject the Christian orthodoxy they have been brought up to believe in. Like Brutha, both Robert Putney Drake (villain) and Hagbard Celine (anti-hero) experience the absolute loneliness of being leaders, responsible not just for themselves but for the fortunes of others. Drake, like Vorbis, ends up in a Hell of his own making, while Celine finds a sort of inner peace based on his philosophy of "Think for yourself, schmuck!" - not a million miles away from the philosophy Brutha steers Omnianism into.

'''''p. 131/95'''''

''According to Book One of the Septateuch, anyway.''

The Septateuch is already noted to be a reference to the Penteteuch, but it's probably also a reference to the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (septuagint means seventy in Latin, and there were 72 translators).

'''''Harper paperback p133'''''

''"But not a barbarian one"''

Ephebe seems to be modeled on Greece. Greece defined barbarian as coming from any country other than Greece.

A bunch of rowdy philosophers who love to argue over a few drinks in a pub, and who get into drunken fights and use basic language. A naive newcomer among them with a name that's halfway to being "Bruce". Hmmm....

'''''Corgi Paperback p.185'''''

''Go tell that to the mariners''. Or to the Marines.

'''''Corgi Paperback p.317'''''

Lu-Tze finds Brutha huddled in his familiar garden, curled up in fear, alone among the melons. He then talks about his fear to Lu-Tze and wishes he was small and anonymous again and his biggest fear was missing a weed when hoeing. This echoes Christ's emotional turmoil the night before his arrest and eventual crucifixion, in the Garden of Gethsemane, where, alone, human and afraid, he pleads with God to take the burden away and spare him the worst. Christ feels forsaken by the absence of God the father; Brutha feels equally lost and alone with Om-As-Tortoise having vanished. (Om was deliberately abandoned in the desert by Vorbis, and is at least a hundred tortoise-hours away from the Citadel). It also refers to French agnostic Voltaire's comment, at the end of ''Candide'', that ''il faut cautiver notre jardins'' - colloquially, ''we all have our row to hoe'' our own garden to tend, our own fate to meet.

The brazen tortoise, in which Brutha is to be the first victim: ''"a torture and execution device designed in ancient Greece by Perillos of Athens. Phalaris, the tyrant of Akragas, Sicily, desired the invention of a new means for executing criminals. Perilos was a brass-founder, who cast a bull, made entirely of brass, hollow, with a door in the side. The condemned were shut in the bull and a fire was set under it, heating the metal until it became yellow hot and causing the person inside to roast to death."''

The Romans were recorded as having used this torture device to kill some Christian martyrs, notably Saint Eustace, who, according to Christian tradition, was roasted in a brazen bull with his wife and children by the Emperor Hadrian. The same happened to Saint Antipas, Bishop of Pergamum during the persecutions of Emperor Domitian, and the first martyr in Asia Minor, roasted to death in a brazen bull in c. 92.apparently this was still used two centuries later, when another Christian martyr, Saint Pelagia, is said to have been burned in one in 287 by the Emperor Diocletian.

The bull and the eagle are two of four archetypes that recur throughout the Bible and are a repeating motif in Christian iconography. In Ezekiel 1:10 and 10:14, there is a description of a race of angels who each have four faces: of a man, a bull, an eagle and a lion. At the the end of the Bible, in the apocalypse of St John (Revelation), Rev. 4:7 lists four separate creatures - not explicitly identified as angelic, although they are in Heaven - whose job is to ceaselessly chant praise of god, pausing only to make a prophetic announcemet when one of the seven seals is broken.

''The first living creature was like a lion, the second was like an ox, the third had a face like a man, the fourth was like a flying eagle.'' (Bible, N.I.V., Revelation 4:7)

Theology ascribes several meanings to this symbolism, all tied into the Biblical rule of Fours. They symbolically represent the Four Gospels, and the four writers of the Gospels. It is especially noticeable in Revelations that each is a herald to one of the Four Riders of the Apocalypse. (the Eagle is the herald of the arrival of DEATH into the world, completing the four riders. Contrast this to the Eagle here being the harbinger of Death to Vorbis - just after Brutha declares, with absolute confidence "Vorbis? you're going to die." the eagle-headed creature announcing "Come And See" to the fourth rider, Death, is fitting here; in the citadel, EVERYBODY came and saw. And believed in Om.)

In the Christian mysticism of Rosicrucianism, the four creatures represent stages in human evolution: the eagle, winged, majestic and capable of flight, is the highest, transcending Man's earthbound limitation. It also represents the soul freed from the chains of body. An eagle certainly helped earthbound tortoises shake off dull Earth, and as a bonus liberated their souls from the shackles of bodily incarnation.... tortoises equate to the Bull - plodding, dull, and patiently enduring. Note Om's transition from the bull to the tortoise...

The Lion is best known as Christian icon in Narnia via CS Lewis' polemic. The lion encountered in the Omnian desert is very emphatically no Aslan!

'''''Corgi Paperback p.346'''''
Death by Tortoise actually happened to the Greek playwright [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeschylus Aeschylus] (b 355BC). In 456 or 455 BC he was visiting the city of Gela where he died. Valerius Maximus wrote that he was killed outside the city by a tortoise dropped by an eagle which had mistaken his head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell of the reptile. Pliny, in his Naturalis Historiæ, adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avoid a prophecy that he would be killed by a falling object.

'''''Corgi Paperback p.354'''''
{{death|i see a hundred thousand people}}. Death may be imperfectly quoting Bob Dylan. He gets the context of ''A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall'' perfectly correctly - Vorbis is reaping ''exactly'' what he sowed and experiencing a Hell of his own making - but he's out by a factor of ten.
''I heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin'...''
Vorbis cannot see he is far from alone. ''His'' experience is of a place where ''black is the color, where none is the number...''

[[Category:Annotations|Small Gods/Annotations]]

Book:Snuff/Annotations

2016-07-26T15:44:23Z

Cerddaf:

On the '''''Shires''''', the debatable border region between Ankh-Morpork and Quirm. Perhaps just the tiniest of shout-outs to JRR Tolkien, who devised The Shire as the home for an inoffensive people of small stature who lived in what amounted to holes in the ground? A minor plot-point, after all, is a ring first found on a severed finger. A similar artefact is something Fred Colon finds impossible to put down, which is so inexplicably, er, ''precious'' to him that he claims vehement ownership of it, and which totally alters his personality. The Lord of the Manor sets out on a quest to defeat evil that leads him into the dark places beneath the earth - except that he has a [[Summoning Dark|tame balrog]] on his side. The rest of the (human) peasantry exhibits all the parochial small-mindedness of the Hobbiton population, although the local pub ain't the Prancing Pony and Jiminy has little in common with Barliman Butterbur, save that both keep a stout club under the counter and disregard the licencing laws... and of course Sam Vimes, like Master Samwise before him, has to set about a Scouring of the Shires to eliminate the incurably evil, bring to brook the ringleaders, and discern between gloating colloborators who needed no encouragement as opposed to those who were scared into submission. No wizards or fireworks, though... and a Rider in Black (Willikins) claimed Statford in the end, on a lonely road miles from anywhere...

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 24:-'''''
''the hats look wrong on them.'' Lady Sybil is bang on the money about gamekeepers and bowler hats. They were originally devised by Edward Coke of Leicester as practical wear for his gamekeepers. See ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowler_hat|here]''. In confusing them with bailiffs, Vimes is perhaps thinking of the sort of hard men employed by Lord deWorde to remove his embarrassing son William, encountered in the climactic scene towards the end of {{TT}}, who are described as wearing bowlers and as the sort of hard men every Lord finds it useful to employ to smooth such distasteful moments. And a ''really'' big distasteful moment in which such men were used to do the dirty work (hinted at on p169) is of course at the heart of the crime Sam discovers.

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 32 and onwards:-'''''
Sybil introduces Vimes to a sadly widowed friend of hers, Lady Ariadne, who has six spinster daughters who live in full expectation of the acknowledged truth that a man, once in possession of an independent income and a country estate, will surely be looking for a wife. One of them is even ''called'' Jane, and she's the strange self-sufficient one who closely observes the world around her and wants to become a writer. Hmmm....
Supported by Sybil, Sam Vimes proceeds to deconstruct a certain Regency novel with extreme prejudice, whilst advising the girls to show a little pride in themselves. Among other things he imparts the truism that Jane is best-advised to base a novel on what she knows best...

''''' Around page 40 and onwards:-'''''
The spinning maidservants are another example of the most unlikely of Sir Terry's plot details being true in Roundworld. At Warwick Castle, in the main part of the castle, there is a set of rules for servants, including how to behave in the presence of their betters, which says turn and face the wall and try to look invisible. The reason given is so that your betters don't have to notice you, rather than to protect against randy aristocrats, but then they would say that wouldn't they ...

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 54:-'''''
The local pub, the [[Goblin's Head]] - oddly evocative of The Bull, the gossip and social exchange of the town of Ambridge, immortalised in long-running BBC radio rural soap opera, ''The Archers''. Its mine host, Sid Perks, also had a little experience of the police behind him - and his (deceased) first wife was called ''Polly''.... (Annotation for {{MR}} too?)

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 60 and onwards:-'''''
The game of [[crockett]], the game of games and king of games, played on village greens over several days and governed by the sort of arcane laws that made Sam Vimes' eyes glaze over while a keen player was earnestly explaining them to him... oh dear, such an easy one...

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 61:-'''''
''St Onan's Theological College''... in the Bible, Onan is struck dead by the merciful LORD for "spilling his seed on the ground", an action taken by generations of theological commentators to be masturbation. (although a sympathetic and open-minded reading of the source text suggests that the real offence is Onan's use of the withdrawal method as contraception, otherwise known as ''Vatican Roulette'' to the disrespectful.) However, the "sin of Onan" is forever associated with masturbation. Which leads to the interesting question of what sort of theology this college teaches, and how on the Discworld Onan got his sainthood. Jackson Fieldfair, a student who is now Bishop of Quirm, is said to have taken his mallet in both hands and given the ball a gentle tap... hold on, that's the origin of crockett... The location of this singular seminary is said to be Ham-on-Rye, presumably not to be confused with the village of [[Ham-on-Koom]] previously visited by Vimes and Lady Sybil, giving him a previous taster of country life.
Again, is Terry being mischievous and slipping in a dirty joke that will be appreciated by those who know and which will pass under the radar of those who don't?

''"Ham-on-Rye"'' - an inadvertent taunt to Sam's desperate craving for a proper bacon sandwich, which by express command of Lady Sybil is now denied to him?

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, pp 120-121:-'''''
A harkening back to {{T!}} and the [[Summoning Dark]]. Sam discovers his arm is itching, the arm marked by the quasi-demonic entity he fought and defeated with the aid of the [[Guarding Dark]]. As the goblin [[Stinky]] tries to articulate his people's need for ''just ice'', Vimes is given a vision of a dark cave and the desire for "terrible endless vengeance". He attributes this to Stinky having touched him on the scar left by the Summoning Dark, and really wishes he hadn't, as ''while all coppers must have a bit of villain in them, nobody wants to walk around with a bit of demon as a tattoo''.
Could it be that in defeating the Summoning Dark, it is now working for him?
Sam discovers later that he can see in the dark as well as any deep-down dwarf: a gift the Dark has left him with? He also acknowledges that having faced it down and defeated it, he meets the Summoning Dark in dreams and it treats him with respect.

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, p165:-'''''
''Vimes stared at the rolling acres stretching out far below: his fields, his trees, his fields of yellow corn...'' A shout-out to {{RM}}? Death realises that the harvest should hope for and expect the care of the Reaper Man and creates fields of waving corn in Death's Domain to remind him of this. Here Vimes the policeman is about to embark on a course of action that will, in the name of the dead, reap a harvest. Looking out over the rolling corn and realising it belongs to him, Vimes the landowner is beginning to grasp the realities of ownership and mastery. Ownership means a duty to that which is owned. He is, in short, having the same sort of epiphany as Death.

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, p174:-'''''

The case of the Marquis of Fantailler, who stabbed his wife to death and tried to evade justice by fleeing to Fourecks, and disguising himself by the simple expedient of not using his title. In investigating the case, [[Sam Vimes]] ran up against the entrenched hostility of Ankh-Morpork's nobility who closed ranks and refused to talk, over and above expressing their collective indignation that a member of the nobility was being hounded as if he were a common criminal. Damn the thief-taker Vimes for getting ideas above his station, can't a chap commit ''one'' murder in peace? Besides, it was his wife's fault for having the crass and inconvenient bad taste to let herself die after only one stab! Vimes recollects this investigation in {{SN}}, while pondering the tendency of the nobility to hide behind privilege, and close ranks to protect each other.

The murder committed by the Marquis and his flight into self-imposed exile is very reminiscent of the Roundworld case of Lord Lucan. This member of the nobility tried to stab his wife to death one dark night. Incredibly, he got the wrong woman, and murdered his children's nanny, then fled in panic. The resultant closed-rank silence of the British nobility in protecting one of their own was not edifying and said a lot about their sense of ingrained privilege and of being above the law. The police claimed to have tried their hardest to crack the case, but may have been deterred by a sense of social expectations - ie, you cannot haul in relatives of royalty and give them the same sort of robust questioning you wouldn't think twice about giving to an Irish bombing suspect or a West Indian or a striking miner. Comment was made about "It was only the nanny, for goodness sake!" and the British nobility made it clear (as a challenge to any authority that believed it could treat them like commoners) that they knew perfectly well where Lucan was, but were not going to tell. In 2011, it is believed a criminal who fled justice in 1974 and was covertly helped out by cash handouts from other nobles died in exile, possibly in Australia or New Zealand.

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 175 and onwards:-'''''

Vimes' visit to Miss Beedle. She lives in a scenario which is reminiscent of the Starkadders' smallholding at Cold Comfort Farm. (another literary shout-out to novels of rural England). The role of Elfine, the unworldly free spirit, is taken by the goblin girl, Tears of the Mushroom, and the unhinged Starkadder family, those archetypes of inbred rurality, would in this context be the habitues of Jiminy's public house, the Goblin's Head. Miss Felicity Beedle might well be Flora Poste, the displaced city intellectual who reads a lot, and who acts as a stone cast into the still and stagnant local pond, sending ripples everywhere.
The owl-shaped clock in Miss Beedle's cottage also appears on Miss Flitworth's parlour wall in {{RM}}, where it serves to seriously discomfort Death in his Bill Door mortal aspect. Here, it worries Sam Vimes. (another reference to the deeper themes of {{RM}}, also a novel set largely in the rural Shires?) It need not necessarily be the same one. A search on Google produces quite a few manufacturers of owl-shaped curio clocks, which are unaccountably popular. Google also throws up articles on the social, literary and folklorique connotations of the owl, as a symbol of death, passage into eternity, and a harbinger of change, suggesting the ghostly nocturnal aspect of this bird together with its haunting night cry might link it to the Banshee myth - ie, hearing it call in the night is a harbinger of death to somebody or something.

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 185 and onwards:-'''''
A.E. Pessimal (now a police inspector) is dispassionately analysing the practice of eating one's own children - an allegation often levelled at despised minority groups by people who have a vested interest in keeping them despised, powerless and friendless (see below) - and considering that in certain circumstances there may be justification to it. Pessimal is talking from actuarial, biological and pragmatic grounds rather than moral or ethical. Cheery Littlebottom is suitably appalled.
While there is historical and anthropological evidence that this has been the practice in certain human societies - usually for the reasons Pessimal summarises and invariably among marginal "primitive" groups living in inhospitable margins - this has always even in those tribal societies been an absolute desperation measure by those confronted with the "dreadful algebra". For instance, a cannibal clan was known to have persisted in the wilds of Scotland until wiped out by appalled neighbours in the late 1600's. A more sympathetic modern interpretation suggests that they were the last hold-out of the original stone-age Picts - a race who are speculated to be the origin of folk-myths about elves, gnomes and ''goblins'' in British folklore...
The clue to the referent here lies in Pessimal's specific reference to ''famine''. Pessimal is, with an absolutely straight face, expounding the arguments of Jonathan Swift, Dean of Dublin, who wrote a satirical pamphlet attacking the English attitude to destructive famine in Ireland. Swift's '''''A Modest Proposal''''' makes the eminent proposal that no welfare benefit should be forthcoming to succour the peasant Irish, who as everyone knows are feckess and idle and even if they were not, would have their self-reliance and willingness to perform honest work fatally weakened by hand-outs and charity. As long as they have resources to consume and goods to sell in an open market, they should exhaust all such resources before any sort of charity is permissible. And as Swift points out, an under-stated resource happens to be all those peasant Irish children these people persist in having by the wagonload. Irish babies should be seen as a cost-effective, economical and easily replaced source of nutrition and calories for their parents, who are otherwise too fond of holding up shrivelled and decayed potatoes, yelling "famine!", and expecting to sit back and receive hand-outs from the foolishly over-generous English. Indeed, the choicer cuts of their children could also be exported to England to grace the tables of genteel English homes, the price for which would defray the expenses to absentee landlords in housing and sheltering these people. Why should the Irish have the best, even of their own children?

Swift was dismayed and made even more cynical that what he had intended as bitter, mordant, satire on the way England had bled his country dry, still expected more, and saw its people as feckless savages who only needed the slightest incentive to start eating their own young, was taken as face value in England and so many people were saying to him "dam' good idea, Swift! We're too dam' soft on those people as it is!"

'''''A Modest Proposal''''' is also a broader satire on the way the rich think about the poor. How many conservative politicians have you heard lately saying "welfare dependency" sucks the will of the poor to work hard or indeed work at all? These attitudes have been around a ''long'' time and have ''always'' been used to demonise a chosen target group....

This was suggested by the current Pratchett novel, ''The Long Earth''. In which reference is made to a book by Roundworld riverboat pilot and writer Mark Twain (Samuel Clement) called ''Life on the Missisippi''. An episode of which involves a fight between two riverboat pilots, which has to be frequently stopped so that the pilot whose boat it is can adjust speed and station on a rough unforgiving river...

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 246:-'''''
"According to the Omnians it was the third crime ever committed!" Vimes is referring to murder. The footnote says the first two crimes in human history were theft and common indecency.
The reference is to Genesis, the first book of the Bible: the theft is of God's property, to whit one apple. When Adam and Eve subsequently looked upon each other and were ashamed at their nakedness - that's the "common indecency". And after an interval of time, their two sons had a falling-out and Cain slew Abel. This is of course the murder.

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 304:-'''''
Vimes notes the presence of Quirmian gendarmes, in their distinctive helmets, the ones he thinks are too fussy and militaristic and impractical for proper coppers. He could be referring to the Adrian helmet of WW1 and the early years of WW2, also worn by French policemen and firemen of the era: see ''[http://www.militarytrader.com/military-trader-news/the_first_modern_steel_combat_helmet_the_french_adrian here].''

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 306:-'''''
''Our relationship with Commondant Fournier is cordial at the moment, is it not?'' - Vimes is alluding to an ''entente cordiale'' between Quirm and Ankh-Morpork....

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 351:-'''''
Vimes comments on how good the cells and locks are in Quirm and how it is unlikely anyone put into a Quirmian cell, under continual guard, encased in thick stone walls and with the best locks on the best doors, could ever escape. Hmmm. Could we call this a ''Bastille''?

Towards the end of the book, Sam takes Young Sam to the Quirm zoo, where his incessant plea to "see the elephant" is finally answered. A continuity shout-out to the end of {{WA}}, where the Lancre witches return home the long way round, "seeing the Elephant" and inadvertently precipitating the events of {{LL}}; or to Sam and Sybil deliberately taking the long way home at the end of {{T5E}}, also explicitly described as "seeing the Elephant"?

It's interesting that the people responsible for the card-based RPG, '''''Magic: The Gathering''''' have recently released a new card: ''Tivadar's Crusade'', which launches a human pogrom against goblins...

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page unknown(someone please provide):-'''''
Various references to Sybil's ancester [[Woolsthorpe Ramkin]] echo Sir Isaac Newton, who was living at his ancestral home, Woolsthorpe Manor, when a falling apple led him to the theory of gravity. In Woolsthorpe Ramkin's case this get slightly confused with Sir Isaac's law of motion "to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction".

The goblin district of the city, nearby to Harry King's premises in [[New Ankh]], is a ramshackle shanty town where goblin homes are built, often ingeniously well, out of materials vrecycled from the waste being processed by Harry. This is largely because goblins are informally not tolerated within the city walls and informal sanctions have been known to apply to those incautious enough to try to live there. Hmm. Is this an unsubtle reference to apartheid in the old South Africa, and the fact that the black labour necessary to do the dirty jobs the whites didn't want (who could not live ''inside'' the city limits of Johannesburg because of apartheid law) had to dwell somewhere. Therefore townships like Soweto grew up, tacitly accepted but without official sanction and which could be demolished if the white authorities deemed this necessary for public order. terry has created Ankh-Morpork's Soweto here...

[[Category:Annotations|Snuff/Annotations]]

Trousers of Time

2016-01-14T15:09:39Z

Cerddaf:

Why did we talk about the the '''Trousers of Time''' when [[Time|she]] never wore them? [[Lobsang Ludd|He]] probably does, but it has nothing to do with his suit bottoms either. No one wears them; they're empty. It's an image of a shape with one entrance and two exits. One may imagine falling continually into the waistband, not knowing from which leg one may emerge. So does history occur: in myriad, often unconsidered, minor decisions.

The [[History Monks]] keep the Trousers pressed and mended. Occasionally they change the style to keep up with what the times should be; now and then one leg may be let out to extra-baggy or reduced to a stocking. Random chance is often good enough, but when it fails to provide the correct outcome [[Lu-Tze]] and the Monks of [[Oi Dong]] are there to help.

The phrase "Trousers of Time" probably comes from the 1960's BBC radio comedy series "I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again" whose stars went on to be "Monty Python" and "The Goodies". One series included a Dr Who parody - "Professor Prune and The Electric Time Trousers" (said in a spooky voice with echo effects). The cast travelled the universe in the Time Trousers encountering dreadful jokes: "There's a library at the end of the left trouserleg", "Aha! A turnup for the book."

[[Category:Discworld concepts]]
[[de:Hosenbeine der Zeit]]

Havelock Vetinari

2015-10-08T15:48:37Z

Cerddaf: /* Character Annotations */ Domitian and mimes

{{Character Data
|title= Vetinari
|photo= awakening.jpg|Havelock Vetinari as drawn by [http://www.nocturnalsoldier.org/Tealin/xhp/disc/index.html Tealin]
|name= Havelock Vetinari
|age= about 50
|race= [[Humans|Human]] (as far as anyone can tell)
|occupation= [[Patrician]], ex-[[Assassins' Guild|Assassin]]
|appearance= Tall, fragile, in control. Has a goatee. His eyes are a penetrating ice-blue in colour. Walks with a cane after the events of {{MAA}}
|residence= [[Patrician's Palace]], [[Ankh-Morpork]]
|death=
|parents= Father dead, didn't take things seriously enough.
|relatives= Aunt [[Lady Roberta Meserole]]
|children=
|marital status= never married, linked to [[Margolotta|Lady Margolotta]].
|books= {{S}} {{G!G!}} {{MP}} {{MAA}} {{IT}} {{FOC}} {{T5E}} {{TT}} {{GP}} {{T!}} {{MM}} {{UA}}, |
|cameos= {{TCOM}} {{SM}} {{TLH}} {{NW}} {{M}} (mentioned) {{WS}} (mentioned) ''[[Discworld Noir]]'' (his voice is heard)
}}
[[Image:Vet02.png|left|150px]]
Family Motto: ''SI NON CONFECTVS, NON REFICIAT.''

''If it ain't broke, don't fix it''

'''Havelock Vetinari''' is the current [[Patrician]] of [[Ankh-Morpork]]. He has been the supreme ruler for some years and is the successor of [[Mad Lord Snapcase]]. The Assassins' Guild have an AM$ 1,000,000 fee for his inhumation, though rumour says that they are not accepting contracts on him at present. As a former [[Assassins' Guild|Assassin]] himself, he is probably just too difficult to kill. However, his greatest defence against would-be plotters is that he carefully sees to it that a reality with him as Patrician is slightly better than one without him.

It was his discovery that people only really want stability and that tomorrow should pretty much resemble today, and this has been his greatest contribution to Ankh-Morpork. Impressively, he manages to keep this up even while he drags Ankh-Morpork, sometimes kicking and screaming, into the future. It is said that Vetinari can accomplish more with irony than most others can with steel. He can also accomplish more with one raised eyebrow than most people can with two of them and a lifetime of practice.

He seems to have no vices whatsoever, since some guild or other would otherwise undoubtedly have made use of them by now. Admittedly, Vetinari did ban street theatre and tends to hang mime artists upside down in a scorpion pit opposite a sign reading "Learn The Words," but this is generally taken by the population as simply an amusing character trait. Anyway, in Ankh-Morpork people think that strolling players are no better than criminals, and mimes are just plain freaky.

It has also recently emerged that Vetinari also has firmly-held Views about [[Daniellarina Pouter|modern art]] which are not far removed from those he holds concerning mime artists. While a fan of music in general, Lord Vetinari believes that actual live performance of [[Opera]] proves less enjoyable than simply reading the notes on the page.

Lord Vetinari enjoys a variety of games and puzzles (both metaphoric and literal); he faithfully completes the daily crossword in the ''[[Ankh-Morpork Times]]'' and is a master at [[Stealth Chess]]. He is also an expert [[Thud]] player, adept at either the Trolls or Dwarfs side of the board. For years, he has carried on a long-distance game with [[Lady Margolotta]] of Überwald, communicating moves via clacks. While initially opposed to the street game [[foot-the-ball]], the Patrician recently endorsed the version of the game played at Unseen University.

Several of his abilities (an absolutely photographic memory, the ability to solve puzzles almost instantly and an apparent inability to get drunk) suggest he may not be entirely human.

Though he apparently lacks any magical or technological understanding whatsoever, matters of that nature have never presented much of an obstacle to Vetinari, mostly because from his perspective such things ultimately manifest, both in initial cause and final effect, in the behaviour of people, which he understands exceedingly well.

Following the events of [[The Truth]], he employs [[Charlie (The Truth)|Charlie]] as his double, standing in for him on occasion. One such occasion was during [[Book:Raising Steam|Raising Steam]], while Vetinari adopted the guise of [[Stoker Blake]].

In the Sky One adaptation of The Colour of Magic he is played by Jeremy Irons. In the Sky One adaptation of Going Postal he is played by Charles Dance.

== Politics ==
Lord Vetinari has a vast spy network, and he himself is the head of intelligence, the only man who knows all of the information so far collected. We learn in {{G!G!}} that some of his spies are particularly intelligent [[Rats|rats]] who evolved under the magic-contaminated grounds of [[Unseen University]]. Also, in {{COM}}, it is suggested that he uses rats as messengers as well. It also appears that he as infiltrated the intelligence networks of the rival guilds and organisations in the city, taking choice morsels of intelligence. In {{S}} he was reading a report of what the chief thief said to his deputy in their secret meeting room. The patrician is adept at using the [[Clacks]] system to deliver misinformation. He has had [[Leonard of Quirm]] create highly difficult codes that can be broken by his most intelligent rivals, thus ensuring they know what he is thinking. Or rather they know what he wants them to believe he is thinking...

Vetinari is very good at listening, and has a way of making people uncomfortable so that they talk more and more in trying to dilute the atmosphere. Lord Vetinari is also very manipulative. His more obvious moves include the innovation of allowing crime syndicates to become legalized guilds much as guilds of people of other trades. This means that a certain amount of crime is legal, and it is the responsibility of the [[Thieves' Guild]] to punish unlicensed stealing, [[Assassins' Guild]] to punish uncontracted killing, etc., arguably doing a better job than the Guard, (when the Thieves' Guild went on strike, crime actually increased.) In politics Lord Vetinari strongly believes in the "''one man – one vote''," system, where he-alone is the man, and he alone has the vote. It seems to follow that the Patrician does not belong to any political party.

His less obvious moves include minimizing the Night Watch division of the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]]; populating it with riffraff and ethnic minorities and demoralizing its leader [[Samuel Vimes]] (then Captain), with the intent of winding him up so that he might unwind all at once, overstep his diminutive jurisdiction, and sort things out ({{MAA}}). Lord Vetinari hires many [[clerks]], some trained Assassins, some young diplomats who are not from the noble families, and some spies assigned to diplomatic offices.

The [[Patrician's Palace]] is in charge of the registration of the [[Guilds of Ankh-Morpork|Guilds]], diplomacy with foreign countries, the wages of City employees such as the Watchmen, and so on. Lord Vetinari also likes to give important jobs to unwilling young men whom he considers capable; his victims so far include [[William de Worde]] of the [[Ankh-Morpork Times]], and [[Moist von Lipwig]] of the [[Post Office]] and the [[Ankh-Morpork_Mint|Royal Mint]].

Unlike previous Patricians, Vetinari truly works to make the city work, not for personal gain or vanity. He has carried out many devious schemes for the good of the city, and eliminates persons or situations that threaten the city. In a very complex manoeuvre, he set up the Ankh-Morpork [[Post Office]] against the [[clacks]] company [[Grand Trunk]] to get the company out of the hands of embezzlers destroying the company for profit. After the clacks system gets back on its feet, Lord Vetinari can again let foreign diplomats send a clacks home about ''what he wants them to think''; characteristically he specifies that his codes be 'fiendishly difficult' but not unbreakable as he wants people to read them so that he knows what they think he thinks they're thinking.

Lord Vetinari's head clerk, for several years now, is a slight, quiet young man named [[Drumknott]]. Both Drumknott and the other members of the Palace staff have been instructed to accept bribes proffered for access to the Patrician.

His success has led many to attempt to emulate him – or, in some [[Cosmo Lavish|extreme cases]], to become him. There is apparently an entire wing of Ankh-Morpork's mental hospital devoted to people convinced that they are Vetinari. They often engage in eyebrow-raising competitions.

After the Unseen University banquet in [[Unseen Academicals]] he confesses to Drumknott that he is 'drunk as a skunk'; however, the only apparent manifestation of this is that he becomes extremely talkative, stubs his toe on a step in the palace, and takes an extra fifty seconds to solve the Times crossword.

==Early Years==
Havelock was born into the extremely wealthy and influential Vetinari family, and it seems that he was raised during the early part of his life by his aunt, [[Lady Roberta Meserole]].

In his youth, he attended the [[Assassins' Guild]], where he studied languages (the guild being the most proper place for wealthy families to send their children for education regardless of their specific vocation). It seems that Vetinari was particularly interested in classical arts of camouflage, defying the guild's policy of all-black dress in favour of dark grey and dark green. He was failed in his stealth course on account of his teacher never seeing him in classes. This, replied Vetinari in his own defense, was to his mind the ''entire point'' of the subject.

Vetinari gained a number of qualifications at the guild, listed in the {{AGD}} as: Doctor of Medicine & Applied Pathology, Doctor of Music, Doctor of God Studies, Master Assassin, Master of Political Expediency, Master of Alchemical Science, Member of the Institute of Dance & Deportment, Bachelor of the Science of Inhumation & Diploma in Physical Education. He has also gone on to become the guilds Provost.

He studied at the guild at the same time as the current Master of Assassins, [[Lord Downey]], who gave him the less-than-affectionate nickname 'Dog-botherer'. Given the positions they respectively hold thirty years later, it is possible that Downey now regrets the little misunderstandings of their youth, especially the nickname. It is obvious that Downey's attitude to Vetinari is now one of obsequious but wary respect. He did however graduate with full honors in [[1968 UC|1968]].

At some point during his early life he journeyed to [[Überwald]], as part of the [[Grand Sneer]] (where young members of high-born and wealthy families journey to backwards countries to see how inferior they are.) During this period Vetinari seems to have had some sort of a relationship with an Überwaldean noblewoman, the [[vampires|vampire]] [[Lady Margolotta]]. Contrary to the way things might have been expected to go, given their respective ages, it is implied that he taught her at least a good deal of what she knows about manipulation.

It is also very possible that when the Patricianship changed hands, and Snapcase demanded files be created on ''"up and coming young men in the Guild of Assassins"'', that would have been a ''very'' good time for Vetinari to embark on the leisurely coming-of-age Grand Sneer; customary to young men of his social class. If the new Patrician was seeking to establish a shortlist of candidates to ascertain the identity of the Assassin who inhumed his predecessor, it is highly likely that Vetinari would have been offered the same sort of grateful advancement as was offered to John Keel - making this an ideal time to leave the city for a few years and exploit his aunt's Disc-wide social and business connections.

How Vetinari himself ascended to the Patricianship is a story yet untold. It is known that his advice was heeded by Snapcase's administration on at least one occasion: when a 20p bounty on rat tails was introduced to combat a serious rodent infestation, but threatened to drain the treasury dry without curtailing the rats' numbers. Vetinari's suggestion to "tax the rat farms" provided an early demonstration of his shrewd political insight.

Another clue to the secret past of the Patrician is that once a year he, like several others, wears a sprig of lilac in remembrance of an important [[Glorious Revolution|event]] in recent history. This is because the Patrician fought in the event on the side of the Watchmen, though at a point of time when old Vimes was not present and the young one was unconscious. As well, Vetinari himself inhumed Lord Winder, by the method of sheer terror. In the latter case, he showed a remarkable degree of foresight and high ambition: Asked by the then-Patrician Winder: "Who are yer?", he answers: "Think of me as ... your future".

It has been said that the only living thing Lord Vetinari truly cared for was his dog, an extremely elderly wire-haired terrier named [[Wuffles]]. After Wuffles' death, he religiously visits the grave weekly to leave a favourite dog biscuit. The end of {{MM}} seems to indicate that he has adopted the chairman of the Royal Bank, [[Mr. Fusspot]], to fill the void left by Wuffles.

In the difficult time of the [[Sourcerer]], which is very carefully not remembered by people who were visiting their ailing aunt in [[Quirm]] at the time, Vetinari was transformed into a yellow-green lizard. Both lizard and Wuffles were taken in for safekeeping by the [[Librarian]], until things could return to normal again. During this time, the lizard was kept in a glass jar. (This left him with an uncomfortable feeling near glass for some time) Fortunately for the senior wizards, Vetinari suffered an uncharacteristic and extremely annoying memory loss on his return to human form, and was left with a distressingly uncontrollable (but short-lived) tendency to try to catch flies with his tongue...

==Character Annotations==
The name "'''Vetinari'''" is a pun on the infamous [[Wikipedia:Medici|De' Medici]] family of Florence who ruled the city and surroundings during the Renaissance.

His dislike of mime artists may be based on the Roman Emperor [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domitian#Religious_policy Domitian] who forbade mimes from appearing on stage in public. (Apparently appearing on stage in private was permitted between consenting adults.)

There is a famous Middle English chivalric romance called "Havelock the Dane."

There are several streets on [[Roundworld]] named 'Havelock' including a Havelock Place in Melbourne. It should be noted that many of these appear to be named after the British General Henry Havelock, who fought in the Indian Mutiny, and after whom the piece of cloth that hangs from the back of a kepi to keep the sun off the neck was named. (In the very best traditions of [[Blouse|military officers having items of clothing named after them]], and despite the fact the Japanese, who at the time didn't count, had independently invented such a useful item six hundred or so years beforehand).

Another famous Havelock was Victorian sexologist [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havelock_Ellis Havelock Ellis], whose career took a very decidedly non-Victorian route, when he compiled what for many years were held to be the first definitive scholarly works on deviant sexuality. As the Victorians seemed to believe virtually every form of sexual expression was deviant, Ellis had no shortage of raw material to include, and gleefully set about shocking his society with a catalogue of work that comprehensively covered just about everything imaginable and quite a few things that are not, perhaps, so easily encompassed by the normal mind. Oddly enough the writings are not at all sexually stimulating or prurient: this Havelock dissects his subject with the same sort of matter-of-fact forensic care and attention to detail that Havelock Vetinari might put to running a city. The underlying reasoning is one that Havelock Vetinari might recognise and nod approval to- there is a suspicion that Ellis is trying to wake people up and bring them to a new level of understanding about how things can be better organised and understood, even if this means having to think the hitherto unthinkable, and contemplate things previously thought beyond the civilised pale.

The name "Havelock" is often said to be of Old Norse/Norwegian origin meaning "sea war"/"sea-contest"/"sea sport" and the likes. According to [http://www.babynamespedia.com/meaning/Havelock this site], however, it's said to be of Germanic origin, primarily used in the Welsh language, meaning "elf warrior" or "olive tree".

Interestingly, this quote echoes Vetinari's philosophy and his stated reason why he has remained Patrician for so long:

''In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life...''

Controversy dogs its provenance. It is sometimes attributed to historian Edmund Gibbon, writing on the final collapse of the Greek city states, first to Persia, then to Macedonia and Rome. But research suggests this is more recent: Margaret Thatcher speaking on the evils of socialism in 1994. A version may have originated with Gibbon; Thatcher's paraphrase is in the context of a diatribe on the perceived evils of state intervention and socialist patriarchy. And Gibbon certainly never said that!

==Also See==
* [[wikipedia:Havelock Vetinari|Havelock Vetinari's Entry]] on [[wikipedia:Wikipedia|Wikipedia]]

[[Category:Discworld characters|Vetinari, Havelock]]
[[Category:Serial characters|Vetinari, Havelock]]
[[Category:Supporting characters|Vetinari, Havelock]]
[[Category:Human characters|Vetinari, Havelock]]
[[de:Havelock Vetinari]]

Book:Snuff/Annotations

2015-09-27T20:42:30Z

Cerddaf: Add Woolsthorpe

On the '''''Shires''''', the debatable border region between Ankh-Morpork and Quirm. Perhaps just the tiniest of shout-outs to JRR Tolkien, who devised The Shire as the home for an inoffensive people of small stature who lived in what amounted to holes in the ground? A minor plot-point, after all, is a ring first found on a severed finger. A similar artefact is something Fred Colon finds impossible to put down, which is so inexplicably, er, ''precious'' to him that he claims vehement ownership of it, and which totally alters his personality. The Lord of the Manor sets out on a quest to defeat evil that leads him into the dark places beneath the earth - except that he has a [[Summoning Dark|tame balrog]] on his side. The rest of the (human) peasantry exhibits all the parochial small-mindedness of the Hobbiton population, although the local pub ain't the Prancing Pony and Jiminy has little in common with Barliman Butterbur, save that both keep a stout club under the counter and disregard the licencing laws... and of course Sam Vimes, like Master Samwise before him, has to set about a Scouring of the Shires to eliminate the incurably evil, bring to brook the ringleaders, and discern between gloating colloborators who needed no encouragement as opposed to those who were scared into submission. No wizards or fireworks, though... and a Rider in Black (Willikins) claimed Statford in the end, on a lonely road miles from anywhere...

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 24:-'''''
''the hats look wrong on them.'' Lady Sybil is bang on the money about gamekeepers and bowler hats. They were originally devised by Edward Coke of Leicester as practical wear for his gamekeepers. See ''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowler_hat|here]''. In confusing them with bailiffs, Vimes is perhaps thinking of the sort of hard men employed by Lord deWorde to remove his embarrassing son William, encountered in the climactic scene towards the end of {{TT}}, who are described as wearing bowlers and as the sort of hard men every Lord finds it useful to employ to smooth such distasteful moments. And a ''really'' big distasteful moment in which such men were used to do the dirty work (hinted at on p169) is of course at the heart of the crime Sam discovers.

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 32 and onwards:-'''''
Sybil introduces Vimes to a sadly widowed friend of hers, Lady Ariadne, who has six spinster daughters who live in full expectation of the acknowledged truth that a man, once in possession of an independent income and a country estate, will surely be looking for a wife. One of them is even ''called'' Jane, and she's the strange self-sufficient one who closely observes the world around her and wants to become a writer. Hmmm....
Supported by Sybil, Sam Vimes proceeds to deconstruct a certain Regency novel with extreme prejudice, whilst advising the girls to show a little pride in themselves. Among other things he imparts the truism that Jane is best-advised to base a novel on what she knows best...

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 54:-'''''
The local pub, the [[Goblin's Head]] - oddly evocative of The Bull, the gossip and social exchange of the town of Ambridge, immortalised in long-running BBC radio rural soap opera, ''The Archers''. Its mine host, Sid Perks, also had a little experience of the police behind him - and his (deceased) first wife was called ''Polly''.... (Annotation for {{MR}} too?)

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 60 and onwards:-'''''
The game of [[crockett]], the game of games and king of games, played on village greens over several days and governed by the sort of arcane laws that made Sam Vimes' eyes glaze over while a keen player was earnestly explaining them to him... oh dear, such an easy one...

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 61:-'''''
''St Onan's Theological College''... in the Bible, Onan is struck dead by the merciful LORD for "spilling his seed on the ground", an action taken by generations of theological commentators to be masturbation. (although a sympathetic and open-minded reading of the source text suggests that the real offence is Onan's use of the withdrawal method as contraception, otherwise known as ''Vatican Roulette'' to the disrespectful.) However, the "sin of Onan" is forever associated with masturbation. Which leads to the interesting question of what sort of theology this college teaches, and how on the Discworld Onan got his sainthood. Jackson Fieldfair, a student who is now Bishop of Quirm, is said to have taken his mallet in both hands and given the ball a gentle tap... hold on, that's the origin of crockett... The location of this singular seminary is said to be Ham-on-Rye, presumably not to be confused with the village of [[Ham-on-Koom]] previously visited by Vimes and Lady Sybil, giving him a previous taster of country life.
Again, is Terry being mischievous and slipping in a dirty joke that will be appreciated by those who know and which will pass under the radar of those who don't?

''"Ham-on-Rye"'' - an inadvertent taunt to Sam's desperate craving for a proper bacon sandwich, which by express command of Lady Sybil is now denied to him?

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, pp 120-121:-'''''
A harkening back to {{T!}} and the [[Summoning Dark]]. Sam discovers his arm is itching, the arm marked by the quasi-demonic entity he fought and defeated with the aid of the [[Guarding Dark]]. As the goblin [[Stinky]] tries to articulate his people's need for ''just ice'', Vimes is given a vision of a dark cave and the desire for "terrible endless vengeance". He attributes this to Stinky having touched him on the scar left by the Summoning Dark, and really wishes he hadn't, as ''while all coppers must have a bit of villain in them, nobody wants to walk around with a bit of demon as a tattoo''.
Could it be that in defeating the Summoning Dark, it is now working for him?
Sam discovers later that he can see in the dark as well as any deep-down dwarf: a gift the Dark has left him with? He also acknowledges that having faced it down and defeated it, he meets the Summoning Dark in dreams and it treats him with respect.

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, p165:-'''''
''Vimes stared at the rolling acres stretching out far below: his fields, his trees, his fields of yellow corn...'' A shout-out to {{RM}}? Death realises that the harvest should hope for and expect the care of the Reaper Man and creates fields of waving corn in Death's Domain to remind him of this. Here Vimes the policeman is about to embark on a course of action that will, in the name of the dead, reap a harvest. Looking out over the rolling corn and realising it belongs to him, Vimes the landowner is beginning to grasp the realities of ownership and mastery. Ownership means a duty to that which is owned. He is, in short, having the same sort of epiphany as Death.

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, p174:-'''''

The case of the Marquis of Fantailler, who stabbed his wife to death and tried to evade justice by fleeing to Fourecks, and disguising himself by the simple expedient of not using his title. In investigating the case, [[Sam Vimes]] ran up against the entrenched hostility of Ankh-Morpork's nobility who closed ranks and refused to talk, over and above expressing their collective indignation that a member of the nobility was being hounded as if he were a common criminal. Damn the thief-taker Vimes for getting ideas above his station, can't a chap commit ''one'' murder in peace? Besides, it was his wife's fault for having the crass and inconvenient bad taste to let herself die after only one stab! Vimes recollects this investigation in {{SN}}, while pondering the tendency of the nobility to hide behind privilege, and close ranks to protect each other.

The murder committed by the Marquis and his flight into self-imposed exile is very reminiscent of the Roundworld case of Lord Lucan. This member of the nobility tried to stab his wife to death one dark night. Incredibly, he got the wrong woman, and murdered his children's nanny, then fled in panic. The resultant closed-rank silence of the British nobility in protecting one of their own was not edifying and said a lot about their sense of ingrained privilege and of being above the law. The police claimed to have tried their hardest to crack the case, but may have been deterred by a sense of social expectations - ie, you cannot haul in relatives of royalty and give them the same sort of robust questioning you wouldn't think twice about giving to an Irish bombing suspect or a West Indian or a striking miner. Comment was made about "It was only the nanny, for goodness sake!" and the British nobility made it clear (as a challenge to any authority that believed it could treat them like commoners) that they knew perfectly well where Lucan was, but were not going to tell. In 2011, it is believed a criminal who fled justice in 1974 and was covertly helped out by cash handouts from other nobles died in exile, possibly in Australia or New Zealand.

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 175 and onwards:-'''''

Vimes' visit to Miss Beedle. She lives in a scenario which is reminiscent of the Starkadders' smallholding at Cold Comfort Farm. (another literary shout-out to novels of rural England). The role of Elfine, the unworldly free spirit, is taken by the goblin girl, Tears of the Mushroom, and the unhinged Starkadder family, those archetypes of inbred rurality, would in this context be the habitues of Jiminy's public house, the Goblin's Head. Miss Felicity Beedle might well be Flora Poste, the displaced city intellectual who reads a lot, and who acts as a stone cast into the still and stagnant local pond, sending ripples everywhere.
The owl-shaped clock in Miss Beedle's cottage also appears on Miss Flitworth's parlour wall in {{RM}}, where it serves to seriously discomfort Death in his Bill Door mortal aspect. Here, it worries Sam Vimes. (another reference to the deeper themes of {{RM}}, also a novel set largely in the rural Shires?) It need not necessarily be the same one. A search on Google produces quite a few manufacturers of owl-shaped curio clocks, which are unaccountably popular. Google also throws up articles on the social, literary and folklorique connotations of the owl, as a symbol of death, passage into eternity, and a harbinger of change, suggesting the ghostly nocturnal aspect of this bird together with its haunting night cry might link it to the Banshee myth - ie, hearing it call in the night is a harbinger of death to somebody or something.

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 185 and onwards:-'''''
A.E. Pessimal (now a police inspector) is dispassionately analysing the practice of eating one's own children - an allegation often levelled at despised minority groups by people who have a vested interest in keeping them despised, powerless and friendless (see below) - and considering that in certain circumstances there may be justification to it. Pessimal is talking from actuarial, biological and pragmatic grounds rather than moral or ethical. Cheery Littlebottom is suitably appalled.
While there is historical and anthropological evidence that this has been the practice in certain human societies - usually for the reasons Pessimal summarises and invariably among marginal "primitive" groups living in inhospitable margins - this has always even in those tribal societies been an absolute desperation measure by those confronted with the "dreadful algebra". For instance, a cannibal clan was known to have persisted in the wilds of Scotland until wiped out by appalled neighbours in the late 1600's. A more sympathetic modern interpretation suggests that they were the last hold-out of the original stone-age Picts - a race who are speculated to be the origin of folk-myths about elves, gnomes and ''goblins'' in British folklore...
The clue to the referent here lies in Pessimal's specific reference to ''famine''. Pessimal is, with an absolutely straight face, expounding the arguments of Jonathan Swift, Dean of Dublin, who wrote a satirical pamphlet attacking the English attitude to destructive famine in Ireland. Swift's '''''A Modest Proposal''''' makes the eminent proposal that no welfare benefit should be forthcoming to succour the peasant Irish, who as everyone knows are feckess and idle and even if they were not, would have their self-reliance and willingness to perform honest work fatally weakened by hand-outs and charity. As long as they have resources to consume and goods to sell in an open market, they should exhaust all such resources before any sort of charity is permissible. And as Swift points out, an under-stated resource happens to be all those peasant Irish children these people persist in having by the wagonload. Irish babies should be seen as a cost-effective, economical and easily replaced source of nutrition and calories for their parents, who are otherwise too fond of holding up shrivelled and decayed potatoes, yelling "famine!", and expecting to sit back and receive hand-outs from the foolishly over-generous English. Indeed, the choicer cuts of their children could also be exported to England to grace the tables of genteel English homes, the price for which would defray the expenses to absentee landlords in housing and sheltering these people. Why should the Irish have the best, even of their own children?

Swift was dismayed and made even more cynical that what he had intended as bitter, mordant, satire on the way England had bled his country dry, still expected more, and saw its people as feckless savages who only needed the slightest incentive to start eating their own young, was taken as face value in England and so many people were saying to him "dam' good idea, Swift! We're too dam' soft on those people as it is!"

'''''A Modest Proposal''''' is also a broader satire on the way the rich think about the poor. How many conservative politicians have you heard lately saying "welfare dependency" sucks the will of the poor to work hard or indeed work at all? These attitudes have been around a ''long'' time and have ''always'' been used to demonise a chosen target group....

This was suggested by the current Pratchett novel, ''The Long Earth''. In which reference is made to a book by Roundworld riverboat pilot and writer Mark Twian (Samuel Clement) called ''Life on the Missisippi''. An episode of which involves a fight between two riverboat pilots, which has to be frequently stopped so that the pilot whose boat it is can adjust speed and station on a rough unforgiving river...

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 246:-'''''
"According to the Omnians it was the third crime ever committed!" Vimes is referring to murder. The footnote says the first two crimes in human history were theft and common indecency.
The reference is to Genesis, the first book of the Bible: the theft is of God's property, to whit one apple. When Adam and Eve subsequently looked upon each other and were ashamed at their nakedness - that's the "common indecency". And after an interval of time, their two sons had a falling-out and Cain slew Abel. This is of course the murder.

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 304:-'''''
Vimes notes the presence of Quirmian gendarmes, in their distinctive helmets, the ones he thinks are too fussy and militaristic and impractical for proper coppers. He could be referring to the Adrian helmet of WW1 and the early years of WW2, also worn by French policemen and firemen of the era: see ''[http://www.militarytrader.com/military-trader-news/the_first_modern_steel_combat_helmet_the_french_adrian here].''

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 306:-'''''
''Our relationship with Commondant Fournier is cordial at the moment, is it not?'' - Vimes is alluding to an ''entente cordiale'' between Quirm and Ankh-Morpork....

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page 351:-'''''
Vimes comments on how good the cells and locks are in Quirm and how it is unlikely anyone put into a Quirmian cell, under continual guard, encased in thick stone walls and with the best locks on the best doors, could ever escape. Hmmm. Could we call this a ''Bastille''?

Towards the end of the book, Sam takes Young Sam to the Quirm zoo, where his incessant plea to "see the elephant" is finally answered. A continuity shout-out to the end of {{WA}}, where the Lancre witches return home the long way round, "seeing the Elephant" and inadvertently precipitating the events of {{LL}}; or to Sam and Sybil deliberately taking the long way home at the end of {{T5E}}, also explicitly described as "seeing the Elephant"?

It's interesting that the people responsible for the card-based RPG, '''''Magic: The Gathering''''' have recently released a new card: ''Tivadar's Crusade'', which launches a human pogrom against goblins...

'''''Doubleday/Waterstones Edition, page unknown(someone please provide):-'''''
Various references to Sybil's ancester [[Woolsthorpe Ramkin]] echo Sir Isaac Newton, who was living at his ancestral home, Woolsthorpe Manor, when a falling apple led him to the theory of gravity. In Woolsthorpe Ramkin's case this get slightly confused with Sir Isaac's law of motion "to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction".

[[Category:Annotations|Snuff/Annotations]]

Ramkin

2015-09-24T11:25:28Z

Cerddaf: /* Known Members */ Add link to Woolsthorpe Ramkin page

Motto: '''QUIS HABEMUS SERVAMUS''' - ''What We Have, We Keep''1

The most famous and the only surviving member of the '''Ramkin''' family, Lady [[Sybil Ramkin|Sybil Vimes]] (née Ramkin), the Duchess of Ankh, is the wife of [[Samuel Vimes]], Commander of the [[Ankh-Morpork City Watch]] and His Grace the Duke of Ankh.

The Ramkin family's money comes from owning extensive properties in [[Ankh-Morpork]] and the surrounding area, renting out even to the [[Assassins' Guild]]. The more traditional Ramkins were arrogant and patriotic like the other noble families on the [[Sto Plains]]. The Ramkins prided themselves in their men never having died in their own beds, and their women always rolling the bandages waiting for war casualties. The Ramkins were perhaps a little more sensible and/or forthright than the other nobles. One ancestral Ramkin, Sybil's father, in fact, saved the estate from disastrous modifications; he achieved this by shooting [[Bergholt Stuttley Johnson|"Bloody Stupid" Johnson]] in the leg when he approached the house.

Sybil's grandfather, Sir Joshua Ramkin, is known to have been a more competent and able military leader who raised Ramkin family regiments. At a time when no wars were going on in the central continent and there was apparently a distressing lack of sworn enemies to fight, Sir Joshua led a military expedition to [[Howondaland]] for reasons which, as yet, are unspecified. By the time he left Howondaland, there had by all accounts been a large and unseemly amount of swearing and several sworn enemies had been newly created. The battle of [[35th Llamedosian Foot|Lawkes Drain]] may have been fought in Howondaland under his generalship.

==Known Members==
* Lady Sybil Vimes (née Ramkin)
* [[Young Sam Vimes|Samual Vimes Jr.]] (on his mother's side).
* Sybil's late brother (his goal was to be able to fly without a broomstick or magic spell, built a flying machine which never made it off the ground) {{SN}}
* Lord Ramkin (Sybil's father)
* Lady Ramkin (Sybil's mother)
* Lofthouse (an uncle of Sybil's, "a bit gaga", but at Sybil's insistence, Lofthouse was the male relative who gave her away at her wedding to Sam Vimes) {{MAA}}
* An late un-named aunt of Sybil's (who, when their coach was once held up at bow-point by two desperate robbers, gave them such a talking to, they actually ran away crying for their mothers {{T!}}
* Lord Ramkin Sr. (Sybil's grandfather, who once shot [[Bloody Stupid Johnson]] in the leg)
* Lady Ramkin Sr. (1) (Sybil's grandmother, who instructed that maids at [[Crundells]] were not to even make eye contact with any gentlemen, (unattached or otherwise), visiting at the hall to prevent scandals) {{SN}}
* Lady Ramkin Sr. (2) (may or may not be the same as (1)), once defended the Ankh-Morpork embassy in [[Pseudopolis]] against a mob, with no assistance but that offered by a gardener, a trained parrot, and a pan of hot chip fat, in the Year of the Quiet Monkey {{T!}}
* Lady Ramkin (Sybil's great-grandmother), once personally cooked a full dinner for 18 in a military redoubt that was entirely surrounded by bloodthirsty [[Klatch|Klatchians]], (and felt able to include sorbet and nuts), during the Year of the Lice, {{T!}}
* Sir John "Mad Jack" Ramkin (3rd Earl, nickname shared with a Roundworld man, [[wikipedia:John Mytton|John "Mad Jack" Mytton]]. He won ownership of the property where the Assassins' Guild hall stands in a card game in 1767) {{SN}}, {{AGD}}
* [[Woolsthorpe Ramkin]] (Mad Jack's younger brother. Would have become a [[Wizard]] if his brother, Mad Jack, hadn't made it known that 'any male sibling of his who took up a profession that involved wearing a dress would be disinherited with a cleaver'. Woolsthorpe later became a natural philosopher, discovering a peculiar phenomenon involving [[Wikipedia:Isaac Newton|apples]]) {{SN}}
* An un-named great uncle of Sybil's ("who once lost a villa and 2000 acres of prime farmland by being definite in believing that a cloak room ticket could beat three aces"; killed in the duel that followed) {{SN}}
* Turnip Ramkin (revolutionized agriculture, involving root vegetable crops) {{SN}}
* Rubber Ramkin (Turnip's brother, devised rubber boots and rubberized fabric, even before the [[Dwarfs]] did) {{SN}}
* Jack "Black Jack" Ramkin (had a hill on the Crundells estate raised in height by 30 feet in order win a bet (2 gallons of brandy) that he could see the smoke from [[Ankh-Morpork]] from his property) {{SN}}

1 At the [[Ramkin Residence|ancestral mansion]] in Ankh-Morpork, however, the sign says '''NON SVMET NVLLVS PRO RESPONSO''' (''She Won't Take No For An Answer''), perhaps better suited to the current occupant, Lady Sybil.

==Annotation==
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramekin Wikipedia] defines a Ramekin as

<blockquote>
A ramekin or ramequin is a small dish, often white in colour, typically preferred for the preparation and serving of various baked recipes. These can be either sweet or savoury, including desserts such as the classic crème brûlée or molten chocolate cake, and savoury dishes such as moimoi, cheese recipes, potted shrimps and soufflé.

The ramekin can be regarded as a vessel of the casserole variety, and similarly, due to its robust construction, is capable of withstanding the extreme heat of an oven, or, in the case of crème brûlée, the flare of a torch flame.
</blockquote>

[[Category:Discworld characters]]
[[de:Käsedick]]

Woolsthorpe Ramkin

2015-09-24T11:23:57Z

Cerddaf: Add character , plus ref to Sir Isaac Newton

Woolsthorpe Ramkin (Mad Jack's younger brother. Would have become a Wizard if his brother, Mad Jack, hadn't made it known that 'any male sibling of his who took up a profession that involved wearing a dress would be disinherited with a cleaver'. Woolsthorpe later became a natural philosopher, discovering a peculiar phenomenon involving apples)

'''Roundworld Equivalent'''

Isaac Newton was born according to the Julian calendar (in use in England at the time) on Christmas Day, 25 December 1642 (NS 4 January 1643[1]), at Woolsthorpe Manor in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, a hamlet in the county of Lincolnshire. He later lived there, and it was there in his garden that he claimed to have seen an apple fall, leading to his discovery of gravity.

Book:I Shall Wear Midnight/Annotations

2014-07-29T21:18:31Z

Cerddaf: Info on Cerne Abbas and Uffingham chalk figures

== ==

'''''(Doubleday hardback pp11-13)'''''
The scouring fair and the Giant: this still happens in England, where a remarkably similar and somewhat [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerne_Abbas_giant priapic giant] is carved in the chalk at Cerne Abbas, in Dorset. Every so often his lines need cleaning. Apparently for many years postcards of the giant were the only pornographic images that could legally be sent through HM Royal Mail. Meanwhile at Uffington the White Horse is similarly (though less ribaldly) scoured, and the event is celebrated by a fair, with all the usual entertainments, including Cheese Rolling and ducking for apples, though not apparently ducking for frogs.

'''''(Doubleday hardback p 103)''''' ''Still, it could have been worse,'' she told herself. ''There could have been snakes on the broomstick.''
Terry is fond of this urban myth. See the relevant annotations for {{T5E}} (hypothetical snakes on a sleigh) and {{CJ}} (putative snakes in a coach). This one could very definitely also be an allusion to the film ''Snakes on a Plane''...

'''''(Doubleday hardback p 105)'''''
Tiffany's landing of a stricken broomstick on top of a moving coach almost exactly mirrors the standard operating procedure for aircraft landing on the deck of a moving carrier at sea - all that's needed now is the arrester hook and transverse cable. Another first for research witchcraft, after ravens used as black-box flight recorders, and in-flight refuelling?

'''''(Doubleday hardback p 118)'''''

''Because you're worthless'' - a play on the commercial slogan for cosmetic company Loreal. ("Because you're worth it")

- for the hag in a hurry.

'''''(Doubleday hardback p 137)'''''

''"I told you to find him; I didn't tell you you were supposed to pull the doors off!"

Tiffany's rebuke to the Feegle echoes the famous line in the movie, '''''the Italian Job'''''. See also annotation to {{TFE}}, Corgi paperback edition p307.

'''''(Doubleday hardback pp 149)''''' Long-term solitary confinement prisoners, often dangerous killers, keeping caged birds for company in their cells - think ''The Birdman of Alcatraz'', now a prison cliche. There is an annotation for another Discworld book that covers similar ground? This also resonates with "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird," the only thing called a sin in the Harper Lee novel of the same name.

Depressingly, the real-life "Birdman of Alcatraz" never kept caged birds in his life, and certainly not during his incarceration. Robert Stroud was a devious, manipulative and thoroughly loathsome double murderer with paedophilic tendencies, who knew how to play a good PR game. He convinced a charismatic lawyer to fight his appeals. This led to a romantic and wildly inaccurate book being written about him which was later filmed by Hollywood with Burt Lancaster in the title role, which established the fiction firmly in the public eye. (Source: '''''Perfect Victims''''' by Bill James, Simon and Schuster, 2011)

'''''(Doubleday hardback p 164)'''''
Wee Mad Arthur gloomily intones "It will be certain death to go in there. Certain death! you'll all be doomed!" This was the catch-phrase of Scottish comic actor John Laurie, who played the gloomy undertaker and over-age soldier Private Frazer in ''"Dad's Army"'' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHfJJgGP7ss Share the doom here] (page ref needed).

'''''(Doubleday hardback pp 176-177)'''''

Since last being heard of in {{ER}}, Simon is described (via third-party accounts) as having let his illnesses and allergies multiply to the point where he has become Unseen University's analogue of Stephen Hawking - speaking to peers through a machine (HEX?) and unable to move, talk, or do very much for himself. Some of this is related via [[Esk]], who can be described as a reliable witness.

''..."the young Eskarina had met at the University a young man called Simon who had been cursed by the Gods with almost every possible ailment that mankind was prone to. ''

''But because the Gods have a sense of humour, although it's a rather strange one, they had granted him the power to understand....well, '''''everything'''''. He could barely walk without assistance but was so brilliant that he managed to keep the whole universe in his head. Wizards... would flock to hear him talk about space and time and magic as if they were all part of the same thing. And young Eskarina had fed him and cleaned him and helped him get about and learned from him - well, everything." '' ({{ISWM}}. pp176-177)

And Simon describes part of the knowledge as ''elasticated string theory'', a phenomena which Eskarina says, in a discourse with Tiffany, has at least sixteen different dimensions... compare this to Hawking on superspace and string theory.

Interestingly enough, on '''page 332''', we learn that Eskarina has a son, whom she must protect. This is the only mention of him in the book. Theories about this tantalising standalone fact may be found on the Discussion page of the [[Eskarina Smith]] entry ([[Talk:Eskarina Smith|here]]).

'''''(Doubleday hardback p 175)'''''

When Mrs Proust performs magic on the statue of Lord Albert Rust to turn it into a temporary Golem under her will -
think of the song ''"The Equestrian Statue"'' by prankster musicians the Bonzo-Dog Doodah Band, in which a statue in the park takes it into its head to wake up and have a canter up and down the square. (''"Little old ladies stop and say "Well, I declare!"''). Listen ''here'' [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKtfFmYiI40|here] .

'''''(Doubleday hardback pp 216)'''''
Rob Anybody describes the abortive attempt to evict the Feegle as having been carried out by a bunch of "mound-digging Cromwells".

This is a strange expression for the Disc, as Oliver Cromwell was the Lord Protector of England who is even today vilified for a policy of mass slaughter and destruction during his campaign in Ireland. Fan-fiction aside, there is no "official" Discworld analogue for Ireland or all things Irish*, and the only other analogue to Cromwell in the writings is Stoneface Vimes - a man who, while capable of executing a King, would not have countenanced the destruction of a city and the slaughter of all its inhabitants. A Vimes would happily kill a King, but protect and serve the people.

Perhaps on their journeys through the dimensions, the Feegle may have visited Ireland in the 1650's and 1660's; Irish folklore preserves the myth of a terrible, wrathful and cunning Little People living in mounds and barrows, who are to leprechauns what Feegle are to flower fairies. Little People are, after all, common to all the Celtic mythologies - Scottish, Welsh, Manx, Breton and Irish.

(*The otherwise unknown and unreferenced country of Hergen has been proposed, but this is strictly non-canon, with nothing to support it, except its geographical location on the far side of Llamedos)

it is interesting in this context that {{UA}} introduces a place on the Disc with the very unambiguously Irish-sounding name of ''Cladh''. There may well be a Discworld Ireland which is yet to be revealed?

'''''(Doubleday hardback p 199-200)'''''
The goings-on at the castle in the run up to a funeral and a wedding. Why is this reminiscent of Swamp Castle in ''Monty Python and the Holy Grail''? Especially when a seemingly dim guard (Preston) is not ''quite'' getting it right about the need to lock up a prisoner, and an increasingly exasperated employer cannot get the idea across...

'''''(Doubleday hardback p 274)'''''
''The world needs cheesemakers''. Not a million miles away from ''Blessed are the cheese-makers'', a line from ''Monty Python's Life of Brian''.

'''''(Doubleday hardback p 316)'''''

''...by the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.''

Shakespeare again: ''Macbeth''. Alluding to the ability of a witch to sense things others cannot. See also the line early in Wyrd Sisters (page?) - "Can you tell by the pricking of your thumbs?" "By the pricking of my ears."

[Somebody please add a Doubleday page number]
The strength of the witch is the coven and the strength of the coven is the witch" seems equivalent to Kipling's "Jungle Law" "The strength of the wolf is the pack and the strength of the pack is the wolf"

[[Category:Annotations|I Shall Wear Midnight/Annotations]]

Book:Making Money/Annotations

2014-03-05T17:15:09Z

Cerddaf: /* By page number */ Latin and French bits

==By page number==
Page numbers refer to the UK edition. Those in italics refer to the US edition.

[pg. 23]- 'If it's about the cabbage-flavoured stamp glue-' Moist began.'
This is a reference to Vimes' statement on page 40 of {{T!}}: '"Remember the cabbage-scented stamp last month?...They actually caught fire if you put too many of them together!"'.

'''''(UK Doubleday hardback pp42-43):-''''' Discussing the Elim, the smallest coin of all, traditionally made by widows "and of course it's handy to drop in the charity box". In the bible, Jesus's parable of '''''the widow's mite''''', in which the smallest coin of all, donated by a poor widow, has more value than all the gold ostentatiously placed in there by the Pharisees, simply because it is all she has to give.

(109) ''Food gets you through times of no gold better than gold gets you through times of no food'' - this is a clever re-stating of Shelton and Mavrides' hippy maxim, used in their comic books about the alternative lifestyle trio '''''{{wp|Fabulous_Furry_Freak_Brothers|The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers}}''''', which originally states:-

''Dope gets you through times of no money better than money gets you through times of no dope.''

And of course a form of "dope", considered superior by cannabis connoisseurs, is known as Acapulco '''''Gold'''''...

(127) "Jack Proust" is an aging comic, the central character in [http://www.sfweekly.com/1999-05-12/calendar/send-in-the-clowns/ ''The First 100 Years''], written and performed by former [[Fools' Guild|clown]] {{wp|Geoff_Hoyle|Geoff Hoyle}}.

(139 Corgi Paperback UK)"nom d'une bouilloire? pourquoi est-ce que je suis hardiment ri sous cape à part les dieux" = "name of a kettle? why is it that I am boldly chuckled except the gods" - please someone explain what that means!

(145 Corgi Paperback UK) "Ad Urbem Pertinet" = "Belongs to the City". Written on Von Lipwig's draft banknote, see also the following.

(146 Corgi Paperback UK) "promitto fore ut possessori postulanti nummum unum solvem an apte satisfaciam" = "I promise to pay an adequate defense, the owner asked for one piece"

(155/''167'') "Bent stood up in one unfolding moment, like a jack-in-the-box." — This foreshadowing will later prove as subtle as a pie in the face.

(190-200/''208-218'') The [[Cabinet of Curiosity]] may be the [http://www.amazon.com/Cabinet-Natural-Curiosities-Complete-1734-1765/dp/3822847941/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-4978409-2923019 Cabinet of Natural Curiosities], a natural history by Albertus Seba. The back cover of the book has a plate of a giant squid. (A lot of museums have a Cabinet of Curiosity as part of their collection.)

(214/''236'') The unusual font indicating the archaic language of Formal Golem uses the Enochian alphabet created by the 16th Century mathematician and astronomer John Dee. (Himself a Discworld character in {{SOD2}}, where he hosts visiting Wizards from Discworld In Elizabethan London, Dee lived at [[Mort Lake|Mortlake]], which is also a location in Ankh-Morpork)). It uses letter by letter substitution to create the effect. The Formal Golem language is designated as appropriate to a near-contemporary of Umnian's multi-meaninged tongue. The characters for r/m, i/y, c/k, and u/v/w are effectively indistinguishable, and the s and e are quite similar. Translated, Adora Belle says "I can speak formal golem."
Of course, we meet Doctor John Dee in {{SOD2}}.

(221/''244'') In Formal Golem, Flead first says, "You make eternity bearable!" and then asks "Why do you care about golems? They have no passionate parts!" [http://www.stooryduster.co.uk/images/pages/common-private-golem-language.htm A visual key to the Enochian alphabet can be found here] where you can try the translations yourself.

(262/''293'') Moist initially makes the same mistake as [[William de Worde]], and assumes that just because [[Nobby Nobbs]] requires proof of species, he's the "Watch Werewolf".

(268/''299-300'') [[Mr Fusspot]]'s courtship of [[Angua von Überwald]] is reminiscent of the battery-powered dog toys beloved of British shopping centres, which yap, somersault and repeat, although none of them come with the "new toy" delicately described by [[Carrot Ironfoundersson|Captain Carrot]] as "a wind-up clockwork item of an intimate nature".

In {{TT}}, Mr. Tuttle Scrope is put up as the replacement Patrician for Vetinari. He runs a shop that sells Leatherwork, "... and rubber work... and feathers... and whips... and... little jiggly things" and was, presumably, the supplier for Sir Joshua Lavish in Making Money, who had the cabinet full of such supplies.

==Need linking to page==
The [[Lavishes]] are distinctly reminiscent of the Borgias. The same extended family, devious infighting, and desire for political power. The most famous Borgia dynasty includes Cesare and Lucrezia "Lucci" Borgia, mirrored here as [[Cosmo Lavish]] and [[Pucci Lavish]], although an alternate source for the name of Cosmo would be [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosimo_de'_Medici Cosimo de Medici], the first of the Medici to become ruler (Patrician?) of Florence.
Incidentally, Pucci is also the name of another influential family from Florence, political allies to the Medici family, particularly Cosimo. Possibly such references to other members (or allies) of the Medici family exist among the Lavishes.

Moist's plan to sell the gold of the bank mirrors the actions of {{wp|Gordon Brown|Gordon Brown}}, who sold 400 tons of Gold Bullion between 1999 and 2002. His comments on gold have been a recurring theme in the Discworld books, ever since the Colour of Magic.

Brown's predecessor, {{wp|John Major|John Major}}, was an accountant and son of a trapeze artist; he has been described as "the only man to run away from the circus to become an accountant."

==A motif recurring throughout the book==
All the sly references to the Roundworld game of Monopoly, which involves a bank, financial speculation, capital investment in a city, and striving to reduce your opponents to absolute penury and degradation. This is dealt with in more detail ''[[Exclusive Possession|here]]''.

[[Category:Annotations|Making Money/Annotations]]

Moist von Lipwig

2014-03-01T09:55:16Z

Cerddaf: Add reference to Ludwig von Mises

{{Character Data
|title= Moist von Lipwig
|photo=
|name= Moist von Lipwig
|age= born 1965
|race= [[Humans|Human]]

|occupation= [[Ankh-Morpork Post Office|Postmaster General]], Chairman of the [[Grand Trunk Semaphore Company]], [[Master of the Royal Mint]]
|appearance= Six foot two, brown-blond hair, average and nondescript.

|residence= Now owner of a property on [[Scoone Avenue]], [[Ankh-Morpork]]
|death= Hung under the name of Albert Spangler, still not dead
|parents= both dead
|relatives= grandfather who raised him.
|children= none
|marital status= Now married to Adora Belle Dearheart.

|books= {{GP}}, {{MM}} and {{RS}}

|cameos= {{T!}}
}}

Swindler, con artist and fraud wanted dead in several cities, and currently Postmaster General and Master of the Royal Mint of [[Ankh-Morpork]]. Smitten with [[Adora Belle Dearheart]], whom he calls "[[Spike]]". After a tough apprenticeship as her fiancé (note that it was not the other way around), they are, as of {{RS}}, married and resident in a property on upmarket Scoone Avenue, where they employ a domestic staff. He revived the [[Ankh-Morpork Post Office|postal service]] in Ankh-Morpork, inadvertently challenging the [[clacks]] [[Grand Trunk|company]], which was stolen from Adora Belle Dearheart's family by a still much bigger fraudster, [[Reacher Gilt]]. Reacher Gilt is also rumoured to have had her brother, John Dearheart, killed. He folllowed this through by rescuing the fortunes of the Royal Bank and the Royal Mint.

Usually dressed all in gold in his capacity as Postmaster General (with corresponding wingèd golden hat; gold paint, of course), Moist was entrusted with the running of the clacks company after it was ascertained that Reacher Gilt and his gang of financial cronies had obtained the company by illegal means.

He is of a nondescript appearance, leading people who see him to look through him without noticing anything prominent or memorable about him. This proved a valuable asset in his previous profession (for avoiding angry mobs) however this advantage is now negated by his big shiny golden suit that makes him instantly recognizable, at least while wearing it. He consoles himself with the fact that it's the suit that people recognize, rather than him. Moist turns this to his advantage: if he really wants to go incognito, he can just change into the shabby old grey suit that [[Albert Spangler]] was executed in. The effect is rather like that of Clark Kent emerging unremarked from a nondescript telephone box - as Superman also knew, people never really '''''look''''', or make connections from what they see.

As of ''Making Money'' and his confessions of his criminal past in open court, it may be that going incognito is far more difficult, and that he may very well become one of Ankh-Morpork's most recognizable citizens, much to his chagrin.

In {{GP}} Moist was temporarily linked to the consciousness of the collective letters of the Post office after he delivered one of them and was officially made the Postmaster by the post guild. The consciousness was aware of Moist's shady past but were by that point willing to take anyone as Postmaster so they could be delivered. The link was painfully severed when the Post Office was burnt down: it nearly killed Moist in the process, as Adora noted. He went deathly pale when the consciousness started screaming in his mind.

A definite crowd pleaser, he uses their favour to further his aims. Lord [[Vetinari]] seems to hold him in high regard; he appears to be one of his lordship's favourite pawns.

Moist's exploits, recounted in ''Going Postal'', include resumption of the post, in Ankh-Morpork as well as surrounding areas such as [[Sto Lat]] and [[Pseudopolis]], the invention of "stamps", facilitating its use, and the liberation of the Grand Trunk from Reacher Gilt and his henchmen. In ''Thud!'' Vimes mentions (angrily, of course) that 'that idiot at the Post Office' has brought out a [[Koom Valley]] stamp, or rather two : you can choose between the dwarves ambushing the trolls or the trolls ambushing the dwarves.

The invention of stamps eventually leads to their use by the populace of Ankh-Morpork as a sort of paper currency, prompting Vetinari's need to transfer Moist to overhaul the Royal Mint and by extension, the banking system. As [[Master of the Royal Mint]], his new hat of office is a threadbare, worn-out, top hat in worn-through black felt. However, Moist makes a visit to the [[Boffo Novelty and Joke Shop|Boffo]] emporium on [[Tenth Egg Street]] and buys glue and golden glitter for a necessary improvement in keeping with his public image, and so that the hat does not clash with the golden suit. His experiment with the creation of stamps leads him to a wider usage of paper with the creation and use of the revolutionary [[Paper Money]].

It is tempting to note here that as Master of the Mint, Moist is effectively playing [[Exclusive Possession]] with two of the standard six game tokens: the Hat and the [[Mr Fusspot|Dog]]. If you stretch a point, he also has the services of the [[Golem]] [[Gladys]], who '''''irons''''' his trousers just by smoothing them against a wall, instead of using the iron in the postmen's locker room; and the coach motif recurs throughout the book (taking the place of the car/train token - although the coach invariably belongs to another player with an agenda of their own, except for when Moist briefly rides the mail coach at the start of the race). Moist also receives, along with the Dog, the promise of $AM20,000 for passing "Go!" right at the start of the game, due to the bequest in Topsy Lavish's will. And the "Go To Jail" penalty certainly applies to Moist's visits to the [[Tanty]]... (To follow this metaphor more closely, [[Exclusive Possession|see here]].) The game of Exclusive Possession resumes in {{RS}} which updates the board to add not only a train but the stations.

Although he has recently taken a (rather spectacular) turn toward public service, Moist is still very much in possession of the mind of a criminal, as [[Vetinari]] notes happily. He is addicted to the rush, and is never happier than when he is making things up on the fly; almost all of his solutions to the many problems he faces are the result of winging it. When oppressed by the legitimate (and boring) responsibilities of his position(s), Moist has been known to go to increasingly desperate resorts to feed his need for danger, such as taking up [[Edificeering]] and [[Extreme Sneezing]] as leisure pursuits. Breaking into his own office, when the penalty for getting it wrong is rough justice from vigilante-minded citizens, is just a part of this syndrome, as is his continued pilfering of [[Drumknott]]'s pencils. Notably, he is much less prone to this behaviour when [[Adora Belle Dearheart]] is around, leading to the inevitable conclusion that he finds her dangerous enough that he doesn't need to engage in other crazy stunts. She finds this rather romantic. He has since discovered the joys of train-surfing, and an even ''more'' dangerous sport involves wining and dining clients at the [[Pink PussyCat Club]], involving the insertion of banknotes into items of underwear. So far, Adora Belle is not aware of this.

In "[[Book:Raising Steam|Raising Steam]]", it is revealed that Moist and Adora Belle have since gotten married and are now living in a mansion on [[Scoone Avenue]], in [[Ankh]], (the same neighbourhood where the Duke and Duchess of Ankh, [[Sam Vimes|Sam]] and [[Sybil Ramkin|Sybil Vimes]], live). Whilst Moist continues to run both the Royal Ankh-Morpork Post Office and the Royal Mint and Bank, Adora Belle runs the Clacks and has made it an equal oppotunities employer, also hiring [[Golems]] and [[Goblins]].

==Aliases==
*Ethel Snake
*Mr Robinson
*[[Albert Spangler]]
*Mundo Smith
*Edwin Streep
*[[Mr Trespass Hatchcock]]
*Jeff the Drover

==Annotation==

Moist von Lipwig. Lip wig = "Moist of the false moustache": the master of disguise!

Moist also does self-designed ''ear wigs''. These are designed to draw attention to themselves - say if the mark is trying to explain things to the Watch afterwards about the gentleman with the steady gaze and the firm handshake and the hair growing out of his ears, the one who convinced me that Vetinari had entrusted him with the right to sell the Brass Bridge... all he will be able to describe with any certainty is the eye-catching undergrowth in both ear-holes. Oh, and he might have had a moustache, too...

It is possible that the Patrician is secretly grooming Moist to be his successor.

==Derivation==
There is a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_von_Mises Ludwig von Mises]] ( 29 September 1881 – 10 October 1973) who was a philosopher, Austrian School economist, although he appears to have been a highly moral and honourable man, which does not quite fit the Discworld character.

[[Category: Discworld characters|Lipwig, Moist von]]
[[Category: Leading characters|Lipwig, Moist von]]
[[Category: Human characters|Lipwig, Moist von]]
[[Category: Making Money|Lipwig, Moist von]]
[[de:Feucht von Lipwig]]

Book:Raising Steam/Annotations

2014-03-01T09:36:22Z

Cerddaf: Correct passage on DI Bonaparte (Bony)

The idea of a group of religiously motivated terrorists, working out of a conviction that the new way is a blasphemy, and the only ways to follow are the old ways, guided of course by the only people who correctly interpret the sacred laws and texts - us. This shadowy group live in dark caves, spare an especial bile for fellows and co-believers who interpret the Faith and the Way more liberally, and who express dissent by bringing tall towers crashing down, followed by attacks on the railways. Hmmm.

And a common remark about tyrants and dictators on Earth, at least since 1900, has been ''At least he got the trains running on time''. (Famously said about Benito Mussolini, who in fact couldn't - there are limits to a Fascist dictator's power, and Benito discovered his was the Italian state railway. Adolf Hitler didn't have to exert himself - German state railways already ran to an incredible peak of efficiency without Nazi help. But see note about "Beamtenherrschaft", below).

This book could well be about one [[Vetinari|Tyrant]]'s desire to get the railways running not only on time but at all possible times...

The very first trainspotter appears on page 59. Many others follow, including Ponder Stibbons, Rufus Drumknott and others. These include [[Young Sam Vimes]] who has possibly found an equally smelly but less scatological hobby.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p12 et seq:'''''
[[Dick Simnel]] is introduced. British readers will instinctively recognise his accent is meant to reflect that of Northern England, the birthplace of British (and world) railways. But which bit of northern England? The experienced dialectologist will pick out occasional words in Yorkshire, Geordie and even Cumbrian slang. But the dominant accent emerging is that of Lancashire. And one particular part of Lancashire, at that. Dick's repeated use of the word ''"Gradely!"'', a Lancashire dialect word meaning "Great! Smashing! Brilliant! Ideal!" et c, along with other little quirks, points only in one direction. Fred Dibnah (1938-2004)from Bolton, Lancashire, was a steeplejack and mechanic who embodied the old-time Northern engineer in everything he did. He became a celebrity on TV, initially for breath-taking steeplejacking, with a commentary delivered in a wry self-deprecating Northern voice, usually while hanging upside down a couple of hundred feet up. In later life, he had a second career restoring and driving old steam engines, which he loved. TV series were made about this aspect of his life. Reading Dick Simnel's dialogue in the best Bolton accent I can do, I realised there could only be one person being portrayed here. The great Fred Dibnah. Right down to the flat cap. Lots of clips are available on You-Tube but cannot be linked here.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p49:''''' Vetinari recaps events going back to {{RM}}, especially the life and interests of Ned Simnel. These included a wife and son.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p65:'''''
''Captain Angua, the most notable werewolf in the Watch...''
Terry chooses words with care. Can we presume there is now more than one werewolf in the City Watch?

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p72:'''''
Albrecht Albrechtsson is seen to make a telling point in a heated debate by smashing his axe right into the middle of the conference table. Sam Vimes once did something similar in a time of dissent involving the conference table in the Rats Chamber, and giving it a Quirmian Polish with a very big axe. The Blackboard Monitor is known and respected among Dwarfs. Hmmm.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p88 and throughout:'''''
''[[Swine Town]]'' - a previously unregarded bucolic backwater, which becomes a strategic location for a railway depot located halfway between two important destinations. Compare ''Swindon'', which until the railway was built connecting London to the (then) second port city of Bristol was a very minor agricultural village. The Bristol railway, the Great Western, was built with the intention of bringing fresh perishable produce swiftly to the markets of the capital, whose river was so foul the local fish was utterly inedible. Swindon (whose name ''means'' Swine Town) became an oasis of heavy industry in Wiltshire, an otherwise entirely agricultural economy. Until privatisation, it remained a key strategic location in the British rail network, its factories building locomotives and directly feeding them into the system. Today, Britain incredibly ''imports'' railway locos and carriages from Europe and - believe this - transfers them to their destination ''by road''. It is possible we've lost the plot somewhere.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p112 et seq:'''''
* This page probably holds the all-time record (outside of {{SM}}) for the maximum number of sly allusions, annotations, and shout-outs to music, history, and other works of literature on a single page. To take them in order:
''Line 6'' - '''It's all about the Locomotion...''' The whole theme of the discussion between Mustrum Ridcully and Lu-Tze is indeed about the irresistable advent of the new. ''Everybody's doing a brand-new dance now!'' Indeed.
Also, the very first George Stephenson-devised engine was called not ''The Rocket'' - that was later - but ''The Locomotion''.
''Let's make a train now...''

''Line 9'' - the [[Ginnungagap]] is placed in its correct Discworld context as the primal chaos from which an ordered world emerged, with the proviso that if left badly managed, it will slide back into that chaos again.

''Lines 13-14'' - ''The only problem I have yet to solve is how to get from the dying world into the new world...'' Lu-Tze is referring back to earlier history monk stories. The Abbot has no problem with this - he is an adept at being serially reincarnated from a dying world into a new one! Lu-Tze has to go about things differently.

''Lines 15-16'' - ''even the Abbot is concerned about the arrival of steam-engines when it isn't steam-engine time'' - an aphorism originally coined by the chronicler of strange and anomalous things, Charles Fort. The full Fortean quote is:

''If human thought is a growth, like all other growths, its logic is without foundation of its own, and is only the adjusting constructiveness of all other growing things. A tree cannot find out, as it were, how to blossom, until comes blossom-time. A social growth cannot find out the use of steam engines, until comes steam-engine-time.'' (Charles Fort, '''''Lo!''''')

''Lines 30 - end'' ''...even the very wise have neglected to take notice of one rather important Goddess...Pippina, the lady with the Apple of Discord''. This invokes the Greek Eris, Goddess of discord, who famously incited war among Gods and men with the Golden Apple casually rolled into a roomful of vain deities, all of whom thought an apple inscribed "KALLISTI" - to the fairest one - was of course theirs by right. The fallout from the war among Gods became the ten-year Trojan War on Earth.

The following conversation between Ridcully and Lu-Tze emphasises the need for balance between Chaos and Order. This is also a central theme of Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's ''Illuminatus!'' trilogy, where the Golden Apple is a plot -point, Eris walks the earth still as Goddess of disorder, her adherents greet each other with "All Hail Eris!", and the Chaos-Order thing is symbolised as Eristic forces versus Aneristic forces.

At the top of Page 113, Lu-Tze concedes that even the history monks can become a less than beneficial force once they get complacent and become part of the established order - he deliberately uses the term "bureaucracy" to describe this danger. This not only brings the Cosmic Auditors to mind - guardians of never-changing sterility - but also Shea and Wilson's assertion that chaos is born, out of sheer desperation, from stifling strangling bureaucracy - which is Order taken to a destructive extreme. Shea and Wilson have a word for this state in their philosophy, and yes, it's a German word - ''Beamtenherrschaft'', Bureaucracy.
''Beamtenherrschaft'', in the original ''Illuminatus!'', is in fact explicitly defined as the sort of state of mind that will ensure the trains run precisely on time, that their human cargo is satisfactorily documented, itemised, counted, and delivered on schedule to the right destination, who then sign for the delivery, in triplicate and in the right places - ''and in the midst of all the paperwork, nobody sees anything wrong or out of place with the destination being Auschwitz.

There is also a sub-plot in one of Robert A. Wilson's solo novels where, in the 1760's, a brilliant mind devises (at least on paper) a theoretically workable steam engine - only to be universally derided and laughed at, even at the advanced universities he attended. France/Italy in the 1760's was evidently not the right orchard or season for "Steam-Engine Time" to come to blossom.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p115:'''''
* Dick Simnel displays a familiarity with the events of {{SG}}, or at least the steam-engineering aspects. while he knows about "The Un-named" ([[Urn]]'s boat) via old books, does he also know the steam-engine was transferred to a landship afterwards?

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p123 (footnote):'''''
''Let the train take the strain'' - was for many years an advertising slogan of British Rail, although it is doubtful that they had the toilets in mind

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p124:'''''
Another sign of the changing times. A large troll halts the train as it slows to a bridge. The passengers hold their breath apprehensively. No, it's not a shake-down for toll money, nor is it the prelude to an anxious request as to whether the train is carrying any billy-goats, gruff optional. The troll works for the railway company. He has a red flag to prove it. The only toll he wants to exact is public recognition that his building-gang constructed the bridge the train is about to cross. As a saying about the future has it, everyone will want his five minutes of fame.... and the future is here. Why dwell on the past?
Later on in the book, we see a canny Moist franchising bridges to Troll families, who are given homes in the bridge pillars - complete with lavatories - and a guaranteed herd of goats. In return they tend to and maintain their bridges. As with Best Kept Station contests in Britain, there is a lot of competition to be the troll who has the Best-Tended Bridge.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p126:'''''
''Go and tell Vimesy you want to be the first Railway Policemen, then. I'd love to see his face''

The British Transport Police is one of the oldest forces in the country, instituted not long after the first railways began. The same Robert Peel who founded the first regular force authorised its commissioning. Author Andrew Martin has fictionalized this period in his Railway Detective novels featuring Sergeant Jim Stringer; author Edward Marston sets his railway police novels, featuring Inspector Colbert, in a slightly later period. however, Andrew Pepper sets his railway police mystery right at the beginning: ''The Revenge of Captain Paine'' investigates violent death and sabotage on a line being built.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p131:'''''
''Chemin de fer'' is indeed both the Quirmian for "railway" and a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemin-de-fer card game]]. The card game is also known as ''Baccarat'' and it is likely the Gamblers' Guild know at least six more variations and anything up to ten alternative names.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p137:'''''
Two children, adventurous if ill-advised souls, are sensing the approach of a coming train by putting their heads to the track to feel the thrilling vibrations.... not just a shout-out to Western movies where the Red Indians detect coming-of-white-man's-iron-horse by this method (and WHY are they not of One-Man-Bucket's ethnicity?). Classic film ''The Railway Children'' introduces its central characters with a scene not unlike this. Although the kids here have the sense to lift their heads ''long'' before the train comes...

'''RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW!'''
Has several referents. A tune by Fatboy Slim (1998) where these are the only lyrics, repeated incessantly, with all the insistancy of a train at full throttle.

On '''pp 91-92''', two children, perhaps the same ones, make friends with Sergeant Fred Colon. The Railway Children of the film of Nesbitt's novel had a similar friendship with a police sergeant who was also older, good-natured and somewhat bumbling.

the "Railway Children" shout-out is more explicit later in the book ('''''p309 et seq:'''''), where a group of children flag down the Iron Girder to warn them about an avalanche which has blocked the line. Whilst Edith Nesmith does not wave her long petticoated knickers in the air to flag down the train (even in ''the Railway Children'', Jenny Agutter got her clothes off), the similarity to the film is remarkable. Terry does say the children ''appeared'' to be flagging the train down with their pinafores, though... Although Moist von Lipwig quickly recognises that being Discworld kids, in a town which is in the orbit of Ankh-Morpork, they engineered the lineslip themselves for attention and excitement..

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), pp172 - 174:'''''
Moist von Lipwig, a man who normally shies away from physical combat (his weapons are other) is sized up by a shrewd assessor of personality, who realises that if his presence is going to effective in a stand-up fight, he needs chemical assistance. This is duly provided in the form of a goblin-brewed tonic, and completely alters his personality for just long enough. This evokes two similar literary accounts of similar potions, both applied to people of a Moist-like inclination. The great Victorian poltroon Sir Harry Flashman is beneficiary of an Arabian tonic administered by his lover just before a vital fight with the Russians in ''Flashman At The Charge''. As he is the only man who can direct the fight, something to dampen his natural cowardice is essential. And in ''The Stainless Steel Rat'', intergalactic con-man and bunco-artist Jim DiGriz realises the only way to understand his lethal adversary (and later wife), the rather ''spiky'' Angelina, is to ingest a chemical cocktail that simulates her marked anger-management problems. Sir Terry has definitely read all the ''Flashman'' books. And "Slippery" Jim and the spiky Angelina diGriz have so many suspicious similarities to Moist and Adora Belle... (now go to ''Reading Suggestions'' for more). Vimes recognises the essential Flashman-like aspect of Moist when he later reflects cowards fight harder and better as they have more consequences to fear.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p180 and perhaps throughout:'''''
The first mention of the leopard being able to change its shorts (Vimes about Moist). Wondered when this was going to come up...

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p190:'''''
A would-be saboteur emulates the passing of Ned Simnel and leaves this world in a massive cloud of pink steam. By the way, the steam is necessarily pink in these circumstances ''because''....
Also, the uneasy suspicion forms in the mind of Moist Von Lipwig that the Iron Girder is sentient and somehow ''engineered'' a situation where a Dwarf who tried to do her harm was wafted to his afterlife in a cloud of hot pink steam. This is strikingly like an event in the Stephen King novel (and movie) "Christine", about a classic American car with sentience and a negative opinion of people trying to do her harm...

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p218:'''''
Chief constable Upshot Feeney of the Shires is privileged to have earned the right to call his Goblin constable simply ''Boney''. this is a ShoutOut to the books by [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Upfield Arthur Upfield]] and to two TV spinoffs, the seventies Australian cop show [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boney_%28TV_series%29 Boney]] and the nineties [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bony_%28TV_series%29 Boney]]. In the books the Boney of the title is Detective Inspector Napoleon Bonaparte, the one half-white, half-Aboriginal in the Queensland force, a man who uses native tracking skills and a shrewd understanding of people to resolve difficult crimes. The Upfield character is based on a man known as "Tracker Leon". The Goblin "Boney"'s real name is something far longer than Boney: his colleagues have to earn the right to abbreviate it.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p220:'''''
It has to be handed to Terry. A nice little bit of misdirection leads us to a logical outcome nobody could have foreseen. After {{T!}}, we all thought the forthcoming One About Railways was going to be about establishing an Underground in Ankh-Morpork using the Dwarfish Devices for propulsion, right? Wrong... the Undertaking , in this respect, is going to be created by the emancipated and newly technically-savvy Goblins. They want a safe means of connecting all major Goblin settlements and providing a means to create and link a Goblin nation. And who knows where this will go to afterwards... no mention of the Devices since.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p223 et seq:'''''
Mrs [[Georgina Bradshaw]], the chronicler of the railway network. Refer to Wikipedia: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bradshaw George Bradshaw]] in the middle 1800's was a railway fan who made a living of writing traveller's guides, even meticulously collating timetables so that, ultimately, a traveller using Bradshaw guides could plot a railway journey, together with stays in recommended cities and local hotels, to confidently craft a journey from Waverley Station, Edinburgh, to Kursky station in Moscow - within five minutes of accuracy all along the way.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), pp228-229 and footnote p228:'''''
The inevitable spin-off: model railways and train sets. Lady Effie is heard to complain that the trackside model of Sir Harry King makes him look too fat... a Fat Controller? whatever will they think of next...

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), pp229-230:'''''
Although Iron Girder is (fortunately) better adjusted to a human rival than Stephen King's Christine: she is heard to purr approval to Emily King buffing up her nameplate till it shines, and indicating her affection for Dick Simnel. it would appear I.G. is only malevolently inclined towards people who are actively attempting to injure her.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p262:'''''
A call-back to {{P}}, as Moist contemplates the nature of the pyramid, its associations, and how it all has to fit together absolutely perfectly and in the right order and sequence.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p263 et seq:'''''
The desperate attempt to restore Rhys to the Low Kingship, involving running a train all the way to Überwald despite frequent attacks and attempts to derail it: this is a shout-out to war movie ''von Ryan's Express'', where a hijacked train carrying a ''lot'' of battle-hardened tough cases trying to make it to safety is subjected to all manner of attacks by increasingly desperate Germans.
There are other movies with the same sort of theme: 1948's ''Berlin Express'' references similar ideas, set in Germany during the Cold War at its coldest, with the Russians monitoring activities closely, as the train is in East Germany...

Strange people aboard a train whose stories don't fit, sleeper carriages on a long-distance express heading in the Discworld referent of East.... ''Murder on the Orient Express''... all it needs is a murder and a French-speaking detective... although it all ''began'' in Quirm...

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p293-294 et seq:'''''
Moist von Lipwig gets practice at moving safely and confidently on the roof of a moving train and leaping from carriage to carriage. Why do you feel this is building up to the regular movie cliché of the protaganist slugging it out with the bad guy on the said pitching and rolling roof of a hypothetical moving train... Moist is seen getting practice in early, as if out of Narrativium nudging him and advising that this is something the good guy about to engage in battle aboard a train needs to learn, ''really quickly''.

Also, Moist thinks of it as another extreme sport: like Edificeering or Extreme Sneezing. It could just be that he has introduced the Discworld to the Roundworld do-not-try-this-at-home of Train Surfing.

Fittingly, both he and Sam Vimes - and an unremarked stoker with a shovel - all get to do this together in a stand-up fight, as befits Narrativium.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p296:'''''
On the social heirarchy of railway workers and their being hard-drinking men on their down time. Wheeltappers and shunters are mentioned. A popular TV show of the 1970's was ''The Wheeltappers and Shunters' Social Club'', a live cabaret set in a fictitious Northern working-mens' club of a sort rooted in everyday reality. The real-life W&S Club would have been set up by and for wheeltappers and shunters; all other trades by invitation only. The show was hosted by the egregious Bernard Manning - think of a Harry King who also made money from muck, in this case dirty and doubtful jokes. Manning was a larger-than-life character who could have been a Roundworld Harry King, both in looks and attitude.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p299:'''''
''[[Downsized Abbey]]''. Heh.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), pp317-320:'''''
A King, on a mission to rescue a people from the Forces of Darkness, is stalled in impenetrable forest. with his way forward blocked, the forest-dwelling race, who are somewhat behind the times, timidly step out begging not to be hunted or killed. They provide the key to forward progress, and the King vows they will evermore have his protection. The whole scene between the Low Monarch and the forest Gnomes echoes King Theoden and the Wild Men of the Druadan forest in ''Lord of the Rings''.

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p361:'''''
'''''Tak save The Queen!'''''
Almost the opening line of a national anthem. And one whose first verse at least will be almost as easy to remember as ''Gold! Gold, Gold, Gold!''

'''''Doubleday hardback (UK), p364-366:'''''
The Brick Joke from the beginning of the book : the brick finally drops as Iron Girder reveals who she ''really'' is. It hearkens right back to the very first page.

[[Category:Annotations|Raising Steam]]