User:AgProv

Just to create the page! Male, too old, should have grown up gracefully but hasn't.

Happy Hogswatch, one and all. Off to family...

The Science of Discworld IV: Judgement Day

Trying to get into the new book. Really trying. The scientific bits are, as usual, challenging going, but once you grasp what they're getting at, it actually gets quite interesting. But the Discworld story, so far, is... well, lacklustre. It doesn't even feel as if he wrote it, if you see what I mean. It reads like second-division fan fic. The sort that isn't bad, tells a decent story, the characters are in context... but the author only gets the classic Terry Pratchett voice here and there in little flashes of brilliance. If anything, the Margery Dawes bits (and why does that make me think of Matt Lucas dragged up) read as if they're in the Felicity Boodle voice TP devised for The World of Poo. I really, really, hope it improves.

Another little problem as I get further into the book: the balance is wrong. The science chapters are too long and the Discworld chapters are too short. Not. Enough. Discworld.

And it used to be said about Terry that he avoided the "plots-r-us" school of dialogue. His dialogue between characters here not only appears to take the place of plot, the speeches are far too long. Dialogue sequences used to be short, pithy and bang-bang. Now there are whole paragraphs of character-led exposition. Rincewind does not sound like Rincewind; the Dean is not the Dean. What's gone wrong? Was Terry just content to write an outline script and then let others - Rob Williams or Rhianna Pratchett or both - fill in the details? There are moments of the old Pratchett genius - his description of how Vetinari can force a crowded room into silence just by sitting there is excellent - but there are just too few of them. So far.

And Sally von Humpeding leaps straight from Lance-Constable to Captain without seemingly going through any intermediate ranks? Sorry, can't buy this. It took Angua years and even Carrot didn't make it all the way in one go.

Fan-art: a new venture.

This is a visualisation of one of my original characters in fanfic, one of the new generation of teacher-Assassins brought into the Assassins' Guild school to deal with the influx of girl pupils. this is a first go at classroom monster and teaching veteran Joan Sanderson-Reeves, professional teacher and, until the Guild caught up with her, successful freelance poisoner. With long experience in administering unorthodox food additives and really exotic herbs and spices, she is now Domestic Science teacher to pupil Assassins. She appears in several of my stories and has a starring role in "Murder most 'Orrible".

[[1]]

("Domestic Science at the Assassins' School, where whether you add almond essence is truly a life-or-death choice. Joan the teacher confiscates a copy of the "Tanty Bugle". And her past comes up to meet her...")

Drawn in pencil and coloured using MS Paint and Gimp.

This is a link to a visualisation of one of my Discworld characters - well, Terry's character, really, but outside a name and a job description she's just a placeholder. For some reason I haven't been able to post my artwork here, but here's a link to it and thus to my portfolio on deviantArt:-

Johanna Smith-Rhodes, visualised and sketched by AgProv

Not perfect, and with some glaring flaws, but now I have the bug I intend to so more to accompany the writings. As this is 95% my interpretation of the character and comes out of fanfic rather than canon, I have deliberately not placed this on the appropriate Wiki page. Drawn for the DeviantArt site and the Fanon Wiki, this is my interpretation of Terry's barely-there character Miss Smith-Rhodes. It hasn't quite got there and some aspects of the drawing are slightly out, but this is the adventuress from Rimwards Howondaland and Assassins' School teacher-with-a-litupa. (note purple sash denoting teacher. Something of a maverick in that she favours dressing in veldt-chic and not in the approved black - with something she does call a big knife, and dressed in bush khaki as if she were at Home in the Gods' Own Country - she has points in common with Crocodile Dundee.) Or at least, a first draft of how she appears in my mind.

More attempts to sketch and draw the Lady Assassins will follow. I have two in preparation, although both are completely non-canonical.