Monstrous Regiment - Tumblr Posts
dear Wazzer and Duchess Annagovia, commission for Alejandra ♥ drawing this motivated me to re-read Monstrous Regiment, and...I fell in love with the characters (once again :D )
IT’S FINALLY DONE!!
I am so deeply proud of this. Especially page three.
Had to give Mal a stupid little cape like he has on the cover. And had to make them hold hands because It’s Pride Month.
Besides, she thought as she watched Wazzer drink, you only thought the world would be better if it was run by women if you didn't actually know many women. Or old women, at least. Take the whole thing about the dimity scarves. Women had to cover their hair on Fridays, but there was nothing about this in the Book, which was pretty dar--pretty damn rigorous about most things. It was done because it had always been done that way. And if you forgot, the old women got you. They could practically see through walls. [...]
Polly had forgotten her dimity scarf. She did wear it at home on Fridays, for no other reason than that it was easier than not doing so. She vowed that, if she ever got back, she'd never do it again.
Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment
yer tellin me that I just h a p p e n e d upon my favorite picrew artist because my boyfriend made me listen to an audio book about a fictional war for the entire two weeks I stayed with him
highly recommend the Black Ribbon vampires of Discworld
Jackrum's little lads
You know what, Maladict? That's... very thoughtful of you.
Bonus: why did you pick the one you did?
...Or tell me the options are wrong and [your write-in candidate] trounces both of them
Wait I'm genuinely surprised by the results! (Tumblr apparently doesn't let you view your own poll results before voting closes unless you vote in it, which I didn't do)
I really wasn't expecting it to be that close, and I didn't think Going Postal was going to win??? I truly believed that it was shaping up to be an absolute sweep by Monstrous Regiment...
observations, personal opinions, and discworld spoilers below the jump
Observations from the sideline: Although both books have their fans, the Monstrous Regiment fans really made an impression with their passion! The pro-MR commentary was thoughtful and persuasive. I saw folks saying that MR is more emotionally and thematically complex, and that there are more characters who are well-rounded. And of course, the queer rep in MR makes it special for readers as well.
Another idea I saw pop up a few times was the special place that one's first/introductory Discworld book holds in one's heart. Couple of people mentioned that factor in conjunction with Going Postal. I personally know someone whose first Discworld book was MR, and I have gifted MR to someone to try to hook them. (My first Disc book was sourcery btw and I was like 8 so I didn't understand... most of it. i'm pretty sure i got it in an airport???) People also commented that Going Postal is more "fun." It's lighter, it's more of a romp. This might make it more of an "easy sell" for trying to hook your friends into Discworld, but I'm sure it depends on your friends :)
One thing I love about GP is how the plot is resolved. That message on the clacks? The message from the dead--giving them not only a chance to be heard again, but a chance to strike back at the company that killed them--feels so right. And yet, it's fake. It's a lie. It's an unethical, unscrupulous lie, and it works. It's real, but it's fake--but it's real enough. It makes a difference and changes the world, at least the world of Clacks operators. By implication, "the dead" speak one more time, and they save lives by forcing a management change at the Trunk. This is the book that gave us the shorthand GNU. GNU Terry Pratchett. We're in on it, too. A man's not dead while his name's still spoken. Is that real? "It's what should have been true," so--maybe it's real enough to make it through the night.
Going back and forth--there are really good points to be made in favor of both books. Monstrous Regiment is a great book. Pratchett did an amazing job with it. There's so much meat on that bone. It's well-written, it's funny, it's heartfelt. The gender stuff is really interesting (I'm not doing Discworld and gender, but if I were it would be its own chapter at least). There's Igorina! The scene at the end with the Duchess and sending the soldiers home permanently changed part of my brain--but I don't know if it was as strong, in terms of character and theme, as GP's big scene.
Comparing MR to GP was, I realized after the poll was underway, comparing apples to oranges. The number of rounded characters is different, the plot complexity is different, the character of the story itself is different. It's a weirder comparison to make than I realized at first. But I really appreciate that people not only voted but also shared their thoughts. It was genuinely thought-provoking in a way I haven't gotten to enjoy in a long time :) So (if you read this far!) thank you for voting and sharing your thoughts!
Bonus: why did you pick the one you did?
...Or tell me the options are wrong and [your write-in candidate] trounces both of them
am i to understand correctly that they just invented some kind of compression of raster pictures
on discworld
during an interview
about something *entirely* else?
You fear tomorrow, and you've made your fear your god.
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heavily inspired by THIS post
IT’S FINALLY DONE!!
I am so deeply proud of this. Especially page three.
Had to give Mal a stupid little cape like he has on the cover. And had to make them hold hands because It’s Pride Month.
>I think he is a trans man, i ve read polish translation first sooo in polish version they also used "her" here, but every time after that scene they refere to him only in he/him pronouns
The picture on the left is from an American edition, the one on the right is from a British edition.
Given that American editions of Monstrous Regiment are slightly different from British ones, including Jackrum’s pronouns at the end of the scene where Jackrum and Polly have a talk in the kitchen, I’m curious what you think Jackrum is and which edition you read that led to that conclusion.
Feel free to answer or elaborate in the notes at any time!
Personally, I read an American edition first, and it threw me off when I read “Around her, the kitchen worked”. Initially, it didn’t even occur to me that “her” could refer to Jackrum, not after the conversation that just took place, so it “her” must mean Polly, right? But that seemed odd, given she was at the door rather than in the kitchen. It stuck in my mind because it seemed so odd, and I reread that paragraph several times to try to make sense of it before I realized (and accepted) that it was probably meant to refer to Jackrum. I didn’t believe that this was Terry’s doing, not after everything else that had happened in the book or with the dwarf women in other books, but how could the publishers have the gall to make this change?
because i ve seen a lot of people talking about starting discworld
REMEMBER THERE ARE FREE AUDIOBOOKS OF ALL OF THOSE BOOKS
here they are
It's *not* tearing your throats out that doesn’t come easily to me. Please don’t make it any harder.