Discworld: Difference between revisions

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# ''[[Monstrous Regiment]]'' (2003 - standalone/The City Watch cameo, Uberwald)
# ''[[Going Postal (Discworld)|Going Postal]]'' (2004 - Moist von Lipwig)
# ''[[Thud!]]'' (2005 - The City Watch)
# ''[[Making Money]]'' (2007 - Moist von Lipwig)
# ''[[Unseen Academicals]]'' (October 2009 - Wizards and new characters)
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'''Children's books:'''
* ''[[Where's My Cow?]]'' (2005 - The City Watch; tie-in with ''[[Thud!]]'')
* ''[[The World of Poo]]'' (2012 - tie in with ''[[Snuff]]'')
 
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* [[Bad Guy Bar]]: The Mended Drum (originally the "Broken Drum", you can't beat it).
** Also, 'Biers', the bar for the differently-alive including vampires, zombies, werewolves, bogie-men, ghouls and various others too weird to fit in anywhere else. Also Mrs Gammage: nearly blind old woman who no-one has the heart to tell her the bar is no longer the Crown and Axe.
* [[Battle Butler]]: Quite literally, with Sam Vimes' butler Willikins. Both in the sense that he temporarily leaves the household for military service in ''[[Jingo]]'' (and proved quite ferocious as a sergeant, both in and out of battle), and in ''[[Thud!]]'' he turns up as a Special Constable, and {{spoiler|takes down two of the three Dwarf assassins without thinking about it, despite the fact that they surprised him by coming directly through the wall}}. Sam thinks how comforting it is at times like that to have a butler who can throw a common fish knife so hard it is extremely difficult to remove from the wall. He's also glad that the different street gangs they were in as kids had a treaty, so he never had to face Willikins in a rumble.
{{quote|Willikins: A cap with sharpened pennies sewn to the brim.
Vimes: You could take an eye out with that!
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{{quote|A bolt of lighting lanced through the clouds and hit Dorfl's helmet. There was a sheet of flame and then a trickling noise. Dorfl's molten armor formed puddles around his white-hot feet.
"I Don't Call That Much Of An Argument" }}
* [[Brainless Beauty]]: [[Moving Pictures|Laddie]], [[Maskerade|Christine]], [[Thud!|Tawneee]] and [[Unseen Academicals|Juliet]]. Perhaps surprisingly, with the slight exception of Christine, they are portrayed sympathetically as good natured innocents.
* [[Brawn Hilda]]: Vimes' wife in ''[[The Fifth Elephant]]''; the [[Valkyries|valkyrie]] in ''[[Soul Music (novel)|Soul Music]]''. To a lesser extent, Agnes Nitt in ''[[Maskerade]]''
** Vimes' wife right from her first appearance in Guards! Guards! In that one, some Palace Guards come to take her to be eaten by the dragon. She takes exception to being dragged off by a load of guards...with a broadsword. It doesn't work out for her, but two of her pets (Sam Vimes and a most peculiar young male swamp dragon) rescue her later on.
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*** The problem, it is revealed, is in STEERING the damn things. They tend to start out with random viewing coordinates, so it's very hard to see anything in particular with them. Most of them end up being used as shaving mirrors because almost everywhere they might look is effectively featureless space.
** Also from the Science of Discworld books, Hex is able to treat our entire universe as one of these. Fast fowarding, or rewinding to see specific spots in human history (our universe canonically exists in a snowglobe on a shelf in the Unseen University, a wobbly shelf).
* [[Cerebus Rollercoaster]]: The series has gotten darker and more mature over the years, all without quite losing its sense of humor. And yes, Pratchett even plays with this trope, contrasting the dark ''[[Monstrous Regiment]]'' with the moderately lighthearted ''[[Going Postal (Discworld)|Going Postal]]'' followed by the dark ''[[Thud!]]'' followed by the moderately lighthearted ''[[Making Money]]'' followed by the even more lighthearted ''[[Unseen Academicals]]'' followed by the pitch black ''[[I Shall Wear Midnight]]''...
* [[Chalk Outline]]: Invoked rarely, and only for laughs. For example, the Ankh is the only river in the world you can draw a chalk outline on. Also, one of the previous postmasters spied into the sorting machine, and [[Nightmare Fuel|his outline was all over the sorting office]].
** In ''The Truth'' The probably human Corporal Nobbs drew a chalk outline of a victim, which is all fine and normal for a copper, except he did it in colored chalk, and felt the need to add a pipe and draw some clouds and flowers.
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* [[Eat Dirt Cheap]]: Trolls eat rocks.
* [[Element Number Five]]: Surprise.
* [[Eternal Hero]]: Parodied in ''[[The Last Continent]]'', where Death speculates that Rincewind is a counterbalance to this, the "Coward with a thousand retreating backs". Discworld also gives us another parody, the octogenarian warrior-hero Cohen the Barbarian, who "[[Badass Grandpa|has a lifetime's experience of not dying]]". Discworld also plays the trope straight with [[Badass Grandpa]] Lu-Tze, who's a 900-year-old member of a monastic [[Time Police]]. Also perhaps Sam Vimes since ''[[Thud!]]'': his possession by the [[Eldritch Abomination|Summoning Dark]] and his resulting special abilities seem to be turning him into an eternal policeman, which can be seen in ''[[Snuff]]''.
** Cohen and his henchmen ''do'' fit the trope. At the end of ''[[The Last Hero]]'', they suffer a huge explosion that should've killed them. But Death doesn't come for them. Why? Because of this trope.
*** Death, in a manner of speaking, comes for them all right, in the form of a crew of Valkyries. Whom they promptly horsejack and proceed to ride off to further adventures.
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** Wee Mad Arthur (in ''[[Feet of Clay (novel)|Feet of Clay]]''). He will ''not'' join the rat-catcher's guild, or pay their dues, and he will tell you that by ''breaking your kneecaps''. It should be mentioned that Wee Mad Arthur is a gnome, and therefore, eight inches high.
* [[Mundane Utility]]: Wizards. All the time. It goes hand in hand with their disdain for work.
* [[National Weapon]]: Dwarfs consider their battleaxes cultural artifacts, and will not part with them even when circumstances require them to bequeath all other weapons (at a diplomatic function, for instance). In ''[[Thud!]]'', we are introduced to a more liberal sect of dwarfs who do not carry them, believing that the axe is "a state of mind".
** We also get to meet some of the Low King's most elite soldiers. While some soldiers bristle with weapons, they bristle with one weapon.
* [[Never Mess with Granny]]: It can be safely said that Terry likes his women strong. For every three women introduced in this vast series, two and a half are old ladies (whether little or otherwise) that can stop a running bull, and the rest are just like them, but younger. Of particular note are Granny Weatherwax, who put a demon in his place with a few threats, and Mrs. Cake (a medium, bordering on small), whom High Priest Ridcully compares to the things from the Dungeon Dimensions.
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** Vimes describes [[Our Trolls Are Different|Detritus]] as this in ''[[Feet of Clay (novel)|Feet of Clay]]'', almost word for word.
** Brought up in ''[[Making Money]]'' when Vimes sends troll guards to the bank. Moist comments that they're not too smart, but you can't talk them over to your side either.
** Also Fred Colon, acting in his role as cell warden. He's stupid, but he's not an idiot. He keeps the keys in a tin box in the bottom drawer of his desk. He also ends up wandering into investigating the key to one of the mysteries in ''[[Thud!]]''.
*** Due to this Colon is one of the few people Lord Vetinari finds hard to deal with, because he is so used to dealing with people who treat words as a form of warfare that virtually ''everything'' he says carries multiple connotations, implications, innuendo, traps and suggestions. All of which reach escape velocity over Colon's head, making him nigh invulnerable to being played, tricked, warned or helped.
* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: