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Aphrodite/Eros

?? Which Of The Greek Gods Are You ??
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I don't know, it's only five questions but it's kind of sweet. Although it does apparently count Hercules as a greek god. Meh, whatever.

So I finished reading Monstrous Regiment yesterday (ha, while searching for that Amazon link I turned up this other book, which may well be the inspiration for the title...). It's an excellent read, though slightly disconcerting in that the central character is clearly based on

bacony.

I was a bit disappointed that everybody turned out to be female. I suppose Blouse wasn't, so it wasn't quite universal, but he just faded away when his part was done while everybody else got their "I@M A GRIRL TOO!!!1!" scene. Aside from anything else I'd been reading Jackrum's voice as Windsor Davies all the way through (though I had guessed, from his constant use of "I am not a XXX man" - I was just hoping all the date fudging in his record meant he was some kind of immortal, or an anthropomorphic personification of war, or the Duchess, or something, rather than just an old woman), and I'm not sure that any woman would be able to duplicate that ... I don't know, this is a world with active Gods and zombies and vampires, where Igors can perform motor neuron reattachment surgery with a needle and thread and sheer power of belief can move turkeys, so perhaps that particular aspect shouldn't be an issue. But from a narrative point of view ... everybody? I thought the point was "women are as good as men" rather than "women are better than men and they're everywhere look out!"

Perhaps that wasn't quite the point, though. Monstrous Regiment wasn't wholly about gender equality - Equal Rites is the place to go for that. This book was more about gender roles. How society forces you into a hole and your whole outlook can change just by changing your clothes. Part of it's about how society isn't divided into "men" and "women", not really. It's really divided into "people" and "women"... women are, in many ways, defined by the ways in which they are different from men. At least, that's how society subconsciously thinks, even in this enlightened age. It's like in those Saturday morning cartoons, where each character would have a defining feature, like "I'm sporty" or "I'm black", and one of them would be I'm female. Maybe that's why the Trolls, Vampires and Igors all had to be female, for the story to work... being a girl isn't all that you are, in the same way that being a sergeant or being a vampire isn't the whole of your being.

Or something.

Anyway. On a related subject, I didn't think the Watch characters were too clumsily inserted - it has been established that Vimes gets sent off on these things, and he didn't take the whole cast with him. The reporters from the Times were very logical and quite necessary to the story, though it wouldn't have hurt to have created a local reporter instead of sending deWorde himself out.

Also sad to see the Times have changed their business cards, even if they still haven't got the spelling right. I always liked "The Truth Shall Make Ye Fret".

Overall: Good read.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

One of the reasons I love Pratchett's writing is the layers.

William de Worde is a great name for a reporter - William riffs on Shakespeare, and de Worde? William of the Word? Like Jones the Steam or John the Smith, it's a surname that could easily evolve.

Then I went walking down Fleet Street and I found a little blue plaque on one of the pubs there, dedicated to Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton's apprentice and successor, who was the first publisher to establish a print shop there.

Beautiful. Doesn't matter if you don't know that - de Worde is a great surname for a journalist. But if you do, it's a lovely in-joke.

Especially because "though not skilful as a printer, de Worde was not idle" - the continual spelling mistakes in the Times motto suddenly make sense.

http://www.bartleby.com/212/1315.html

I can't really comment apart from to agree with you, as I'm trying not to read any of the spoilers on the post above, and to be awed anew by the man's careful attention to detail. And I was pleased when I finally "got" "Vetinari"

I do wonder how many of the layers are deliberate, and how many of them are due to the fact that Prattchett is a fact magpie, and devours detail when he's not writing.

But then a writer who doesn't like research should really get another job.

There is always more to it than meets the eye, isn't there? Like the title of the book ... I knew there would be more to it than the few throwaway lines from de Worde that revealed the enemy considered them to be monstrous, and now I get it. :)

Thanks for filling me in on de Worde, too. That's another one that I always suspected had a punchline somewhere.

Hercules is deified after his death in the Nessus-shirt incident, becoming "God of Strength" although the books I read as a kid were fairly confident he was a "demi-god" due to his half-human nature.

Aha ... I don't know anything about the shirt-incident you mention. Was it like the Disney movie? That was cool.

Geek attack, but the 1st Edition AD+D DMs Guide had a magic item called a cloak of poison (IIRC).

If you looked inside it, there was a label pronouncing to have been made by the Nessus Clothing Company.

I will send spiders to eat your eye-sockets clean.

Yaaaaay!

I do find Prattchetts strong female characters a bit samey. The girl in Monstrous Regiment is striklingly similar to Susan and The girl from Wee Free Men, and all of them remind me of Bacony.

Wonder if there is a correlation between readers of Pratchett books and Bacons' number of stalkers.

Hmm, random coincidental statistics, the best kind :-)

I came out as Hercules, who, as you rightly pointed out, is not a god or goddess; he's a demi-god. A demi-god I have nothing in common with:

Hercules

(http://quizilla.com/users/truly-dippy/quizzes/%3F%3F%20Which%20Of%20The%20Greek%20Gods%20Are%20You%20%3F%3F/)

I think it based it entirely on the first question where I picked "strong" as the most appealing word but to me "strong" doesn't just mean in a physical way but mostly in a mental and emotional way.
I think the quiz is poor but it is sweet that you're the god/goddess of lurve.

I picked Strong too. And I think you make a darling Hercules. :)

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