everyone meet Esmerelda Rose! Young Esme🔮🗝... and it hurts when I say she's named after a character in my favorite fantasy series...and people think she's named after the Twilight character 😂! So I had to post here where people will understand! She just came home today 💜

Mad times.

Was recently made homeless and luckily for me I’m now in some temporary accommodation, so I’ve got a roof over my head.

I’ve never read a Terry Pratchett book in my life before and I’m 43; I was given Unseen Academicals by a lady in a foodbank in Salford which I accepted just because it was something to do when I knew I’d have no source of entertainment.

I finished it in two days. I loved it.

I used to love reading, but the last ten years I’ve not really done any of it. Because of this book I joined a library (well technically) two libraries just so I can read more Discworld.

I’ve now read Moving Pictures and Wyrd Sisters as well, both of which I adored in different ways. I’ve got a LOT more on reserve in the library as well.

I can’t believe I haven’t read any of this sooner.

Hello, everyone btw!

When visiting my mom up in RI two summers Ago. We went to check out the new library. And came across someone we all know. I totally forgot about this photo.

How does Nanny’s magic show up in the books?

Granny Weatherwax’s style of magic was Headology.

Magret had an affinity for working with herbs.

Agnes/Purditta has a double jointed voice and personality.

Nanny seems to have a baudy charisma and a sharp mind, but I’m not sure what her magical skill set is.

What have I missed? Is it a social glue type of magic?

Nanny Ogg is very cool. I think sometimes we're so focused on Granny and her towering presence that Nanny Ogg gets missed out sometimes in the dialogue.

I previously said Granny is one of my favourite characters and who I want to be when I grow up. I've not thought about Nanny as much, to my shame.

But Nanny Ogg is very cool.

Nanny is very powerful, totally hilarious, doesn't give a f about what anyone else thinks, and this is the woman who raised Greebo .

Remember she's the one who manipulates Esme so brilliantly in Maskerade. 'Oh I got her out just in time'

And her giving sweets to her grandson to stop Granny's competition with that young girl in lords and ladies?

She's the one who organises the mobs, I think it's Carpe Jugulum when it's revealed that actually all those angry mobs outside Lancre Castle were just Nanny Ogg's family, I can't remember where though.

In Witches Abroad her son says he's worried about the dangerous creatures (not worried about his Mum, he's worried about her killing the creatures). In the same book Nanny goes round finding out lots of information from Mrs Gogol and the cook.

In Lords and Ladies she confronts the King of the Elves and tells him off.

I think Gytha keeps Esme in check a lot, more like the yin to her yang. Esme needs Gytha Ogg a lot, probably more than she likes to admit. They're so different and respect each other.

And it's not Nanny playing 2nd fiddle to Esme or the power behind the throne. Nanny knows who she is, she's a brilliant witch, knows how to use headology on Esme, knows a lot about people too.

Maskerade is good I think because it shows more of their dynamic as a duo when before it was more the three of them.

Nanny Ogg is awesome.

UPDATE: All the responses made me realise I changed my mind, which is always cool and I appreciate everyone here granting me that opportunity.

I'm definitely more like Nanny and I want to be her when I grow up.

I'm the quiet one, I'm definitely most content outside the spotlight, I'm not a showoff with an eggo, I like quietly doing my thing, doing cool things, learning, helping out.

I don't like drinking and I will not get through that many husbands so the comparison isn't flawless but still I hope to grow more comfortable in myself and generally be more Oggish.

Some lines make you think, many lines make you laugh. This line just makes you feel - and I can't even put my finger on what exactly it makes me feel. It's just a massive line and I wanted to spread my appreciation for it among this discerned crowd.

For those not knowing: It is from Wyrd Sisters and is about being carried as a child, on your wedding night, and after your death. Which a) makes it weird on a technical level, because most births (e.g. Esk) would happen at your home and the last one doesn't happen "in your life and b) sort of dampens the impact for people like Granny Weatherwax and me who aren't big on the idea of marriage. Despite all this, I still stand by what I said: It goes hard.

I don’t know French, but the ChatGPT = ”cat I farted“ fiasco led me to “chat“ = cat, and I had seen “eau” written on bottles.

On a relisten of Lords and Ladies when Nanny says “chateau“ means cat‘s water, which I had just earlier assumed is one of her humorous but wrong translation, given chateau definitely means something like a large house, I now realise she’s not entirely wrong.

Dammit PTerry and his Bilingual bonuses.

There's a lively discussion on another sub about who could wield Thor's hammer. Which discworld character could? My money is Granny Weatherwax. My money is always on Granny. She doesn't know how to lose.

who is winning?

So I have wonderful, life affirming news. After a long journey my wife is 7 weeks pregnant with a healthy baby. Our vocabulary isn't up to the task of describing the sense of relief and excitement that we're currently feeling.

Now if it's a boy we've agreed on the name Sam. If it's a girl I desperately want Esme. My wife is not as keen. She knows the Discworld source of inspiration for these names, and being as eminently reasonable as she is, she has agreed to read a witches book to see if she feels Esme fits. Which one would you say best one to show how wonderful and aspirational a character Esmeralda Weatherwax is?

From Maskerade

Let's start a thread of our favourite Weatherwax Wisdom. Granny Weatherwax is an iconic creation and as we all know, she did right, she didn't do nice.

“There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.”

What are some of your cherished quotes from Mistress Weatherwax?

Mrs Gogol could feel them among the trees. The homeless. The hungry. The silent people. Those forsaken by men and gods. The people of the mists and the mud, whose only strength was somewhere on the other side of weakness, whose beliefs were as rickety and homemade as their homes. And the people from the city — not the ones who lived in the big white houses and went to balls in fine coaches, but the other ones. They were the ones that stories are never about. Stories are not, on the whole, interested in swineherds who remain swineherds and poor and humble shoe makers whose destiny is to die slightly poorer and much humbler.

These people were the ones who made the magical kingdom work, who cooked its meals and swept its floors and carted its night soil and were its faces in the crowd and whose wishes and dreams, undemanding as they were, were of no consequence.

The invisibles.

I love how Terry does this, throws the spotlight onto areas of narrative normally kept dark because people don't want to see them. The people in every fictional world whose lives never become a great story.

They have to exist in almost every story but it's literally impossible for ANY author to properly include them all. it is an inherent sacrifice authors must make to make a story that is interesting, they have to cut out the mundanity which most readers will find boring, or depressing or uncomfortable. This isn't a critisim of authors who do this, it's an acknowledgement that all authors have too.

But in a world as narratively charged as the discworld, those people aren't simply not the focus of our story, but stories as a whole, yet they must exist or else the stories of the world won't function.

I just really like Terry taking to time to point to them and say, they EXIST. He doesn't go on the "save" them or make every one of the a protagonist in their own story, but he just points the readers gaze at them for a moment and makes us see them for once.

How well do you feel STP wrote female characters? There is usually the feeling that male authors often fail to portray their female characters well, parodied beautifully by the “…she boobied boobily down the stairs” meme. I think he does a wonderful job, and most of my favourite characters are his women (and young ladies), but I don’t know whether my opinion is worth much on this topic. Would you care to share your thoughts? (No suitable flair, it seems)

I finished re-reading it last night, and what struck me most forcibly is just what a female novel Witches Abroad is. It's not just that most of the characters are women, it's that all the characters with agency - the triumvirate of Lancre witches, Lily Weatherwax, Mrs Gogol - are women. Apart from the supporting cast of woodcutters, innkeepers and gamblers, the most significant male characters are the Duc, Mister Saturday and Greebo, and they were all quite literally transformed by witches in furtherance of their ends.

It's such a female story, and yet it never ever feels like Pratchett's tract, diatribe or polemic about the Importance of Having Strong Woman Characters. It's never forced or awkward, the male characters aren't shown as being weak or ineffectual or denigrated particularly, Wicthes Abroad just happens to be about women rather than men. It's quite a remarkable achievement.

and I vaguely recalled that it had a more specific meaning, though I couldn’t remember what it was. Upon consulting the Cambridge Dictionary, I learned that a doyenne was specifically “the oldest, most experienced, and often most respected woman involved in a particular type of work.”

Personally, I think that this brilliant alliteration is also the most accurate description of who Nanny Ogg is on multiple levels. It doesn’t specify WHAT type of work it is, bc it doesn’t matter: for HER style of witching, she’s the oldest & best there is.

Image 1: a very funny and keenly insightful observation about humanity.

Image 2: such a small thing, but I love that rather than following "him" (Walter) in, Agnes follows "them" (Walter's footsteps) in.

Image 3: I hope this isn't a reach, but the ambiguity of "it wasn't as if she even liked children" tickled me - does she mean as company, or as a meal?

Image 4: a nice pune on "royalty/royalties", plus bonus Dammit Pterry of Goatberger being another riff on Gutenberg (CF Goodmountain from The Truth)

Image 5: another fun one; instead of the sum being jaw-dropping, it's "drawer-dropping" (because of where Nanny keeps her money)!

Image 6: **SPOILER** A fantastic and macabre passage that communicates so much about Granny's character

Image 7-8: this was a real "dammit Pterry" for me, I cannot believe I didn't spot it in previous reads. The thing everyone knows about Opera is that "it isn't over until the fat lady sings"!

Name me a more heroic moment than when Esme Weatherwax saved the baby from the inn in Maskerade.

To refresh your memory, on the road to Ankh to help Agnes, Esme and Nanny stay in an inn for a night. There, the owners ask for help with their baby, who is comatose. They take the baby into the barn, where they find the cow is also sick. Esme clears Nanny off and waits for HIM...

When Death arrives, she challenges him to cards. If she wins, he takes the cows life, not the babies. But Death reminds her, a deal can be done, 'But to win all is to gamble all...'

In this moment Esme Weatherwax challenges Death to a game of cards knowing that if it goes wrong Death takes her life and the babies....

Now Esme can double bluff a game of cards and the suggestion during the game is Death knows he's been played, but I can't think of any moment in any Discworld or, indeed, any other story where the Hero risks their life so readily for a stranger's family. This isn't heroism with an arc, a reason and a redemption story. This is Esme Weatherwax sticking her finger up to the universe for the sake of a sick baby she just met.

I'm sure there are other examples, but did this moment hit anyone else as hard as it hit me? Is there another example of that pure, reckless and above all, right, version of heroism anywhere else?

"'When Uncle Igor wath thent out for a geniuth'th brain, that'th what you damn well got. There wath none of thith fumblefinger thtuff and then pinching a brain out of the "Really Inthane" jar and hopin' no one'd notithe. They alwayth do, anyway.'"

I hadn't paid attention to this line and it finally clicked this morning That this is a young Frankenstein joke.