It's So Nice To See Him Like This, Just A Little Guy.

something's wrong with my copy of Slay the Princess

I redownloaded Twitter.

Thank you to everyone who got me to 50 likes!

It ain't much, but it... yeah, I'll probably do something for 100. Thanks anyway, this is pretty cool.

Got to reblog the duck.

Mine was The Colour of Magic because it was one we had and was the first published, and I thought I should start at the start.

Sometimes I wonder if these books are, as a collective series, some kind of eldritch abomination with a mind of their own.

Silly idea, really, because it's so obviously true. Books are magical, even if they don't look it. You can tell because looking at them makes people do and feel and see all sorts, conjuring mental images through the refractive lens of the mind's eye or giving them the desire to make things or even convince people they can make things they can't yet but given a page or two more and suddenly the whole universe is opened up and, despite having only looked at some arbitrary symbols on a thin wavy tree sliver, suddenly they can.

This is 1:50 in the morning. No idea if I'm lucid or mad. Probably a mix of both and some fatigue for seasoning. Good morrow.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, you do not decide which discworld book you're going to read first, the universe does. It's whichever one accidentally makes its way into your immediate vicinity, whichever one is the only one on the shelf at the library when you were actually looking for something else. It will find you when it's Time, it has something to do with wossname... quantum

Havelock Vetinari is literature's most dangerous tyrant.

Astute, learned, and wickedly clever, there are no ends the man will not go to in achieving his goals. There is no one he will not manipulate, no one too important to remove by a variety of means, and no one so powerful as to threaten his position.

And this applies, most importantly of all, to himself. Who watches the Watch, after all?

But Vetinari is literature's most dangerous tyrant because he is at once, yes, a tyrant, but ALSO literature's most dedicated civil servant.

He cares for the city. And ONLY for the city. It is from this position of being the man who truly only cares for Ahnk Morpork that he derives his authority. After all, who cares as much as he does?

Vimes? Perhaps, but he's a married man and a father with private concerns that should take his attention as well (even if Vetinari has to constantly remind him of that fact). He has other things to worry about, but good job that man for sticking to his lane: a sledgehammer sized scalpel for repelling threats and keeping the peace.

Carrot? Certainly, but Carrot cares more for the PEOPLE than the CITY. His mind is on the present, keeping the ones who are alive upright and breathing and getting justice for those tragically cut short. He is not concerned with the welfare of the CITY, as such. Not with the future the next generation shall inherit.

The guilds? Self-interested fools who were happy to take what Havelock gave them: stability and a piece of the pie no sane person would eat. They are content to squabble over portions of nebulous power, and all of them recognize that if Vetinari were gone... well, it doesn't much bear thinking about, really.

The nobles? Self-interested fools who are UNhappy with what Vetinari has given them: a slow walk to total obscurity and an eternal life in the back catalogues of Twerp's Peerage. Besides, they tend to only be effective when they can convince others to foolishly do their bidding, and the market for such men has seen a suspicious dearth in supply as late.

The wizards? Certainly not. Tried that before, thank you, and everyone seems much happier when gravity remains consistent and no one randomly becomes newts. Let them remain in their university, fat, happy, and most definitely NOT doing any bloody magic.

Lipwig? Maybe. In time. If he is convinced that it is in his own self-interest and things remain... interesting. But he also has Spike and the Bank and the Post Office, and a man can only juggle so much before suddenly there's a chainsaw in the front row and an awful lot of screaming. Best to keep him in practice of course, but... no. Not yet.

Vetinari uses all of them. They are tools in his box as he tunes and fixes and cares for the Disc's greatest city. The Turtle moves, but so does the Patrician, and it is a close contest on who shifts greater mountains. It is easy to imagine more than a few of the gods on Cori Celeste are keeping an eye on him and wondering what he's up to.

Except for the smart ones. They are doubtlessly taking notes.

Quick question for the Dr Who fandom here, but I need to give context.

I'm making 3 polymer clay daleks (2005 design). 1 is almost done, another will also be a drone. But I'd like a Supreme to boss them around and I'm stuck on colours.

So I'm asking Tumblr to know: which Dalek Supreme / other leader rank has the best colours?

Classic black:

Revival red:

Purple time controller:

New Paradigm white:

Please note that this is likely just the colours I will use. The time controller would likely get rings, the red version would probably get the butresses and both all versions would be rocking the modern eyes and standard lights but besides that, I'll just be adding colours to the 2005 drone.

Once again losing my shit over the body swap. What do you mean Crowley sees Aziraphale as brave and kind and forgiving to the end. What do you mean Aziraphale sees Crowley as suave and silly and confident. They make me sick.

Amazing analysis.

I think the voice of the cold intrests me as a character so much because he's such a real and visceral response to their circumstances. Which is true for all the voices and each is intriguing to dig into in a different way, but this post is about cold the others will get their turn (probably)

Imagine with me, for a second, you've only just learned what it means to exist and you've already been discarded.

You've done everything you were told without question. This is your purposes and you were promised Good at the end of it and you do it and you do it well. Your guide, and authority figure you should be able to trust who is seemingly so much more experienced in this world than you even seems happy with you. You must be doing it right

Then you're abandoned. The only Good for you is an eternity of nothing. The only way you can be Good is to hurt others and to not exist at all.

Wouldn't that leave you empty? Hurt, clawing for something, anything to fill that void. You had Purpose and it turned out to mean nothing, you had a vague promise of Good and it turned out to be nothing.

You can't be Good, can't fulfil that Purpose when all of it means nothing, when you've been lied to and led to be locked in a box for the rest of time. And rather than feel that hurt, you claw it out of yourself with your own two hands, and the same implement you'd used to fulfil your Purpose.

All he wants is that Good he was promised, and to him that's the opposite of that box. It's the opposite of Nothing. It doesn't matter if it hurts him, if it hurts somebody else, if it feels good or feels bad, he just craves something that will make him feel. That will make everything worth it in the end, that will free him from the monotony and inherent stagnation of the situation he's in. What use does he have for morality in pursuit of this? What use is morality in this situation anyway? Where everything is being presented with such grand consequences, where everything is both right and wrong, where these consequences never seem to quite stick for him regardless? So he simply encourages action, in whatever form that may take.

Because it's so much more intresting if it's an active choice. Something is always better than that empty cabin surrounded by nothingness all around he's subconsciously running from. Because cold is most aware of their godly nature, and so is most aware of whats always missing no matter what they do. Who tries to fill that emptiness, first with Purpose then with Action.

For a voice that claims to feel nothing at all a lot of his drive is purely emotional. He wants to be intrested, he wants to be engaged, he wants to feel something even if it hurts. He wants to feel connection to this body the same way the other voices do, and yet criticises them for feeling in that way.

At the core of it all, he wants back what he's lost. And by his very nature he cannot have it.

This is it, the best news story (from BBC news):