Yeah, like the bird.

Look at us go!

GNU Terry Pratchett.

“He never forgot. He just put the memories away, like old silverware that you didn’t want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart.” ― Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

IN A DISTANT and second-hand set of dimensions, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part . . .

See . . .

"GNU Sir Terry Pratchett" - L-Space Wiki / Ursula K. LeGuin / "Terry Pratchett" - Wikipedia / "GNU" - Urban Dictionary / Going Postal by Terry Pratchett / Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett / Brandon Sanderson / Paul Kidby / The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett

Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably Priced Love and a Hard-Boiled Egg!

Night Watch, Sam Vimes learning important lessons about being a good man and a good copper

he definitely fucks but there’s no way he fucks normal

Hot take:

Futuristic fantasy stories that DON’T quantify and rationalize magic to some measurable degree (midichlorians, aura, power levels) are actually Badly Written because, and hear me out: people quantify everything. Calories, acidity, solubility, decibels, milliliters, the Scoville scale tells you how hot a pepper is. Ancient fantasies, myths, and post-apocalyptic stories can get away with vague rules because they don’t know how to close an electrical circuit so they can light a room, let alone measure radiation wavelength. If you want me to buy that your civilization has been practicing magic for ten thousand years in a flourishing empire with magic academies, there had better be a thermometer they can stick in your mouth to see how many magic points you are putting out right now.

Yeah, that’s a great point! Magic users will consider magic scientific on some level, with rules and expectations (most magic users, at any rate). Even if it sounds bonkers to our understanding of the world, they would have some way of explaining it all. Especially when there’s technology there too.

If you can explain how you’ve harnessed tame lightning to brighten your house at night, and use contained explosions to move your horseless carriage, then you’ll certainly have whole textbooks full of charts on the genetic factors involved in telekinesis and telepathy.

(Side note: the first time I read about ley lines was in a Mercedes Lackey book that compared natural magic to the water cycle, with rivers and lakes, and I was impressed forever. I’d love to see more of that.)

Also, though, the fact that modern people WANT to quantify something doesn’t mean we’ll quantify it CORRECTLY. They measure calories in labs by burning food and seeing how much heat they get out of it. It has nothing to do with the chemical process in your cells wherein food is converted to energy, so it’s … pretty useless for measuring what people think it does.

counter argument: i was a welder for seven years and as far as i am concerned electricity is a loud blue magic juice that comes out of metal boxes and sometimes sets you on fire.

like, all the scientific knowledge in the world can’t make a dent in a guy who just wants to his job good enough not to get yelled at and then go back to bed.

right, and i think that right there is the difference between “stuff you, as a writer, should consider for worldbuilding” and “stuff that may actually make it onto the page because the POV character(s) give a shit about it”. knowing that it’s a human tendency to quantify everything is useful when considering how a culture behaves toward magic. knowing that it’s also a human tendency to differ in our individual attitudes toward things despite general cultural trends is useful when considering how a character behaves toward magic.

i am a big doofus,,,,,,,a dumb goober,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,my whole life ive been drawing on a 72ppi 1000px by 1500px canvas and wondered why them brushes from pro industry artists dont work as they should, you absolute clown you need the 300ppi

anyway heres a vimes discworld as a kolesov's brushes test (and a test to paint with warm shadows and cool lights)

i still feel so silly

The older I get, and the more on fire the world seems to be the more I feel comforted and SEEN by Sir Terry Pratchett and Discworld.

Not because all the books are inherently comfortable so much as because they feel like someone taking you by the hand and saying; “I know. I’m just as angry about this bullshit. But we can hold hands. But the sun still rises. But hope is still important. Hope wears steel toed boots and smiles with pink and bloody teeth and will make you laugh and will make you cry. It’s not okay. But we’re in the shit together, and some day it’s gonna be less shit.”

This got away from me.

What I’m saying is, I’ve got a shovel.

I don’t know how anyone could say Terry Pratchett only made Cheery trans on accident. This man was out here writing about how gender identity and gender expression are two different things, making a point to show that Cheery does not have to perform femininity for her gender and pronouns to be respected, and he wrote all that in the year 2000.

Cheery is a woman. When she is surrounded by people who refuse to accept that, she feels pressured to look as girly as possible to stand up for herself and others like her. When she is surrounded by people who accept her, she may or may not feel in the mood for certain looks on certain days. She was able to stop being the Symbol For Gender Freedom In Ankh Morpork because she no longer had to prove that was worth fighting for. And she is still a girl when she wears pants. And she is treated as one.

Buying an object from a pagan/witchy store on Etsy because I like the aesthetic:

The handwritten note that reeks of sage inside of the package: May this magik ritual bowl bless your altar and bring a higher vibration of frequency to your work 🙏🔮

Me, immediately throwing my desk clutter into it:

The thing is, they're not wrong. Organizing the clutter on my desk really did improve the vibes of my work desk. Just maybe not in the way they intended.

#i’m so sorry but this is discworld witches#this is nanny ogg using a gift magrat gave her#and then the narration noting that despite magrat’s frustration and disappointment it did do the job#what’s the one bit from witches abroad#the common kitchen breadknife was better than the most ornate of magical knives#it could do all that the magical knife could do#plus you could also use it to cut bread#this is that turned inside out#(again i’m SO sorry i am the way that i am)#discworld

Please don't apologize for Discworld posting on my posts.

Discworld witchcraft is almost exactly how I view my own practice. Either everything is magical and divine or nothing is. It's all about how you view it.

Hogwarts houses are out. Unseen University disciplines are in. Choose your side

Y'ALL

i live in the most haunted house in the northern hemisphere because i keep buying cursed dolls and cracking them open like pistachios to release the ghosts inside em. see i've got this business idea and it's to unethically harvest their ectoplasm and sell it in little jars like honey. unfortunately i've hit a snag, namely that ectoplasm tastes like shit and also if you ingest it you permanently lose the capacity to feel joy. so now i've got a bunch of unsatisfied customers who are literally impossible to please banging on my door at all hours. it doesn't really matter though because the ghosts are already constantly slamming all my doors and cabinets so it's just a wall of sound in here at all times anyway. i'm pretty sure i've got tinnitus now but on the upside i've got this new business idea where i repair old dolls with kintsugi and sell them at a ridiculous markup to etsy women in cuffed corduroy pants.