Terry Pratchett knows how to fill a moment with emotion.

Earnest, fervent, sincere emotion. Joy, humor, horror, sadness, all of them at once. Terrible, terrible things happen to the characters in his books, and yet they’re funny to the point that I think they’re mostly branded as comedy.

At the same time, I can easily see most of his books being recreated as horror stories. God, I would love to look more at the ways he creates terrifying situations.

And even during those horrifying moments, he still manages to work in a joke, and you want to laugh as you frantically turn the next page to see if the protagonist makes it out alive. I have no doubt that he might kill off a main character moments after poking fun at their name, and both moments would come across as entirely sincere.

Specifically I want to bring up an example I just came across. I’ve been going through his books in chronological order and I just got to Going Postal (spoilers ahead) and I can see why so many people have this book as their favorite.

Our main character, Moist, has been unwillingly appointed Postmaster, and the old Post Office is filled with decades of undelivered mail. It’s revealed to him, over the course of a few chapters, that the undelivered mail speaks to people, and the collective spirits of those hundreds of thousands of undelivered letters are restless and angry and trapped.

I’d like to make a note that I think this is the first time Pratchett has used magic in this particular way. Discworld has the Magic-Themed books, and the Not Magic books, and while there are occasional overlaps, for the most part Magic is used as a foil and satire for classic magical stories, or as a way for Wizards and Witches to tell their stories. Theclosest I can remember Magic happening to this is in Moving Pictures, where the Holly Wood spirit escapes into Discworld and infects the people there to start making movies, and this mostly subtle and seems a way for Pratchett to make a note of how insane it is for us to treat movies and actors and the whole business of making them in the way we do.

I’m actually rather pleased that he chose The Mail to be something that is just… magic. Unexplained, powerful, something that makes sense and yet doesn’t. Maybe that will change as I get further in the book.

To the moment I’m thinking of. Moist has just been declared Postmaster, and now he’s confronted, in the dark, by the spirits of the mail. They ask him if he will do his job, if he will move the mail again. He says that he isn’t worthy, and the mail says that they just need someone, anyone who will help them.

So Moist says he will. He will do it.

Then the mail, all the hundreds of thousands of unsent letters, say

Deliver Us

And this is what I’m talking about. This is a climatic moment, a moment where Moist is making big changes in his life, in what he is deciding to do. You can feel the desperation of the mail to be sent to their destinations, to be freed from this stagnant hell.

Deliver Us

It’s a pun, you see. Because you deliver mail. It gets delivered. A joke, in the middle of this important moment. It’s a pun and an order, to do his job, to let them fulfill their purpose.

And at the same time, it’s a plea. A desperate, angry plea to be set free and given life again, a plea that someone, even someone like Moist, will be their savior and deliver them from their endless purgatory.

Deliver Us

This is what I love about Terry Pratchett.

the christian concepts of repentance and sin are genuine soul poison

wow i wonder if perhaps there is some fundamental difference in the role that christianity and judaism have played in world history vis-a-vis the religions adopted and perpetuated and therefore shaped by the forces of global imperialism, or some kind of history of cultural perception of judaism, that would make a blanket condemnation of judaism raise red flags in the way a blanket condemnation of christianity doesn't. much to think about

I see posts go by periodically about how modern audiences are impatient or unwilling to trust the creator. And I agree that that's true. What the posts almost never mention, though, is that this didn't happen in a vacuum. Audiences have had their patience and trust beaten out of them by the popular media of the past few decades.

J J Abrams is famous for making stories that raise questions he never figures out how to answer. He's also the guy with some weird story about a present he never opened and how that's better than presents you open--failing to see that there's a difference between choosing not to open a present and being forbidden from opening one.

You've got lengthy media franchises where installments undo character development or satisfying resolutions from previous installments. Worse, there are media franchises with "trilogies" that are weird slap fights between the makers of each installment.

You've got wildly popular TV shows that end so poorly and unsatisfyingly that no one speaks of them again.

On top of that, a lot of the media actively punishes people for engaging thoughtfully with it. Creators panic and change their stories if the audience properly reacts to foreshadowing. Emotional parts of storytelling are trampled by jokes. Shocking the audience has become the go to, rather than providing a solid story.

Of course audiences have gotten cynical and untrusting! Of course they're unwilling to form their own expectations of what's coming! Of course they make the worst assumptions based on what's in front of them! The media they've been consuming has trained them well.

i dont agree with a lot of the posturing against people who only watch kid's cartoons because it feels mean-spirited. like if you want to do that it's cool and i don't think you're committing some moral or intellectual sin--but it is very silly when people who do this forget that they're watching cartoons for children, not in a 'you can't expect children's media to be good' way or even a 'the politics of children's media aren't worth analyzing way' but in a 'you have to be realistic about genre expectations' way. because that's how you end up with arguments over whether steven universe should have killed people or not

#children's media often has 'violence is bad' messaging in it that would be obnoxious in media for adults#this is bcos many little kids do need to be told not to bite their siblings (via @penny-anna​)

“ianthe has a secret plan” ok yeah probably but it’s funnier for me to imagine she fulfilled all her dark machinations by becoming a lyctor, and is now just desperately scrambling from book to book trying to stop everyone from blowing up the solar system and ruining it for her

just saw a job listing that requires a masters degree in accounting and they want to pay $14/hour. good luck with that

i told my girlfriend about this and she said "they do know those guys can do math, right?"

As a European, I knew Americans have been asking for walkable cities but i had no idea it was literally this hostile

WHERE DO YOU WALK YOUR DOGS!?!

lol yeah

I love those things that are like "fma if edward had a gun" because like. they did give him a gun. like I get the point, but they very much did give him a gun and he did not use it.

Drew this little griddlehark comic while going through something and I thought I’d share it:)

If you see those pamphlets that Christian’s leave around to evangelize, especially if they’re the ones that look like dollar bills, rip them up and throw them in the trash. It’s a mitzvah