#This is Rosy. I'm a little in the system. For a bit of context... why this post might be out of character. I'm having a hard time rn

[krowbby]

Hogfather footnotes poll, Part 2!

Since it's Hogswatch season, I'm back with another footnote poll! Hogfather has a ton of footnotes, so this has to be split into 2 parts :P Part 1 linked here!

Full text of each footnote plus a little context for each is below the readmore so this post isn't a mile long. Enjoy!

There had been people dressed up as pixies, and a picket outside the shop by the Campaign for Equal Heights.* *The CEH was always ready to fight for the rights of the differently tall, and was not put off by the fact that most pixies and gnomes weren’t the least interested in dressing up in little pointy hats with bells on when there were other far more interesting things to do. All that tinklywee stuff was for the old folks back home in the forest—when a tiny man hit Ankh-Morpork he preferred to get drunk, kick some serious ankle and search for tiny women. In fact the CEH now had to spend so much time explaining to people that they hadn’t got enough rights that they barely had any time left to fight for them.

Wizards didn’t go to bed early in any case,* *Often they lived to a time scale to suit themselves. Many of the senior ones, of course, lived entirely in the past, but several were like the Professor of Anthropics, who had invented an entire temporal system based on the belief that all the other ones were a mere illusion. Many people are aware of the Weak and Strong Anthropic Principles. The Weak One says, basically, that it was jolly amazing of the universe to be constructed in such a way that humans could evolve to a point where they make a living in, for example, universities, while the Strong One says that, on the contrary, the whole point of the universe was that humans should not only work in universities but also write for huge sums books with words like “Cosmic” and “Chaos” in the titles. †The UU Professor of Anthropics had developed the Special and Inevitable Anthropic Principle, which was that the entire reason for the existence of the universe was the eventual evolution of the UU Professor of Anthropics. But this was only a formal statement of the theory which absolutely everyone, with only some minor details of a “Fill in name here” nature, secretly believes to be true. †And they are correct. The universe clearly operates for the benefit of humanity. This can be readily seen from the convenient way the sun comes up in the morning, when people are ready to start the day.

[...] although no one now knows why, or why an extant bequest pays for one small currant bun and one copper penny to be places on a high stone shield on one wall every second Wednesday.* * The ceremony still carries on, of course. If you left off traditions because you didn’t know why they started you’d be no better than a foreigner. 

What Ponder was worried about was the fear that he was simply engaged in a cargo cult. He’d read about them. Ignorant* and credulous† people, whose island might once have been visited by some itinerant merchant vessel that traded pearls and coconuts for such fruits of civilization as glass beads, mirrors, exes, and sexual diseases, would later make big model ships out of bamboo in the hope of once again attracting this magical cargo. *Ignorant: a state of not knowing what a pronoun is, or how to find the square root of 27.4, and merely knowing childish and useless things like which of the seventy almost identical-looking species of the purple sea snake are the deadly ones, how to treat the poisonous pith of the Sagosago tree to make a nourishing gruel, how to foretell the weather by the movements of the tree-climbing Burglar Crab, how to navigate across a thousand miles of featureless ocean by means of a piece of string and a small clay model of your grandfather, how to get essential vitamins from the liver of the ferocious Ice Bear, and other such trivial matters. It’s a strange thing that when everyone becomes educated, everyone knows about the pronoun but no one knows about the Sago-sago. †Credulous: having views about the world, the universe and humanity’s place in it that are shared only by very unsophisticated people and the most intelligent and advanced mathematicians and physicists.

[...] and there’s this museum I read about where they found a pocket calculator under the altar of this ancient temple, you know what I’m saying? but the government hushed it up…* *It’s amazing how good governments are, given their track record in almost every other field, at hushing up things like alien encounters. One reason may be that the aliens themselves are too embarrassed to talk about it. It’s not known why most of the space-going races of the universe want to undertake rummaging in Earthling underwear as a prelude to formal contact. But representatives of several hundred races have taken to hanging out, unsuspected by one another, in rural corners of the planet and, as a result of this, keep on abducting other would-be abductees. Some have been in fact abducted while waiting to carry out an abduction on a couple of other aliens trying to abduct the aliens who were, as a result of misunderstood instructions, trying to form cattle into circles and mutilate crops. The planet Earth is now banned to all alien races until they can compare notes and find out how many, if any, real humans they have actually got. It is gloomily suspected that there is only one—who is big, hairy and has very large feet. The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.

The singers were halfway down Park Lane now, and halfway through “The Red Rosy Hen” in marvelous harmony.* *“The red rosy hen greets the dawn of the day.” In fact the hen is not the bird traditionally associated with heralding a new sunrise, but Mrs. Huggs, while collecting many old folk songs for posterity, has taken care to rewrite them where necessary to avoid, as she put it, “offending those of a refined disposition with unwarranted coarseness.” Much to her surprise, people often couldn’t spot the unwarranted coarseness until it had been pointed out to them. Sometimes a chicken is nothing but a bird.

I’m waiting for the Hogfather, thought Ponder Stibbons. I’m in the dark waiting for the Hogfather. Me. A believer in Natural Philosophy. I can find the square root of 27.4 in my head.* *He’d have to admit that the answer would be “five and a bit,” but at least he could come up with it. 

He’d always promised their mother that he’d look after Banjo,* *It had been Ma Lilywhite’s dying wish, although she hadn’t known it at the time. Her last words to her son were “You try and get to the horses, I’ll try to hold ‘em off on the stairs, and if anything happens to me, take care of the dummy!”

Wizards know when they are going to die.* *They generally know in time to have their best robe cleaned, do some serious damage to the wine cellar and have a really good last mea. It’s a nicer version of Death Row, with the bonus of no lawyers.

The Senior Wrangler hummed cheerfully to himself as he ran a comb through his beard for the second time and liberally sprinkled it with what would turn out to be a preparation of weasel extract for demon removal rather than, as he had assumed, a pleasant masculine scent.* *It was, in fact, a pleasant masculine scent. But only to female weasels.

“A whole sheep!”* *Which had died in its sleep. Of natural causes. At a great age. After a long and happy life, insofar as sheep can be happy. And would probably be quite pleased to know that it could help somebody as it passed away. 

The man went to shut the door but Arnold Sideways was ready for him and had wedged his boot in the crack.* *Arnold had no legs but, since there were many occasions when a boot was handy on the streets, Coffin Henry had affixed one to the end of a pole for him. He was deadly with it, and any muggers hard-pressed enough to try to rob the beggars often found themselves kicked on the top of the head by a man three feet high. 

#discworld #terry pratchett #hogfather #polls #gnu terry pratchett

[creacherkeeper]

multiples of 7 for the character asks for bo!! <3

7. what quality do they like the least about themselves?

OOF. WHAT A WAY TO START. i think theres a Lot about himself bo doesn't like and he's still coming to terms with what a lot of that means like. In Context. of like. Everything. but i think Right Now the thing he doesn't like the most is that he makes people sad. because he can Tell but he also cant Help It and he's trying to find the balance between. opening up. and making people Worry about him. because he!!! does not want to affect the people he cares about in a negative way!!! its fine if they do that to him but not the other way around. he's not supposed to take up space <3

14. do you have a favourite conversation that they’ve had with another character? briefly describe it!

i definitely have favorite conversations with the pcs, but i think my favorite conversation with an npc was when they were in the book and bo got. a little mad. at bubba. for not just working things out with ezzy. and yelled at him a wittle bit. just bc i think that was like a Turning Point for bo of like. maybe the first time he ever acted selfishly towards someone? and knew he was acting selfish and said it anyway? and just being like. actually me and rosie deserve a full family so why cant you get your shit together. which like. in hindsight with everything we know about them now, Harrowing for bubba, but it was also bo like. showing he felt safe enough with bubba to get upset at him? bc that's pretty rare for bo

21. without revealing any secrets, how much of your character’s backstory does the rest of your party know about? 20%? 75%? 0%?

i mean. broad strokes, 100%. there's always going to be little details to flesh out, but bo backstory was pretty simple and didn't get changed at all from original version to now. all the nuance that's come with it has come from hollis. i didnt know jack shit about bubba or him and eabha's relationship or the rangers or anything. i found out In Game with everyone else (madly affectionate)

28. what is something that helps to comfort them?

talking to kai <3 kai is really good at both grounding him but also making him like. actually deal with stuff so he gets it out of his system. he's used to being like. oh i'm upset. gonna bury this forever. but kai is like. okay bud we're gonna talk through it and then chill out and bo is like wait huh this actually helps?? wild

35. pick a character that they know. what is something that they do that your character finds annoying/frustrating?

flip side of that,,, less annoying and more frustrating / concerning but. kai not eating well <3 bo is such a big food guy and like. is so used to people showing care through food. and so kai will stress bo needs to take care of himself because he deserves to feel good and then will have like. an iced coffee for breakfast and not eat again for 8 hours and it drives bo insane. he doesn't understand how they can be so in tune with things emotionally and also expect so much from their body and fighting abilities and then not take care of it right

42. how similar is your character to you?

MEAN QUESTION. i think more similar than i would like to admit but not as similar as i would fear. i think we have some good traits in common and some bad traits in common and some hangups in common but overall we have fairly different like. cores. and life experiences, obv. it is sometimes hard for me to play bo cause im like noooooo i dont want to say this but its what bo would say!!! it what bo would think!!!! im very much a Character Actor as a player and me and bo differ. A Lot in how we go about the world

#THANK YOU FOR THESE HARROWING QUESTIONS I WUV YOU #bo tag