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#the ankh-morpork archives
noirandchocolate · 2 years
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In fact humans, once you get to meet them without a pitchfork in their hands, are remarkably focused and flexible creatures.  It is amazing what they will tolerate provided it is not done to them personally.  You will be pleasantly surprised.  These are city people.  Out in the rural areas, somebody sees everything.  In the city, however, provided you do not make too much noise or are excessively cruel to animals, and nod cheerfully to your neighbors should you encounter them, then no one will bother you until blood actually seeps through the partition wall.  And even then, they may well preface their opening remarks with ‘Excuse me…’  In short, humans in the city prevent themselves from going totally insane by ignoring all but a tiny amount of what is happening around them.  Provided that you follow our sensible advice and try to fit in, they simply will not notice you.
–Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs, “The Ankh-Morpork Archives”
(This is about vampires blending in with humans so I feel like it fits tumblr’s current collective fandom.)
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sparkly-angell · 7 months
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Yall Discworld fandom I need you guys to check out this fic right here
It's a Samuel Vimes/Sybil Ramkin/Havelock Vetinari romance story but it's also a murder mystery. The fic manages to mix all these aspects seemingly into a story that has a really close caliber as the guards books (i had to stop reading fifth elephant to focus on the fic, yes, I was mixing both stories)
Here's the summary:
It began with a quiet confession from Lord Vetinari, and Lady Sybil making a decision about what to do with it. Vimes is exhausted, and at once frightened by and drawn to the changes that the two are introducing to his life. But then dwarfs around the city begin to go mad and hallucinate themselves into a violent frenzy, and a brutal murder is committed in the pouring rain. Maybe, just maybe, Vimes can figure it all out before the madness and the rage gets him too.
It's explicit, it's kinky, it's about finding yourself and loving/accepting yourself, but also there are some weird fucking things going around Ankh-Morpork that are unrelated... Until they aren't anymore.
The characters are all So In Character, they are well thought and they have their own depths and motivations, it's beautifully done.
Putting the Commander to Bed should be a must read between Jingo and Fifth Elephant. It's all I'm saying.
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jellymish-art · 12 days
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How do I even armour, part 4:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Now with short sword and a Summer version of the uniform!
Notes:
The Summer version is a little nod to Guards! Guards!, cause the watchmen all wear sandals in that book. And you know, since Ankh-Morpork experiences seasons, maybe the sandals are a Summer thing. XD It also features a leather shoulder cover instead of a cape and a short-sleeved shirt / tunica. There's still a gambeson, but a sleeveless one.
He also technically wears his truncheon on the right side of his body, along with some pouches, but I couldn't make it work in this perspective. Might do a sketch from the other side later, to figure out the placement of everything.
Inking and colouring next!
Pose reference by: The Pose Archives on DeviantArt
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[ID: A 32-person single elimination bracket showing all the cities competing in this tournament. End ID.]
Alright!! Here, as promised, is the bracket!!! Polls will go up tomorrow at...some point! Ideally not as late in the day as this!! (Is there some kinda site you can use to make matchup images?? I've been making them by hand and it SUCKS.)
Full list of competitors/round 1 brackets under cut!!
Revachol (Disco Elysium) v. the City of Frank (Osmosis Jones)
New Mobotropolis (Sonic the Hedgehog) v. Gotham (Batman)
New York City (Great Cities) v. Mechanicsburg (Girl Genius)
Gravity Falls (Gravity Falls) v. The City (Ulysses Dies At Dawn)
Atlantis (Blaseball) v. Battery City (Danger Days)
Atlantis (Stargate: Atlantis) v. Crystal Palace (Friends At The Table)
The City (Archive 81) v. Death City (Soul Eater)
Hlithvida Upon the Western Sea (Glitch RPG) v. Night Vale (Welcome To Night Vale)
Eskew (I Am In Eskew) v. the City of Angles (City of Angles)
Gunnerkrigg Court (Gunnerkrigg Court) v. Kennett Ontario (Pale)
Beszel/UI Quoma (The City and The City) v. Paris (Paris Burning)
Nagspeake (The Greenglass House) v. Ankh-Morpork (Discworld)
London (Fallen London) v. London (Kraken)
Port Cecil (Sunless Seas) v. London (Great Cities)
Ancient Cities (Minecraft) v. The Self Aware Colony (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri)
Chicago (Blaseball) v. Polythreme (Fallen London)
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bracketsoffear · 10 months
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Lord Havelock Vetinari (Discworld) "Lord Vetinari is the patrician of the largest city on the Disc, Ankh Morpork which he, quoting another character "plays like a fiddle". He came into the role and totally changed how the city works, pulling apart some old structures and repurposing others for himself. He is aware of virtually everything happening in his city and uses them to his advantage. He is never straightforward with people, constantly manipulating people so that they best serve Ankh Morpork. He is always in control, even when locked up in his own dungeons he controls the lock to the door, even when ousted from his position for a military commander to take emergency power his plans hold steady and he managed to avert the war through trickery. He is a puppetmaster who will hand the puppet their strings because he knows they'll do what he wants them to do anyway."
Director Lee Harvey Oswald (The Department of Truth) "In The Department of Truth, the protagonist’s boss (and the director of the titular department) is a much older Lee Harvey Oswald, though it’s not explicitly known which version of him he is. As in, what story of the assassination is true? Is he the CIA stooge? The innocent patsy? The lone gunman? Our protagonist muses this question in the second issue and can only conclude: “He’s probably not the one killed by Jack Ruby.” And looking at the picture the comic paints of who he is now, he seems much more the type to spend his time in Howard Hunt’s circles than Kerry Thornley’s, if you know what I mean. He has become the image of the perfect Cold War-era fed with his browline glasses, dark suit, quips about a new generation gone soft, and an ever-present cigarette. And that’s because he always has been that. He joined the Department as an agent when he was 19, working to counter the Soviets and gain information on their country’s equivalent of the D.o.T. And we, the reader, do not know what happened on November day in Dallas, but neither does he, it seems. Kennedy stood against the Department and it was his job to take him out, but in that book depository, he saw the Scarlet Woman (see the Extinction poll) holding a sniper rifle, ready to tear apart the country’s sense of truth with a bullet. (Well, three.) But as the story of the assassination spread, so did the idea of Lee Harvey Oswald, the concept of the shadowy assassin that was seen on the front pages, the conflicting theories and paranoias made manifest. To quote Hawk Harrison (another character), “the living embodiment of every horrible thing people think the government is capable of, filled up into a man-shaped thing.” No matter how human he may or may not be, he might as well be American paranoia personified in function. He’s a man desperate to do whatever it takes to uphold the ideal of what America is supposed to be, that Shining City on a Hill; a man fighting in a war of propaganda and information and disinformation, a war of stories and ideas. To quote Indrid Cold, he’s simply a “dream this country is having.” 
History is, of course, written by the victors, and facts can be rewritten by them as well. After Lee’s “death”, the previous Director (Frank Capra) put him in the Department’s archives to try and figure out who the Scarlet Woman was, only for him to use the research to find a new way of doing things, a way to shift reality through manipulating what people believe to be true on a large scale through media, and symbolic imagery, and simple lies that serve to reinforce what the public wants to believe about this country, and for that, Richard Nixon appointed him to the job we know him in, Director of the D.o.T. Director Capra was a naïve idealist who truly believed that the American Dream was not only real but could be achieved through hard work. Lee knows that the American Dream is a lie, but my god, he will do what it takes to make it real, no matter how underhanded the tactics. If you can control the narrative, you can control the Truth. 
For most of his tenure, it was the height of the Cold War, there was a distinct enemy to push against. It was a conflict of countries, of ideologies, of two superpowers trying to keep their way of life at the expense of the other, and it was the U.S. that won out. There is another version of the 20th century, the one that was once real, where the founding ideals of the USSR were much closer to being realized within its border, it was something better than what it became, but the U.S. won the propaganda war and what was once simply a fact had become a hazy fiction that never happened. And so the victor rewrites history. 
And how does one become the victor? Through whatever means necessary, from fabricating events that later became real, to assassinations, to media manipulation, to the creation of the Satanic Panic itself, playing off paranoia and Christian nationalism to strengthen the idea that America is something that exists, that the American Dream is worth fighting for. (And of course, in the case of the latter, to deflect media attention from the whole Iran-Contra Deal.)
Finally, I leave you with this monologue: “I know you don’t trust me. I don’t care. I’ve done enough bad shit, and spent the last sixty years of my life lying through my teeth every goddamn day. I don’t need you to trust me. But I need to trust you to know that the ends justify the means. You’re sour over your star-faced man. Hawk told you that he stoked the fire there, tried to make it seem realer than it was. That we had a vested interest in people believing that Satan was lurking behind every corner. I was younger then. I was stepping boldly. I was trying to defend the dream of what America was supposed to be. Not let those Russian fucks dictate our future. I’ve done many things that haunt me, more than you can imagine.”
This description has been abridged. Click link for Director Oswald's full description.
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justforbooks · 3 months
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Terry Pratchett fans Pat and Jan Harkin unearthed a whimsical collection of lost Terry Pratchett stories and they reveal the secrets behind their discovery.
Terry Pratchett fans may have been devastated when a hard drive of his unfinished, unpublished works was crushed by a six-and-a-half tonne steamroller in 2017, as per the late author’s instructions. Pratchett did not want his unpublished works to be finished by someone else and then released. But to any fans still reeling from the loss of the beloved fantasy novelist’s creative output, hope is on the horizon: lost stories published under a pseudonym early in his career have been rediscovered.
It is a happy accident that retired couple Pat and Jan Harkin came across a treasure trove of Terry Pratchett stories in 2022. The pair were on the hunt for “The Quest for the Keys”, a story that fan Chris Lawrence had saved from his childhood. Clues were limited: Lawrence had saved neatly trimmed newspaper clippings which were missing dates. All they knew was that the story was from roughly 50 years ago (around 1972), having possibly appeared in the Western Daily Press.
And so a trip back in time began. The time machine they used was the British Newspaper Archive in Boston Spa. Over the course of around 16 trips to the library, the Harkins meticulously searched through thousands of issues of local newspapers to try and find “The Quest for the Keys” in its original form.
They established a timeframe for the search: 1970 to 1983. The story featured a city called Morpork, similar to Ankh-Morpork, a city that features prominently in the Discworld novels. The Harkins suspected that it was unlikely Pratchett would reuse the same name in a short story after the publication of his Discworld work, so they figured that the story was most likely published before his first Discworld novel The Colour of Magic was published in 1983.
As it turned out, the story was actually published in 1984—the Harkins had to slog through over a decade’s worth of newspapers to find it. This miscalculation was, however, a stroke of luck, because hidden in these archives were a selection of stories even Pratchett’s agent and former publisher Colin Smythe did not know about.
Pat and Jan joke that their background in medicine served as training for this project. “We know well the importance of conducting meticulous research—and keeping a record of it,” Jan comments. Their dive into archives was thorough and methodical, and the rewards were rich.
Pat and Jan realised they had struck gold when they came across a story called “Blackbury Weather”. The name Blackbury rang a bell as it is the setting for Pratchett’s Johnny Maxwell trilogy. But strangely, the byline was Patrick Kearns.
“We weren’t sure what to think at first,” Jan says. “We obviously had read a lot of Terry’s work and recognised the style, but we aren’t literary experts. We weren’t sure if Patrick Kearns was a real, separate person. We sent the stories to Colin and it was really exciting when he came back and said, ‘This is Terry.’”
“Patrick is vaguely like Pratchett and Kearns was Terry’s maternal grandmother’s maiden name. So we had found a pseudonym,” adds Pat. 
Could there be more stories out there? “I would say I don’t think there are any more, but then that’s what I would have said if you asked me a year ago, before we found these ones,” Jan says. “We don’t know if any more stories will turn up. But we’re really pleased that these have come through, and hopefully people are going to have a lot of fun reading them.”
In the collection’s introduction, Pratchett’s long-time collaborator Neil Gaiman remarks on the late fantasy writer’s semi-mythical status among fans. What was the man behind the magical writing really like?
Pat and Jan got to know Pratchett quite well after meeting him at various conventions. In fact, the inventive author would often call Pat up with strange questions like, “How much earwax do you produce in a lifetime?” (About an egg-cupful, since you ask!) Or “Can you get hold of some arsenic for me?” If you didn’t know he was a writer, you might find these queries quite suspicious!
But according to Pat, the big thing about Terry was that he was really interested in people. “He liked nothing better than to sit and talk to them,” Pat says. “I asked him once, if he hadn’t sat in all those signing queues, just writing his name over and over, how many Discworld novels would there be? And he said, ‘I think there would probably be about half as many.’”
Jan adds, “I agree with Neil’s take on Terry. He was a human being, it’s difficult to say that somebody’s happy and jolly all the time, because they’re not. But he was very stimulating company over a dinner table. He was great fun. And he had a mind like a vacuum cleaner—anything that you said could be taken away and digested and thought about, and then maybe even put in a book somewhere.”
The result of the Harkins’ efforts is a collection of whimsical, amusing tales about cavemen inventing cooking, the real wild west of the English-Welsh border and Father Christmas trying a career change for better pension prospects, to name just a few.
Fans will recognise elements of Pratchett’s signature style, including footnotes with humorous comments and cultural references (such as the Lone Crofter in “The Real Wild West”, as opposed to the Lone Ranger), as well as names that cropped up in Pratchett’s later work, like the aforementioned town of Blackbury. The collection closes with the story that started it all, “The Quest for the Keys”, a tale set long ago when “dragons still existed and the only arcade game was ping-pong in black and white”. 
But who knows, maybe there are more of Terry Pratchett’s stories out there, just waiting to be found.
Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?
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cirrus-grey · 2 years
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Currently loving the idea of a post-canon Magnus Archives/Discworld crossover where the Magnus world is Roundworld, and the Fears are just a side-effect of some hapless student wizard spilling a few expired curses on the globe.
The Senior Faculty bring it into the Great Hall to try and figure out why it's gone all dark. As they're watching, the darkness begins to lift, rising from the globe as though whatever tethered it there has been cut. It forms into an ominous, evil mist, expanding, growing darker, the Fears beginning to manifest in this new world...
...and then the Luggage eats them.
Jon and Martin materialize almost immediately afterward with a flash of light and a sparkly twinkle. The wizards, seeing that Jon is dying, pelt him with every healing spell they can think of. Individually none of them should work, and together they should probably kill him, but somehow luck is on his side and when the haze of hectic magic finally clears Jon sits up, completely healthy and revived. The wizards spend some time debating whether to send him and Martin back to Roundworld or not, before deciding it would be too much work and bidding them a fond farewell into the streets of Ankh-Morpork.
They eventually move out to The Chalk and live their cottagecore dreams, happy up there on the Downs.
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femslash-fic-hub · 11 months
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Identity Shenanigans
Fandom(s): Discworld
Rating: General Audiences
Relationship(s): Maladict/Polly "Ozzer" Perks
Characters: Maladict, Polly "Ozzer" Perks, Salacia "Sally" von Humpeding
Warnings: None
Summary: Pride 2020 prompt challenge--Mal/Polly, "Identity Shenanigans". Before starting a transfer year in the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, paperwork must be filled out.
Author: Chuthulhu (Mangaluva)
Identity Shenanigans - Chuthulhu (Mangaluva) - Discworld - Terry Pratchett [Archive of Our Own]
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[Image ID: the book "The Ankh-Morpork Archives: A Discworld Anthology Volume II", by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs. /end]
Treated meself in honour if Terry Pratchett day <3
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timeisweird · 2 years
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“You need a special kind of mind to rule a city like Ankh-Morpork, and Lord Vetinari had it.”
It was often said as a sort of backhanded compliment about him, but Vetinari had to agree with the sentiment in its entirety.
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seizethegrey · 2 years
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Sacharissa de Worde began to dictate, and the dwarf’s typesetting tools kept time. "Lord Havelock Vetinari (66), Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, passed away early this morning of Natural Causes...." A very brief piece I wrote on the day Terry Pratchett died which I just realized I never shared with the world. In the words of a friend "shortest story with a legit plot twist I've seen on the internet."
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noirandchocolate · 2 years
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Henry the Taupe–A wizard of Unseen University.  While studying criminology, he essayed to see if people could be cheated even after they had been TOLD they were being cheated.  He set up a Find-The-Lady table in Sator Square and announced to the gathering crowd: ‘I WILL cheat so that it will be impossible for you to win!  You CANNOT win!‘  This caused much amusement.  Despite the fact that no one won, many customers even returned for another go.  Henry made AM$200 and decided to study human nature instead.
--Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs, “The Ankh-Morpork Archives”
(I actually watched a performer do almost exactly this at a Renaissance Faire last fall, while waiting in line for funnel cake.  He said if you could win he’d get you a free cake.  Three people in line took him up on it and they all lost.  It was a free-to-play game, so there was no harm done, but it was just so funny watching him tell people he was going to lie and cheat and then seeing people try so hard to outsmart him anyway.)
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rlrr · 2 months
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The Ankh-Morpork Archives: Volume Two – Terry Pratchett, Stephen Briggs, and Paul Kidby
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ao3feed-mystrade · 4 months
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Выходной день главного инспектора Ночной стражи
read it on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/51815218 by Anonymous Иногда стража преподносит Лестрейду совсем уж неожиданные сюрпризы Words: 1442, Chapters: 1/1, Language: Русский Fandoms: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Sherlock (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Categories: M/M Characters: Mycroft Holmes, Greg Lestrade, Detritus (Discworld) Relationships: Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade Additional Tags: Crossover, Humor, Alternate Universe - Discworld Fusion, Discworld References, Ankh-Morpork City Watch, Pre-Slash, Out of Character read it on AO3 at https://archiveofourown.org/works/51815218
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Plunder, at Reasonable Rates
by Winter_of_our_Discontent
The Pirates’ Guild was a relatively recent addition to the oceans of the Disc, compared to the more well-known Thieves Guild of Ankh-Morpork, having only been established a few decades ago by the Infamous Pirate Jean Pussier d’Papier. Still, it was established enough that even the most lawless, ruthless of pirates wouldn’t have imagined looting and pillaging without the proper licensing and paperwork.
 For OFMD AUpril Day 10 prompt: Specific book (Discworld Series)
Words: 1006, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English
Series: Part 9 of OFMD AUpril 2023 Prompt Fics
Fandoms: Our Flag Means Death (TV)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Categories: M/M
Characters: Blackbeard | Edward Teach, Israel Hands, Stede Bonnet, Blackbeard's Crew (Our Flag Means Death)
Relationships: Blackbeard | Edward Teach/Stede Bonnet
Additional Tags: meet cute, Alternate Universe - Discworld Fusion, Still pirates
source https://archiveofourown.org/works/46408627
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ankh-morpork-times · 2 years
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Not a Terry Pratchett interview but I think it deserves a space on this blog nonetheless!
A speech given by Lord Vetinari to the City Watch (The Ankh-Morpork Archives Vol. 1, Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs. Transcript can be found on @noirandchocolate's blog here).
Read by Stephen Briggs, narrator of Discworld audiobooks, co-author of Discworld companion books and plays, and generally agreed upon as the Roundworld's answer to Lord Vetinari himself. (Go and give him a follow over on Twitter while you're here)!
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