Great Discworld Re-Read: Lords and Ladies and Men at Arms

It's been a hot minute, but I've finally got the next two books in the Great Discworld Re-read ready for review! First up is the next book with our favorite Witches, Lords and Ladies (1992)

We're back with the witches of Lancre and they've finally made it back home from their various travels abroad. Magrat is astounded to discover that in her absence, Verence, the new king of Lancre, has taken it upon himself to arrange for their wedding to take place on Midsummer Night's Eve, and everything has been arranged already for her. So why isn't she happy? Meanwhile, Granny and Nanny realize that Lancre has a pair of problems - some new girls in town who think they understand what witchcraft is all about, and Elves. The problems are most likely connected, of course.

Now, I'm not sure why, but the Witches books are ones that I enjoy a great deal but always take me a long time to get through. Part of it, I think, is because we see so much of the world through Granny Weatherwax's view, and she realizes just how dumb people can be. It can be really hard to read page after page of people not being smart enough to get out of the rain until an old woman with an honorary degree in Headology tells them to do so. She's full of common sense, except when she isn't, and her view that other people have no sense whatsoever colors nearly every interaction she has with other characters. It's not the easiest thing to read.

It is, however, a bit of a delight to see some characters that we're going to get to know in later books in the form of the new girls in witching circles. Magrat is already a different kind of witch from Granny and Nanny, and seeing how witchcraft can evolve even further (and then take a sharp left turn into something out of the movie The Craft) is interesting to watch, particularly with how Nanny and Granny react to it. Granny is, shocking absolutely no one, incredibly stubborn, and Nanny is willing to work around the constraints of the rules of the game to make sure the "right" people win and do what they're supposed to.

This is also a book that introduces the idea of the Trousers of Time, Pratchett's take on multiple timelines. Basically, at any one decision point, a person can end up going down a different leg of the Trousers of Time and end up in an entirely different place than they would have if they'd gone the other way. We start seeing this with the Elves causing circle time, indicating that the walls between Here and There are thinner than normal and that it might be possible to see or hear (or remember) what one did in those other legs of the Trousers. Elves, needless to say, are bad news, and just the kind of messy things that Granny hates, so of course, there has to be a battle.

There's Shakespeare, Morris dancing, showdowns, and a big wedding all in one book, and I imagine everyone just needs a really long nap afterwards.

Finally (for this installment, at any rate), we're back to the City Watch with Men at Arms (1993).

The world has changed quite a lot for the men of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch. For one thing, there are more of them, and they aren't all men. Carrot, our favorite dwarf by adoption, introduces his parents to three new members of the watch - Cuddy (a dwarf by birth), Detritus (a troll), and Angua (a woman who also happens to be a werewolf). In addition to adding new members, one of their own, Captain Sam Vimes, is set to retire after he marries the Lady Sybil Ramkin, who he met during the dragon exploits of Guards! Guards! Sam has also gotten on the wagon and is trying to figure out how to live as a civilian, and discovering that he's not the biggest fan, but what can you do?

Well, you can start by figuring out who blew a hole in the Assassins' Guild, killed a clown, a dwarf, and a beggar, and trying to blow big holes into Detritus...

Generally, the technology level of this part of Discworld is probably about the Middle Ages, maybe a little later. You've got crossbows, but nothing more than that. At least, you didn't, until one Edward D'Eath of the Assassins' Guild discovers a drawing in a little-known book by Leonard da Quirm and sets a few things in motion that cause a whole lot of chaos.

I have to wonder how an American author would have tackled the idea of the first gun in a world that knows only crossbows, because the way Americans and Brits think about guns varies so widely, in large part due to how ubiquitous (or not) they are. In Pratchett's world, a gun is a sign of a devastating change in the atmosphere, a way of destroying lives that will cause no end of sorrow and make death cheap and easy, and will clearly cause nothing but bad things to happen. There's no space for "self defense" in Pratchett's world when it comes to a gun.

This is also the book that introduces the idea that Carrot Ironfoundersson might be more than simply a charismatic guard with adoptive dwarven parents, but possibly the rightful king of Ankh-Morpork. He seems to have an idea that this might be his destiny, and we see that he wants no part in it. While others may talk about "back when we had kings," he is happy to proceed along the streets of the city, showing the new guards the ropes and giving Angua a gift of the city he calls home.

There are so many aspects to this one book that it's hard to summarize. Pratchett's latent anger toward police comes out in some of the ways the Watch acts, talking about how they chase because someone ran, and "an innocent man has nothing to fear from the police" is an axiom in need of addressing because it's clearly wrong. He mentions how people are guilty of something most of the time, and if the police happen to catch a person who is guilty of the thing they're actively seeking at that moment, then it's a happy coincidence - this is not the language of a person who trusts the police.

And yet. The City Watch are some of the best characters in the Discworld, in part because they aren't perfect, and Pratchett doesn't let people think for one second that they are. He shows them, warts and all, and lets people see that the work still needs to be done by someone, but it can (and should) still be done better. Over the course of the books, the Watch does get better as people grow and evolve, so it's important to see that they have to start from somewhere.

And like that, this edition of the Great Discworld Re-read is complete. Next time we'll start with Soul Music (1994) and Death having a personal crisis. Again.

Father's Day

Father's Day is always hard for me. Losing my father when I was in high school, having reminders of dads surround me during this time of year just reminds me of what I'm missing. Dads are complicated, just like anyone else, and I've learned more about mine after he died that makes me see him in a different light. I worshipped him as a little girl, so having him fall from his pedestal just by being human was a hard lesson in reality.

Greg Wood, 1953-1998

One of the things that I find myself wondering the most is whether he would like the person I've become. He was fairly conservative, so the fact that I grew up liberal probably wouldn't have gone over super well. I have a distinct memory of arguing with him over something when I was a kid, and him glaring down at me and grumbling "You're gonna grow up to be a liberal, aren't you?" I had no idea what that meant, but hey, turned out he was right!

I also wonder if I would have turned out to be the same person if he had lived. I moved out west for college in large part because I wanted to get as far away from where I went to high school as I could. I wanted to run away from the immediate pain of losing him, and I'd never been out west before. I found a home in the Pacific Northwest, and learned how to let myself relax into the parts of myself that I'd been hiding for ages. Being autistic (though I didn't know that until just a couple of years ago) meant I was masking and trying to fit in most of my life; it was finding my tribe out here that allowed me to unmask and allow myself to grow more comfortable in my own skin. Would I have been able to do that if I'd stayed in Maryland? I don't know.

I hate that Dad never got to see me do anything important. He died before I graduated from high school, so he never saw me do that, go on to college, get married, write my books... There are so many things I've done that he never got to see. I think that's the part that hurts the most when I'm surrounded by Father's Day reminders - he didn't get to be proud of me.

Sorry for the downer today, friends! I promise I'll be back with more Discworld soon. In the meantime, if you still have him around and have a good relationship with him, don't forget to wish your dad a happy Father's Day!

Great Discworld Re-Read: Small Gods

ince this is one of my favorite books, it gets a post all to itself. Small Gods (1992) is one of the stand-alone books that doesn't fit into any of the mini-series of the Discworld, and to me it's a great entry point to the world on the whole.

The story is fairly simple for all the complex topics surrounding the themes of the tale. Brutha, a novice in the religion of the state of Omnia, encounters a tortoise in the vegetable garden that speaks to him. Said tortoise is, in fact, the great god Om upon whom the religion is based - or rather, upon whom the religion was once based. Now, Om has become a small god, reduced in size in power as the number of believers in him has shrunk to just Brutha. The state of Omnia revolves around the traditions and precepts of the religion, but the religion has taken on a life of its own, separate from the god. Now Om is trying to regain his power, if nothing else than to have the ability to turn into something more mighty than a tortoise.

Terry Pratchett had a lot of thoughts on religion, and a good number of them show up on this book. The idea of separating the belief in the religion from the belief in a god, for example, is something that definitely can make a person think, especially if they (for example) grew up in a church that was very strict in the Right Ways to Be, all of which came from God by way of the prophets and the Bible. Thinking that maybe the prophets weren't presenting the commandments directly from a god, but rather that they may have their own agendas that influenced their writings, can come across as utterly blasphemous the first time you hear it. It certainly did to me, and that was years after I had stopped attending church regularly as a child.

In college was the first time I approached the Bible of Christianity as an historical work, rather than a purely religious text. Looking at the ways that translations can influence how the messages from the prophets and others are received by later generations is something that made my brain twitch uneasily; I had spent every Sunday from ages 5 to 11 in a Baptist Sunday school, and one of the main things I was taught was that the Bible was literally true in every word. Learning that the words had changed over the years and those changes impacted the actual meaning of the verses, in addition to having meaning change across language, meant that the Bible my Mexican grandparents read was actually not the same as the one I read. It was a difficult blow to my beliefs, even though I had stopped going to church when my family moved to Spain when I was 11.

Small Gods was the first work of fiction I ever read that put a lot of the questions I'd had into a context that made them make more sense to me. Taking something from the real world and putting it into a fantasy world makes it easier to examine in a lower-stakes setting, giving the reader a chance to study and think things through in a way that feels more safe. It's yet another reason why I love speculative fiction and why you'll never see me arguing against escapist fiction.

Next time, we're going back to the Witches with Lords and Ladies! Granny Weatherwax versus the fae - it's going to be a knock-down, drag-out fight and I can't wait.

Great Discworld Re-Read: Reaper Man and Witches Abroad

It's been a minute, but I'm back to the Great Discworld Re-Read! The first of the next two books is the next in the Death arc of books, Reaper Man (1991).

This is one of the few books where I enjoy the wizards of Unseen University, mostly because they are so very out of their element. The focus is on what happens when people can't die, because the Auditors (a form of being that is determined to make sure all the rules are followed no matter what) determine that Death has become too human and needs to be removed and replaced. There are a few consequences of this, largely that without Death, people don't know how to die. The biological processes stop (as we see with wizard Windle Poons who dies and, after not being met by Death or told what to do or where to go next, comes back to his body), but the soul doesn't know what to do. Poltergeist activity builds up as there's too much life force, and that activity starts taking the form of some very strange things never before seen in Ankh-Morpork.

In the meantime, Death has been given a life timer of his own, and he has a few days of life before he will die. He decides to go into the world and live while he has the chance, and discovers that there are absolutely terrifying aspects of life that he'd never contemplated before. Reading about Death learning how to dream is fascinating in a way, just from taking a different perspective on something that happens so naturally to most of us.

I enjoy watching Death learn more about life, and watching the wizards work through the problem of the build-up of life force. The outcome of the life force is a little odd and feels a little out of left field, but it's still fun. Meeting characters like Reg Shoe and Mrs. Cake for the first time, knowing that they'll be coming up in later books, is always fun - I really appreciate seeing characters introduced that I know will be important later on.

Overall, it's not my favorite of the Death books, but it is a lot of fun.

Next up is Witches Abroad (1991).

Ah, the witches of Lancre. They're not the first characters I reach for when I think of Discworld, but I always enjoy reading their tales. This time, another witch in Lancre who happened to have been a fairy godmother dies, and she leaves her wand to Magrat, along with a mission - the poor girl in Genua must NOT marry the prince. It's up to Magrat to stop it from happening, and of course, Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax are determined to come with her and "help."

This is a travelogue across the Disc with several fairy tales thrown in, but not the kinds of fairy tales that end happily ever after. There's a lovely spin on them, looking at what the actual impact of the stories would be. Looking into the mind of a wolf that's been made to think it's human enough to take on the role of the Big Bad Wolf of Little Red Riding Hood's tale is horrifying as the wolf is driven mad by the magic used to make it play the part it was never meant to play.

Watching the witches deal with all parts "foreign" is hilarious in a way that manages to avoid being cringey, mostly because the way they interact with the other cultures is being mocked for their tone-deafness, rather than acting as though they are completely in the right to treat all other cultures as failed versions of their own. It's a delicate line to walk and Pratchett does it very well. Learning about Granny Weatherwax's history and her family also helps develop her character and helps her become a more fully-formed character, rather than a caricature. It's one of the best parts about reading a long-running series - there's so much more opportunity to develop characters and worlds more thoroughly than a single book or even a trilogy.

The re-read is going more slowly than I had originally planned, but I'm grateful for that - it's giving me a little treat through the months, something to read that I know I'm going to enjoy in the midst of the books I've checked out from the library or the nominees for the Hugos that I'm working on now. It just means the series is going to go on longer than I had thought when I started it, but there are worse things in the world.

Next up is Small Gods, another one of my favorites!

All the World's a Stage

There's something about the theater that's been a big part of my life since I was in high school, and I can't quite put my finger on what it is that draws me in. I remember listening to my first cast recordings when we lived in Spain, so when I was about 12 or so, because my brother had gotten interested in theater. I don't remember what the first show I heard was, but I know Phantom of the Opera and Les Mis were among the first - being a girl child of the '80s and '90s meant Phantom and Les Mis were required obsessions. I know the first shows I ever saw were put on by the base's community theater, followed by the school theater, and that my brother had gotten involved in the tech side of things. Naturally, if it was something my big brother was doing, then I needed to do it, too, and so I started out on stage and doing stage makeup. I ended up studying theater in college, even knowing that I would never make a living at it, because as much as I enjoyed it, I wasn't particularly good at it.

This is all coming up because I've been incredibly fortunate to have extremely generous in-laws with season tickets to the touring theater productions that come to Seattle. Last month they had extra tickets to Les Mis and asked if my husband and I would be interested in going. My husband is also a fan of musicals, particularly the more established, traditional musicals like Rodgers and Hammerstein's works and Andrew Lloyd Webber, so we were happy to take them up on their offer. It's been a little bit since I've seen live theater, and it's been even longer since I've seen one of the two core musicals of my teenage years. That went well, so when they had extra tickets to Phantom this month, they invited us and we happily went with them.

I'm happy to say that both Les Mis and Phantom have held up remarkably well over the years. I find myself watching the side characters more than the leads these days, and watching the ways in which an actor can take a part with few lines and turn it into a whole, three-dimensional person on stage. It's not easy (she says from her days in the background) - frequently, Spear Carrier #3 is meant to be human furniture and that's it. But when someone is given the room to make a character their own, that's when you can see magic on a stage. Les Mis had some fantastic actors in some of the "smaller" roles that really helped the show be more than just a series of solos with a bit of plot in between.

As for Phantom? One of the things I've come to realize as I've gotten older is that the Phantom himself is a little over the top. The man is a bit extra, you could say. This production leaned into this beautifully. The fact that the Phantom had an entire writing robe and hat that he wore when he was working on Don Juan Triumphant? Beautiful. He played the character like the undersocialized, immature man-child that he can be, and it makes him that much more sympathetic. The best stories make you feel something for all of the characters and keep them from being two-dimensional caricatures, which this production did wonderfully.

If I could go back and tell 16-year-old me that I would be able to see these shows I obsessed over, live in a theater, multiple times and with a partner who loved them, too, I don't think she'd believe me. I'm very happy that I can surprise young me like this - it's nice to have some good news for her now and then.

Go see live theater if you can! It's an experience well worth having at least once.

Flash Fiction: Ersatz AI

In honor of NYC Midnight's Flash Fiction contest (which started May 1), I'm sharing my entry from last year's contest. The prompts for the flash fiction contest (which is separate from the short story contest) include a genre, a location, and an object, and the story has to be less than 1,000 words long. My entry last year was my first attempt at flash fiction, and hoo boy, is that a tough format! My first draft of this story clocked in at about 2,000 words, so editing was a painful process.

My prompt for this story was genre: romance; location: an art class; and object: a passport. Romance is not a genre I gravitate towards either in reading or writing, so it took a bit to find something that I would be comfortable writing. It must have worked, though, because I managed to get an honorable mention for this story! Here is Ersatz AI.

Moira Carano stared at the message from Kathryn, intrigued. Teaching the art of passport forgery was a new chapter for her, and the pay offered was excellent. She started planning the first class.

Kathryn and Moira met online. “Hello, and thank you!” Kathryn waved excitedly, her blonde curls bouncing with the motion. “I’m so glad you’re doing this.”

Moira waved back. “Of course! I thought we’d start with the simpler pages in the passport to get our feet wet.” She tucked her jet-black hair behind her ear, hoping the tremor in her hand wasn’t too visible.

“Perfect! There’s one other person we need to add to the class, before we get started.” Moira froze, wondering if this had all been a trap after all. Instead, part of the screen filled with a waving stick figure. “This is Ersatz AI! It’s the system that’ll create the passports once we have the data you’re providing. It’s able to make several documents quickly, so we’re more efficient.”

Moira waved tentatively at the screen. “Nice to meet you, uh, Ersatz,” she said weakly. “Why don’t we begin with visa pages? There’s some anti-forgery details you’ll need to replicate for this to work.” Moira smiled as she saw the stick figure pull out an oversized pencil and begin to “take notes” while Kathryn sat up straighter in her chair.

Two weeks later, they met for their second class. Ersatz was a bit more fleshed out, with a rudimentary face and body, and Moira welcomed them both warmly. “How are my favorite students today?”

Kathryn flushed a bit, trying not reveal how much she enjoyed having an attractive teacher call her a favorite student. “We’re doing well. Ersatz did some practice with the visa stamps we looked at last time that I think you’ll like. Go ahead, Ersatz.”

Ersatz’s screen changed to show images from visa pages on a U.S. passport with a few different stamps. Moira studied them closely, nodding. “Wonderful! Though, there’s a little problem here. The second stamp on the first page, that’s not a real country. Guilder is from The Princess Bride.”

Kathryn giggled, while Ersatz, reappearing, looked mortified. “This is what happens when geeks get artsy,” she said, typing rapidly. “Somebody created visas for fictional countries and added them to a data set that made it into Ersatz’s library. I bet it would have made a TSA agent’s day, seeing that!”

Moira’s green eyes grew cold. “Or it would have caused the person holding the passport to be detained, thrown in jail, or deported. Do you not realize how important these details are?  You may think this is funny, but you’re handling people’s lives with these documents. If you can’t be serious about this, you have no business working in this field.”

Kathryn bristled, her pale face flushed. “You had the luxury of time when you were working, which, I’ve noticed, you aren’t doing now. A lot of people need these passports quickly, and Ersatz and I are their best bet. I understand the risks, which is why I came to you to learn. If all you’re going to do is spit on my efforts, you can leave, and we’ll do it on our own.”

Ersatz ended the standoff by showing a new page of visa stamps. Moira nodded in satisfaction. “Nice work adding the smears of ink, Ersatz. It’s just the kind of human touch you needed.” She sat back and smoothed her hair, and noticed Kathryn doing the same thing. “Let’s take a break and come back to this next week, shall we?”

They were on edge with each other at the next class. “Ersatz, you’ve been working out!” Moira waved at the 3D cartoon sharing a screen with Kathryn.

“It’s been working overtime since our last meeting. Me, too,” Kathryn added, running a hand over her hair. “Listen, I’m sorry about before. I know how important this is. When I get nervous, I crack jokes, and, well, you make me nervous.” She bit her lip, waiting.

Moira sighed. “I’m sorry, too. What you do is so beyond my experience, I don’t fully grasp the ins and outs. I trust that you know what lies in your hands. Peace?”

Kathryn nodded, and they both grinned as Ersatz transformed into an olive branch for a moment. Mood considerably lighter, Moira began the lesson.

“I think it’s time to work on the most important part of the passport. The biodata page is the most scrutinized, and most like to cause problems. There are a ton of details meant to catch fakes, and you need to be prepared.”

Kathryn fought to focus on Moira’s words and not the way her hands moved as she spoke, with just the faintest tremor. Her face lit up as she spoke, and Kathryn found herself drawn to her lips. She was in trouble.

Moira tried not to let Kathryn distract her, but the way she twisted one blonde curl around her finger as she listened, and the way she shot up like she’d be struck by lightening when hit with an idea, it was too much to ignore. Moira found herself dragging the class out, dreading the end of it.

Too soon, they were done. The silence stretched awkwardly until Ersatz broke it. “Ms. Carano, thank you. Would you like to go to dinner with Kathryn?”

Kathryn waited for the ground to swallow her whole. Moira grinned, too delighted for words. “Ersatz, I would love to.”

“You would? Really?” Kathryn clapped her hands excitedly, all embarrassment forgotten. “Let’s meet up downtown, say, this time next week? We’ll play it by ear, yeah?”

“Wonderful. See you then.” With a final wave to them both, Moira ended the call.

Kathryn typed rapidly, and Ersatz studied the request. “Ideas for a date starting with lunch at a Thai restaurant in downtown Seattle for two women interested in art and technology.” Ersatz’s avatar cracked its digital knuckles and got to work.

Mission Statement, or: Why Do I Write?

A few months ago, I applied for a scholarship and had to write a personal essay as part of the application. I didn't get the scholarship, but I am quite proud of the essay I put together. One of the questions I had to answer with the essay was "how will the community be better for [my] presence in it," and I think I explained that pretty well. It also is more or less a statement about why I write. Since this is my digital home, more or less, I felt it was important to share it here as well.

This is my water bottle. The bottle itself, the base that supports everything else, is my identity as a storyteller. I’ve been telling stories since I could talk, entertaining myself first and foremost, giving myself the space to make up a new world. In the third grade, I learned that writing my stories down made them stronger and gave me a bigger audience. Books were my comfort, but they didn’t have a lot of people like me in them. I wanted to change that and make sure people could see themselves as stars of their own stories.  

Over time, the stickers I’ve put on the bottle have illustrated how my interests and attitudes have developed and changed. Starting the base layer is a comedy/tragedy mask sticker. I started studying theater in sixth grade, and I fell in love with the language of the stage and the ability to take on a new persona whenever I wanted. The script showed me how to tell a story through dialog and acting taught me how a change in inflection or body language impacts how an audience perceives a line. Both pieces helped me figure out when to describe every detail and when to leave room for interpretation.

Next are two stickers that are roughly the same size – a chocolate concha, and the Star Trek: The Next Generation communicator badge. My mother is second-generation Mexican American, and she deliberately did not share her culture with my brother and me because she had learned that assimilating into Anglo society offered safety and security. I’ve spent much of my life trying to connect to my personal heritage, and that has led me to seek out Mexican culture on my own. It’s not a path people talk about, and finding my way alone has been challenging. Mine is not an uncommon experience, but it is one that’s frequently overlooked in the United States. I’ve not found many stories related to the journey I’ve chosen to take, and I want to share my map with people walking the same path.

My father died when I was 17, and I’m eternally grateful to him for introducing me to the world of speculative fiction. He was a geek, and Star Trek was the first sci-fi show he watched with me. It was appointment television for us, opening my eyes to the world of what-if and imagined futures. I also learned about character development over a long period of time and drove my father nuts by pointing out continuity errors, both of which impact my writing to this day. 

The last layer of stickers represents things that are the least obvious about me – a bisexual pride flag, a disability icon, and an autism infinity symbol. I put these on my water bottle because I want to be open about the kinds of experiences I am able to share. I’m a bi woman who is married to a man. I am an autistic woman with low support needs. I have mental and physical health issues that are not easily seen but impact the way I approach everyday life. Generally, if a character in a story has any one of these identities, it is their core characteristic – they are the Bi Character, the Autistic Character, the Disabled Character. It’s rare to see a character that is fully fleshed out as a person who happens to be bi, or autistic, or disabled, much less any combination of the three.

My water bottle is my way of saying that I exist in this world in these ways, and I want to be seen. I tell stories to show other people that I see them, I know they exist in these (and many other) ways, and I want them to be seen, too. My goal is to shine a light on as many different ways of being as I can, so that my audience can find a way to see themselves in a story as something other than a token or a villain. We create our own worlds and there’s room for everyone in them.