I posted about this some time ago, but I finally can say with absolute certainty that I had the best time at this year's International Discworld Convention.

Everyone was so polite and friendly and welcoming. And believe me, while I've been a fan since I was small, I know what Terry and the Discworld mean to the UK.

The whole convention was an absolute blast, and I made so many new friends and even got to meet Stephen Briggs and Rhianna Pratchett!

Hopefully (fingers crossed), I'll be returning for the 2028 convention.

As a 3D hobbyist, I was looking for a short, fun project. As a Discworld enjoyer, I always loved the cautionary tale linked to Mr. Hong's entrepreneurial venture.
It was then only logical to try and re-create the infamous Three Jolly Luck Takeaway Fish Bar*.

I hope you all find it as enjoyable to look at as I had fun building it.

*Please do not send me to the scorpion pit for illegal use of non-canon architecture.

I vaguely knew what discworld was since i was a kid (turtles and cool turtle pc wallpapers) but i never interacted with it, since i was never much of a reader sadly. But i started listening to the audiobooks in order of release around a year ago, after starting a new (terrible) warehouse job. Now ill be frank and say the job sucked sucked sucked, i was in the worst mental space id ever been in my life and genuinely the only thing that kept me going was the discworld audiobooks, Pratchetts ideas and stories and Nigel Plainers voice take up a large part of my headspace and will do so forever hopefully.

i used to listen to a whole book each shift, and once id listened to them all i would just start from the beginning. The books were the only things that motivated me to go to that job because even though i knew it would be a rough day, atleast i could listen to Snuff for the 9th time, so really not too bad at the end of it.

I used to get about 3-5h of sleep at most per night back then, for months in a row, the discworld books tethered me to some sense of reality, im so happy i found these books, peak.

Ive luckily found a job i LOVE, and im getting into reading for the first time in my life, just picked up The colour of magic from my library and im ITCHING to get through all the books, its so surreal, reading

Seriously though Nigel Plainer narrates my dreams atp please dont help.

Can anyone explain the joke to me? 😅 I don't get the reference.

While out traveling in Northern Ireland (my first time across the pond to visit the UK), one of the museums I visited had a shako and a frock on display, which of course immediately made me think of Monstrous Regiment.

Basically the idea is that for each book you finish reading, you embroider a small design on a sweater/hoodie. I started with Unseen Academicals as it's the one I'm reading right now but eventually I'll probably do them all.

I think I'll stick to books I've loved, not every book I read, but that will probably still include all of Discworld. I'm happy to take suggestions, I need to design small symbols that can represent a book (and hopefully aren't so vague that I won't remember which book years down the road).

Anyway it's nothing like the jacket I've seen but I'm still proud, it's my first embroidery on a piece of clothing ever!

I dont get it what is happening

So when I first read the novels, I immediately was irritated by characters saying „could of“ (1) instead of „could’ve.“ That irritation lasted for like five minutes, after which I realised it’s probably just a clever way to show that the characters don’t care for spelling or something about how spelling doesn’t matter for understanding or whatever, but you know, Terry probably used it deliberately. I was, however, further irritated by the fact that nobody seems to talk about it, except for one post in this sub where one reader took offence by this „mistake“ and everyone else was like „its not that deep bro."

Fast forward a few years and I’m writing a term paper in linguistics and I remember this weird little "could of" thing in Pratchett’s work. So naturally I go through all the books and try to find all occurrences of this „mistake,“ expecting like 100 to 200 hits because in my memory this thing was all over the place. Turns out, in the entirety of Discworld it is used 26 times. That’s way less than I would of expected.

But that’s not all: The vast majority of these hits occur in the first 12 books. Actually, it starts with Albert using it in Mort; and then Witches Abroad and Guards! have like 10 occurrences each, and then...

they just kinda stop.

After Witches, it just happens three more times with some random characters: Gaspode, some thief, and the Tooth Fairy in Hogfather and that was it.

The characters, even those who said (or thought) "could of" before start saying could’ve.

So I checked when the characters in the first (could of-heavy) books say "could of" as opposed to „could’ve," like if they code switch when talking to different people or something like that.

So I checked for occurrences of „could’ve" and found… nothing.

The very first time anyone in the Discworld uses the „correct“ form of this contracted auxiliary verb „-’ve" is on page 129 of Witches Abroad. That is 11 entire books without this very usual contraction appearing even once.

"'You should've let me make him believe he was a frog,' muttered Granny."

But Granny doesn’t usually say „should’ve.“ She said „should of“ four times before, and suddenly says „should’ve“ - and she keeps going.

After that, the „could’ve“s keep pouring in. Slowly at first, but in Maskerade the „correct“ form appears 8 times and eventually replaces „could of“ entirely. The nail in the coffin for our old friend „of" is Hogfather, where the Tooth Fairy says "should of" one last time, but the competing „could’ve" appears four times - once used, of all people, by Albert: the guy who started all of this 17 books prior, thereby shattering the last piece of continuity I could find with the usage of "could of." After this, „could of“ never makes an appearance again.

So what’s going on here?!

The weirdest thing to me is that there is no clear cut! Two books contain both forms (Hogfather and Maskerade), so its not like some editor caught Terry using it at some point and purged the text of this „mistake.“ And I came into this being very sure that this was a deliberate choice, but seeing that the books start out exclusively using "could of" and soon after that exclusively use „could’ve" without any rhyme or reason I could identify makes me go crazy IN CASE YOU HAVEN’T NOTICED

Like did Terry and his editors just not care? Could they maybe really not have known?

So anywhoozles, to recap (TLDR:) I was irritated that "could of" is used in the books, that this phenomenon doesn’t seem to have a name, that nobody seems to care and now I’m more irritated about all those things. (/TLDR)

I kinda just wanted to share what I’ve found so far and I mean I guess if you have any information on people using „could of“ in general or specifically in Discworld novels I’d be interested in anything you have to say, but I think mainly I just wanted to tell the world „something’s off with the of’s"

thanks for reading bye

also if my supervisor sees this: Hey Doc, you can see I’m taking my research very seriously! -A

__________________________

(1) whenever I say „could of“ or „should of" I also mean all other forms you can build with of or ve: could of, would of, should of, must of, couldn’t of, wouldn’t of, shouldn’t of, and mustn’t of.

I'm trying to make my way through the whole series. So far I am loving discworld SO much. Death is awesome. I love the Watch. I've enjoyed some of the other more separate books. I've really enjoyed them all. But I haven't quite clicked with the Wizard books as much.

I know a lot of folks have their caveats about The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic, but I also really did not enjoy Sourcery. I liked a lot of the stuff with Coin, but felt like it had pacing issues and some other plot problems in the back half.

I kind of assumed "Oh. All of Discworld just gets better. It all picks up after Mort." but maybe there's some new perspective I could gain before I try Eric?

Should I expect more of the same from Eric?

Visit-the-Infidel-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets seems to have colleagues in the nursing services...

the turtle moves ✊🏼

The turtle and elephants I made a while back, but wasn’t sure what I was gonna make the disc out of for a while.

Randomly found a large button while I was walking around today and it just worked.. threw together the disc using it as a base and some tinfoil papier-mâché and acrylics

My brother says he wants a book for his birthday, so obviously I'm thinking Pratchett.

So far my main ideas are Mort or Small Gods, but I'm not sure if I'm missing something obvious here. Maybe Rincewind is the way to go?

(He hasn't read anything in a couple of years so I don't have high hopes that he'll actually read it, but I'm thinking of hiding a £20 inside to incentivise him.)

Edit: thanks for the suggestions everyone! I've decided to go with my first instinct and get him Mort.

Hey all,

I'm selling off my paperback collection if anyone knows anyone interested.

Based in Dublin/Meath.

http://www.adverts.ie/40945170

It’s in an estate sale auction and I’m feeling like I kind of need it, but then I’d need a turtle coffee table to put it on.

I had been meaning to give Pratchett’s work a try for a long time, but had admittedly been (and honestly still am) overwhelmed by the sheer number of volumes in the Discworld collection. After a bit of research I decided to start with Guards! Guards! as I had heard it was a fan favourite and I was intrigued by the City Watch. I’ve really been enjoying it so far, but I’m not totally sure where to go from here. Should I finish all of the City Watch books in one go, or would it be better to jump around between the subseries? Also, how long did it take you all to finish all the books? And are there fans who only stick to one particular subseries?

Nanny said never to trust a dog with Orange eyebrows. However, I would have trusted this dog with my life and the lives of everyone I know.

I was trying to calculate the logistics of getting to NJ (this rescue doesn't do out of state adoptions) and also how to con them into me adopting her. She got adopted before I could Oceans 11 her out of there!

Hopefully the person that adopted her knows how lucky they are and give her the world's best home! They now share their home with a living Discworld reference.

I don't know if this has been shared before but it's a Scot sharing the roundworld origins of the Nac Mac Feegle.

I’m not sure how I’ve never realized this before, but Death directly creates the Death of Rats on accident in *Reaper Man*.

The rats are what he kills as Bill Door in a Bill Door way. Sure, he kills the one chicken for dinner, but he clearly taps into his nature as Death to pull out the soul/spirit/whatever. But the rats?

Miss Flitwick’s poison. And he “felt like a murderer.”

This is what called the Death of Rats to be near him, so if he hadn’t killed the rats in such a human fashion, it wouldn’t have been nearby to take on its particular form due to morphic resonance. And if it hadn’t, it wouldn’t have been able to hang on and wouldn’t have caught his attention and led him to save it.

…Which technically makes Susan the niece of the Death of Rats. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

ETA: Dear grammar Nazis, “on accident” and “by accident “ have the same meaning and the former has no other meaning than the same as the latter, which is being used increasingly by a younger generation who understand that such distinctions are often meaningless and silly. But if you really feel the urge to comment about this, others already have. This is like being angry about ending a sentence with a preposition. Get over it, because (as someone else wisely pointed out) linguistic diversion is a thing… and Terry would be the first to mock you for this behavior.

(And since I don’t want to deal with it further, anyone coming here to try to be a dick about regional grammar is getting a block. Like, why behave this way here? It’s so unnecessary.)

FINAL EDIT: I am now going to completely mute the replies because people have chosen to be such jerks here about not liking my choice of one word, rather than replying to the substance of what I said, for the most part. But let me just say this: if you think that is a real rule, then ask yourself why we do not say that we did something “by purpose?” BECAUSE IT’S FREAKING ARBITRARY, AND IS NOT A REAL RULE. Use logic, FFS.

OKAY, ONE MORE EDIT: A mod is trying to state that calling someone a grammar Nazi is the same as calling them an actual Nazi and banned me for that. I was directly told in a comment that using the word “Grammar” doesn’t change what it means. Everything else aside, that is offensive to state the two statements are the same. I could not let that pass without comment; for shame.

(And, just to be clear, I also don’t appreciate you trying to threaten me with “the admins” based on your assumptions. Way to show your real nature, pumpkin. This isn’t you being a mod, this is you engaging in personal attacks. Pathetic. Almost as pathetic as claiming you are the arbitrator of what it means to act like him because you met him once. Yikes. You’re a real peach, too: a rotten one.)

Hi all,

I’ve been reading reviews of the audiobooks and it seems that the consensus is that the best version of Small Gods is the one narrated by Nigel Planer. I can’t find it anywhere though-apple books has the abridged edition, and audible has the one narrated by Andy serkis.

Any leads on where I can purchase this version?

GODDAMMIT PTERRY.