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Carrot is a force for good without a doubt, but he is not the Good Man in Ankh-Morpork. Vimes is. Vimes who is deeply suspicious of just about every group in the city, Vimes who constantly has to reexamine his beliefs and prejudices, Vimes who really really wants to kick the shit out of the bad guys but never lets it happen. If you'd do it for a good reason, you'd do it for a bad one.

And it happens again with Granny Weatherwax - the one who wanted to be evil, who can feel the evil nagging at her every day, who nevertheless holds the line.

This is just too funny😂

I'm sure that I'm far from the the first person to notice that this line in Wintersmith (2006) was published just a year before Pratchett's 2007 announcement of his posterior cortical atrophy diagnosis.

Out of nowhere, Roland, a boy who in this book also happened to acquire specific additional traits like glasses and a love of books, suddenly has a deep, angry hatred of anything which takes memories.

The above line hit me like a damn train, and then I skipped back and reread the sequence as Roland and the Feegles arrived and realised that the Underworld Roland is in is filled with confused old people being parasitised by 'bogles' which steal their memories and identities. It's not remotely subtle but also heartbreaking in how understated it is. The strangeness of the woman dragging a cardboard box is nightmarish. This is actual horror.

Terry. Oh my god. Sir. This is one of your children's books and you brought this here. You brought this here because you trusted and respected your young readers with something so hard and personal. This is Terry writing down his deepest fear, in a children's story, the safest place to put the most frightening things you can think of.

The skeleton reaches into its robe. From abyssal depths it produces a heavy book bound in sheets of lead and night. It is the kind of book that gets stolen by a rugged adventurer from a temple with more spike-traps than the average house of worship contains. It is the kind of book to which the word “tome” might properly be applied. Frost forms on its pages from the lingering chill of the void. 

The skeleton coughs once and holds the book out to the man sitting on the bed.

And this was apparently a common enough belief that an archbishop felt the need to write a treatise to debunk it and insist that only god controls the weather, which is the only reason we know about it.

there are three important points to take from this, i think

This is great inspiration for your next dnd game

Tropes that might seem relatively modern (like airship pirates) can often actually go WAY back

What other Witch could so shrewdly bend the very story she was in to her will? To take the tropes and clichés and to weaponize them against those who were wrong in defense of those who could not defend themselves?

What other Witch, when faced with the Good Fairy Godmother, would rip the story from her very fingers and set things to right?

What other Witch, under vampiric assault, could turn the famous bite around and, instead of becoming a vampire herself, through force of sheer will Weatherwax the vampire? What does that even mean?

What other Witch could give a child a gift so powerful it would override narrative convention and let the long lost prince refuse to take his rightful crown in favor of pursuing his dreams?

Indeed, what other Witch would resist the crown when it fell into her lap?

There have been untold millions of Witches in literature, but not a one of them could sit demurely at a social gathering, doing absolutely nothing, and drive everyone around her to near insanity through sheer nervousness?

No one else could be so proficient at both Magic and People that she would barely need or want to use the former because of how effective and predictable the latter could be.

And all of this, ALL of this, while going against her own narrative nature as 'The Bad Witch'. To resist your own role in the story so completely that you transcend expectations and settle into legend as one of the ultimate forces of righteousness on the Disc? That requires more power, more cunning, and more skill than any, every other Witch. Combined.

And she did it by knowing people. By watching them and knowing things and by understanding, better than their own mothers, how to talk to everyone and precisely pass along knowledge. How to command respect, even if they don't like you very much. How to be indispensable, while dispensing with the pleasantries.

She didn't do it alone, but she wouldn't admit that within earshot of Gytha or any of her numerous brood (So, she would never admit it). She benefitted by her associations with Nanny Ogg, with Magrat, with Agnes, with Tiffany, with Ridcully (allegedly), and even with Death.

Who else would earn time for her candle to flicker in the wind, and a warning by the Grim Reaper himself, for the right she had done in the world.

Right. Not good. Not nice. Right.

She was the vessel Pratchett poured his every indignant thought at the inherent injustice in the world into, and she brandished those white hot notions against every part of the stories that tried to make her into something she did not want to be.

So fuckface would turn into Facefucker. Buuuut. That changes the meaning entirely! It implies that the target… let’s call him Wulfric, is a fucker of faces. However og Fuckface means Wulfric’s face is the face in need of a thorough fucking, and definitely on the receiving end. Poor (lucky?) Wulfric. So would that still make it a true exocentric compound noun? Since it doesn’t keep its meaning? SO FASCINATING!!!

As an aside, the German word for Fuckface is Backpfeifengesicht, meaning a face in need of a slapping. While less severe, it’s endlessly more delightful and pleasing to say.