#the guilds

Absolutely nobody needed to say: A lot of the most powerful men in the city owe their positions to Lord Vetinari.

And nobody replied: Certainly. But to the kind of men who seek power, gratitude has very poor keeping qualities.

In “Family Business”, the 111th episode of The Magnus Archives, Gerry tells Jon that “there aren’t any god-like powers of hope, or love, or indigestion”, as you can see in the transcript below.

It is possible that he picked indigestion as an example out of a hat, but that seems like an odd example, especially when the other two examples were hope and love. As a Discworld fan, however, it sounds familiar. It sounds like a strange Hogswatchnight at Unseen University, when displaced belief created all sorts of peculiar beings, such as the Eater of Socks, and indeed, the God of Indigestion.

But that could be a coincidence, right? It’s possible. But consider this: even if Mary was a rare book seller that didn’t care about popular modern books, she must’ve been acquainted with other booksellers, if only because they were in the same branch of business, so young Gerry probably spent time around other bookshops. Also, not only was Terry Pratchett a bestselling author, but Hogfather was #1 on the UK Top Ten charts in both October 1996 and November 1997.* It’s likely that young Gerry Keay would have come across it.

So imagine a bored young Gerry being dragged along from bookshop to bookshop by Mary, and in one of the bookshops he sees a book that looks like a Christmas story, except instead of 8 reindeer (or 9 with Rudolph) pulling Father Christmas in a sleigh, there are 4 pigs pulling a skeleton dressed up like Father Christmas in a sleigh. And that skeleton has a scythe. And there’s a guy wearing a knife and holding another.

It’s not like he’d find the sight of a knife wielding assassin or a skeletal grim reaper unfamiliar, but unlike Mary’s precious Leitners, this book wouldn’t feel evil. It wouldn’t try to kill him.

Imagine this poor little goth boy raised to be obsessed with fear and powerful evil beings beyond anyone’s comprehension getting his hands on his first non-evil book, and it’s one of the Death books. Imagine little Gerry reading Hogfather.

The End was something he’d been raised to despise and fear, and now here’s a silly book where Death is friendly and trying to save the world with the help of his (mostly) human granddaughter, a super cool fantasy Victorian/Edwardian sort-of-goth governess trying to live a normal human life in spite of all the shenanigans going on around her. Who hates a previous governess for teaching children to be afraid, tells children “Don’t get afraid, get angry”, and beats up monsters with a fire-poker. Young Gerry probably wished that Susan would show up and be his governess; and given what we know about his time with Mary (a few examples from episode 111 are shown below), he would’ve been much better off with Susan.

Also, I think he would’ve appreciated parts of the series pertaining to this, especially Guards!Guards!

Poor Gerry. He didn’t even last as long as the publication span of Discworld (1983-2015). GNU Gerry Keay.

Happy Hogswatch from the Thieves’ Guild, who most kindly wish to remind the public that the first 32 premiums arranged on Hogswatch Eve may be had with a Hogswatch Discount.