Poetic License @the-evil-duckling - Tumblr Blog

Somehow, he fought onward, his entire body dragging behind him as if half dead, an impediment, a thing worth forgetting. He wanted to pull free of it, even as he understood that his flesh was all that kept him alive – yet he yearned for dissolution, and that yearning was growing desperate.

Wait. This is not how I see the world. This is not the game I choose to play – I will not believe in this abject . . . surrender.

It is what kelyk offers. The blood of the Dying God delivers escape – from everything that matters. The invitation is so alluring, the promise so entrancing.

Dance! All around you the world rots. Dance! Poison into your mouths and poison out from your mouths. Dance, damn you, in the dust of your dreams. I have looked into your eyes and I have seen that you are nothing. Empty.

Gods, such seductive invitation!

Toll the Hounds, by Steven Erikson (Malazan Book of the Fallen #8)

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malazansapper

‘The Redeemer is a most helpless god,’ Anomander Rake said after a time. ‘Unable to refuse, unable to give. A sea sponge swallowing the entire sea. Then the next one and the one after that. Can it simply go on for ever? But for Itkovian, I would think not.

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momento-more

@elodieunderglass - This made me think of you.

nightblood

Lmao

jensonk23

My girlfriend, upset last night and wanting to listen to some tragedy to make herself feel better:

Me:

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stormagedondarklordofall

treewizarded

a BRILLIANT read, and even more incentive for me to make my own wizards trope-defying and excellent.

roachpatrol

God it’s fascinating to look at the timestamp on this one and then realize that Pratchett went on to write his Witches Series and Granny Weatherwax, who’s strong and fierce and brilliant and austere and so achingly, bitterly, intensely good. I think Granny Weatherwax would give Gandalf a hard look and Gandalf would remember he had a very urgent appointment three shires away and stroll off really fast.

ceruleancynic

Holy fuck, everybody go read this right now.

Pratchett is one of the people whose work is not only hilarious, but legitimately brilliant. I learned so much from reading his books. Even this talk is peppered with the kind of thing that makes you snort out loud and get stared at by coworkers:

No wonder witches were always portrayed as toothless — it was living in a 90,000 calorie house that did it. You’d hear a noise in the night and it’d be the local kids, eating the doorknob.

And he fucking nails the witch/wizard dichotomy. Wizards = wise, powerful, organized, educated; witches = crones who give you warts. The Tiffany Aching series addresses this directly, as do the regular Discworld books focusing on the Lancre witches. Like Roach says, Granny Weatherwax is achingly, bitterly, intensely good, and that’s partly because she’s constantly aware of how easy it would be to be bad. How someone has to do the mucky jobs and help the obnoxious and stupid and never, ever take credit for anything you didn’t do; how the hardest thing is to stay balanced just on the edge between extremes, maintain that equilibrium, do what needs to be done no matter how awful or difficult it may be. Wizards never have to think about this. They just forge straight ahead, eating big dinners and squabbling amongst themselves and taking their power for granted.

roachpatrol

Come to think of it, that’s one of the most significant divisions of power in Discworld: the men all gang up into this big elitist mob and loll around indolently, specifically not doing magic. Their magic is so powerful and dangerous that it’s a better use of their time to all keep each other down, all the wizard books basically revolve around ‘Oh no, someone’s doing magic, we’d better stomp them flat and then go home for second breakfast’. They keep the world from turning inside out but not much more than that, and they’re kind of a bunch of assholes about it too. Meanwhile the witches are just grimly slogging along, delivering babies and rousting out vampires and changing compresses, like, they stake out territories and then take care of everyone in it… while everyone still thinks that wizards are respectable and witches are shady.

oldmanyellsatcloud

The line about equal rites killed me, though. The insightful commentary (on the internet no less) here helped buffer that.

discworld-heritage-posts

Discworld Heritage Post

kyraneko

It’s the difference between status and value. Who does the necessary work, and who takes the credit. Who the world would actually fall apart without, and who reaps the rewards of being considered important.

There’s gender in it, but shades of poor-and-rich as well.

singlecrow

What’s marvellous I think here is that Pratchett’s criticism of Le Guin, on Earthsea, was made in 1985 - and in 1990, she wrote Tehanu, which is a fantastic indictment of the sexism and misogyny of the earlier Earthsea books. Doesn’t meant she saw this, she probably didn’t - her own unease with the earlier Earthsea books was evident in other places - but it’s what Pratchett himself is saying, reality creates fantasy creates reality.

mific

Terry being brilliant, and read the comments.

hungwy

whenever i hear people say shit like "omg funnest? can i say that? is that a word?" i think about mfers like thomas browne who literally just added english derivational morphology onto french and latin words and people of his time were just like yeah cool

apollo-cackling

[transcript: A master neologist, Browne appears at number 69 in the Oxford English Dictionary's list of top-cited sources. He has 775 entries in the OED of first usage of a word, is quoted in a total of 4131 entries of first evidence of a word, and is quoted 1596 times as first evidence of a particular meaning of a word. Examples of his coinages, many of which are of a scientific or medical nature, include 'ambidextrous', 'antediluvian', 'analogous', 'approximate', 'ascetic', 'anomalous', 'carnivorous', 'coexistence', 'coma', 'compensate', 'computer', 'cryptography', 'cylindrical', 'disruption', 'ergotisms', 'electricity', 'exhaustion', 'ferocious', 'follicle', 'generator', 'gymnastic', 'hallucination', 'herbaceous', 'holocaust', 'insecurity', 'indigenous', 'jocularity', 'literary', 'locomotion', 'medical', 'migrant', 'mucous', 'prairie', 'prostate', 'polarity', 'precocious', 'pubescent', 'therapeutic', 'suicide', 'ulterior', 'ultimate' and 'veterinarian'.[17] /end transcript]

velvetvexations

Weird Fantasy (1950) #18 written by Al Feldstein and drawn by Joe Orlando, with editor Bill Gaines

velvetvexations

So he said it can't be a Black. So I said, "For God's sakes, Judge Murphy, that's the whole point of the Goddamn story!" So he said, "No, it can't be a Black". Bill just called him up and raised the roof, and finally they said, "Well, you gotta take the perspiration off". I had the stars glistening in the perspiration on his Black skin. Bill said, "Fuck you", and he hung up.

Al Feldstein, Tales of Terror: The EC Companion

iconuk01

Just to add context for those not aware of the impact of this story.

The reason it was so important for narrative purposes, was that the plot concerns the visit of the Astronaut, in his completely opaque spacesuit, to a planet populated entirely by self-aware robots (originally from Earth) who have built their own society and are petitioning to be allowed to interact with Earth again as equals.

They have a democratic government and free choice of careers etc. as the orange robot serving as guide tells the Astronaut.

The Astronaut notices that there are two different types of robot on this world; the orange ones, who are in charge, gifted access to all information and facilities. and the blue robots, who are seen as more limited in function, have less access to information and resources, and are not allowed positions of power or as wide a choice of employment opportunities. Even transportation is segregated.

The Astronaut investigates further and discovers that the blue and orange robots are actually structurally identical, there is absolutely no difference between their potential or capabilities, and it is only because the orange robots are instructed by their Educator system to consider themselves superior, that the difference exists.

The Astronaut tells the robots they are not ready for re-alignment with Earth, until they come to terms with their own unfairness, and how Earth had had to deal with this issue themselves. When that time comes, the robots will be able to ally with Earth.

Then he leaves in his spaceship, and it's only in that one final panel that we see the Astronaut is black.

Not subtle, nor should it be, but for 1950 this was a breathtakingly powerful statement, perhaps the first of it's kind in the genre.

The black character was not a caricature, or comedy relief, he was a main character in his own right, a human who "simply" was black.

assortedinsanities

Ok, but this story is sadly revolutionary even now. That is not just a human who happens to be black, as far as every other character in this story is concerned this is the most important, maybe even the only human they ever see, who happens to be black.

As depressing as that is, but a black person just casually representing the entirety of humanity is a breathtakingly powerfull statement even today, a quarter of a century later.

about-faces

alex51324

reblogging for Black History Month!

butterbeerandlemoncakes

"The rest of the story was but another version of a tale Roland of Gilead had heard many times and had, in some measure, lived through himself. It was fragmentary and incomplete, undoubtedly shot through with myth and misinformation, its linear progress distorted by the odd changes--both temporal and directional--which were now taking place in the world, and it could be summed up in a single compound sentence: Once there was a world we knew, but that world has moved on."

--The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, Stephen King

mervynbunter

You said something in “Smith” which I hope I grasped, and there was a feeling almost of recognition. An odd feeling of grief overcame me when I read it. I cannot explain my feelings any clearer. It was like hearing a piece of music from way back, except that it was nearer poetry by Graves’ definition. Thank you very much for writing it.

Terry Pratchett, in a letter to J. R. R. Tolkien, 22 November 1967

Thank you very much for your letter. The first one that I have received with regard to Smith of Wootton Major. You evidently feel about the story very much as I do myself. I can hardly say more.

J. R. R. Tolkien, in reply to Pratchett’s letter, 24 November 1967

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pukicho

I wanted to read a fantasy book so I went to r/fantasy on reddit and also checked out my local bookstore: What the FUCK. These books SUCK. How do you fuckers read this shit? You IDIOTS. I have never seen such an uncreative "creative" genre in my life. You all looked at Tolkien and decided 'well that's good enough' - There has been almost no innovation in this space AT ALL for 50 years. Books are dying because publishers and authors alike are afraid of making something REALLY weird and twisted. You'd rather regurgitate the greats. I'm gonna pick up a pen and show you how it's done. You fuckers. Anyone have any good recommendations?

the-evil-duckling

The malazan book of the fallen, by Steven Erikson.

#malazan #steven erikson #fantasy #books #the malazan book of the fallen

pangur-and-grim

the book people said that I need to write a "Dear Reader" postcard, but this is all I have so far

pangur-and-grim

the book people said this is alright but that it’s too short, so this is maybe what I’ll add to it

erry-cherrybomb

@theshitpostcalligrapher “death of the author requires you to kill me” goes pretty damn hard right?

theshitpostcalligrapher

oh heallll yea

ink: ferris wheel press, cloak and forest

metamorphesque

Tired, Langston Hughes

aeshnacyanea2000

One minute you’re a writer, next minute you have written. And that’s the time, just at that point when the warm rosy glow of having finished a book is about to give way to the black pit of post-natal despair at having finished a book, that you start again. It also means you have an excuse for not tidying away your reference books, a consideration not to be lightly cast aside in this office, where books are used as bookmarks for other books.

-- Terry Pratchett - A Slip Of The Keyboard: Collected Non-fiction

quotescurator

He leads. In the ways of leading, the ways the rest of us do not – and can never – understand.

I looked into his eyes, and I saw such resolve that I could not speak.

Absence of doubt? No, nothing so egotistic as that. Nimander has plenty of doubts, so many that he’s lost his fear of them. He accepts them as easily as anything else. Is that the secret? Is that the very definition of greatness?"

— Steven Erikson, Toll the Hounds (The Malazan Book of the Fallen, #8)

#Quotes #Steven Erikson #malazan #Toll the hounds #fantasy literature #books

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Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.

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dunsparr0w-deactivated20260722

Finding a thriving Malazan community on this site has genuinely perked up my life, so glad to find like-minded souls also crying their eyes out over *insert literally any character here*

the-evil-duckling

"Thriving" pretty sure its like a dozen of us reblogging each others stuff, but its good to have u all!

timeisweird

Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett

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