Eric & The Part about the Dragon Was (Mostly) True

Episode 18

Release Date: 9/29/2021

Eric by Terry Pratchett

The Part about the Dragon Was (Mostly) True by Sean Gibson

Your hosts discuss how true the part about the dragon really was as they talk about unreliable narrators and reminisce over D&D (and other tabletop roleplaying game) hijinks. Think Orcs get a bad rap? You’ll probably love The Part About the Dragon Was (Mostly) True by Sean Gibson as well. Your hosts have also made it to Eric in their Journey to the Center of the Discworld, and Lilly got to enjoy the experience of reading a Pratchett book for the first time. Also a potential first for Fiction Fans: your hosts’ notes were almost identical for this book. Don’t worry, it probably won’t happen again. This week’s Pet Peeve Corner brings you: Minutes! They’re probably too precise for what you’re describing!

Thanks to the following musicians for the use of their songs:

- Amarià for the use of “Sérénade à Notre Dame de Paris” - Josh Woodward for the use of “Electric Sunrise” - Scott Buckley for the use of “Twilight Echo”

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

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Episode Transcript*

*this transcript is AI generated, please excuse the mess.

Lilly 00:04

Hello, and welcome to another episode of fiction fans, a podcast where we read books. And other words, too. I'm Lily. And I'm sure. And I like to start off with some positive notes at the beginning. I like to think the whole podcast is positive.

Sara 00:23

I think that should be we like to start off not just you.

Lilly 00:27

That's true. I was just laying claim to the idea, because, you know,

Sara 00:33

it was I will grant you that it was your idea initially. But

Lilly 00:38

I gotta say, heloise rubbed off on me. And I've been a little bit. I got that pride go in. Yeah. taking credit for everything with various degrees of sincerity.

Sara 00:50

And bringing in that podcast book talk in the intro.

Lilly 00:54

I know it's like we talked about books or something. Perish the thought. I was wondering if it's even accurate to say that we start the podcast with a ray of sunshine, because isn't the whole episode? Wonderful. I like to think so.

Sara 01:10

I mean, I think it depends on how much thinking content we have.

Lilly 01:14

Which direction does that go? Up to the listener? Okay. Well, let's start with a not necessarily book related positive thing, Sarah, what something great that happened. This week,

Sara 01:27

I saw an old friend from college, whom I haven't seen in literally years, we went and got coffee at this really cute little coffee shop in Berkeley. So that was nice.

Lilly 01:39

venturing out into public and everything.

Sara 01:41

I know, I actually left the house who even am I?

Lilly 01:46

Oh, my God thing does not involve leaving the house. I rearranged some furniture today, I've sort of moved back into my office. But that's not the good thing. The good thing is that moving furniture always gives our cats some kind of weird Gremlin energy. I don't know what it is. But just any kind of rearrangement of the house just gives them such zoomies all day running in and out of the rooms exploring the same desk that they have had, that I have had for their entire lives. But suddenly, it's in a different place. And so it's very exciting. And so I've gotten to hear them gallop throughout the house all day, and it's great.

Sara 02:27

If it's in a different place. That means it's a new piece of furniture.

Lilly 02:31

That's what it feels like. They've never

Sara 02:33

seen this desk before in their entire lives.

Lilly 02:37

It's revolutionary. Exactly. Actually, Bard keeps peeking his head into the podcast recording, which is very nice.

Sara 02:45

It's very cute.

Lilly 02:48

Anyway, I have a very nice desk setup. Now instead of like hunched over on the couch, which is more comfortable, but not as useful. This is true. Yeah. Anyway, as far as our actual episode tonight goes, Sarah, what are you drinking tonight?

Sara 03:05

I made myself with a whiskey sour. A lot of whiskey sour. Very strong whiskey sour.

Lilly 03:12

So we better get this recording done fast. Otherwise, it's gonna go downhill,

Sara 03:16

basically. All right. And what are you drinking tonight? Lily.

Lilly 03:21

It's clearly just a whiskey day because I am having a hot toddy.

Sara 03:25

We were clearly on the same wavelength.

Lilly 03:28

It's been raining up here. And so I'm jealous. I needed it.

Sara 03:32

So jealous.

Lilly 03:35

Have you read anything good lately?

Sara 03:36

I did. I read the Wisteria Society of Lady scoundrels by India. Holton,

Lilly 03:42

you were telling me about that. It's I was,

Sara 03:45

and it is so good. It's a romance novel, which I know I'm on the record as saying I don't much care for romance novels. But this one, the romance was secondary enough to the plot that it totally worked for me. And the plot is basically like, what if some highbrow Victorian ladies learned how to make their houses fly. And then they went around as pirates pirating their houses, flying their houses, and attacking each other and having tea with each other, and generally being scoundrels, and it is so good. So funny. The sequel comes out at some point next year, and I just I adored it. Like, this was one of my probably one of my favorite books that I've read this year. That sounds great. It was amazing. Yeah, it was amazing. Have you read anything? I know that you're not going to be able to top the Wisteria society

Lilly 04:44

but no and very different content. I've been trying to look up some of the some of the historical mythology surrounding golems. I'm mostly familiar with the concept as it is seen in you know Dungeons and Dragons and popular culture fantasy, but I know that they are of Jewish origins. And so I wanted to read a little bit more about where they actually came from, and sort of the original stories around them. I found, apparently, there's a book published by the Jewish Museum in Berlin, but only some of it has been translated. So I can't actually buy the book. But they have the translated segments posted on their website. So I've been going through that.

Sara 05:30

Well, that sounds interesting. Is there any particular reason for your interest in the in golems?

Lilly 05:36

Are they you should ask? Yes, I am working on a book that has leans very heavily on magically constructed people that I refer to as golems. And I've been working on it for a couple of years. And I was like, you know, I should make sure I'm not doing anything really stupid.

Sara 05:56

Probably a good point. There is an episode of Supernatural that deals with golems. That is worth watching.

Lilly 06:03

I'm sure it's worth watching. I suspect it is not any closer to the original mythology, that

Sara 06:09

I mean, how accurate it is, I couldn't say but they do make a point of like incorporating Jewish mythology into it. Oh, cool. Okay.

Lilly 06:22

So like they clearly did at least some research. That's good. And that is what I hope people say about my book someday. Well, we read a couple of books for this evening, or whatever time of day, it is, through the power of technology

Sara 06:38

for this episode.

Lilly 06:40

There you go. The first book we read was the part about the dragon was mostly true by Sean Gibson. This was a fun book.

Sara 06:50

It was a fun book, it got on the calendar, because I had seen a review online somewhere and thought, oh, this sounds right up my alley. And so I purchased it. And then that day, Shawn was running a competition on Twitter for a signed copy. And I entered and I happen to win, and that I had two copies. And I was like, Well, I don't know what to do with the second copy. I'll send it to Lily.

Lilly 07:13

And I do appreciate that. We got to we got to start working books we already own onto the schedule somehow give our wallets a break.

Sara 07:24

I mean, we did that with us. That's true.

Lilly 07:27

That was great. It was brilliant. Very good planning on your part. Indeed. I will say it did take me a couple chapters to really get into this book. Mostly because I haven't read anything by Gibson before. And so he spends a lot of time setting up fantasy tropes and dungeons and Dragon tropes, which I am very familiar with and love. But he spent enough time setting them up that I as a reader was wondering, Where are you going with this? You know, I need more than just Oh, the Randy half elf Bard. But eventually he does start playing with the tropes and subverting expectations in a way that was super fun. I just I didn't know what to expect. And I didn't know if that we were going to get to that point. And I'm very glad that we did.

Sara 08:18

We do we do get there. And one of the things that I really enjoy about this book actually is how it subverts kind of like some of the racial prejudices you see in d&d, like the elves versus orcs thing, you know, it goes into how elves are just really good at propaganda, essentially, yeah, they're all the Bards. So they're the only point of view that you hear. There's a rock giant, who spends most of the story speaking very, very slowly. But that it turns out that he's like really good at maths and knows a lot. And he can he's really good at sewing. And so that was fun, a fun sort of subversion.

Lilly 08:58

I mean, like I said, once we got well, definitely by the time we got to the orcs, I was so happy that that part was one of my favorites. But it starts earlier and I eventually caught on that the the narrative style, and the narrator herself was

Sara 09:19

incredibly unreliable.

Lilly 09:21

Well, yes. It wasn't just an unreliable narrator. It was Gibson using that unreliable narrator to make jokes at her expense that the character didn't necessarily realize she was making, which yes, I mean, that was just really well handled. It was some excellent prose in that sense. I mean, in every sense, you know what I'm talking about that in particular,

Sara 09:44

I do know what she mean. I actually I really enjoyed. So this story of setup as Helen was talking about this adventure that she has been recounting is like a Bardic tale everywhere. And you can Get the Bartok tail. But then in between you also get her story of what actually happened. But still from her perspective, which as we said, Yes, it's very perspective. So it's all of it is biased. But I really enjoyed that framing story and how you see what like, the expectation is, it's, you know, it's like an expectation versus reality thing. Like you expect this really heroic tale. And what you get is not quite that a lot of poop jokes as a lot of poop jokes, except when it's held was doing it because she, of course, is incredibly heroic and beautiful. And everyone's

Lilly 10:38

always enchanted by her beauty, except when they're not, but she's still pretty sure that they are. I have a confession time in our long running d&d campaign. It's been going up well, there have been a couple hiatuses, one of which being COVID. But we started it six years ago. And we have taken our characters from level one to level 20, which I don't know if people need context, but 20 is very high.

Sara 11:06

Yeah, that would explain why it's taken us six years.

Lilly 11:09

Yeah. Well, like I said, there's been some long chunks of hiatus we haven't been playing. But for a while, we were doing twice a week for this campaign. It was fun. I do play a half elf Bard. It's me, I'm sorry. I'm not sorry. I love Laura Lynn. She and her Louise would get along very well. But it's that stereotype. And there were a lot of moments in this book, where I not only recognize the stereotype, but recognized it in myself in and I felt it was a loving way. It wasn't rude.

Sara 11:48

Yeah, none of it feels like mean or malicious. It's it's like Shawn has a lot of love and respect for d&d and enjoys it. And it's just poking fun at some of the tropes that you see in games.

Lilly 12:00

It's also not just that surface level. Everyone jokes about Randy Bard, like that's a that's a meme at this point. But there's also some scenes where the different characters are trying to overcome some sort of conflict. And they're getting in each other's way. And one of them does an action that messes up what the other character was planning on doing. I did just say action. I'm sorry, I'm not going to use d&d The entire time.

Sara 12:29

It would be kind of appropriate if you did so.

Lilly 12:31

It was chronicling my husband's our DM, the Dungeon Master. So I was chronicle linked to him all of the different d&d phrases as I came across. He agrees that orcs and goblins get a bad rap. We actually are on the goblin side in our campaign. Anyway, this isn't Lily talks about her d&d campaign for an hour. But it's hard to not like it. This book brought up all of those fond memories for me.

Sara 13:00

And I also think that I mean, both you and I are d&d players, but I feel like so I don't actually play a lot of what I would call namebrand. d&d. And this book was still really accessible to me as someone who doesn't play a lot like you. You don't actually need to be that familiar with any of the terms or, or anything like that, because it's it's worked in really well. Yeah,

Lilly 13:27

everything is in context, right. So even though I giggle when I can tell that wiska is describing spell slots. That doesn't mean you have to know what a spell slot is to interact with the story. Also, can we talk about whiskey because I love her

Sara 13:43

whiskey, it was fantastic.

Lilly 13:44

She was a little rat person, and she was the wizard. And she was great.

Sara 13:50

The foul mouthed wizard who insulted everyone constantly.

Lilly 13:53

But she liked it when people insulted her back. And I think that was really important for her as a character. She wasn't just mean that was just how she communicated and she wanted people to participate. That's such a different vibe from I'm just gonna be rude to everyone.

Sara 14:10

Yeah, no, I agree with you entirely there.

Lilly 14:13

You mentioned the sort of narrative structure of this book with the the Bartok myth versus slightly more accurate retelling of events. And that reminded me quite a bit of gigantic by Ashley Stokes, which we read pretty recently. It's not it's not the same book at all. No,

Sara 14:35

they're very different there. But

Lilly 14:36

it's very different books.

Sara 14:38

I see what you mean about there being kind of a similar framing structure, because in gigantic you get the straight laced characters perspective on events, and then you get the how it how would you call it?

Lilly 14:51

It's about people hunting for Bigfoot. And you have one person who very rigorously abides by I like the rules of science. And then someone reacting to that who truly believes Bigfoot is real, and reads into things in a very different way and has a very different impression of events. And so that is different from this because it's two words getting two different characters retellings, whereas for this book, the part about the dragon was mostly true. We're getting one character telling us two different versions of the story for different purposes, which is also such a comment on just storytelling. General. Gibson, you madman. My favorite line, or, I mean, maybe not necessarily my favorite line, a line I loved that I did pull out as my note, the thesis of this book, I don't just break hearts, people, I break forth walls.

Sara 15:55

There were a lot of really good quotable lines in this book. Also bad puns are a lot of puns. There were a lot of puns and as as a deep lover of puns, I appreciate it.

Lilly 16:06

I think we'll probably get more into this conversation when we start talking about the other book we read for today, Eric, by Terry Pratchett. But this was a very good pairing. We're not usually this good at pairing up.

Sara 16:23

We are not. But there's there's something almost Pratchett like about the part about the dragon was mostly true. I mean, you get maybe a little blunter with some of the bathroom humor in this. more explicit, a little more explicit. And it's certainly more d&d focused than a lot of Pratchett is, but it had that same kind of humor in that same kind of vibe.

Lilly 16:50

Oh, the tone Absolutely. Yeah. Didn't didn't use footnotes the way that Pratchett does, but he will have parentheses inside parentheses on a page. And it's definitely feels like that nested footnote, where Pratchett is just giving you world details. And you're just following along, because that's a fun detail. Does it really have anything to do with the story? No, but I want to know about round kabobs shish crowns, I don't remember what they were, but I read them in the part about the dragon was mostly true. And it was great. Yeah. Crowns bbka shish rounds, I don't know,

Sara 17:33

something. There's a lot of really nice world building that goes on in these parentheses.

Lilly 17:38

And again, it throws a lot of lore at you, but also contextualize it at the same time, which because a lot of the creatures are, I assume fabricated like political roaches things. There's no way that we would know what that was going into it. But because heloise is telling us the story, she's also explaining what these things are. And that is why I did not hate the first person narrative perspective. And

Sara 18:06

I was, I was wondering if we would talk about that, because you're on record, in multiple places, about not enjoying first person generally,

Lilly 18:15

no one's gonna believe me, because we keep reading good ones.

Sara 18:21

The horror, I

Lilly 18:23

know, but I promise I'm much harder on first person narration than I am on third person. But this book, first of all, has the unreliable narrator, which is super fun. But also, one of the problems I tend to have with first person narration is that the voice has to be there. If I'm supposed to believe that this is someone telling me a story. Or if I'm supposed to believe this is someone's mental commentary, their word choices, and their phrasing has to match that. And so many times a book will be in quote unquote, first person, but it's explaining events, the way someone farther away would be explaining them might. Does this make sense and making sense?

Sara 19:07

I mean, that makes that makes sense to me. How much that will make sense to listeners who have not Catholic last whiskey sour? I can't guarantee it's like someone

Lilly 19:19

describing themselves. Right? A third person narrator might describe a character in a certain way, whatever. But an actual person would never use that same phrasing to describe themselves. That's like that's one where I get really nitpicky a lot of times. But in books, like the part about the dragon was mostly true. I absolutely believe heloise would describe herself the way she does in the whole book. Because that's the whole point. We want to end our non spoiler section with a quote before we hit why you should read this book. Yes, I

Sara 19:58

think we should do that. I wanted to say something clever, even flippant. But NERC was making too many rational points I couldn't refute or ignore. Deflecting guilt with insults is a time honored. Hello easy and tradition, but it felt suddenly trite, which was really annoying. I hate conversations that make me want to be a better person.

Lilly 20:20

Me too. heloise. Me, too. Hey, this is not a really relevant, but I was extremely confused. It comes up at the end of the book. I don't think this is a spoiler though. There's another story that heloise brings up that she wrote about some adventurer named Grimble, who she goes on an adventure with, but in this in the content of this book, heloise made it sound like that had not been written yet. But it's on the cover of this book. And so I was so I'm confused as to the order that they came out that they happen in

Sara 21:00

well, I can't speak to any of that. But there is another heloise book. Or there are two heloise books, I believe, that are her and Grimble. And not in fact, the sequel to the part about the dragon was mostly true. They are not a continuation of some of the events in this book. But those two stories do exist.

Lilly 21:24

Right and have always references them at the end of this book. Or she references her story about it, which I assume is Gibson's novel, The Chronicle of heloise.

Sara 21:38

I don't know about that,

Lilly 21:40

on the clairvoyant. But the tenses used was extremely confusing. It doesn't actually matter. Maybe I was just bringing too much meta into it, but she did it first.

Sara 21:56

I haven't read them yet. So I can't comment.

Lilly 21:58

Yeah, I have no idea anyway, but there's neither here nor there. But I was confused. be confused with me. Before we move on to our spoilery conversation, however, Sarah, why should you read this book?

Sara 22:13

Um, if you enjoyed kings of the wild, you'd probably like this book. If you haven't read kings of the wild, but you like d&d, or bathroom jokes, or hilariously unreliable narrators? Are Terry Pratchett. You should you should read this book.

Lilly 22:32

We are using d&d as a catch all for fantasy RPGs. Yes, I don't think you even necessarily have to be familiar with a tabletop RPG. Although that's where I recognize a lot of these tropes from. I mean, just even Wow, Warcraft, that's the one I was trying to say. Warhammer has ruined me.

Sara 23:00

I thought you were going to play it off as Wow, being not

23:06

better.

Lilly 23:08

Can I cut? I'm gonna cut all that out and just have me making sense.

Sara 23:14

You're welcome.

Lilly 23:17

To avoid spoilers for the part about the dragon was mostly true. Skip to 3748.

Sara 23:27

So, one thing that I wish was developed more in this book, and I hope that will be developed in the sequel, although I did ask Shawn when we were getting sequel on Twitter, and he said, you know, there was a pandemic.

Lilly 23:43

Big old question. Basically.

Sara 23:47

I want naughty and hello was to have a chance to develop the relationships because naughty who is the Ranger?

Lilly 23:57

Yeah, I would say Ranger.

Sara 24:01

She has a crush on held was and it's very cute. It is. I

Lilly 24:06

did not read it that heloise was interested back in her.

Sara 24:10

I don't necessarily think that Hal was interested. But I would like to see that relation. Like I want to see a development of that relationship. Even if it's not he actually like saying, verbally. I'm interested in you. And Hal was saying, you know, thanks, but no, thanks.

Lilly 24:31

Yeah. I'm more of the orc chieftain kind of gal.

Sara 24:36

Yes. Or, or the Dwarven kind of gal. Yeah, she's

Lilly 24:39

super into dwarves. But also just, I read it as she enjoyed the attention, frankly, and obviously played into it when it benefited her. But I did not get the impression that she was attracted to women, although maybe I was just she does say dwarves she doesn't say Dwarven men so I Yeah, It being small minded.

Sara 25:01

I didn't get the impression that she was not into women. Fair enough. Yeah. And even if she's not into naughty I just think that it's it was cute. Yeah, gosh. And I would like I would like to see more of it or maybe

Lilly 25:14

naughty will get a love interests that reciprocates and then heloise will have to deal with not appreciating not even she had her. Oh, I

Sara 25:23

like that too.

Lilly 25:24

Yeah, you got. Yeah, we're gonna make you a romance fan. We've brought it up a little bit earlier. But the orcs in this book, it was probably my favorite part. Where they come across the orc encampment town.

Sara 25:45

And basically a town.

Lilly 25:46

Yeah, it's a town. They This is one of the first things when they actually get inside there. Like there's porches with grandmothers. And yeah, that idea that these groups of people aren't villains. They're just other groups of people. Mm hmm. Like I said earlier, there was a lot of setup for fantasy tropes, that I was a little bit hesitant because I didn't know where I didn't know if it was going to go anywhere. And Gibson proved that it was earlier than this moment. But this was where I was just completely engrossed. It was my definitely my favorite part. The orcas legal system, and the only celebration that they actually get, despite how Louise's insistence otherwise.

Sara 26:36

Yeah, the scenes with though with the orcs were very good. I don't know if I particularly have anything to add on that statement. It was just good. I do like there's so we've mentioned or I've mentioned, or we've mentioned, we've mentioned

Lilly 26:52

how audit, even if I didn't say anything out loud.

Sara 26:56

I'm pretty sure it's we, we have mentioned how bits of this remind us of Pratchett and one of the things that particularly stood out as being very similar with some of the I don't know if I would exactly call it social commentary, but there's a quote about gendered words, which I really appreciated. It is talking about how Borg who, as I mentioned was the rock Giant was very good, unexpectedly good at sewing. And although

Lilly 27:31

a quick comment, the character's expectations were because he only wears a loincloth. So being surprised that rock giants are good at sewing is not rude, given those details, I think.

Sara 27:45

Well, that's true, too.

Lilly 27:47

I just wanted to include that. That doesn't have anything to do with the comment you're about to make. But they were justified in being surprised, I think.

Sara 27:54

Yes, yes. But my comment is not about them being surprised, but So heloise says Fun fact, it turns out that Borg is at least as good of a seamstress as Madame Mottola, Fleur Seamster, I have no idea what the gender proper way to say that is when the one doing the sewing is a man, or at least a rock giant, maybe seem giant. It's telling that a word can be so gendered that you don't know what the male equivalent might

Lilly 28:20

be. Taylor is the answer. Sorry, Halloween.

Sara 28:25

Taylor. Taylor has really different connotations than seamstress, though.

Lilly 28:29

Am I? Am I thinking of the wrong word? No, Taylor is just someone who does clothing. Who does so in?

Sara 28:35

I don't know. So maybe this is me. But when I think of seamstress, I think of not necessarily fancy clothing more like every day, you know, regular ordinary sewing.

Lilly 28:52

But is that your gender? It could fit through? It could it could be?

Sara 28:57

It certainly could be. But when I think of Taylor, I think of like Kingsman suits.

Lilly 29:03

So the definition of Taylor is a person whose occupation is making fitted clothes to fit individual customers,

Sara 29:11

and the definition definition of seamstress. If they're different, though, why do you need to have a seamstress? Who sews? Why can't you just have a tailor? See a woman who sells is not necessarily a professional?

Lilly 29:23

That's true. Oh, I should a woman who sews especially one who earns her living by sewing. Wow. That does include things other than clothes, like blankets and curtains and I guess furniture would probably be different upholstery. Yeah, furniture is different. But I think we're running into a thing where the cooking is a woman's job unless it's paid well, in which case it's always been. It's the glass elevator situation, right? Even though the nursing industry is dominated by women Is the men in it still making more than the women?

Sara 30:03

Well, like computer science was developed by women, and it became a man's profession.

Lilly 30:10

As soon as something is the only word I can think of this fancy, but that's really not prestigious. Yes, the moment something becomes prestigious, even if the general occupation is considered women's work, the high powered positions are still held and maintained by men.

Sara 30:27

Yeah, see, I think I think that's where I think that Taylor is not the right equivalent to seamstress because Taylor implies prestige, rightly or wrongly. I mean,

Lilly 30:38

I'm wondering if that's a symptom and not the cause.

Sara 30:42

Yeah, it could be. Yeah.

Lilly 30:45

Chef and Chef Struss. I start calling them all chefs dresses. All right. We've teased them long enough, Sarah, we must address the puns in the book.

Sara 31:01

There are some very good puns in this book. I can I can read more of my favorites. I mean, I feel like the segment is just going to become me reading quotes. The part about the dragon was mostly true.

Lilly 31:14

Okay with that they're good pawns.

Sara 31:18

They are good puns.

Lilly 31:19

Hey, if anyone made it this far and still hasn't read the book. Seriously, don't listen to this part. Go read the book. The puns are better in context. Obviously.

Sara 31:30

They are better in context. Okay, I'm gonna read about half a page, because you need some of the setup for this pun. But then why call them bog men. I shrugged. Because people are idiots and we live in a patriarchal society. It had a penis, interjected Borg. What? Asked naughty, incredulous. We waited for two minutes before Borg spoke again. It flopped around. When I pushed it. You pushed his penis. I asked Jeeves by a bog man dinner first board, or at least a drink? I don't think he did that said Rami. I hope he didn't anyway, because Borg didn't ask and it's not okay to touch a bog man's penis. If he doesn't say it's okay. I'm pretty sure it's not okay to touch anyone's penis without consent. I said. Rami tilted his head to concede the point? I think that's a good general rule. Or maybe just a good general rule. Yes, I was gonna say yes. And b Yes.

Lilly 32:41

Gibson does tease us with some sequel content at the end of this book, or should I say heloise? Does?

Sara 32:48

They both do? They both do. So at the beginning of the book, one of the reasons why this band of adventurers gets together to face the titular Dragon, is because they are running from an encounter with a stronger enemy, a wizard, who completely like outclasses them. And they've just handed over some, you know, super strong, magical item to the wizard. And then they go and deal with this dragon. And we don't find out what happens with the wizard. And that's teased at the very end of this book. And it leaves me with so many more questions and answers. Well, we better tune

Lilly 33:30

in next time.

Sara 33:32

Yeah, there better be a sequel,

Lilly 33:36

we had one more thing to bring up that I remembered solely because the quote in question is on page 69. One of the things that is introduced early on in this book are the names of the people who live in Scandrick, which is the town or village or village. It was the location beset upon by this dragon. And all of the characters names in that place are absolutely ridiculous. And luckily, I was not the only one to notice that. I'll share some of their names here. So we have people in this town, or village locale.

Sara 34:21

And I should note that we are calling it a town or village because there is some dispute among the residents as to whether it should legally be considered a town or a village.

Lilly 34:33

Like the whole first chapter is about whether it's a town or a village, it was a nice little recurring joke. I'm trying to find some of their names. Well,

Sara 34:46

there's Goodman drunk men. That's a good one. And good men, young men.

Lilly 34:52

Those are the two best ones probably. And Alderman Alderman.

Sara 34:56

Yes. And all the results are men. And hello was Have a quote Scandrick is mildly less boring than Borden, which is one of the five most boring places I've ever been to. My Editor's Note is Borden is also a pretty good name for a very boring town. And I've been to a lot of places, I replied, though it's a perfectly valid place to be from, I wasn't seriously in your place of origin. I was seriously in your ridiculous names.

Lilly 35:29

And that, hey, that's a great example of some of the jokes that Gibson implants really early on. And, well, if you know him as a writer, I'm sure you would be more confident that he's going somewhere with it. You know, the memes are funny enough, they're silly, they're goofy, whatever. But then having it loop back around and be addressed in that way. It was like felt very fulfilling for the for me as a reader. Okay, so I was a little bit of a shithead

Sara 36:03

Why were you a little bit of a shithead?

Lilly 36:05

I did look up Minotaurs in the fifth edition monsters manual for Dungeons and Dragons. Yeah, yes, right. It's a big deal when they're fighting the Minotaur that he's resistant to fire and weak to ice. That's not a thing in fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons.

Sara 36:24

He's also very flatulent, and that's probably not a thing. edition Dungeons and Dragons either.

Lilly 36:30

That's true. It didn't bother me while I was reading it, but because there is so much d&d in the book. I had to I had to know was curious.

Sara 36:40

Did you look up earlier editions?

Lilly 36:42

No, I did not. That's a good point.

Sara 36:45

Because we don't we don't know if it's specifically fifth edition. That's true.

Lilly 36:52

No, Minotaurs are mostly good at mazes.

Sara 36:55

I mean, that tracks with mythology.

Lilly 36:59

Yes. Anyway, that yeah, it didn't bother me. But it had me thinking. I also did like the beholder and a gown and a ballgown.

Sara 37:12

That was a good image. But the Minotaur thing, you know, it's like all of the best games have a little bit of homebrew to them, right. No, it didn't bother

Lilly 37:20

me. I was just curious. Because a lot of the other stuff I could identify as, like, oh, yeah, that's something unique to this book, or Oh, yeah, that's something pulled from d&d as I know it. So I got to that. And I was like, No, I want to know which one it is. That's all. I wanted to know which one it was. That's fair. I do acknowledge I was being a little bit of a shithead. Once again, we descend. I'm not sure why I chose descend. I actually I do I do know why I chose descend for this step in our journey on the center to the Discworld. It's because we're going to hell today.

Sara 38:06

We are going to hell today.

Lilly 38:09

In this world, though, specifically.

Sara 38:13

You mean, we're not going to hell every day?

Lilly 38:16

Aren't we already there? But, you know, podcasts related. We read Eric by Terry Pratchett.

Sara 38:24

And I should I want to mention that this is the first Discworld book since we started our journey to the center of the Discworld. That is a new read for you.

Lilly 38:35

Yeah, I think I have been honest about this in the past that I haven't actually read.

Sara 38:41

I'm pretty sure you've mentioned it. Yeah. Quite a few. Yeah,

Lilly 38:45

I've read most of them. But there are just some weird gaps because I never sat down and was like, I'm gonna read all of them. It was always which books are at Barnes and Noble when I have allowance money, because I'm 14 in the story.

Sara 39:02

You are not like me, and when I'm going to read everything in chronological order publication order. Well, which I guess is chronological order for Discworld to

Lilly 39:11

I am now does that count? Now? Yeah, it was fun getting a new story. I mean, new to me. Yeah,

39:19

I bet.

Lilly 39:22

It was also a rinse wind book, which I that's probably the answer is I just haven't read many of those.

Sara 39:28

It's funny because rinse wind is my favorite series of Discworld. Personally.

Lilly 39:34

It's been really good. So far. Something that I noticed which is very unique for the Richmond series of Discworld novels is that they all are extremely connected. Like there's a very strong timeline.

Sara 39:50

You mean you mean unique for Discworld in general not specific to like you're saying that all of the rings when books are very closely related in time not, which is unique among the Discworld series, not that that's specific to this particular Rincewind novel, right? Yes.

Lilly 40:14

For example, you don't really have to read an earlier death novel to read one of the later death novels. There are some similar characters, but they're introduced and then it's fine. You don't have to actually know what happened in a previous book. Whereas, well, if we're cheating and use the first two Discworld novels, they're literally just one book cut in half.

Sara 40:38

Yeah, that doesn't really count. Okay.

Lilly 40:40

But in this one, there's a footnote on page 12. That just tells you the plot of sorcery.

Sara 40:48

It's It's true that I think that the rents one Books More so than any of the other Discworld books are more chronological, like I agree with you that they take place one after the other, or more closely, one after the other in a way that that not many other Discworld books do.

Lilly 41:06

They're not as chronological, they also depend on each other. They follow very closely, the consequences of one book follows through into the next one. This book starts by rince wind being summoned from the hell dimension that he had found himself trapped in at the Endospores. Didn't know it wasn't a dimension dimension dimension. Okay. It sucked, though. You can agree there.

Sara 41:35

It did suck. It was not a pleasant place.

Lilly 41:38

Yeah, it was a help I mentioned, if not capital H Hill. And so that is directly tied to the events in this book. And I guess, well, I haven't read all of the other ones very recently. So maybe I shouldn't try to recall. There are other series that are more or less related to the previous books within the series. But this one, I think, stands out for being so interconnected.

Sara 42:09

Yeah. I mean, like I said, I think that that there are other books and other storylines that do something similar, but there's more of a time gap. Like, for example, Weird Sisters and witches abroad, follow each other chronologically, but there there does feel like like, they're not necessarily immediately one after the other.

Lilly 42:36

And the events of one book aren't like, the setup for the events in the second book, are they? Oh, they're not

Sara 42:44

they're not the setup. They are kind of heavily referenced. But not it's not quite as much of a setup. No.

Lilly 42:51

Yeah. It's not the direct cause of it's

Sara 42:54

no, it's it's not the direct cause the next book, and that that is the case for some later runs when books to

Lilly 43:00

dance can man rinse when does Yeah. Self important? I don't know. I don't know where I was going with that. It just stands out to me. That's all.

Sara 43:09

Yeah, no, I think that's fair. But yeah,

Lilly 43:12

a whole footnote that literally says, See sorcery. Like Pratchett man, what are you doing for book sales down? Like?

Sara 43:25

I mean, he's just, you know, written, this is a continuation of sorcery.

Lilly 43:30

It was fine, because we have read sorcery. And I think you probably could read this, even if you hadn't read sorcery. Because well, there's a footnote that tells you everything that happens in it, first of all, but also, like you can follow along. It's just a very, with how independent some of the other Discworld books are. It was very interesting.

Sara 43:52

I feel like Eric is also a little unusual, just because it was published. And looking at the I'm pulling this from the Wikipedia page. This is not part of like, I didn't just know this.

Lilly 44:04

But it will happen sic lipidic knowledge of the publishing dates of every Discworld novel, are you even a real fan?

Sara 44:11

I'm working on it. I'm working on it. I wasn't actually going to talk about the publication dates just yet. Oh, that's later on for the conversation. Sorry. But I was I was gonna say like it was published as a Discworld story in a larger format than the other novels, and it was illustrated. Oh, so it has a little bit of a different origin story than any of the other novels which fits with its kind of different feeling.

Lilly 44:39

It's also extremely short. I thought I had purchased the wrong book. When I basically got like, a standard a4 envelope with a pamphlet inside and I was like, oh, no, I got the abridged. Like, no, it's, it's like 150 pages.

Sara 44:58

I mean, my copy is 200 pages, but there's the the pages are quite widely spaced.

Lilly 45:05

Yeah. But it's very short and even holding that book up to the other Discworld novels. It's like half the length of more, which was a pretty short one, too.

Sara 45:14

Yeah. It's not a very long novel, which is good because I had less time to read it the normal.

Lilly 45:20

I wasn't rushing to finish it for a while. But that's because I was 100 pages in and I was like, Oh, hey, I'm almost done.

Sara 45:30

Got it. Kind of a nice feeling.

Lilly 45:32

That's an us problem, though.

Sara 45:33

Not a problem. That isn't us problem.

Lilly 45:36

No, I really liked it. Overall, I will say it is directly referencing Faust, which you can tell because on the title page, it has found and it's crossed out and says Eric, yes. It is a very clear parody. I am not familiar with the story of Faust. I think we started to watch an adaptation in an airport once

Sara 45:59

we did so we, we started to watch a stage play put on at the globe that I have on DVD that features Arthur Darvill as Mephistopheles, which is why we were watching it. I remember that much. Yeah, but I used to fall asleep or something. I don't Yeah, I don't think that we finished it. I saw it. I'm pretty sure that I saw it live. Actually. I think that's why I bought the DVD.

Lilly 46:25

Well, falling asleep on you in an airport is as much of Faust as I remember.

Sara 46:32

Well, now you've read Eric, and you don't have to read first. There you go.

Lilly 46:37

I would still like to watch it. But I guess I'm saying that I will be leaning on you. Because I just Faust go hang out with Odysseus. I don't think so.

Sara 46:46

Look, this was like eight years ago, my memory doesn't go back that far.

Lilly 46:49

Okay. So maybe you also don't know what happens. And one thing that was also kind of fun when we were prepping for this episode, we wrote down quite a few identical notes for this book.

Sara 47:04

And that's not usual, because our notes typically are quite different.

Lilly 47:09

Yeah. But I would say over half of them were firmly overlapping,

Sara 47:16

referencing the same scene or the same concept.

Lilly 47:19

So anyway, that's just fun. A little bit of a meta conversation there. But

Sara 47:25

fiction fans trivia?

Lilly 47:28

Which Terry Pratchett book Did they agree on the most?

Sara 47:33

I feel like that wouldn't necessarily be Eric. It's just that we had notes in agreement.

Lilly 47:38

Yeah. Okay. All right. So when we were planning out what to talk about, I pulled out a pun, that I did not get at all. And I was going to ask you to explain it to me. But as I was typing it out, I got it. So no one gets to make fun of me for not getting this Pong. But I'm still going to share with that it befuddled me for a couple hours.

Sara 48:08

You know, what I just realized is I can't use your your page numbers.

Lilly 48:12

Oh, yeah, because our prints are different.

Sara 48:16

Yeah, normally, I can use your page numbers and actually look at what you're at the quote, you're talking about my cat.

Lilly 48:21

Oh, welcome to the struggle of buying non bookstore novels for English major classes. The teacher had all the page numbers for one version. And obviously you go to the used bookstore to get Frankenstein for $1. But then you can never find the part they're talking about.

Sara 48:44

I tried to avoid English classes. So

Lilly 48:49

good thing that wasn't my goal. failed spectacularly. Yep. Eric gave a sigh of lungs lung. Oh boy. I should have measured my whiskey. Eric gave a sigh of long suffering patients minerals he said bores you know rinse wind colored I don't think a lad your age should be thinking of I spent so much time trying to figure out the dirty pun in the word minerals like mine her all's Yeah, I could not figure it out for the life.

Sara 49:32

I feel like sometimes you just have to actually like speak a sentence or or be typing it out and like thinking it in your head. Well, I

Lilly 49:41

realized that Okay, so this must be an accent thing. Right Hmm. So then I started trying to say minerals with a obscene cockney accent in my head, you know, oh, you minerals governor did not help at all. It turns out it was oars the whole time. The later portion of horology, the study of time, or the study of horse, depending on which side of the pond you're on, I got that immediately. Anyway, oops.

Sara 50:23

You got it eventually. And that's all that matters.

Lilly 50:26

I got to the right place, I figured it out.

Sara 50:29

You did figure it out, eventually. Something that I think is interesting. And listeners can correct me if I'm wrong here. But I feel like I don't hear much talk about Eric as a Discworld novel. And yet it has some of the most recognizable quotes, or at least to me, the most recognizable quotes. One of them, for example, is on what I would say is page 153. It's probably not you're probably not your 153. I don't think I have a 153. Bus. It's probably not your page 153. No,

Lilly 51:01

that's just not exist. Okay, sorry, continue.

Sara 51:06

Multiple exclamation marks. He went on shaking his head, or a sure sign of a diseased mind. There's also a quote that I thought was from this book, about how the road to hell being paved with frozen salesman, but that's actually good omens, and not this book.

Lilly 51:23

There was so much overlap between this book and good omens.

Sara 51:28

Yeah, there were there was I'm going to start that over. Yeah, there was. And I wonder how much of that is because they were written at roughly the same times? I mean, obviously, I don't I don't know how long the writing process for either. Books was,

Lilly 51:45

I would argue they were published around the same time. Well, yeah,

Sara 51:48

that's what that's that's what I'm wanting to say. Like I we know that Eric was published in 1990. Although the Internet didn't tell me exactly when. And good omens was published in May of 1990. And I am making the assumption, which could be incorrect, that that means that they were written at roughly the same times.

Lilly 52:08

I feel like the foreword of good omens implies that it was a pretty long process.

Sara 52:13

But there was still probably some overlap between the writing time of good omens and the writing time with Eric.

Lilly 52:20

Absolutely, yes. I would just say that I think if we were looking at influences, I would say it feels like Good Omens influenced Eric, just based on my understanding of the timelines.

Sara 52:32

Yes. And I would not disagree with you there. Like I think that you're right. It felt like Good Omens influenced Eric rather than the other way around it. This also could just be a factor of we've read good omens more.

Lilly 52:46

Yeah. Well, I certainly Yeah.

Sara 52:49

But no, I think you're right.

Lilly 52:51

It does have a road to hell is paved with good intentions. Joke, though.

Sara 52:56

Yeah, you're right. I mean, it does have I think that the joke and good omens about the frozen salesman is better. It's certainly more original. It is more original. But there there is a similar joke. At the very end of this book. You're right. There's also another joke where they say that HAL has in in Eric, it says that HAL has all the best tunes. And in good omens, there's a quote, it said that the devil has all the best tunes. This is broadly true. But Heaven has the best choreographers. And like those are basically at least the first half of that sentence is basically word for word the same.

Lilly 53:34

Those are definitely echoing each other. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. You have one more comparison here that I think you should bring up.

Sara 53:41

I was I was going to bring it up, actually. And that's I think that the theme of what Hal needed, feels kind of like a reprise of the theme of humanity and good omens, in that. There's a lot of talk of HAL is not as good at coming up with horrific ideas as humans are in both books. And like demons are not the ghastly ones. It's all of the worst ideas come from the mind of humans.

Lilly 54:10

salutely. And we also get, I mean, the, the mastermind behind that, in both books. definitely has some, some similarities as well. Or the I'm sorry, there are different masterminds, but because they are the ones who came up with that concept. It's hard to not draw similarities between them.

Sara 54:31

Yeah, it feels kind of like the devil in ERIC is a less compassionate version of Crowley.

Lilly 54:40

Will Crowley is not the big man on campus. And globins

Sara 54:45

he's, he's not the he's not the evil one in good omens. Also, side note, because I'm used to supernatural and supernatural and good omens pronounced that name. Two different ways. I can never remember whether Croley is the good omens pronunciation or the supernatural pronunciation and whether Crowley is the other one. I think Crowley is good omens and Crowley is supernatural.

Lilly 55:12

I always pronounce it like all star Crowley.

Sara 55:16

See, which is

Lilly 55:17

not related to either of them.

Sara 55:19

Well, well, no, it's related to both of them. Sure.

Lilly 55:24

That was I mean, though, like Aleister Crowley was the dude.

Sara 55:26

Yeah, I Yes, I know. I know that but both characters are named after him. Okay, or like are referencing him. And I don't know which pronunciation goes with which phantom

Lilly 55:40

meaning either. Sorry.

Sara 55:44

I think I think it's curly.

Lilly 55:47

Well, when I first introduced his crawly, like poopy Crowley like

Sara 55:54

this is this is very true. But all of that to say that if I mispronounce it, it's because I'm thinking of the wrong fandom.

Lilly 56:01

Well, we I thought we decided we were just weren't gonna get into pronunciation discussions this episode, and just do whatever the fuck we wanted.

Sara 56:11

We decided that for him it was

Lilly 56:13

we decided that for heloise.

Sara 56:17

We didn't. We didn't discuss that in any other context. But yes,

Lilly 56:22

but he's the mastermind behind the strategy in good omens. Even though he's not in charge of Hill, all capital letters in charge of hell. Which is who? And Eric comes up with that?

Sara 56:37

Yeah. And Crowley or Crowley

Lilly 56:41

seadog?

Sara 56:44

I've been referred

Lilly 56:49

to circumvent the issue though, doesn't it?

Sara 56:53

You're right. It does. It does. Anyway, he. I don't even I don't even remember.

Lilly 57:01

I'm sorry, I shouldn't have interrupted

Sara 57:04

my brain is too fried by sea dog. Anyway, the king of hellos like a less human or less compassionate version of the dog.

Lilly 57:19

See, it was a good idea. I can't say that with a straight face. Okay, I have one more comment about this book before we start getting into the spoiler conversation.

Sara 57:34

What's your comment?

Lilly 57:35

We all know I have a huge soft spot for the character death. And he has some really excellent scenes in this book. He's not a main character. He just sort of shows up. Because how can you have conflict without death? You know, he just he's always around a little bit. But there was one scene with him and the Demon King or the King of Hell or whatever his title is

Sara 58:00

us to Fergal. By the end He is the supreme president. And that's a spoiler. I don't think that's really a spoiler.

Lilly 58:07

All right, then it's not a spoiler. But as to fuggle, or however you pronounce his name, I'm not going to apologize for that, because it's stupid on purpose. This is true. The two of them have a really wonderful scene, a little over the halfway point, I would say like two thirds into the book. And I won't get into the content of it, because I do think that would be a spoiler. But holy shit. Deaths dialogue is top notch in that moment.

Sara 58:38

Death is very good in this. I mean, death is very good in most books, but death is very good in this book.

Lilly 58:44

He is always very good. Yeah, that moment for me was just like, Yes, this is everything I ever want out of one of these. All right, when should you read this book? Because we've decided for Discworld. We're not going to say should you read this book?

Sara 58:58

Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. Um, when should you read this book? It should not be the first Discworld book that you pick up? No, definitely not. I think that if you're enjoying the read seven books if you started reading them chronologically, and you've read source free and you want to read more Discworld, I think this should be the next Discworld book that you pick up. If you are enjoying that. If you are on the fence about Discworld or on the fence about Rincewind I would maybe say skip this and come back. Yeah,

Lilly 59:27

I don't think this is as I'm gonna use the word slap stick. That's not exactly the right phrase. But rinse wind tends to get into high jinks. And the high jinks in this book were very different from the previous ones. I feel.

Sara 59:43

Yeah, it feels a little more muted in some respects,

Lilly 59:48

which is why I originally said slapstick which was not quite right, but I wasn't totally wrong either. So very good book also so short. Read it. It'll take you less than an afternoon

Sara 1:00:00

Yeah, I mean, it's, it's something that you can easily read in a couple of hours. Like it's not going to take you very long.

Lilly 1:00:07

And it does have that fun theme of being very strongly referential to a piece of literature, which a good number of other Discworld books do. Not all of them, of course. But that is, I would say, one flavor of Discworld. And so if you are considering that, it's totally worth checking out, although, who really knows what happens in Faust? So, maybe not useful. Well, eight years

Sara 1:00:35

ago, I did, or how many years ago?

Lilly 1:00:40

A certain number of years, a village number of years ago. Yes. To avoid spoilers for Eric, skip to 114 56.

Sara 1:00:56

So I didn't realize this, I didn't actually write it down. But I also have a note about how I really love labialis.

Lilly 1:01:04

Yeah, I loved labialis or Odysseus, depending on how technical you want to get.

Sara 1:01:10

I mean, depending on whether you're referring to him by his, our world names, or His Discworld name.

Lilly 1:01:18

Yeah, I hope that was interesting. The main thrust of this book is Eric and drinks wind, sort of running around through history. And they hit a couple of points, and one of which is absolutely the Iliad. And poor Odysseus is labialis and He is very tired and put upon which kind of tracks

Sara 1:01:43

but definitely tracks also rinse one's ancestor. labialis means for insert of wins.

Lilly 1:01:50

I love that.

Sara 1:01:52

It's very good. Something that I noted as being particularly pertinent just because we had read the part about the dragon was mostly true for this episode as well, is that there's a little bit of that kind of like expectation versus reality framing. And Eric, like there is in the part about the dragon, it comes out in a little bit of a different form. But like Eric, he has three wishes and he's getting rents wind because he thinks rents wind is a demon, he's he's getting ready when to to fulfill these wishes. And one of them is that he wants to see or meet the most beautiful woman in the world palette of joy.

Lilly 1:02:32

He wants to possess the most beautiful woman in the world.

Sara 1:02:36

Well, okay. i And he

Lilly 1:02:38

doesn't specifically say Helen of Troy that's just how the wishes fulfilled right?

Sara 1:02:42

That's yeah, I'm but I'm, I'm saying that, that, that that is Helen of Troy, or in the story, Eleanor, Eleanor of sword,

Lilly 1:02:50

which, as I think was cut, but we mentioned earlier, between ourselves. Helen of Troy is one of the only connections with Faust that we could identify based on summaries online.

Sara 1:03:04

Yes. But especially with regards to Eleanor and you know, the the battle for Troy or sword. There's this big disconnect between what the story is, and what Eric thinks is the case, versus like the actuality, which is kind of what we get with her laws. And the story that she tells, you know, her her Bartok tale, versus the story that she tells them the part of about the dragon was mostly true. The actual events,

Lilly 1:03:36

poor Eleanor of sort, that having some little shit roll up and go. She is not that pretty. Yeah, I

Sara 1:03:47

mean, Eric is kind of a little shit. He's also 13.

Lilly 1:03:50

I realized we did not summarize at all, which Oh, well,

Sara 1:03:55

we didn't. Well, I was gonna say it's not too late. You can still summarize.

Lilly 1:04:00

Eric summons a demon rinse wind is trying to escape a different dimension. And so he takes the opportunity.

Sara 1:04:06

I don't think he realized he takes the opportunity.

Lilly 1:04:10

No, he's just trying to get out. And does it but Eric helped on accident. Eric is also 13th and trying to summon a demon to get him a bang made. Not in so many words, but that's what it was.

Sara 1:04:23

That's basically what it was. And the

Lilly 1:04:27

wishes obviously backfire, because that's how it goes. We later find out that a different demon was fulfilling the quote unquote, wishes to distract the Demon King, which was a very good that twist at the end with the coup was excellent. So they are accidentally being brought around throughout time into different situations. One of which being the Iliad, or finding Eleanor of sort, because Eric wished for the most beautiful woman or Are you read the back of my book? To have a style in hot babe? Yep,

Sara 1:05:06

that's what that's what my book says to all. He wants us to fulfill three little wishes to live forever to be master of the universe, and to have a style in hot babe.

Lilly 1:05:19

That doesn't act like that fits pretty well. That fits pretty well with Eric. What does bother me is the very end of the summary. There's only one thing Eric wishes now that he'd never been born. No,

Sara 1:05:36

that's not that's not quite accurate. That never happens. That does not happen. That categorically does not happen. Nope, that does not happen. That's just a

Lilly 1:05:46

lie. One of my absolute favorite moments in this book was rinse wind using social engineering to get through hell. And it is very explicitly draws the connection between the hierarchies of hell and the hierarchies of the unseen University, which just sort of cements my idea that Pratchett is extremely snarky towards the higher education system in Britain. And he's going to make fun of academia everywhere he can, including comparing it to literal hell.

Sara 1:06:25

Is this when they're at because of course, it doesn't help because we have different editions. Your page number doesn't help. Is this winter at the doorway to hell?

Lilly 1:06:35

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Not for nothing headwinds when survived for years and the paranoid complexities of unseen University. He felt almost at home. His reflexes operated with incredible precision. You mean you weren't told? He said to the person guarding the door trying to prevent them from getting in. It was hard to see if Earl floggers expression changed if only because it was hard to know which part of it was expression. But it definitely projected a familiar air of sudden and resentful uncertainty. told what it said. Rinse Wind looked at Eric. You'd think they'd tell people wouldn't you? Tell them what said Eric clutching his ankle? The heads modern management for you said rinse when his face radiating angry concern. They go ahead and make all these changes all these new arrangements and do they consult the very people who formed the backbone? exoskeleton corrected the demon or other cancerous and kindness structure of the organization runs when finished smoothly. He waited expectantly for what he knew would have to come. Not them said herbal flogger too busy sticking up notices they are I think it's pretty disgusting sediments wind. Anyway, they get along great and it's wonderful.

Sara 1:08:03

They do. Also what's wonderful is like I was able to find that.

Lilly 1:08:09

Just that yeah, that moment of he's been in enough university settings that he can manipulate a demon.

Sara 1:08:19

I wonder of the things that I really enjoy about rents Windows is how he uses his wits to get out of situations like

Lilly 1:08:26

Odysseus,

Sara 1:08:28

like Odysseus, yeah, or LaViolette. And this was really no exception to that.

Lilly 1:08:34

Do we address quits a cool model?

Sara 1:08:37

And that whole segment,

Lilly 1:08:38

or quit whole segment fur coat all which, like, come on. You're better than that.

Sara 1:08:49

Yeah, that

Lilly 1:08:51

one of the places they visit is not the Aztec Empire, but it was clearly riffing off of it. And it just wasn't funny.

Sara 1:09:02

It's, again, it's one of those things where it feels like he's laughing with racism instead of laughing at racism. And

Lilly 1:09:11

all of the jokes were. Their word sounds like other words heard or, which like, that's no, yeah. So you have to get through that whole section. And it's just boring, because none of the jokes are actually funny. Yeah, like it was.

Sara 1:09:27

It was fine.

Lilly 1:09:29

I hope all of them landed. There were a couple of good, like, general religion riffs, which I'm always down for. But all of the cultural ones were just,

Sara 1:09:40

yeah, yeah, it was not his strongest piece of humor. And it wasn't. I mean, it wasn't as offensive as some of the other like racist bits, but do come up with but it also

Lilly 1:10:01

makes me clutch my pearls or anything. It was just all of the unquote jokes. were stupid and bad. Because they relied so heavily on that. And it was like, there's not actually any joke there.

Sara 1:10:17

Yeah, it's like Terry Pratchett. He usually means to be fair to well, also, to be fair, he this was written or published in 1990. But still, like, even at 9090, probably not funny,

Lilly 1:10:34

instead of classic codal it's quits overcoat. Oh, that's it. That's the whole joke. There's nothing out here. That's nothing.

Sara 1:10:45

Yeah, that's fine.

Lilly 1:10:47

I wonder if I'm especially hard on it. Because we did read servant of the underworld by Alia de Bodard, earlier this year, and that is a fantasy novel completely within the ancient Michigan setting, which is my attempt to pronounce Mexico with the correct accent. And I'm sure I finished that up. But what I met and like so that was a fantasy novel with all of these really, like this rich Pantheon and all of these gods and me trying my damnedest to pronounce these words correctly, even in my own head. And then Pratchett rolls in granted 30 years earlier, with it sounds like a different word.

Sara 1:11:41

Yeah, yeah, it was definitely one of the weakest points of the book. It wasn't great. I think it deserves to be called out as being not great.

Lilly 1:11:50

The there were moments, they get teleported to this place. Because Eric, one of Eric's wishes was to be the master like to rule all kingdoms.

Sara 1:12:02

Something I mean, he basically wanted to be he wanted to rule the world, and, you know, get all of the tribute associated with ruling the world and all of the prayers.

Lilly 1:12:14

So these people have a prediction, that's not the right word, prophecy. These people have a prophecy that a king will come and he'll be the ruler of the universe, and they want to torture him because the universe isn't great. And that's apparently his fault. If he's the ruler of it. And that part was pretty funny. That bit I did like, and so he shows up, and they're giving him a bunch of money, and he's so happy. And winds wind obviously realizes something's not right. But Eric assumes they're worshipping Him. And everything, of course, is right. And so that that dynamic in that moment was funny. I did laugh at those points. So it wasn't completely hopeless.

Sara 1:13:00

Well, well, because that that bit is not relying on racist stereotypes so much. You know,

Lilly 1:13:08

we're laughing at a 13 year old for assuming these random strangers are going to work with him for absolutely no reason.

Sara 1:13:15

Yeah. Yeah, I can. I can laugh at that. Exactly.

Lilly 1:13:19

So it's not like this whole section of the book was without redemption. There were just long stretches that I did, did follow literally fell asleep while reading. Now it was after lunch. So that's not entirely on the book, but did actually happen. Would you like to end this conversation with another quote from this book that we really liked?

Sara 1:13:49

So this quote is from the arch chancellor of unseen University, who still is not arch Chancellor critically. We have not gotten to Wrigley yet. But we're getting there. Slowly but surely. Anyway, it is the arch Chancellor's point of view. His head ached. He felt it was several weeks past his bedtime. And that's the extent of the quote that I

Lilly 1:14:17

wanted to read. That's it. That's because

Sara 1:14:19

that's it. Because I too, always feel like it is several weeks past my bedtime.

Lilly 1:14:25

You're talking to the woman who just admitted to napping after lunch. So

Sara 1:14:30

oh, man, my my lunch break is as often as not spent doing an app taking a nap.

Lilly 1:14:38

Sometimes you just gotta catch up on bedtime. Yeah, and the art chancellor of the unseen University understands that.

Sara 1:14:48

He's also probably, you know, 80 years older than we are but

Lilly 1:14:54

if not more, This is something that I find happens more often with I don't want to say amateur authors, but I don't know how else to say fanfiction.

Sara 1:15:11

You could just say fanfiction.

Lilly 1:15:13

It mostly happens. I mostly notice it with fanfiction, but it does absolutely happen in traditionally published books. So the aren't getting away from this complaint today. Real authors. A minute is a really long time. I feel like authors use the word minute when they actually want the word moment. Because one moment is, yeah, who knows, whatever. That's however long it takes to be correct.

Sara 1:15:48

If it's nebulous. Yeah, it wasn't nebulous definition.

Lilly 1:15:51

A minute is a concrete unit of time. And saying that something happens for a minute is almost always way too long.

Sara 1:16:01

What I really have trouble with is when fanfiction authors are real authors, but I see this more in fanfiction not real authors published authors.

Lilly 1:16:11

I said that earlier as a joke, I would like to know that was a joke.

Sara 1:16:16

I do mean published authors.

Lilly 1:16:19

You mean traditionally published authors? No, I mean, published authors.

Sara 1:16:23

I mean, published Well, I'm I'm taking published authors to me and

Lilly 1:16:28

transmission literacy is original works, it's fine. We're never gonna get the verbiage right.

Sara 1:16:33

Yeah, that's not that's not the point of this pet peeve.

Lilly 1:16:38

Also, this is a pet peeve, in case you couldn't.

Sara 1:16:42

But But I do like people, people, particularly fanfiction, authors will say like a conversation took five minutes or 10 minutes. And they'll give us the text of the conversation, right? But it's something that will only take maybe, you know, 30 seconds if you're saying it out loud with someone, because I don't think that people realize just how long a minute actually is. In a dialogue.

Lilly 1:17:08

Well, just in general, omitted as a long time. This did come up in the part about the dragon was mostly true by Sean Gibson. However, I'm like 99% Sure he was doing it on purpose.

Sara 1:17:24

Yeah, I'm pretty. I'm pretty sure that Shawn was was using a minute as just an exaggeration because Helaas is prone to those

Lilly 1:17:33

because there are times when they're waiting for I forgot his name. Borg was born.

Sara 1:17:39

Okay. Borg, my notes say Borg. Anyway,

Lilly 1:17:44

Borg takes a very long time to react to things. And it's so often in that novel, it will be described that everyone is waiting for five minutes for him to respond. And oh, my god, five minutes is way too long. But to your point, how Louise is a very unreliable narrator. And prone to exaggeration, so it's okay like that. It became part of the joke, but a lot of authors do it sincerely and bugs the shit out of me just to make a point. I am now going to stop talking for one minute

Sara 1:18:22

are you actually going to include a minute of silence in this episode this is long enough. Not funny don't make don't make me talk. Oh, God.

Lilly 1:18:51

I don't like this. I don't like this. I don't like this at all. This is

Sara 1:18:57

this was this is really mean of you to just spring this on me. Now I have I have a minute or 30 seconds left or whatever now to fill. And it's like, you know, it's

Lilly 1:19:07

like that.

Sara 1:19:10

That British show where you have to talk about a topic for one minute with no hesitation deviation or repetition. And oh my god, that's hard. I'm not used to just talk

Lilly 1:19:24

though. That was it. That was a whole minute.

Sara 1:19:27

Yeah, but there was there was repetition and deviation hesitation there.

Lilly 1:19:31

Okay. Yes, I met you survived. But that's one okay. This also comes up a lot in pornography, where someone will orgasm for 10 minutes long or whatever. And it's like no. Incorrect to the point of unacceptable levels.

Sara 1:19:53

Yeah, that's, that's just kind of ridiculous. No one

Lilly 1:19:57

knows for a whole minute. Okay. doesn't happen. Just say moment, just say moment.

1:20:06

It's right there.

Lilly 1:20:07

You could even say five moments, a handful of moments, whatever. But it's not going to make me go. Well, now I'm gonna count out 60 seconds in my head and see if this makes sense. It never does never make sense. Yeah, don't use minutes.

Sara 1:20:23

Yeah, I mean, I can't, I can't really argue there.

Lilly 1:20:27

Unless there's a good reason. I can't come up with any off the top of my head. But,

Sara 1:20:31

well, the good the good reason is when you have an unreliable narrator, like who was who was very clearly exaggerating?

Lilly 1:20:37

Sure, yes. Or, I don't know, if you're giving us that 80s montage of someone getting strong, and it's like, and then they held a plank for five minutes. That is concrete information that's actually useful. I don't know why you would be describing it that precisely. I think that's what it is. Using the word minute is very precise. Whereas moment, gives everyone some wiggle room. It gives us the suspension of disbelief and we can just assign whatever value makes sense to us in our head. Instead of making me start like literally break out the stopwatch and go how incorrect is this? Let's find out.

Sara 1:21:22

Yeah, that's fair.

Lilly 1:21:28

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of fiction fans

Sara 1:21:32

comm disagree with us. We're on Twitter and Instagram at fiction fans pod. You can also email us at fiction fans pod@gmail.com

Lilly 1:21:44

If you enjoyed this episode, please rate and review on Apple podcasts and follow us wherever your podcasts live.

Sara 1:21:53

Thanks again for listening and may your villains always be defeated by