User:Old Dickens

Verse

What if the stories were true? What if there really were Vampires and Werewolves and Wizards and Witches who really could turn you into a toad, or make you think they had? Suppose Nick and Nora Charles were the most powerful couple in the country...

There is a story that the world is a disc borne on the backs of four elephants which stand on the carapace of an enormous turtle. In one corner of the Multiverse (the one farthest from Reality) this, too, is true. This is where the story creates the history and a one-in-a-million chance turns up nine times out of ten and the ocean falls into space around the rim without depleting itself. On the Discworld, "what if?" must be answered, the stories lived, the myth made real.

Tales from this remote universe arrived regularly via inspiration particles intercepting the particularly receptive and talented brain of Sir Terry Pratchett, OBE. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to sort, file and illuminate the elements of these chronicles in this little corner of the vast library of L-space. Just don't forget your ball of string.

Bridge

Black Lives Matter seemed like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately, it was just three women with a meme and no idea of political organisation. Now any attention-seeking malcontent can set up a website and call herself "Black Lives Matter" and promote any outrageous agenda that occurs to her.

In Seattle, a young woman established a website in support of a local chapter only to find herself co-opted by crazies who stormed a Bernie Sanders rally to denounce him for having marched for civil rights in the sixties. (Yes, that Bernie Sanders, the unacceptably liberal candidate.) When the original activist apologised on the website she was excoriated by the founding group. In Toronto, a group assuming the title stopped the city's Pride parade, claiming the right to decide who could participate. They particularly proscribed the police department, who have recently made a show of apologising for past abuses of the gay community. When the mayor weighed in on the side of police participation, the self-appointed BLM proclaimed that the mayor of the city had no right to comment; THEY would decide who should be allowed to participate in someone else's celebration.

Having shot themselves in the foot and the groin, the recent massacre in Dallas by a completely deranged acolyte may be a shot in the head.

Chorus

I sometimes sit and laugh giddily at the mere existence of some Pratchett characters (Carrot Ironfoundersson, say) and the reality he created out of the absurd stereotype. This is often toward the end of the bottle of wine, but still, it suggests how he's different from other writers I have followed. There are now more than a thousand Discworld characters described here, and that's not all.

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Made a sysop for the many good contributions --Sanity 01:34, 19 August 2006 (CEST)