Talk:Book:Unseen Academicals

The cover art referred to is the poor, lame Harper version, mind you. The original shows many of the usual suspects and a few newcomers lined up behind the Librarian, with ball, as for the team iconograph. --Old Dickens 20:20, 19 July 2009 (UTC)

Publication date

Is October 6th still the official release-date? If thats the case my favourite store made a major booboo by selling me a copy this monday (I'll start my second redthrough tonight)? Iron Hippo 17:56, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Amazon and Waterstones still say something from the sixth to tenth of October. What edition is that? --Old Dickens 19:12, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

Doubleday hardcover (in Sweden) Iron Hippo 09:48, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Amazon.co.uk now says 1 Oct, i.e. now. --Old Dickens 23:25, 30 September 2009 (UTC)

The nice girl girl at the store said they got their shipment earlier than excpected Iron Hippo 09:48, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Now published

Since the book is published, I suggest we move the entire stuff to something like "Unseen academicals pre-release discussion" and start on a proper Book: Unseen Academicals, liberally pasted with Here Be Spoilers!!

Would it not be more beneficial to simply delete the content of this page as a when it becomes irrelevant? personally i do not see the benefit of keeping old stuff online --BOZZ 13:27 1 October 2009 (UTC)

I am a nice(-ish) guy so I don't like to flat out delete stuff, Nevertheless it's a moot point as I and others are doing exactly what I proposed. Get the book, read it once, jump in, read it again, correct what you wrote the first time and so on. Have fun Iron Hippo 22:25, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

no objection to "losing" the previous page content, esp. as it will still be there for retreival in the depths of history. --AgProv 19:54, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Book Template?

One question, though: is there a book template yet for Unseen Academicals, something like Unseen Academicals? --AgProv 19:54, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

There is now. --Old Dickens 20:27, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

Cover

The unidentified Wizards appear to be (front to back): Senior Wrangler, Indefinite Studies, Recent Runes, but of course I don't have the book out here on the edge of the universe. I'm not sure we need the duplicate covers: if we replace the automatic Amazon cover image with this one it could be blown up as desired. --Old Dickens 22:46, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Spoiler alert; the lineup on the cover doesn't actually come into play as is(ie Vetinari never refs). In the article I named the persons in the iconograph leaving three unidentified; one starter should be Bledlow Nobbs(no relation) but I can't picture him in the picture. Iron Hippo 22:55, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Series

Is it Wizards Series or Ankh-Morpork Books?

(And how does the note on Bengo Macarona clarify anything? Why would there be another one?) --Old Dickens 04:41, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

It's not so much that only one has matriculated, as such, it's more that there's ONLY ONE! As in, no-one else with that name is as good at his speciality as he is. For his supporters, anyone mentioning the name Macarona will only and for always conjure up that one image, whatever else they are talking about. As in "There's only one Paul Gascoigne" (as so memorably portrayed by Aggers on a recent post). For older (English) fans of Foot-the-ball the only cock-up was "There's only two Trevor Stevens"...

Not that we non-Merkins should be aware of the game of baseball but the New York Mets a few years ago ended up with the play-by-play note Bobby Jones relieved Bobby Jones - Iron Hippo 21:38, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Now the Swede is teaching me baseball trivia. What a wonderful thing is a wiki, as I said before. --Old Dickens 23:44, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

A man was relieved by another man? Or even by himself? Can you see Nobby's dirty grin??--Knmatt 11:06, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

It's a baseball thing, not given to the British to understand (any more than we can figure out when a cricket match ends). It doesn't even involve the ritual grabbing of the jockstrap, actually. --Old Dickens 14:37, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Shakespeare annotation (or not)

Don't know the Hack well enough but: -How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless Dean Doubleday p.46 sounds like something of the Hacks that Pterry could paraphrase--Iron Hippo 22:54, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child -

from King Lear [1]

If she must teem, Create her child of spleen; that it may live, And be a thwart disnatured torment to her! Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth; With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks; Turn all her mother's pains and benefits To laughter and contempt; that she may feel How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is To have a thankless child! Away, away!

so in it can go as an annotation? --AgProv 23:11, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

My blood alcohol level is paramount to my ability to write something comprehensible. Or not --Iron Hippo 23:26, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

And I have the same old complaint. Why aren't the annotations on the annotations page? . --Old Dickens 23:44, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

An independent annotations page has now been set up and appears to work. Although I'd be glad if somebody with more experience of HEX/PEX/WIKI could check it out, as it still reads red on the index page despite being able to receive and store material. --AgProv 20:55, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Nope. Refresh your browser. Much neater, thank you. --99.242.219.94 21:46, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Football and Foot-the-ball

I vote we have 2 separate articles. There is the ancient and outlawed practice of kicking each other in order to get a leather object to a post at one end of an agreed area. Then there is the new-fangled game under creation during the events of Unseen Academicals. I think keeping one article will be confusing, especially considering where you reference Dimmers, Dollies, Pork Packers etc as well as two sets of rules, champion players, traditions, events of the big game... what do we think? --Knmatt 13:30, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Two articles seems like confusion to me. I'd prefer one showing the development of the game from ancient to new versions. See Wikipedia's Football, which covers many more varieties and their history. --Old Dickens 14:16, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

But has links from it to main articles on Association Football, Rugby Football, Medieval Football, Australian Rules Football etc etc with a potted version of each on the main article...But hey! Majority rules OK! If that's what we think then fine. --Knmatt 14:21, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

It covers many more games about which a lot more is known, and the reader probably has a better idea of which he's looking for. Here (and of course I don't have the book), it seems to be the transformation of one game. I'd still prefer to start from one article on the game involved in the book. If we can come up with so much material on both versions that it becomes unwieldy the old game can still be hived off later. (One for and one against ain't a majority.) --Old Dickens 14:41, 4 October 2009 (UTC)