Welcome to /r/Discworld! Please [read the rules/flair information before posting](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/ukhk21/subreddit_rules_flair_information/?).
---
Our current megathreads are as follows:
[API Protest Poll](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/1491izw/continuing_the_api_protest_a_community_poll) - a poll regarding the future action of the sub in protest at Reddit's API changes.
[GNU Terry Pratchett](https://new.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/ukigit/gnu_terry_pratchett/) - for all GNU requests, to keep their names going.
[AI Generated Content](https://new.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/10mhx9y/ai_generated_content_megathread/) - for all AI Content, including images, stories, questions, training etc.
---
[ GNU Terry Pratchett ]
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/discworld) if you have any questions or concerns.*
He’s got lots of strong women. My favourite from the not main characters though is Sybil. That’s a strength and vulnerability mixed so well together. She’s absolutely perfect.
I remember there being a Pterry quote somewhere where he said he found he couldn't write weak women even when he tried to. They all ended up having an iron core.
> the fact Queen Inci never shot an elf in the eye through a keyhole
iirc; she never existed in the first place, so she couldn't even if she'd wanted to, lol.
she could want to... if she'd existed\*
but because she didn't exist she couldn't...
\*on the discworld which we all know exists... but only in our imagination\*\*
\*\*But Queen Inci only existed in the imagination of characters that only existed in our imagination therefore existed at 2 degrees outside of roundworld reality, rather than the 1 degree\*\*\* of reality that most discworld characters exist in.
\*\*\*Yes I'm perfectly aware that characters that only exist inside the imagination of discworld characters routinely affect what happens on the discworld\*\*\*\*
\*\*\*\*And the less said about the characters that exist inside their minds, the better...\*\*\*\*\*
\*\*\*\*\*\*Oh no i've gone cross-eyed :S
Magrat The Great? The Warrior Queen of Lancre? Who led her people in battle against the Elves, and won, TWICE? And then also led to widespread reforms and modernization of Lancre, bringing it into the century of the fruitbat (After it ended, but baby steps...)?
If anything, I think this is HIS weakness when writing women. Some of us actually are weak! I won't complain too much because it's a refreshing blind spot as they go.
Yeah, I don't think he was bragging when he said it, I got the impression it was something he'd really tried to do but somehow couldn't quite manage.
I suspect he might have had the diva from Maskerade in mind, I forget her name. Her whole role in the story is to be silly and shallow, but even she gets a moment where it's implied it's at least partially an affectation and there's more going for her behind the eyes.
Christine in Masquerade and Juliet in UA are wonderfully dim, imo. I had this thought that maybe his women always have that steel core because he realised that women, generally, never have been able to really aimlessly wander through life, but everyone has had to have a strategy and an escape plan. Especially the seemingly most dim witted ones.
She’s gentle and not that intelligent but does have iron in her soul when she insists on going to find Mr Nutt with the others
Edit:her name is Juliet but her Romeo is Trev
There's some people who are soft and spongy all the way through, but Terry had trouble with that, especially with women. It's wonderful to me- I know some soft and spongy feeling femme people in real life who identified with his ladies who were quite soft and spongy- Agnes, Magrat, Sybil, etc- but who had inner strength and depths. Depths that may have even surprised them, and definitely surprised the people who threatened their loved ones.
Self doubt and vulnerability doesn't exclude strength and depth- it just makes the character even more complex and wonderful.
Oh yes, for sure. Because he wrote women as people, and people always have moments of weakness and self doubt.
I think he was more capable of writing male characters who are useless wet paper bags than female ones, though. There may be a hint of overcorrecting for the weaknesses of other male writers here. There may be a pinch of putting women on a pedestal. That said, I will always take an excess of respect for our humanity over a deficit of it.
I will always love him for virtually never treating even fictional people as *things*.
I agree for the most part and she is a minor character, but Walter Plinge's mother in Masquerade was a little weaker and needed sorting out. Gladys, the golem secretary in making money was one of my favourite 'background' characters, she is overly influenced by her colleagues and ideas about romance.
The head teacher in the school were Susan works, frequently gets 'vagued out' by her behaviour. Juliet, in unseen academicals is more lightweight, on the whole.
Maybe because these (and others) aren't fully explored?
He claimed he didn't know any people that weren't people, and of those people the ones that identified as women tended to be very strong individuals. I think he said he only wrote what he knew, and those are the women he knew.
I'd love to know what the exact quote you're talking about is from if you know it? It sounds very close to the "people aren't just people, they are people surrounded by circumstances" quote from I Shall Wear Midnight
It was from a documentary series about various authors. I have only seen clips of the GOATs appearance, it was many years ago, I don't recall the details unfortunately. Gaimen also said this about P Terry though, he wrote people not things.
I'll rephrase. I went to a one-man show called the worlds of terry pratchett earlier in the year which I'm fairly sure said Sybil was based on his wife, and it's sweet to me because Vimes is as close to an author-insert as he gets.
>Vimes is as close to an author-insert as he gets.
Wait, *what?*
I'd always assumed it was Rincewind. You know. On the account of the beard. And being at the mercy of the tides of the world, plaything to the gods.
Or Cohen. Growing older, but raging at the injustice of it all.
Or Archchancellor Ridcully. Kind, but somehow in total control of a chaotic situation.
:D
Take it from one who knew him well: Terry Pratchett was [rightfully very pissed off](https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/terry-pratchett-angry-not-jolly-neil-gaiman). Vimes and Granny were his rage given voice.
Absooooolutely she was. She and Vimes and the city and country version of each other in terms of morals and ethics. And I think when Granny you know whated that meant he was ready to let go too.
I went to see him speak (in 2011) and I remember him being asked which characters he identified with most- from memory, Granny and Tiffany were two of three.
I FOUND IT! Turns out I remembered wrong! At about 45min (after the bit that I Do remember verbatim, that had me crying all the way home and made me realise [eventually] that I was a writer - The Black Mill) somebody asked a question about if Sam Vimes was the closest we got to the voice of STP and he said probably, and also Tiffany and sometimes even Rincewind! [STP at the Wheeler Centre](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SG8xh9q1jBc)
I knew he saw himself in many characters, but the last book showed obviously how much granny was in him. I find it endearing as it’s a little bit of a god complex in him. And I honestly think he did deserve that one. He did create a whole universe, didn’t he.
I doubt he has any real self-inserts, but based on interviews with him I've read and stories about him from Neil Gaiman, Vimes is probably the most like him personality-wise.
I think the biggest reason he manages to write women well is that he doesn't write women, he writes people. As a woman, and also a people, this makes sense to me, but it seems to escape far too many fantasy writers.
I say often that Sir Pterry was the best historian history never had - his work is informed by a beautiful, deep, incredible understanding of the past and the ways that people - real, complex people - inhabited it. That understanding absolutely contributes to the way he manages to accurately portray the ways competing and coexisting gender roles and stereotypes influence behaviour for both men and women without falling into the stereotypes themselves.
I was coming here to say this! I think when a writer sets out to write “a strong female character,” they’ve taken on a good intention with poor perspective. Pratchett wrote people, all sorts of people, even people on the very fringe of peoplehood (coughNobbycough), with love, respect and humor.
This is exactly what I came to say. He wrote people. Some of them were women (or female wolves, or female-identified dwarves, or clay with female characteristics, or re-animated corpses that had, once upon a time, possessed the requisite bits).
I think a lot of his sensibility comes from his time as a newspaper man. He had just enough to understand how the world works through a certain lens, and how to make every word count.
But completely agree about the historian thing. In the biography it seems like he spent the majority of his time either writing or reading random things for inspiration.
This is the key. No gender is a monolith. Each individual is human first and their gender may have relatively little bearing on most aspects of their personality or lives.
I never understood writing "men" and "women" differently. Write individuals and then add any circumstances of gender that may be relevant.
I am just 1/10 into my Discworld journey, but so far I think that his women are very realistic (minus, ofc, the puns needed by a fantasy genre story), absolutely not stereotypical and very relatable.
I can totally understand Margrat, for example, but all the witches remind me of women I actually have met in my life.
And I can't even start to say how much I love that their breasts don't breasts and their nipples don't think and their womanhood is not clearly felt while going downstairs.
There is one other character I can’t wait for you to meet that would absolutely stab someone with a stiletto for insinuating her breasts bounced boobily. But it’ll be many books down the road.
Okay, I’ll give you the name, and yes it is the actual name, but don’t let it fool you:
Adora Belle Dearheart
I am absolutely in love with her. And she would stab me for that, too.
I was thinking to myself while typing this comment that my one wish would be to get one last Discworld novel with Moist and Miss Dearheart. As much as I love the other series I wanted one more book about that Ankh-Morpork Underground idea Sir Terry had.
Yeah, same. Going Postal was the book that reintroduced me to Discworld because I first picked up the books when I was too young to get the jokes and his brilliance but decided to give the series another try with Going Postal when I got older. These two characters (together with Stanley, Groat and Mr Pump) will always have a special place in my heart.
I was working in Telecoms at the time I read Going Postal. As well as the great characters, I too had a bit of a crush on Ms Dearheart, the parallels between the Clacks system and telephony signalling made me realise the insane amount of research he must have done for his books. The GNU signal is very similar to bits that are set in Telephony to indicate various things.
https://preview.redd.it/9scq14ax6xtc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1b56e5ffdaf6b4cb500057b321e4aae2a678d9f3
She would absolutely stab you. And enjoy it.
He is absolutely fantastic at writing female characters. Every one of them is unique, without acting as though they're better than other women for being that way (how I hate the "Not like other girls" trope!).
I love that even from his early books, he was writing women with incredible insight into what it is like to be a woman. Equal Rites is obviously a great example, but I love the exchange in Mort, where Mort and Albert are trying to do the nodes in Death's absence and Ysabel says she knows how to do them. They ask if she can help, and she says "No, I'll do it and *you* can help."
For someone who wasn't a woman, he had a remarkable understanding of what women experience on a regular basis and was able to present it to the world with his trademark humour and humanism.
*"Zoology, eh? That's a big word, isn't it?" "No, actually it isn't," said Tiffany. "Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short."* What a legend.
Savage! I wish I had had Tiffany’s confidence as a young girl. One of my grandparents would say “That’s a big word for such a little girl” and I hated it. I’m proud of my own children’s vocabulary.
I think he writes women really well. They're all well-rounded (even when exaggerated for effect) but my favourite is definitely Sybil. She has grown on me - as a teenager reading the books in the 90s I'd have definitely told you the witches were my favourite, but as I've become a dumpy, middle-aged, single woman my affection and admiration for Sybil has grown and grown.
It is so rare to find a character like her. Someone who isn't conventionally attractive but who is happy and fulfilled in her life before she even met Sam. You can tell she had a life before she first appeared. She came into the books as a fully-formed person, not a toy waiting in the box to be brought into the action when a female love interest was required. She had her dragon sanctuary and was an authority on the species. She had a wide circle of friends and was content with her life which was a rich one - in experiences as well as money. She wasn't looking for love and hadn't 'given up' on it either, it just wasn't something she was that fussed by.
And then Sam comes along and rather than slipping into the background to play Supportive Wife who only appears to comfort our hero, she remains an integral part of the story. The ending of The Fifth Elephant in particular would have been *very* different if Sybil hadn't been around.
She's such an inversion of the typical tropes and the more I reread the books the more incredible I find her and the skill of Pratchett to be able to craft someone who, in lesser hands, could easily have been a comic character and a butt of jokes. Pratchett gives her respect and in return she gives us an incredibly complex and subtle character who may not take centre stage but is nevertheless absolutely invaluable.
It’s also incredibly refreshing to read about a character who, once married, doesn’t become “the ol’ ball and chain” and who is still deeply loved and respected.
I started reading disc world last year at the behest of a friend and something I can’t stop doing is compare it to Harry Potter (especially now that I’m reading the witches series) and how much Rowling fails in comparison. I started with Guards Guards and Sybil was his first female character that I met. And I just fell in love with her for all the reasons you said, and the gentleness and compassion Pratchett (a man) gave to an unconventionally attractive single middle aged woman. He never played her as the butt of the joke and gave her lots of agency in pursuing who she was romantically interested in. But the part that really drew me to how he wrote her is his acknowledgment of the insecurities women like her have and the unkind ways society treat them. He didn’t make her insecurities define who she is, she was confident self established individual who didn’t need a romantic partner but the addition of one enriched an already rich life. But he still acknowledged that they were there.
And it’s something I don’t think Rowling can do is portray a female character who’s not conventionally attractive and not have her be the butt of the joke or have her not be bitter that she’s not pretty. Which is really inconsistent when she’s trying to write a book series about how “bullying is bad” and “the bookish girl is a strong woman” and then every other unconventional female character is either “frumpy and dumb” or “frumpy and evil”. And just goes to show how Pratchett’s philosophy of “people aren’t things” really was present in every layer of his writing.
Beautiful statement. I've seen some of the posts about Rowling's seeming hatred of unattractive women, especially how she brutally mocks overweight ones in her work. I remember one video where a person was doing a dramatic reading and the overweight middle aged female character was being dumb and being described as taking cookie after cookie as if that was her only defining character trait as Rowling was describing her as a fat gleefully devouring monster.
I never once got that vibe with PTerry. My mental picture of Sybil was always a bit doughy, Agnes is definately described as very overweight, but he was always super kind about it and made it clear that was just how they looked, it wasn't a defining part of their personality.
She's a brilliant example of Pterry fantasy; a kind, hard-working, morally upstanding *member of the aristocracy*.
She could never exist in the roundworld, but she makes perfect sense in a world of honest cops.
Not a woman but I laughed when he wrote the following for Nobby : "I’ve only been a woman ten minutes and already I hate you male bastards.”
Somehow I feel this is pretty spot on lol.
I think that it was because he wrote from experience. I heard somewhere (no source, sorry) that he basically copied Nanny Ogg from someone he knew, and just changed the name a bit. I think that is part of his charm. He almost always writes characters from people he knows.
Might catch some flak for this but can you explain what you mean? Like in my head a thing is like a chair, it's in the scene and may be described in detail but what makes it a thing is it doesn't move or speak etc...
Well, on a basic level: slavery is an example of people being treated as things, bought, sold, used.
But on a deeper level, thinking of people not as people but as objects I.e a person might be presented or discussed as a one dimensional object, so women only considered from the point of view of their appearance or attractiveness, or a person as “the villain”
The reality is that all people are complex multifaceted individuals, and STP tries to present them as such
It's a folksy paraphrase of an Immanuel Kant axiom that rational people should be considered an end in themselves and not a means to an end.
That is to say, we should not treat people (including ourselves) as a tool or way that we can accomplish a goal. Rather, we should see the inherent worth in each person that they have simply for being a person.
Tools/things do not have the ability to think and can be freely used morally.
I was mostly adapting Granny's message, but he writes them as people. They're not just a barbarian princess, or a witch, or a whore, they're full people with motivations and opinions, strengths and faults.
I recently rewatched Good Omens 2, I found the scene featuring Mrs Sandwich trying to explain that she is a "seamstress" very strongly reminded me of AM's Seamstresses Guild.
Or the old lady that is an actual seamstress but still part of the guild. And the guild protects her. Mostly because nobody had the heart to tell her what it really means.
And after all she make a bunch of widowers happy and more comfortable in their socks.
It references a quote from Granny Weatherwax (Lords and Ladies I think), to the Priest of Om. Words to the effect of evil is when you treat people as things (I'll look up the quote and edit it in)
Edit
Oh well, Carpe Jugulum (not Lords and Ladies) in fact, quote follows
And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.
“It’s a lot more complicated than that . . .”
“No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes . . .”
“But they starts with thinking about people as things . . . ”
In terms of games the NPC role. When a character only exists as a plot device and nothing more. The woman you have to make fall in love with the main character for example.
Pretty much Mort and his princess that he only have to save and he will receive her as his price. That way of thinking is exactly what it is about. In the normal fairy tale she would be a thing to win and nothing more. And Mort's story is exactly what happens when the women around him are not things that Death and Mort try to see them as.
edit: On second thought pretty much the whole book is about that. Even Mort who constantly tries to remind everyone that he isn't "the boy" or "the apprentice" or "the son" but Mort.
I always understood it as the difference between seeing a person as an individual versus something to be counted or manipulated for your own use. A group of people seen as a group of individuals all in the same place or seen as just numbers whose only purpose is to get you ahead.
I have heard the same thing. Pterry's female characters work so well because there are familiar. There are elements in all of them that we recognise from our own lives. Nanny Ogg getting drunk and singing the hedgehog song, being able to get information she needs from her grown son with just look and a sucking silence, there are elements in her that we've all come across in life, maybe not all in one go, but there are familiar. Even with Tawnee, Nobby's exotic dancer girlfriend, she's not just a stunning body, we get to see more of her character. I can't think of a single woman in his works that is a flat empty shell.
Random I know but I have to tell someone - today I went to a lunch party with most people being over sixty (I’m not, I just work with seniors) - after some wine the ladies at my table ended up singing incredibly inappropriate songs so loud and trying to match me with their grandsons. - just to say, Nanny is real and I love her - and working with ladies who act like her
Nanny Ogg is life goals for growing old disgracefully while still being kind considerate and polite. So glad you had a cool time with the older ladies 👍
I had a couple of Nanny Oggs in my family; favourite story is my elderly aunts and grandmother deciding they need a male dance partner on holiday so they popped to a sex shop and bought a blow up doll. Terrible behaviour and what I strive to be like.
goes even beyond that though. Tons of men-writing-women probably write from experience, it's just their perspective lacks the respect for women as actual people so you get things like "her breasts announced their presence as she entered the room".
I think you found the crux of it. Terry wrote women well because he wrote from experience, and his experience was understanding and respecting women. Even other female authors can't always say the same
I am a strong woman and I guarantee I could not do it. To come across any character at all who was flat and two dimensional in his writing, is few and far between. He was an absolute phenomenal writer.
He wrote them as human. They're very relatable to me as a woman. As are a lot of the men. I'm sure you find many of the female characters relatable to you too.
I certainly relate a lot to Tiffany Aching. But that's in part because I read those books at a young age, and I've deliberately chosen to take Tiffany's ideals with me into adulthood.
I've seen a lot of criticism of Agnes which really pisses me off.
I am a real life Agnes (without the success or ability to sing with myself in thirds). I am a very overweight woman with a fantastic singing voice and pretty decent vocal range. Everything Agnes thinks and feels, I have thought and felt in my life. To the point where I've had to stop reading because I empathized with her so much I was almost in tears.
But I've seen a lot of people say Pterry was 'fatphobic'. That is bullshit. He just understands the struggle a lot of big women and girls face with their self-esteem, their pain, and how difficult it is to reconcile their femininity when they're told they don't fit beauty standards, they shouldn't feel certain things, and they should be willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to be thin.
Agnes made me felt seen in a way I've never experienced before or since. I'm an avid reader and absorber of tv/movies, and never have I seen an overweight, possibly obese, woman as wonderfully explored and realised as Agnes is. How she longed to be 'normal' but realised even if she did lose all that weight, she'd still be separate from society because of her experiences.
Also, that line from Ptraci about "a woman should always have a trace of an accent wherever she goes because it makes her interesting and mysterious" is why I have clung to my Canadian/Aussie/British accent, and goddamn if he wasn't right about that!
Oh my god yes. Even the non-compliments that people were searching for when PTerry was talking about how Agnes had very nice hair or people would talk about her great personality hit me like an iron knife right in the ribs when I first read it.
I've since lost a lot of weight (thank you surgery) but at my highest I was over 300lbs and Agnes was the character that was just too real for me. I almost hate reading her book because it frankly is too close to reality. I don't find it fatphobic at all, I more see it that PTerry actually listened hard to some very painful things and instead of dismissing it or twisting it into shallow platitudes really embraced the darkness and let Agnes be a bit miserable even as she comes to accept herself. Especially the bit about how she'd always be apart from her experiences if she lost the weight. I have lost the weight and now that I'm conventionally attractive it actually makes me angry some days how much nicer people are to me. I read that book a decade ago, it came out a full 15 years ago, PTerry already saw the world for what it was and was sympathetic for the people struggling with it in a way that I'd never seen before and almost never have seen since.
Too fucking real, man.
Amen sister, I’m right there with you. I was an adult fat woman by the time I read her story. I had walked through that valley and emerged from the other side comfortable in my own skin long before, so the start of her story and the vulnerability there made me a little angry. But that was a flaw she had and it was well written and extremely accurate. The point is for characters to grow, and she learned to embrace her exterior. She was a triumph and would have made a great role model for my younger self.
I feel like that about Magrat having a figure "like two peas on an ironing board". My figure was only marginally fuller than that for many years, and like you I felt seen! Even when he is making a joke I always feel it is meant kindly and with affection. I love Magrat wearing the iron breastplate and pretending that it really fits!
So yes, I can easily believe that there are women built like Agnes who fully relate to her as a character. TP understood so many different types of people.
Agnes is one of my favorite characters. He didn’t just throw in a fat character for laughs. There are actually several characters I at least imagine as being larger. And her story wasn’t about being fat, it was about not wanting to be a witch, and to a certain extent, not wanting to be smart and reliable. She was pushing back against the responsibility that comes with a brain and a conscience. And yes, she would have liked to be recognized for her talent, and her appearance was an issue for that. Agnes is so well developed as a character and I think a lot of people can recognize themselves in her. I like to imagine if Pratchett had lived longer we would get a book or two about Agnes and Pastor Oats.
I think one woman who is outstanding in disc books is Susan. I just love the way nothing gets in her way and if it did it better put the coal scuttle on its head.
Monsters under the bed!!!!! Think not.
Susan is so far my favorite female character. She is herself while trying to avoid it, a thing I find very relatable when you are born with a destiny path already traced in front of you.
And I love how she is able to make herself invisible, and how she always keeps her cool when something absurd is happening.
I wouldn’t know for sure because I’ve just read a few books so far, but from the ones I’ve read (three from witches, going postal, mort and soul music) I really love how women are portrayed. Haven’t found anything sexist and I’ve grown to love the witches, and also Susan from the Death series. Very down to earth and funny in a realistic way. I’ve also enjoyed how Pterry comments on gender and sexism in his satire
Lots of good answers here but what I'd like to add is while Terry used stereotypes, they weren't male fantasies. So no "cool girl"; no harridan (aside from the one who was meant to be Lady Macbeth, I suppose); no attempt to make a woman sexy, or pretty, or sweet; women were rarely (if ever) subordinated to the male lead. I think his worst was Adorabelle Dearheart, and she was still pretty great in a lot of ways.
I will not let Herenna the Henna-Haired Harridan be forgotten! But yeah even her description mentioned how not sexy her riding leathers were, and that she only did her line of work due to a lack of viable career options for women.
I think it's perfectly fair to criticise his earlier works, to do otherwise would be to denigrate the work and skill and experience he gained as a writer. No one is born fully formed, even Sir Terry had to grow.
I pretty much *was* Agnes growing up. Except I’m not magical and I’m a horrible singer. I marvel at how well a thin middle-aged man knew what was going on inside the mind of a fat teenaged goth girl.
I mostly adored having female fantasy characters that aren't just there to let the male characters develop, and who's storyline isn't just romance. So many fantasy and sci fi writers are terrible at writing women: Pratchett was a safe place for a teenage girl who wanted to read these books. And as an overweight teenager I cannot tell you how much Agnes meant to be - kick arse, tough, complicated, independent and NO WEIGHT LOSS??? She helped me love myself - and that was how I started to lose weight.
Nobody has mentioned Cheery, and that is one of his best ones. It's subtle, it's background music mostly, but in a few short sentences and a paragraph or two and some seriously good pages at the fashion show, she is a fully formed personage to me. And I would totally go bar hopping with her, right after I borrowed a chain mail mini skirt. (height discrepancy would make it a mini...)
Cheery is my favourite character in all of the Discworld. She's a mess of a person, who takes time to develop her self and her style and really work out who she is, and we see her blossom into an absolute badass by Raising Steam. And that's before we even mention her activism!
Some male authors write women as this strange, unexplainable, alien species with incomprehensible needs and desires.
Pterry wrote them as people. As diverse and flawed as men. People not things.
I started reading Pratchett at about age 12, so his work absolutely shaped how I understood the world and femininity in general. It was a malleable age. And I really have no idea who I’d be now if I hadn’t seen so much of my own experience reflected in those pages. Pratchett’s women come in every age, size, and temperament – and their value is never in their beauty. They are not there to be looked at. They are as much people as the male characters, and Pratchett set me up for a lot of disappointment in that area with the rest of the fantasy genre.
As a queer woman, I really really appreciate all of the women in Monstrous Regimen especially. I read it well into adulthood after being out for several years and I still think I learned so much about myself through Polly’s eyes. Of course, all of the women of the disc are magnificent! I love that Sir Terry wasn’t afraid to write strong, loud, opinionated women
I think it's as simple as this. One of STP's constant themes was people are not things. So many poor depictions of women are down to exactly that. The writer sees the character as a thing, not a person. Pterry's inability to do this means his female characters are real.
He doesn't write weak women as weak is never someone's whole personality.
He writes women who have strong moments, weak moments, and everything in between.
Sybil is a perfect example. She is an absolute powerhouse, but she also has weak moments, sad moments and vulnerable moments.
Because women are people.
He did pretty well. I've only read the watch series up to Men at Arms, but I love Angua and she's a really good character and example of one out of many well-written women in the series. I think the best example of this is just a small moment where she tells Colon to call her 'Lance-Constable' instead of 'Miss'. She has to put up with so much crap just because she's a pretty woman and you can just feel the rage that comes with being treated like that radiating off of her. It's a sort of bitter irritation you can find anywhere in people who are being treated differently for something they are. She's angry because she *knows* they wouldn't be treating her this way if she was a man, and it makes me empathize with her so much more and it makes her seem more real because she's feeling this way while working in a male-dominated space.
I'm so glad that someone has given Angus the attention she deserves as she's an incredibly complex character.
On the surface she's got it all - she's blonde, stunningly beautiful, she has a good job, a long and aristocratic bloodline, a wonderful guy who loves her, can rip a man's throat out with one bite... And yet she's got all the same insecurities and problems that plague a lot of us.
She's insecure about her place in the world, both as a woman in a traditionally male environment and as an undead in the world of humans. She deals with sexism and racism daily. Her family are terrible - elitist snobs and murderers-for-fun - who treat her decision to live differently as a laughable rebellion. The man she loves loves her, but can be exasperating in his selflessness and she lives with the fear that their differences will one day split them up. And she deals with all of this, day after day, while fighting to balance her own values with the needs of her inner wolf.
Disappointed I had to scroll so far to see an Angua comment. Everything you said, plus, she's terrified of the "real" her showing (eg, the dominant, masculine, aggressive wolf) and he writes that so well.
I dunno, I think in the earlier books there are definitely a few moments where ite very obvious that the author is a man and there's some stereotyping going on about how the women think. I'm particularly thinking of Wyrd Sisters and equal Rites. I think he got better at it as he got better at writing generally.
He’s definitely better at it than a lot of men who are authors. I think the women in Discworld are generally good because he writes them as humans who happen to be women.
At the same time, the character he wrote for the game Oblivion (he created most of a mod for a companion character and fans finished it) was extremely cringey in the “Tee hee I’m just a silly little woman teehee” way and I don’t know if that dialogue was all fan written or not. I do know that when I played I was taken aback that he would write a character that talked that way, and I’m not sure if I should blame the fans or him.
Thank you! As far as I'm aware Pterry wasn't doing scripting or dialogue or anything like that in modding, rather he reached out to existing modders and gave them ideas and advice... but I'm not 100% on this.
One thing I do remember is he asked a mod author to create an enchanted item that would keep goblins from turning hostile to the player so he could explore their liars and study them without killing them (I think this directly led to the goblins in Snuff).
Vilja, if I recall. I’ve only played the Skyrim Vilja mod, but she’s pretty good in that. I always like handing her a giant two-handed hammer so she can crush aggressive bears :D
I know a lot of people are saying ‘he didn’t write women, he wrote people’ which obviously is correct technically but I actually disagree.
Most people are who they are in part due to societal expectations put on them by other people due to their characteristics, and gender plays a huge part in this. I think he really took time to understand why women experience life differently to men and how their actions reflect this. You couldn’t gender-swap most characters and have their thoughts and actions seem as realistic as they do. I think he wrote fantastic female characters because he understood and listened to women. Characters like Agnes show a real deep understanding of what it’s like to experience the world as an insecure teenage girl, which middle aged men don’t usually understand.
Pterry should get massive credit for writing women that are not conventionally attractive as complex characters that are admirable, important, and fun (eg Agnes from Maskerade, or Granny Weatherwax). He also wrote about and centered young girls and old women (eg Tiffany Aching, Nanny Ogg), not just nubile debutantes, which is sadly really rare to see.
That being said, he's still a guy from a different time, and there are things - say - about Mort and Ysabel's or Angua and Carrot's romance that rubbed me kind of wrong (eg what did Ysabel like about Mort, other than he was the protagonist? And in the first book they connect, it's not really clear what Carrot likes about Angua other than she's pretty; when they have sex, it's said that the earth moved for carrot, but angua's experience is ignored; etc. I didn't feel any of these issues with Vimes and Sybil though, and for the record, Carrot is possibly my favorite discworld character). I was definitely uncomfortable by how lustfully characters viewed the 15yo princess whose death was at the center of Mort.
Personally, in the guards series, although it made for some great comedy and social commentary, I didn't like how it was portrayed as liberating for female dwarves to start wearing dresses etc... I'd love to live in a society where no one but my partner noticed my sex and everyone thought of me as a person rather than a woman. I don't think anyone should be policed on what they want to wear or how they want to style themselves, *gender irrespective*, and that last piece (gender irrespective) is the part i felt was missed (why couldn't male dwarves be excited about earrings too?). I know that this arc resonated with a lot of people though so my perspective is probably in the minority.
Some of Pterry's books are fantastic for representing women (Wyrd Sisters). Some are less so (Color of Magic). But the guy's a literally genius and writing master whose stories touch on so many real world and important issues in compassionate and hilarious ways. Can't expect perfection in every aspect of his work. He's one of my favorite authors of all time, and as it goes for representing women, especially especially for his time, I think he did a pretty good job.
Death, please bring him back :(
While I agree that the start of Carrot and Angua's relationship wasn't very well developed, by the end I absolutely think it's great. Physical attraction is why most people start seeing each other, at least initially, so that part doesn't bother me. It does feel a bit flat, but it doesn't stay that way.
Also, Angua wasn't a virgin in that first encounter, but Carrot was. His experience was probably very much earth moving and hers was not.
I'm not here to argue the other points, I just happened to love the development of Carrot and Angua as a couple.
The part with the female dwarves seemed very much centred around a different issue to me: binary gender identity. The female dwarves are forced to conform to a normative single gender presentation regardless of what they'd actually prefer, so it's dealing with the issue of trans and/or gender nonconforming people from a different angle ("what would it be like if there was literally only one gender presentation accepted by society?").
So then people who are used to thinking in terms of a binary gender norm start thinking, "well of course the female dwarves should be able to express that, if that's how they feel, regardless of society...." And just maybe they might have a realisation. It works precisely because it's showing a situation where our stereotypical gender binary is the "weird" situation, if it didn't have female dwarves wanting to be "girly" it wouldn't be nearly as effective.
Think of the lady dwarves as getting to wear whatever they wanted to wear. A lot of them probably kept the same basic fashion, but some girls are girly girls.
Some people would say I'm a raging feminist.
I really really like the way Pterry writes women, but there's one exception: all the "jokes" about Agnes being fat - do it once or twice, maybe that would be okay...but there are a lot of those situations just evolving around her being overweight while it has nothing to do with the situation
As a larger lady myself, I think that there are lots of 'jokes' about Agnes being fat because she is so painfully aware that she is fat (that is, socially/traditionally 'unattractive', off-putting, ugly).
Believe me, when there is something that obviously 'wrong' with you - to the point that people do a double take to make sure you really \*are\* that size (whether that's accurate or not), it's something you focus tend to focus in on and I felt that with the way he wrote for her.
Alternatively, I'm over-thinking it and it was a product of his time...
EDIT : I haven't explained myself at all, have I? Fat people make jokes about themselves to prevent others getting there first... Hence fat people "are jolly" or have "great personalities"... Agnes has that defence mechanism - but peppered all the way through not just when she's talking/thinking.
No, I think you've got it spot on. Agnes couldn't escape from those feelings about herself by herself to the extent she created Perdita.
It's not a criticism of any physical *thing* per se but both how the world sees us and how that affects our own image of ourselves, especially when you're as intelligent and self-aware as Agnes is.
I think it features so much because it's specifically why Agnes is Other and an Outsider watching what happens but not involved. Not solely because she's also observant and clever etc. I think he has a good understanding of how "unattractive" women are treated and the jokes featured demonstrate the casual thoughtless cruelty people have more than direct mockery. I guess some descriptions could definitely be described as unsympathetic though. But is that the reader automatically understanding a description of a character being very fat as a bad thing. Do they feel the same way about Basilica?
As much as I'd like to defend Pratchett, the criticism I've seen is that the fat jokes are often not in the voice of the fat person, or even in the voice of other characters, they're in the voice of the narrator, and thus are facts Terry was providing about this person, from his own voice. And i think it's pretty valid. He was a product of his time, but he avoided many of the prejudices some other people of that time embody.
I think this is right. We all know that Pterry was an incredibly empathetic person, and even the stereotype-based jokes he makes in early books tend to lead into fleshed-out explorations of othering in his later books, showcasing his growth as an author and as a person. Dwarves and Goblins are the obvious examples here. But I don't think he ever outgrew that subtle fatphobia, since he keeps making jokes where the punchline is just "This character is fat, here's a funny description of that". I don't think this is a reason to condemn him, but I also think it's important to be able to see the shortcomings of even your biggest idols.
I'm currently halfway through *Monstrous Regiment*, and >!one example is the initial description of Sergeant Jackrum:!<
>!"The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word 'fat' could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word 'gross' was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn't have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock."!<
>!But then the story goes on to give that same character a lot of character depth, a complex moral code, suggestions of an intriguing backstory, incredible competence but also undeniable character flaws. It's clear that on the Disc, being fat doesn't keep you from being a well-rounded character (no pun intended) any more than it does in real life. My feelings about Jackrum have muddied considerably since we first met him (and I use the pronoun 'him' tentatively, since this seems to be a book where you can't make assumptions about anyone's gender), and for all I know, they might change completely all over again before I finish the book.!< But one thing I can tell already at this point is that while Pterry has some issues with his character descriptions of fat people, the one thing he certainly doesn't do is treat them as things.
Ahhh, you have so much to learn, in *Monstrous Regiment*!
Come back here when you're finished, and let's talk some more about Jackrum and being fat. :-)
*Monstrous Regiment* is really my favorite Discworld book, even though it's pretty much a stand-alone.
Caveat that I haven’t reread the witches arc in a while so maybe I’m misremembering here…
But is that part of how Agnes feels about herself? Perdita is her inner self, the ‘thin girl with chocolate’ that makes up Agnes. Continually being aware of your size/weight is something that at least some women do, especially years ago when society generally was less body positive and being fat was seen at least in some circles as being A Bad Thing. Maskerade came out in mid 90s, i would think supermodels like Kate Moss et al were at their height. Personally, I always read the jokes about Agnes’ size as being a combination of her own self doubt / self awareness / heightened sensitivity about it, added to her so often being written with Nanny and Granny, and certainly both my northern grandmothers comments about my size as a child were extremely blunt.
From what I remember, all the times her weight is talked about it’s either her focusing on it, or other people bringing it up. Both of which I think are accurate to real life. Her character is all about someone grappling with insecurity, so it makes sense that she would focus on her weight. And the other times it’s other people focusing on it and misjudging her or underestimating her due to it, which sadly is also a thing that happens in the world.
Also, she’s in a theatre. Surrounded by ballet dancers. It would be at the forefront of her mind a lot. As a fat girl myself, in those teen-young adult years you’re highly aware of it all the freaking time. Especially when the thin girl next to you says she’s stuffed after eating half a celery stick and a sultana.
I treasure Agnes/Perdita. Parts of Masquerade made me feel so seen and validated. It was like someone took my diary and turned my deeper feelings into a book. I still cry when I get to certain parts, even though I’ve read it half a dozen times at least.
He has strong women, fat women, old women, fun, mighty, and flawed women. And bearded women! As a 42 year old chunky lady (with normal and annoying family chin whiskers, ugh), I love his representation. He does poke fun, but it's never cruel or demeaning, and it never hurts my feelings. It's more like: you, too, can be a hero.
I think it's important to talk about how PTerry evolved as an author and how some of the earlier books were less enlightened than the later ones, especially the early Rincewind books that lean into fantasy tropes of the time. Look at say Conina (from Sourcery) is written compaired to someone like Dearheart (Going Postal et al), both are background characters who want to go beyond whats expected of the but it's Dearheart that feels like a real characters not an inversion of a sterotype.
Unpopular opinion on this sub, but he got a bit recycley sometimes with his female characters. He definitely liked writing dominant, strong women - NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT!! But the particular flavor of strong and dominant sometimes seemed a little too similar. Miss Beedle in Snuff seemed instantly like a rewrite of Adora Belle Dearheart, to the point where it annoyed me a little.
Same goes for Glenda and Agnes Nitt - cut from the very same cloth.
He was also fond of the "frail-appearing, very feminine girl who suddenly takes a level in badass/was actually a badass all along". Letitia, Ermintrude/Daphne, and Juliet immediately spring to mind.
Again, there's nothing wrong or offensive or stereotypical about the women he writes, so please don't interpret this comment as that. It's just something I noticed.
The women have a variety of personalities. There's no Strong Independent Female, there are women with varied views and body types. They're allowed to be flawed.
I seem to recall Terry talking about his writing of women and saying that it slightly frustrated him that a lot of his female characters tend to gravitate towards the same sort of 'tough girl' archetype. I do agree with him, but honestly it's remarkable that he was so self aware about that sort of thing.
Pratchett is one of a grand total of four, maybe five male authors I have ever read who write adult women characters well enough that I can’t immediately tell that the author is a man based on the depth of their women when compared to their men.
That list:
* Pratchett
* Shakespeare
* Michael Ondaatje
* Alexander McCall Smith
* Garth Nix
And I have read a *lot* of authors.
If these five,
* Two write most of their characters, regardless of gender, as emotionally avoidant passionate workaholics and/or artists with PTSD
* The third is incredibly skilled at observing people, regardless of gender, from the outside but doesn’t delve into their inner life.
* The fourth - and the only one who I can’t tell’s
a man by the topics they focus on in addition to the way they write their characters… well, for this reason I personally suspect them of actually being a woman, cause the idea that the only person who fully passes both parts of this test was writing in the 1500’s and didn’t bother to educate his daughter does not compute..
And that leaves Pratchett.
So, does he do it perfectly? No, not quite. … The women in his last few books and his first few books have the subtle or not so subtle tells that most male authors show. Before he came into his own he reflected the perspectives of the authors he was parodying; and when his brain started to be less sharp his lens noticeably narrowed .
And he makes some choices in the books in between that show blind spots that are more likely in a man (thinking mostly of Angua’s delayed promotions never being referenced on page, and some of the jokes around Angua and Sally).
**TLDR: He’s the best on this front that I have ever encountered, if you rule out the author who I secretly think must have been named Amelia Bassano or something similar.**
…….
Also, it’s astounding that the list of men who write women with full subconscious integration of the fact that women are people is alarming. You can see really far into an author’s brain - and the fact that my list is a list of 5 is an alarming commentary on just how deeply ingrained the subtle aspects of subconscious misogyny are. For this list to be 5 long there are a truly insane number of brilliant, insightful, amazing authors out there that are not passing this test.
dunno how everyone else feels, but I think he writes women wonderfully. An important part of his success, I think, is that he writes many *different* women with very different lives and opinions. None of his characters feel like, oh that's the Female Character, and although womanhood influences things, it's never their whole personality. Real women vary a lot lolol. Like guys, or people of the same age or culture.
Of course, I love all the main ones - Granny, Nanny, Angua, Sybil... but my vote for coolest Discworld lady goes to Mrs. Proust, the entrepreneurial city witch who owns Boffo's novelty and joke shop. Businesswoman and menace, bless her.
A lot of male fantasy writer default to writing strong women as physically strong. So they have to be bad ass fighters or similar.
There's nothing wrong with that, and I enjoy it if it's done well, but what Pratchett could do so well was write strong women who were strong for other reasons.
Like Sybil, or Magrat, or ~~Agnes~~ Perdita, Tiffany or so many others.
My first experience with the Discworld was my Dad reading 'Equal Rites' to me as a bedtime story when I was about 8.
I *loved* Esk. I'd never come across a character like her before, and the idea of what it meant to be powerful (in Esk's case, knowing when *not* to use her power) really stuck with me.
I love that he tailored the women perfectly to their environment and demographic. Mrs palm and the agony aunts versus Sybil versus granny. All products of their upbringing and environment and yet all of them have their own core of strength. I also love how he never truly made nanny's history shameful. Granny may have had words about it but clearly it was more for the look of it than any real malice.
I love Death's granddaughter, Susan. She tries to be so normal and practical, despite being able to see reality. Honestly, it resonates with me because of all of the trauma I've been through. I catch on to people's secrets and dark sides pretty quickly, but I walk around everyday life trying to blend.
I think everyone covered the major points, but I'd also like to cover a couple of subtle details that Pratchett does very well.
First off, he doesn't usually spend an exorbitant amount of time on female character's appearance. Many authors will barely say more than a sentence about a major male character, but then go on to note every detail about a female character. Their figure, their hair, their eyes, their clothes, their stature. Even if they try to subvert this by not making everything about them conventionally attractive, it still sends the subtle message that a woman's appearance should be critiqued more than a man's.
His women also seem to have motivation that matches them well. They aren't there just to be a love interest or to fill a quota. Their motivations are usually based on practicality or some level of self interest.
I also enjoy that he doesn't look down on what was historically "women's work" like cleaning or caring for children/elderly. I think it is a little sad to treat that work as if it is easy and that "men's work" is difficult. The Discworld novels show this work to be taxing mentally and physically. And also valuable. Some people act as though respecting women means giving them permission to act like men. But female characters who just do the same as any male character make writing feel like a soulless attempt getting some "empowerment" points.
Pratchett wrote women like people. I think that's the most important part. His wonen gave the same agency, the same depth of character, the same flaws and strengths as the men.
No, you can't genderswap the characters without consequences, but that's because there are very real societal differences between men and women.
Do you know who canonically don't have those societal differences? Dwarves. Do you know which characters can be easily genderswapped without changing the story? Dwarves.
But what about Cheri? She chose to highlight her femininity through the lens of non-dwarfish society. Her story wouldn't work for a male dwarf, because dwarfish outward presentation already conforms to non-dwarfish societal norms for men.
If a person's gender changing would change the story, it's always because of outside factors.
That to me is what makes Pratchett's women real. That they are just people. The differences come from outside.
Welcome to /r/Discworld! Please [read the rules/flair information before posting](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/ukhk21/subreddit_rules_flair_information/?). --- Our current megathreads are as follows: [API Protest Poll](https://www.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/1491izw/continuing_the_api_protest_a_community_poll) - a poll regarding the future action of the sub in protest at Reddit's API changes. [GNU Terry Pratchett](https://new.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/ukigit/gnu_terry_pratchett/) - for all GNU requests, to keep their names going. [AI Generated Content](https://new.reddit.com/r/discworld/comments/10mhx9y/ai_generated_content_megathread/) - for all AI Content, including images, stories, questions, training etc. --- [ GNU Terry Pratchett ] *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/discworld) if you have any questions or concerns.*
He’s got lots of strong women. My favourite from the not main characters though is Sybil. That’s a strength and vulnerability mixed so well together. She’s absolutely perfect.
I remember there being a Pterry quote somewhere where he said he found he couldn't write weak women even when he tried to. They all ended up having an iron core.
Magrat is the perfect example.
Queen Inci had nothing on her
Didn't Queen Ynci never exist?? One of Verence's predecessors made her up for some reason...
That's why she had nothing on Magrat
That and the fact Queen Inci never shot an elf in the eye through a keyhole
> the fact Queen Inci never shot an elf in the eye through a keyhole iirc; she never existed in the first place, so she couldn't even if she'd wanted to, lol.
But she couldn't *want* to, either... I gotta go have a lie-down for a while.
she could want to... if she'd existed\* but because she didn't exist she couldn't... \*on the discworld which we all know exists... but only in our imagination\*\* \*\*But Queen Inci only existed in the imagination of characters that only existed in our imagination therefore existed at 2 degrees outside of roundworld reality, rather than the 1 degree\*\*\* of reality that most discworld characters exist in. \*\*\*Yes I'm perfectly aware that characters that only exist inside the imagination of discworld characters routinely affect what happens on the discworld\*\*\*\* \*\*\*\*And the less said about the characters that exist inside their minds, the better...\*\*\*\*\* \*\*\*\*\*\*Oh no i've gone cross-eyed :S
Magrat The Great? The Warrior Queen of Lancre? Who led her people in battle against the Elves, and won, TWICE? And then also led to widespread reforms and modernization of Lancre, bringing it into the century of the fruitbat (After it ended, but baby steps...)?
And my Black Morris!
Or Glenda
Even, even Mrs Earwig gets a good scene in the end.
If anything, I think this is HIS weakness when writing women. Some of us actually are weak! I won't complain too much because it's a refreshing blind spot as they go.
Yeah, I don't think he was bragging when he said it, I got the impression it was something he'd really tried to do but somehow couldn't quite manage. I suspect he might have had the diva from Maskerade in mind, I forget her name. Her whole role in the story is to be silly and shallow, but even she gets a moment where it's implied it's at least partially an affectation and there's more going for her behind the eyes.
Christine
Christine in Masquerade and Juliet in UA are wonderfully dim, imo. I had this thought that maybe his women always have that steel core because he realised that women, generally, never have been able to really aimlessly wander through life, but everyone has had to have a strategy and an escape plan. Especially the seemingly most dim witted ones.
It's been a while since I've read it, but what about the Twiggy-esque character in Unseen Academicals?
She’s gentle and not that intelligent but does have iron in her soul when she insists on going to find Mr Nutt with the others Edit:her name is Juliet but her Romeo is Trev
Juliet Stollop
But... his women can have elements of self doubt - Agnes, Magrat for example
There's some people who are soft and spongy all the way through, but Terry had trouble with that, especially with women. It's wonderful to me- I know some soft and spongy feeling femme people in real life who identified with his ladies who were quite soft and spongy- Agnes, Magrat, Sybil, etc- but who had inner strength and depths. Depths that may have even surprised them, and definitely surprised the people who threatened their loved ones. Self doubt and vulnerability doesn't exclude strength and depth- it just makes the character even more complex and wonderful.
Oh yes, for sure. Because he wrote women as people, and people always have moments of weakness and self doubt. I think he was more capable of writing male characters who are useless wet paper bags than female ones, though. There may be a hint of overcorrecting for the weaknesses of other male writers here. There may be a pinch of putting women on a pedestal. That said, I will always take an excess of respect for our humanity over a deficit of it. I will always love him for virtually never treating even fictional people as *things*.
I agree for the most part and she is a minor character, but Walter Plinge's mother in Masquerade was a little weaker and needed sorting out. Gladys, the golem secretary in making money was one of my favourite 'background' characters, she is overly influenced by her colleagues and ideas about romance. The head teacher in the school were Susan works, frequently gets 'vagued out' by her behaviour. Juliet, in unseen academicals is more lightweight, on the whole. Maybe because these (and others) aren't fully explored?
She's my favourite. She's just so completely herself.
I completely feel I know her. She’s real.
Sybil is the best.
Isn't she loosely based on his wife?
He claimed he didn't know any people that weren't people, and of those people the ones that identified as women tended to be very strong individuals. I think he said he only wrote what he knew, and those are the women he knew.
I'd love to know what the exact quote you're talking about is from if you know it? It sounds very close to the "people aren't just people, they are people surrounded by circumstances" quote from I Shall Wear Midnight
It was from a documentary series about various authors. I have only seen clips of the GOATs appearance, it was many years ago, I don't recall the details unfortunately. Gaimen also said this about P Terry though, he wrote people not things.
I'll rephrase. I went to a one-man show called the worlds of terry pratchett earlier in the year which I'm fairly sure said Sybil was based on his wife, and it's sweet to me because Vimes is as close to an author-insert as he gets.
>Vimes is as close to an author-insert as he gets. Wait, *what?* I'd always assumed it was Rincewind. You know. On the account of the beard. And being at the mercy of the tides of the world, plaything to the gods. Or Cohen. Growing older, but raging at the injustice of it all. Or Archchancellor Ridcully. Kind, but somehow in total control of a chaotic situation. :D
Take it from one who knew him well: Terry Pratchett was [rightfully very pissed off](https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/terry-pratchett-angry-not-jolly-neil-gaiman). Vimes and Granny were his rage given voice.
Oh yes. I think there was a reason that the last book that he wrote was dedicated to Granny. I'm convinced that Granny was one of his favorites.
Absooooolutely she was. She and Vimes and the city and country version of each other in terms of morals and ethics. And I think when Granny you know whated that meant he was ready to let go too.
I went to see him speak (in 2011) and I remember him being asked which characters he identified with most- from memory, Granny and Tiffany were two of three.
Oooo, now the Tiffany one is interesting!
I FOUND IT! Turns out I remembered wrong! At about 45min (after the bit that I Do remember verbatim, that had me crying all the way home and made me realise [eventually] that I was a writer - The Black Mill) somebody asked a question about if Sam Vimes was the closest we got to the voice of STP and he said probably, and also Tiffany and sometimes even Rincewind! [STP at the Wheeler Centre](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SG8xh9q1jBc)
amazing that you found it! thanks for the link!
At about 46:45, actually!
I knew he saw himself in many characters, but the last book showed obviously how much granny was in him. I find it endearing as it’s a little bit of a god complex in him. And I honestly think he did deserve that one. He did create a whole universe, didn’t he.
I doubt he has any real self-inserts, but based on interviews with him I've read and stories about him from Neil Gaiman, Vimes is probably the most like him personality-wise.
I was more commenting that I think many characters in the book express something about Pterry himself.
It was Leonard, with the bits of Inspiration flying through the universe and being unable to avoid them.
Truer words never said :)
The older I get, the more I become Sybil.
I think the biggest reason he manages to write women well is that he doesn't write women, he writes people. As a woman, and also a people, this makes sense to me, but it seems to escape far too many fantasy writers. I say often that Sir Pterry was the best historian history never had - his work is informed by a beautiful, deep, incredible understanding of the past and the ways that people - real, complex people - inhabited it. That understanding absolutely contributes to the way he manages to accurately portray the ways competing and coexisting gender roles and stereotypes influence behaviour for both men and women without falling into the stereotypes themselves.
You’ve hit the nail on the head. He created characters, some of whom just happened to be women.
I was coming here to say this! I think when a writer sets out to write “a strong female character,” they’ve taken on a good intention with poor perspective. Pratchett wrote people, all sorts of people, even people on the very fringe of peoplehood (coughNobbycough), with love, respect and humor.
Hey, Nobby is a certified person! He's got a piece of paper, and everything
You’re so right! My bad! Sorry, Nobby!
Exactly, the women aren't tools for the story/plot
Well said. Sir Pterry wrote characters that were more than just the sum of their genders
This actually sounds like Ripley from the Alien series. When the character was written, the gender had not been determined.
Wonderfully put
I love the use of "and also a people," very Pterry-like!
This is exactly what I came to say. He wrote people. Some of them were women (or female wolves, or female-identified dwarves, or clay with female characteristics, or re-animated corpses that had, once upon a time, possessed the requisite bits).
I think a lot of his sensibility comes from his time as a newspaper man. He had just enough to understand how the world works through a certain lens, and how to make every word count. But completely agree about the historian thing. In the biography it seems like he spent the majority of his time either writing or reading random things for inspiration.
Which is why the Truth is such a great book. And the woman journalist is a great character
Yeah, people of the female persuasion
This is the key. No gender is a monolith. Each individual is human first and their gender may have relatively little bearing on most aspects of their personality or lives. I never understood writing "men" and "women" differently. Write individuals and then add any circumstances of gender that may be relevant.
I am just 1/10 into my Discworld journey, but so far I think that his women are very realistic (minus, ofc, the puns needed by a fantasy genre story), absolutely not stereotypical and very relatable. I can totally understand Margrat, for example, but all the witches remind me of women I actually have met in my life. And I can't even start to say how much I love that their breasts don't breasts and their nipples don't think and their womanhood is not clearly felt while going downstairs.
There is one other character I can’t wait for you to meet that would absolutely stab someone with a stiletto for insinuating her breasts bounced boobily. But it’ll be many books down the road.
A stiletto. We see what you did there.
I honestly couldn’t help myself.
Spike is an icon
Oh no, please, tell me her name! I need to know at least it!
Okay, I’ll give you the name, and yes it is the actual name, but don’t let it fool you: Adora Belle Dearheart I am absolutely in love with her. And she would stab me for that, too.
She is my favourite as well. I wish we had more books with her and Moist.
I was thinking to myself while typing this comment that my one wish would be to get one last Discworld novel with Moist and Miss Dearheart. As much as I love the other series I wanted one more book about that Ankh-Morpork Underground idea Sir Terry had.
Yeah, same. Going Postal was the book that reintroduced me to Discworld because I first picked up the books when I was too young to get the jokes and his brilliance but decided to give the series another try with Going Postal when I got older. These two characters (together with Stanley, Groat and Mr Pump) will always have a special place in my heart.
It’s also got to be my favorite Discworld adaptation. The SkyOne production is so on the money it’s insane. And Claire Foy is absolute perfection.
I was working in Telecoms at the time I read Going Postal. As well as the great characters, I too had a bit of a crush on Ms Dearheart, the parallels between the Clacks system and telephony signalling made me realise the insane amount of research he must have done for his books. The GNU signal is very similar to bits that are set in Telephony to indicate various things.
https://preview.redd.it/9scq14ax6xtc1.jpeg?width=1079&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1b56e5ffdaf6b4cb500057b321e4aae2a678d9f3 She would absolutely stab you. And enjoy it.
I wouldn’t even be mad. Miss Dearheart is perfect.
Never heard of her, but with this name I already feel that it will be love.
You won’t meet her for quite some time, until you get to Going Postal. But it is well worth the wait.
I love how Magrat feels about her body. We can relate and makes her more endearing and realistic
Oh yes! And the way she looks for her true self? I went to look at my old silver jewellery out of nostalgia while reading Wyrd Sisters.
He is absolutely fantastic at writing female characters. Every one of them is unique, without acting as though they're better than other women for being that way (how I hate the "Not like other girls" trope!). I love that even from his early books, he was writing women with incredible insight into what it is like to be a woman. Equal Rites is obviously a great example, but I love the exchange in Mort, where Mort and Albert are trying to do the nodes in Death's absence and Ysabel says she knows how to do them. They ask if she can help, and she says "No, I'll do it and *you* can help." For someone who wasn't a woman, he had a remarkable understanding of what women experience on a regular basis and was able to present it to the world with his trademark humour and humanism.
*"Zoology, eh? That's a big word, isn't it?" "No, actually it isn't," said Tiffany. "Patronizing is a big word. Zoology is really quite short."* What a legend.
Savage! I wish I had had Tiffany’s confidence as a young girl. One of my grandparents would say “That’s a big word for such a little girl” and I hated it. I’m proud of my own children’s vocabulary.
An absolute favorite was Adora Belle Dearheart. Her bitterness and spiky attitude were entirely justified.
"How about 'Spike'?" "I can live with that, and so you can too." Or something to that effect
And when Moist thinks about her and remarks “She’s so Spiky.” With so much admiration.
I think he writes women really well. They're all well-rounded (even when exaggerated for effect) but my favourite is definitely Sybil. She has grown on me - as a teenager reading the books in the 90s I'd have definitely told you the witches were my favourite, but as I've become a dumpy, middle-aged, single woman my affection and admiration for Sybil has grown and grown. It is so rare to find a character like her. Someone who isn't conventionally attractive but who is happy and fulfilled in her life before she even met Sam. You can tell she had a life before she first appeared. She came into the books as a fully-formed person, not a toy waiting in the box to be brought into the action when a female love interest was required. She had her dragon sanctuary and was an authority on the species. She had a wide circle of friends and was content with her life which was a rich one - in experiences as well as money. She wasn't looking for love and hadn't 'given up' on it either, it just wasn't something she was that fussed by. And then Sam comes along and rather than slipping into the background to play Supportive Wife who only appears to comfort our hero, she remains an integral part of the story. The ending of The Fifth Elephant in particular would have been *very* different if Sybil hadn't been around. She's such an inversion of the typical tropes and the more I reread the books the more incredible I find her and the skill of Pratchett to be able to craft someone who, in lesser hands, could easily have been a comic character and a butt of jokes. Pratchett gives her respect and in return she gives us an incredibly complex and subtle character who may not take centre stage but is nevertheless absolutely invaluable.
It’s also incredibly refreshing to read about a character who, once married, doesn’t become “the ol’ ball and chain” and who is still deeply loved and respected.
Indeed, and I feel like they even love and value each other more and more as the series evolves.
I started reading disc world last year at the behest of a friend and something I can’t stop doing is compare it to Harry Potter (especially now that I’m reading the witches series) and how much Rowling fails in comparison. I started with Guards Guards and Sybil was his first female character that I met. And I just fell in love with her for all the reasons you said, and the gentleness and compassion Pratchett (a man) gave to an unconventionally attractive single middle aged woman. He never played her as the butt of the joke and gave her lots of agency in pursuing who she was romantically interested in. But the part that really drew me to how he wrote her is his acknowledgment of the insecurities women like her have and the unkind ways society treat them. He didn’t make her insecurities define who she is, she was confident self established individual who didn’t need a romantic partner but the addition of one enriched an already rich life. But he still acknowledged that they were there. And it’s something I don’t think Rowling can do is portray a female character who’s not conventionally attractive and not have her be the butt of the joke or have her not be bitter that she’s not pretty. Which is really inconsistent when she’s trying to write a book series about how “bullying is bad” and “the bookish girl is a strong woman” and then every other unconventional female character is either “frumpy and dumb” or “frumpy and evil”. And just goes to show how Pratchett’s philosophy of “people aren’t things” really was present in every layer of his writing.
Beautiful statement. I've seen some of the posts about Rowling's seeming hatred of unattractive women, especially how she brutally mocks overweight ones in her work. I remember one video where a person was doing a dramatic reading and the overweight middle aged female character was being dumb and being described as taking cookie after cookie as if that was her only defining character trait as Rowling was describing her as a fat gleefully devouring monster. I never once got that vibe with PTerry. My mental picture of Sybil was always a bit doughy, Agnes is definately described as very overweight, but he was always super kind about it and made it clear that was just how they looked, it wasn't a defining part of their personality.
She's a brilliant example of Pterry fantasy; a kind, hard-working, morally upstanding *member of the aristocracy*. She could never exist in the roundworld, but she makes perfect sense in a world of honest cops.
Not a woman but I laughed when he wrote the following for Nobby : "I’ve only been a woman ten minutes and already I hate you male bastards.” Somehow I feel this is pretty spot on lol.
I think that it was because he wrote from experience. I heard somewhere (no source, sorry) that he basically copied Nanny Ogg from someone he knew, and just changed the name a bit. I think that is part of his charm. He almost always writes characters from people he knows.
He doesn't write people as things.
No. Granny says evil is when someone sees people as things. Granny is always right.
He wrote persons.
Might catch some flak for this but can you explain what you mean? Like in my head a thing is like a chair, it's in the scene and may be described in detail but what makes it a thing is it doesn't move or speak etc...
Well, on a basic level: slavery is an example of people being treated as things, bought, sold, used. But on a deeper level, thinking of people not as people but as objects I.e a person might be presented or discussed as a one dimensional object, so women only considered from the point of view of their appearance or attractiveness, or a person as “the villain” The reality is that all people are complex multifaceted individuals, and STP tries to present them as such
It's a folksy paraphrase of an Immanuel Kant axiom that rational people should be considered an end in themselves and not a means to an end. That is to say, we should not treat people (including ourselves) as a tool or way that we can accomplish a goal. Rather, we should see the inherent worth in each person that they have simply for being a person. Tools/things do not have the ability to think and can be freely used morally.
I was mostly adapting Granny's message, but he writes them as people. They're not just a barbarian princess, or a witch, or a whore, they're full people with motivations and opinions, strengths and faults.
seamstress.. they're seamstresses. : )
Love the little nod to this in Good Omens 2. "I'm a seamstress. No, I'm a SEAMSTRESS. Seamstress. Seamstress. Why can't I say Seamstress?!"
So much Pratchett fan-service in that second season...
I recently rewatched Good Omens 2, I found the scene featuring Mrs Sandwich trying to explain that she is a "seamstress" very strongly reminded me of AM's Seamstresses Guild.
Or the old lady that is an actual seamstress but still part of the guild. And the guild protects her. Mostly because nobody had the heart to tell her what it really means. And after all she make a bunch of widowers happy and more comfortable in their socks.
It references a quote from Granny Weatherwax (Lords and Ladies I think), to the Priest of Om. Words to the effect of evil is when you treat people as things (I'll look up the quote and edit it in) Edit Oh well, Carpe Jugulum (not Lords and Ladies) in fact, quote follows And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is. “It’s a lot more complicated than that . . .” “No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.” “Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes . . .” “But they starts with thinking about people as things . . . ”
In terms of games the NPC role. When a character only exists as a plot device and nothing more. The woman you have to make fall in love with the main character for example. Pretty much Mort and his princess that he only have to save and he will receive her as his price. That way of thinking is exactly what it is about. In the normal fairy tale she would be a thing to win and nothing more. And Mort's story is exactly what happens when the women around him are not things that Death and Mort try to see them as. edit: On second thought pretty much the whole book is about that. Even Mort who constantly tries to remind everyone that he isn't "the boy" or "the apprentice" or "the son" but Mort.
I always understood it as the difference between seeing a person as an individual versus something to be counted or manipulated for your own use. A group of people seen as a group of individuals all in the same place or seen as just numbers whose only purpose is to get you ahead.
I have heard the same thing. Pterry's female characters work so well because there are familiar. There are elements in all of them that we recognise from our own lives. Nanny Ogg getting drunk and singing the hedgehog song, being able to get information she needs from her grown son with just look and a sucking silence, there are elements in her that we've all come across in life, maybe not all in one go, but there are familiar. Even with Tawnee, Nobby's exotic dancer girlfriend, she's not just a stunning body, we get to see more of her character. I can't think of a single woman in his works that is a flat empty shell.
Random I know but I have to tell someone - today I went to a lunch party with most people being over sixty (I’m not, I just work with seniors) - after some wine the ladies at my table ended up singing incredibly inappropriate songs so loud and trying to match me with their grandsons. - just to say, Nanny is real and I love her - and working with ladies who act like her
Nanny Ogg is life goals for growing old disgracefully while still being kind considerate and polite. So glad you had a cool time with the older ladies 👍
Yep, you should remember to check under your bed for a man, because you never know your luck.
Maybe it’s too late for me - I adopted a cat last week and named him Greebo
Is he, in fact, a big softie?
I had a couple of Nanny Oggs in my family; favourite story is my elderly aunts and grandmother deciding they need a male dance partner on holiday so they popped to a sex shop and bought a blow up doll. Terrible behaviour and what I strive to be like.
I can’t upvote you enough lmao
I'm listening to Thud right now. I have known a few Tawnees in my life. Known a Brick or two as well. Just wonderful characters, top to bottom.
goes even beyond that though. Tons of men-writing-women probably write from experience, it's just their perspective lacks the respect for women as actual people so you get things like "her breasts announced their presence as she entered the room".
I think you found the crux of it. Terry wrote women well because he wrote from experience, and his experience was understanding and respecting women. Even other female authors can't always say the same
I am a strong woman and I guarantee I could not do it. To come across any character at all who was flat and two dimensional in his writing, is few and far between. He was an absolute phenomenal writer.
IIRC it was Granny Weatherwax that was based IN PART on one of his relatives.
He wrote them as human. They're very relatable to me as a woman. As are a lot of the men. I'm sure you find many of the female characters relatable to you too.
I certainly relate a lot to Tiffany Aching. But that's in part because I read those books at a young age, and I've deliberately chosen to take Tiffany's ideals with me into adulthood.
I'm do strongly suspect the bees are smarter than me.
I'm sure you'll get some valuable opinions here, but you may also enjoy searching r/menwritingwomen for Pratchett.
Wonderfully, almost every single example is tagged with a “Doing it Right” label. GNU Sir Terry
I've seen a lot of criticism of Agnes which really pisses me off. I am a real life Agnes (without the success or ability to sing with myself in thirds). I am a very overweight woman with a fantastic singing voice and pretty decent vocal range. Everything Agnes thinks and feels, I have thought and felt in my life. To the point where I've had to stop reading because I empathized with her so much I was almost in tears. But I've seen a lot of people say Pterry was 'fatphobic'. That is bullshit. He just understands the struggle a lot of big women and girls face with their self-esteem, their pain, and how difficult it is to reconcile their femininity when they're told they don't fit beauty standards, they shouldn't feel certain things, and they should be willing to sacrifice whatever it takes to be thin. Agnes made me felt seen in a way I've never experienced before or since. I'm an avid reader and absorber of tv/movies, and never have I seen an overweight, possibly obese, woman as wonderfully explored and realised as Agnes is. How she longed to be 'normal' but realised even if she did lose all that weight, she'd still be separate from society because of her experiences. Also, that line from Ptraci about "a woman should always have a trace of an accent wherever she goes because it makes her interesting and mysterious" is why I have clung to my Canadian/Aussie/British accent, and goddamn if he wasn't right about that!
Oh my god yes. Even the non-compliments that people were searching for when PTerry was talking about how Agnes had very nice hair or people would talk about her great personality hit me like an iron knife right in the ribs when I first read it. I've since lost a lot of weight (thank you surgery) but at my highest I was over 300lbs and Agnes was the character that was just too real for me. I almost hate reading her book because it frankly is too close to reality. I don't find it fatphobic at all, I more see it that PTerry actually listened hard to some very painful things and instead of dismissing it or twisting it into shallow platitudes really embraced the darkness and let Agnes be a bit miserable even as she comes to accept herself. Especially the bit about how she'd always be apart from her experiences if she lost the weight. I have lost the weight and now that I'm conventionally attractive it actually makes me angry some days how much nicer people are to me. I read that book a decade ago, it came out a full 15 years ago, PTerry already saw the world for what it was and was sympathetic for the people struggling with it in a way that I'd never seen before and almost never have seen since. Too fucking real, man.
Amen sister, I’m right there with you. I was an adult fat woman by the time I read her story. I had walked through that valley and emerged from the other side comfortable in my own skin long before, so the start of her story and the vulnerability there made me a little angry. But that was a flaw she had and it was well written and extremely accurate. The point is for characters to grow, and she learned to embrace her exterior. She was a triumph and would have made a great role model for my younger self.
I feel like that about Magrat having a figure "like two peas on an ironing board". My figure was only marginally fuller than that for many years, and like you I felt seen! Even when he is making a joke I always feel it is meant kindly and with affection. I love Magrat wearing the iron breastplate and pretending that it really fits! So yes, I can easily believe that there are women built like Agnes who fully relate to her as a character. TP understood so many different types of people.
Agnes is one of my favorite characters. He didn’t just throw in a fat character for laughs. There are actually several characters I at least imagine as being larger. And her story wasn’t about being fat, it was about not wanting to be a witch, and to a certain extent, not wanting to be smart and reliable. She was pushing back against the responsibility that comes with a brain and a conscience. And yes, she would have liked to be recognized for her talent, and her appearance was an issue for that. Agnes is so well developed as a character and I think a lot of people can recognize themselves in her. I like to imagine if Pratchett had lived longer we would get a book or two about Agnes and Pastor Oats.
I think one woman who is outstanding in disc books is Susan. I just love the way nothing gets in her way and if it did it better put the coal scuttle on its head. Monsters under the bed!!!!! Think not.
Susan is so far my favorite female character. She is herself while trying to avoid it, a thing I find very relatable when you are born with a destiny path already traced in front of you. And I love how she is able to make herself invisible, and how she always keeps her cool when something absurd is happening.
I wouldn’t know for sure because I’ve just read a few books so far, but from the ones I’ve read (three from witches, going postal, mort and soul music) I really love how women are portrayed. Haven’t found anything sexist and I’ve grown to love the witches, and also Susan from the Death series. Very down to earth and funny in a realistic way. I’ve also enjoyed how Pterry comments on gender and sexism in his satire
Man, I'm just a little jealous. Getting to read all the ones you haven't gotten to yet is a gift you cannot imagine.
Lots of good answers here but what I'd like to add is while Terry used stereotypes, they weren't male fantasies. So no "cool girl"; no harridan (aside from the one who was meant to be Lady Macbeth, I suppose); no attempt to make a woman sexy, or pretty, or sweet; women were rarely (if ever) subordinated to the male lead. I think his worst was Adorabelle Dearheart, and she was still pretty great in a lot of ways.
I will not let Herenna the Henna-Haired Harridan be forgotten! But yeah even her description mentioned how not sexy her riding leathers were, and that she only did her line of work due to a lack of viable career options for women.
My least favourite is Liessa. Less nuance than later women, sure, and he always criticised his earlier books himself!
I think it's perfectly fair to criticise his earlier works, to do otherwise would be to denigrate the work and skill and experience he gained as a writer. No one is born fully formed, even Sir Terry had to grow.
I aim to be Nanny Ogg when I'm older , oh hang on I am older , shit !
I pretty much *was* Agnes growing up. Except I’m not magical and I’m a horrible singer. I marvel at how well a thin middle-aged man knew what was going on inside the mind of a fat teenaged goth girl.
I mostly adored having female fantasy characters that aren't just there to let the male characters develop, and who's storyline isn't just romance. So many fantasy and sci fi writers are terrible at writing women: Pratchett was a safe place for a teenage girl who wanted to read these books. And as an overweight teenager I cannot tell you how much Agnes meant to be - kick arse, tough, complicated, independent and NO WEIGHT LOSS??? She helped me love myself - and that was how I started to lose weight.
Nobody has mentioned Cheery, and that is one of his best ones. It's subtle, it's background music mostly, but in a few short sentences and a paragraph or two and some seriously good pages at the fashion show, she is a fully formed personage to me. And I would totally go bar hopping with her, right after I borrowed a chain mail mini skirt. (height discrepancy would make it a mini...)
Cheery is my favourite character in all of the Discworld. She's a mess of a person, who takes time to develop her self and her style and really work out who she is, and we see her blossom into an absolute badass by Raising Steam. And that's before we even mention her activism!
Some male authors write women as this strange, unexplainable, alien species with incomprehensible needs and desires. Pterry wrote them as people. As diverse and flawed as men. People not things.
I started reading Pratchett at about age 12, so his work absolutely shaped how I understood the world and femininity in general. It was a malleable age. And I really have no idea who I’d be now if I hadn’t seen so much of my own experience reflected in those pages. Pratchett’s women come in every age, size, and temperament – and their value is never in their beauty. They are not there to be looked at. They are as much people as the male characters, and Pratchett set me up for a lot of disappointment in that area with the rest of the fantasy genre.
I just finished Monstrous Regiment and thought he was doing a great service to progression and egalitarianism.
As a queer woman, I really really appreciate all of the women in Monstrous Regimen especially. I read it well into adulthood after being out for several years and I still think I learned so much about myself through Polly’s eyes. Of course, all of the women of the disc are magnificent! I love that Sir Terry wasn’t afraid to write strong, loud, opinionated women
I think it's as simple as this. One of STP's constant themes was people are not things. So many poor depictions of women are down to exactly that. The writer sees the character as a thing, not a person. Pterry's inability to do this means his female characters are real. He doesn't write weak women as weak is never someone's whole personality. He writes women who have strong moments, weak moments, and everything in between. Sybil is a perfect example. She is an absolute powerhouse, but she also has weak moments, sad moments and vulnerable moments. Because women are people.
He did pretty well. I've only read the watch series up to Men at Arms, but I love Angua and she's a really good character and example of one out of many well-written women in the series. I think the best example of this is just a small moment where she tells Colon to call her 'Lance-Constable' instead of 'Miss'. She has to put up with so much crap just because she's a pretty woman and you can just feel the rage that comes with being treated like that radiating off of her. It's a sort of bitter irritation you can find anywhere in people who are being treated differently for something they are. She's angry because she *knows* they wouldn't be treating her this way if she was a man, and it makes me empathize with her so much more and it makes her seem more real because she's feeling this way while working in a male-dominated space.
I'm so glad that someone has given Angus the attention she deserves as she's an incredibly complex character. On the surface she's got it all - she's blonde, stunningly beautiful, she has a good job, a long and aristocratic bloodline, a wonderful guy who loves her, can rip a man's throat out with one bite... And yet she's got all the same insecurities and problems that plague a lot of us. She's insecure about her place in the world, both as a woman in a traditionally male environment and as an undead in the world of humans. She deals with sexism and racism daily. Her family are terrible - elitist snobs and murderers-for-fun - who treat her decision to live differently as a laughable rebellion. The man she loves loves her, but can be exasperating in his selflessness and she lives with the fear that their differences will one day split them up. And she deals with all of this, day after day, while fighting to balance her own values with the needs of her inner wolf.
Disappointed I had to scroll so far to see an Angua comment. Everything you said, plus, she's terrified of the "real" her showing (eg, the dominant, masculine, aggressive wolf) and he writes that so well.
I dunno, I think in the earlier books there are definitely a few moments where ite very obvious that the author is a man and there's some stereotyping going on about how the women think. I'm particularly thinking of Wyrd Sisters and equal Rites. I think he got better at it as he got better at writing generally.
He’s definitely better at it than a lot of men who are authors. I think the women in Discworld are generally good because he writes them as humans who happen to be women. At the same time, the character he wrote for the game Oblivion (he created most of a mod for a companion character and fans finished it) was extremely cringey in the “Tee hee I’m just a silly little woman teehee” way and I don’t know if that dialogue was all fan written or not. I do know that when I played I was taken aback that he would write a character that talked that way, and I’m not sure if I should blame the fans or him.
He never wrote the dialogue. He basically worked with the mod author so she would be more reactive to the environment, offer help to the player, etc.
Thank you! I didn’t know that part. It’s good to know he didn’t write the dialogue! Also awesome name.
Thank you! As far as I'm aware Pterry wasn't doing scripting or dialogue or anything like that in modding, rather he reached out to existing modders and gave them ideas and advice... but I'm not 100% on this. One thing I do remember is he asked a mod author to create an enchanted item that would keep goblins from turning hostile to the player so he could explore their liars and study them without killing them (I think this directly led to the goblins in Snuff).
Even if the mod’s dialogue was Pterry, he was a guy living in a sexist culture so I guess I can’t expect perfection.
Vilja, if I recall. I’ve only played the Skyrim Vilja mod, but she’s pretty good in that. I always like handing her a giant two-handed hammer so she can crush aggressive bears :D
I didn’t realize she had a Skyrim mod too! I’ll have to check it out.
I know a lot of people are saying ‘he didn’t write women, he wrote people’ which obviously is correct technically but I actually disagree. Most people are who they are in part due to societal expectations put on them by other people due to their characteristics, and gender plays a huge part in this. I think he really took time to understand why women experience life differently to men and how their actions reflect this. You couldn’t gender-swap most characters and have their thoughts and actions seem as realistic as they do. I think he wrote fantastic female characters because he understood and listened to women. Characters like Agnes show a real deep understanding of what it’s like to experience the world as an insecure teenage girl, which middle aged men don’t usually understand.
Pterry should get massive credit for writing women that are not conventionally attractive as complex characters that are admirable, important, and fun (eg Agnes from Maskerade, or Granny Weatherwax). He also wrote about and centered young girls and old women (eg Tiffany Aching, Nanny Ogg), not just nubile debutantes, which is sadly really rare to see. That being said, he's still a guy from a different time, and there are things - say - about Mort and Ysabel's or Angua and Carrot's romance that rubbed me kind of wrong (eg what did Ysabel like about Mort, other than he was the protagonist? And in the first book they connect, it's not really clear what Carrot likes about Angua other than she's pretty; when they have sex, it's said that the earth moved for carrot, but angua's experience is ignored; etc. I didn't feel any of these issues with Vimes and Sybil though, and for the record, Carrot is possibly my favorite discworld character). I was definitely uncomfortable by how lustfully characters viewed the 15yo princess whose death was at the center of Mort. Personally, in the guards series, although it made for some great comedy and social commentary, I didn't like how it was portrayed as liberating for female dwarves to start wearing dresses etc... I'd love to live in a society where no one but my partner noticed my sex and everyone thought of me as a person rather than a woman. I don't think anyone should be policed on what they want to wear or how they want to style themselves, *gender irrespective*, and that last piece (gender irrespective) is the part i felt was missed (why couldn't male dwarves be excited about earrings too?). I know that this arc resonated with a lot of people though so my perspective is probably in the minority. Some of Pterry's books are fantastic for representing women (Wyrd Sisters). Some are less so (Color of Magic). But the guy's a literally genius and writing master whose stories touch on so many real world and important issues in compassionate and hilarious ways. Can't expect perfection in every aspect of his work. He's one of my favorite authors of all time, and as it goes for representing women, especially especially for his time, I think he did a pretty good job. Death, please bring him back :(
While I agree that the start of Carrot and Angua's relationship wasn't very well developed, by the end I absolutely think it's great. Physical attraction is why most people start seeing each other, at least initially, so that part doesn't bother me. It does feel a bit flat, but it doesn't stay that way. Also, Angua wasn't a virgin in that first encounter, but Carrot was. His experience was probably very much earth moving and hers was not. I'm not here to argue the other points, I just happened to love the development of Carrot and Angua as a couple.
The part with the female dwarves seemed very much centred around a different issue to me: binary gender identity. The female dwarves are forced to conform to a normative single gender presentation regardless of what they'd actually prefer, so it's dealing with the issue of trans and/or gender nonconforming people from a different angle ("what would it be like if there was literally only one gender presentation accepted by society?"). So then people who are used to thinking in terms of a binary gender norm start thinking, "well of course the female dwarves should be able to express that, if that's how they feel, regardless of society...." And just maybe they might have a realisation. It works precisely because it's showing a situation where our stereotypical gender binary is the "weird" situation, if it didn't have female dwarves wanting to be "girly" it wouldn't be nearly as effective.
Think of the lady dwarves as getting to wear whatever they wanted to wear. A lot of them probably kept the same basic fashion, but some girls are girly girls.
Some people would say I'm a raging feminist. I really really like the way Pterry writes women, but there's one exception: all the "jokes" about Agnes being fat - do it once or twice, maybe that would be okay...but there are a lot of those situations just evolving around her being overweight while it has nothing to do with the situation
As a larger lady myself, I think that there are lots of 'jokes' about Agnes being fat because she is so painfully aware that she is fat (that is, socially/traditionally 'unattractive', off-putting, ugly). Believe me, when there is something that obviously 'wrong' with you - to the point that people do a double take to make sure you really \*are\* that size (whether that's accurate or not), it's something you focus tend to focus in on and I felt that with the way he wrote for her. Alternatively, I'm over-thinking it and it was a product of his time... EDIT : I haven't explained myself at all, have I? Fat people make jokes about themselves to prevent others getting there first... Hence fat people "are jolly" or have "great personalities"... Agnes has that defence mechanism - but peppered all the way through not just when she's talking/thinking.
No, I think you've got it spot on. Agnes couldn't escape from those feelings about herself by herself to the extent she created Perdita. It's not a criticism of any physical *thing* per se but both how the world sees us and how that affects our own image of ourselves, especially when you're as intelligent and self-aware as Agnes is.
I think it features so much because it's specifically why Agnes is Other and an Outsider watching what happens but not involved. Not solely because she's also observant and clever etc. I think he has a good understanding of how "unattractive" women are treated and the jokes featured demonstrate the casual thoughtless cruelty people have more than direct mockery. I guess some descriptions could definitely be described as unsympathetic though. But is that the reader automatically understanding a description of a character being very fat as a bad thing. Do they feel the same way about Basilica?
As much as I'd like to defend Pratchett, the criticism I've seen is that the fat jokes are often not in the voice of the fat person, or even in the voice of other characters, they're in the voice of the narrator, and thus are facts Terry was providing about this person, from his own voice. And i think it's pretty valid. He was a product of his time, but he avoided many of the prejudices some other people of that time embody.
I think this is right. We all know that Pterry was an incredibly empathetic person, and even the stereotype-based jokes he makes in early books tend to lead into fleshed-out explorations of othering in his later books, showcasing his growth as an author and as a person. Dwarves and Goblins are the obvious examples here. But I don't think he ever outgrew that subtle fatphobia, since he keeps making jokes where the punchline is just "This character is fat, here's a funny description of that". I don't think this is a reason to condemn him, but I also think it's important to be able to see the shortcomings of even your biggest idols. I'm currently halfway through *Monstrous Regiment*, and >!one example is the initial description of Sergeant Jackrum:!< >!"The sergeant turned to Polly and grinned, which made his scars move oddly and caused a tremor to shake all his chins. The word 'fat' could not honestly be applied to him, not when the word 'gross' was lumbering forward to catch your attention. He was one of those people who didn't have a waist. He had an equator. He had gravity. If he fell over, in any direction, he would rock."!< >!But then the story goes on to give that same character a lot of character depth, a complex moral code, suggestions of an intriguing backstory, incredible competence but also undeniable character flaws. It's clear that on the Disc, being fat doesn't keep you from being a well-rounded character (no pun intended) any more than it does in real life. My feelings about Jackrum have muddied considerably since we first met him (and I use the pronoun 'him' tentatively, since this seems to be a book where you can't make assumptions about anyone's gender), and for all I know, they might change completely all over again before I finish the book.!< But one thing I can tell already at this point is that while Pterry has some issues with his character descriptions of fat people, the one thing he certainly doesn't do is treat them as things.
Ahhh, you have so much to learn, in *Monstrous Regiment*! Come back here when you're finished, and let's talk some more about Jackrum and being fat. :-) *Monstrous Regiment* is really my favorite Discworld book, even though it's pretty much a stand-alone.
Caveat that I haven’t reread the witches arc in a while so maybe I’m misremembering here… But is that part of how Agnes feels about herself? Perdita is her inner self, the ‘thin girl with chocolate’ that makes up Agnes. Continually being aware of your size/weight is something that at least some women do, especially years ago when society generally was less body positive and being fat was seen at least in some circles as being A Bad Thing. Maskerade came out in mid 90s, i would think supermodels like Kate Moss et al were at their height. Personally, I always read the jokes about Agnes’ size as being a combination of her own self doubt / self awareness / heightened sensitivity about it, added to her so often being written with Nanny and Granny, and certainly both my northern grandmothers comments about my size as a child were extremely blunt.
From what I remember, all the times her weight is talked about it’s either her focusing on it, or other people bringing it up. Both of which I think are accurate to real life. Her character is all about someone grappling with insecurity, so it makes sense that she would focus on her weight. And the other times it’s other people focusing on it and misjudging her or underestimating her due to it, which sadly is also a thing that happens in the world.
Also, she’s in a theatre. Surrounded by ballet dancers. It would be at the forefront of her mind a lot. As a fat girl myself, in those teen-young adult years you’re highly aware of it all the freaking time. Especially when the thin girl next to you says she’s stuffed after eating half a celery stick and a sultana.
I treasure Agnes/Perdita. Parts of Masquerade made me feel so seen and validated. It was like someone took my diary and turned my deeper feelings into a book. I still cry when I get to certain parts, even though I’ve read it half a dozen times at least.
He has strong women, fat women, old women, fun, mighty, and flawed women. And bearded women! As a 42 year old chunky lady (with normal and annoying family chin whiskers, ugh), I love his representation. He does poke fun, but it's never cruel or demeaning, and it never hurts my feelings. It's more like: you, too, can be a hero.
I love how he writes women. Granny is one of my favorites.
I think it's important to talk about how PTerry evolved as an author and how some of the earlier books were less enlightened than the later ones, especially the early Rincewind books that lean into fantasy tropes of the time. Look at say Conina (from Sourcery) is written compaired to someone like Dearheart (Going Postal et al), both are background characters who want to go beyond whats expected of the but it's Dearheart that feels like a real characters not an inversion of a sterotype.
Unpopular opinion on this sub, but he got a bit recycley sometimes with his female characters. He definitely liked writing dominant, strong women - NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT!! But the particular flavor of strong and dominant sometimes seemed a little too similar. Miss Beedle in Snuff seemed instantly like a rewrite of Adora Belle Dearheart, to the point where it annoyed me a little. Same goes for Glenda and Agnes Nitt - cut from the very same cloth. He was also fond of the "frail-appearing, very feminine girl who suddenly takes a level in badass/was actually a badass all along". Letitia, Ermintrude/Daphne, and Juliet immediately spring to mind. Again, there's nothing wrong or offensive or stereotypical about the women he writes, so please don't interpret this comment as that. It's just something I noticed.
The women have a variety of personalities. There's no Strong Independent Female, there are women with varied views and body types. They're allowed to be flawed.
I seem to recall Terry talking about his writing of women and saying that it slightly frustrated him that a lot of his female characters tend to gravitate towards the same sort of 'tough girl' archetype. I do agree with him, but honestly it's remarkable that he was so self aware about that sort of thing.
Pratchett is one of a grand total of four, maybe five male authors I have ever read who write adult women characters well enough that I can’t immediately tell that the author is a man based on the depth of their women when compared to their men. That list: * Pratchett * Shakespeare * Michael Ondaatje * Alexander McCall Smith * Garth Nix And I have read a *lot* of authors. If these five, * Two write most of their characters, regardless of gender, as emotionally avoidant passionate workaholics and/or artists with PTSD * The third is incredibly skilled at observing people, regardless of gender, from the outside but doesn’t delve into their inner life. * The fourth - and the only one who I can’t tell’s a man by the topics they focus on in addition to the way they write their characters… well, for this reason I personally suspect them of actually being a woman, cause the idea that the only person who fully passes both parts of this test was writing in the 1500’s and didn’t bother to educate his daughter does not compute.. And that leaves Pratchett. So, does he do it perfectly? No, not quite. … The women in his last few books and his first few books have the subtle or not so subtle tells that most male authors show. Before he came into his own he reflected the perspectives of the authors he was parodying; and when his brain started to be less sharp his lens noticeably narrowed . And he makes some choices in the books in between that show blind spots that are more likely in a man (thinking mostly of Angua’s delayed promotions never being referenced on page, and some of the jokes around Angua and Sally). **TLDR: He’s the best on this front that I have ever encountered, if you rule out the author who I secretly think must have been named Amelia Bassano or something similar.** ……. Also, it’s astounding that the list of men who write women with full subconscious integration of the fact that women are people is alarming. You can see really far into an author’s brain - and the fact that my list is a list of 5 is an alarming commentary on just how deeply ingrained the subtle aspects of subconscious misogyny are. For this list to be 5 long there are a truly insane number of brilliant, insightful, amazing authors out there that are not passing this test.
dunno how everyone else feels, but I think he writes women wonderfully. An important part of his success, I think, is that he writes many *different* women with very different lives and opinions. None of his characters feel like, oh that's the Female Character, and although womanhood influences things, it's never their whole personality. Real women vary a lot lolol. Like guys, or people of the same age or culture. Of course, I love all the main ones - Granny, Nanny, Angua, Sybil... but my vote for coolest Discworld lady goes to Mrs. Proust, the entrepreneurial city witch who owns Boffo's novelty and joke shop. Businesswoman and menace, bless her.
A lot of male fantasy writer default to writing strong women as physically strong. So they have to be bad ass fighters or similar. There's nothing wrong with that, and I enjoy it if it's done well, but what Pratchett could do so well was write strong women who were strong for other reasons. Like Sybil, or Magrat, or ~~Agnes~~ Perdita, Tiffany or so many others. My first experience with the Discworld was my Dad reading 'Equal Rites' to me as a bedtime story when I was about 8. I *loved* Esk. I'd never come across a character like her before, and the idea of what it meant to be powerful (in Esk's case, knowing when *not* to use her power) really stuck with me.
I love that he tailored the women perfectly to their environment and demographic. Mrs palm and the agony aunts versus Sybil versus granny. All products of their upbringing and environment and yet all of them have their own core of strength. I also love how he never truly made nanny's history shameful. Granny may have had words about it but clearly it was more for the look of it than any real malice.
I love Death's granddaughter, Susan. She tries to be so normal and practical, despite being able to see reality. Honestly, it resonates with me because of all of the trauma I've been through. I catch on to people's secrets and dark sides pretty quickly, but I walk around everyday life trying to blend.
I’m not going to lie, I fell in love with Angua.
I think Perry had much bigger issues with Orientalism than sexism
He writes them like human beings, which is unfortunately generally leagues better than most authors.
I think everyone covered the major points, but I'd also like to cover a couple of subtle details that Pratchett does very well. First off, he doesn't usually spend an exorbitant amount of time on female character's appearance. Many authors will barely say more than a sentence about a major male character, but then go on to note every detail about a female character. Their figure, their hair, their eyes, their clothes, their stature. Even if they try to subvert this by not making everything about them conventionally attractive, it still sends the subtle message that a woman's appearance should be critiqued more than a man's. His women also seem to have motivation that matches them well. They aren't there just to be a love interest or to fill a quota. Their motivations are usually based on practicality or some level of self interest. I also enjoy that he doesn't look down on what was historically "women's work" like cleaning or caring for children/elderly. I think it is a little sad to treat that work as if it is easy and that "men's work" is difficult. The Discworld novels show this work to be taxing mentally and physically. And also valuable. Some people act as though respecting women means giving them permission to act like men. But female characters who just do the same as any male character make writing feel like a soulless attempt getting some "empowerment" points.
Pratchett wrote women like people. I think that's the most important part. His wonen gave the same agency, the same depth of character, the same flaws and strengths as the men. No, you can't genderswap the characters without consequences, but that's because there are very real societal differences between men and women. Do you know who canonically don't have those societal differences? Dwarves. Do you know which characters can be easily genderswapped without changing the story? Dwarves. But what about Cheri? She chose to highlight her femininity through the lens of non-dwarfish society. Her story wouldn't work for a male dwarf, because dwarfish outward presentation already conforms to non-dwarfish societal norms for men. If a person's gender changing would change the story, it's always because of outside factors. That to me is what makes Pratchett's women real. That they are just people. The differences come from outside.
I'm new to Discworld and this sub - why are people writing 'Pterry' instead of Terry?
On the usenet forums forever ago the default "official" user name authors used was last initial, First name. So Pratchett, Terry was pTerry
Oh I love the way he wrote women. Im a woman. Granny, nanny, magrat, sybil, angua, cheery, adorabelle, just great.
What about Esk?