OK, so this is lowering the tone to places even dwarves probably won't go for fear of striking elephant...
Idly one day, I randomly typed in "Discworld Porn". What I found horrified me beyond words.
There is none. Not one single, solitary picture that I can find, even on the Japanese websites, where no topic is normally safe.
Sure, if you really hunt (as I did, purely in the spirit of scientific enquiry and utter disbelief) you can find the occasional fanfic annotated "slash, if you squint" and suchlike. Or perhaps a pic of Errol and his flame. But nothing that most people would consider graphical porn.
This might seem normal to most of you, but that's because you haven't thought about it. This is the INTERNET! There are reams and REAMS of appalling Harry Potter porn fanfics and pictures of Snape with.... well, and so on. And the LotR porn is just... uh... unjust.
So why is there nothing for Discworld? Is it a measure of the relative popularity? For a while, I thought that must be it: LotR just has a massively larger fanbase, so has more pervy artists. But then I changed my mind: there are just as many Discworld fans as there are, say, furry fans, and there's furry porn all over the net. People tend to be far more attached to the Discworld than they are to LotR, because it's deeper, it's richer, it's more real... and then I think I figured it out.
It's because Pratchett writes about real people, doesn't he?
It's easy enough to form an idealised fantasy with the characters from most authors, about Tolkien's Strider or even the hobbits. But a fanfic about Vimes and Sybil, or any of the wizards or witches and anyone else, Verence and Magrat, the luggage and... it would just take a stronger mind than mine to see eroticism in any of these.
Carrot and Angua are about the only ones I can think of offhand who could possibly be idealised enough to make interesting porn art.
Searching for "carrot porn" will obviously just find you suggestively shaped carrots suitable for inclusion in the Ankh-Morpork Times (yes, okay, this is the net, I *know* what I just said is almost certainly naive, but I am clinging to my sanity by the fingernails already in this topic, so I'm not going to do the search to prove myself wrong, OK?).
Google-image-searching for "Angua" finds some really good art... but still no Discworld porn.
Ah, well.
I do admit I'm a tiny bit relieved that, despite this being the net, there's no Foul Ol' Ron or Reg Shoe porn out there... that I've seen, at least.
Re: Discworld porn?
People tend to be far more attached to the Discworld than they are to LotR, because it's deeper, it's richer, it's more real... a
How can anyone call Discworld deeper than Middle-earth?
The following is soley my personal opinion. Goodness, I'd hate to start the forum's first flamewar
Tolkien created a world: a mythology, geography, history and language. But to me it seems he peopled them mostly with the kindof flat personality archetypes that you find in myth and legend, then stuck a very small number of "normal" people in, and focused on them.
That's OK: the whole reason archetypes exist is so that they can be used to refer to a person and give them more depth than space would otherwise permit. Pratchett does it all the time: take an arcetype, twist one feature, then run with what you get from that. You don't need to know anything more about a virgin sacrifice who's annoyed to be rescued. Or a barbarian who's got really old. Or a wizard who's incompetent. The archetype does all the work.
It would definitely also be untrue to claim that all Tolkien's main characters were shallow. There was a ton of character development in them, and even the minor ones changed over time. There were emotions, there was love, there was a story arc. As you expect in any good tale... but no more. You learned little of the people, their past, their hopes and dreams, aside from where it specifically related to the quest.
They weren't shallow stories, but they also didn't touch on many people's everyday lives in any way whatsoever. He didn't litter his pages with insights into human nature, nor the nature of many other things. The stories themselves tended to be simple quests, with a few sidetracks and subquests.
So I feel that there's more depth, whether you mean that in terms of characterisation, or insights, or "deep meaning to the overriding story", or the depth of the world-detail that the reader is exposed to, in any recent Pratchett book than the entire collected works of Tolkien.
Is there any father with a new son out there who says Thud didn't resound with him on a deeper and more meaningful level than anything Tolkien ever wrote?
Equally, the same might be said of Tolkien by anyone who regularly has to undertake massive quests to save mankind... but you know, there really aren't that many of those people out there.
And that's kindof my point.
Discworld is deeper than Middle Earth because it has continued to evolve. Time has moved in the Discworld. The last we heard of Middle Earth was the last of the Elves sailing away on a boat.
Discworld started with your basic medievil world, where theres magic, dragons and heroes, and has eveolved with every book. Remeber the first mention of the clacks? Now look at it. It's barely mentioned in the beginning, before shifting to one of the main focuses of Going Postal.
Hows Strider/Aragorn coping as King? We don't know. We DO know how Vimes is coping with being Commander of the City Watch, and a Duke, and a Knight AND a Father, which considering he started life (in the sense of the novels) drunk in a gutter, is CONSIDERABLE evolution.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE LOTR, but it does feel a bit stale compared to the vibrant, ever-evolving world of Discworld.
Discworld is deeper than Middle Earth because it has continued to evolve. Time has moved in the Discworld. The last we heard of Middle Earth was the last of the Elves sailing away on a boat.
Discworld started with your basic medievil world, where theres magic, dragons and heroes, and has eveolved with every book. Remeber the first mention of the clacks? Now look at it. It's barely mentioned in the beginning, before shifting to one of the main focuses of Going Postal.
Hows Strider/Aragorn coping as King? We don't know. We DO know how Vimes is coping with being Commander of the City Watch, and a Duke, and a Knight AND a Father, which considering he started life (in the sense of the novels) drunk in a gutter, is CONSIDERABLE evolution.
Don't get me wrong, I LOVE LOTR, but it does feel a bit stale compared to the vibrant, ever-evolving world of Discworld.
Exactly. I think this is especially apparent in Thud now, with one of the main focuses of much of the series being changed/threatened/evolved. It takes guts and skill to do something like that and avoid alienating readers or defamiliarising the world- but I think Pratchett can pull it off.
ROIGHT!
Another great example out of Thud is Koom Valley. The first time I heard of it (I'm sure it was mentioned in earlier books, but I'm not certain) was in Theif of Time, and then it was only mentioned as a painting that the Auditors might take apart. Even the Discworld geography goes through character development.
Even the Discworld geography goes through character development.
This is so true, but I hadn't even thought of it like that before you said it!
Another reason there isn't Discworld porn could have something to do with the fact that there hasn't been a popular live action movie... Yet...
...there hasn't been a popular live action movie... Yet...
People I've talked to say "Watch this space!"
Yeah but people always say that! The same could be said about most rumoured movies. How long was it before the long-rumoured Freddy Vs Jason or Alien Vs Predator films finally emerged? (Not that these are comparable to Discworld, but still....) Other long rumoured but never glimpsed films include the Red Dwarf one and The A-Team.
Will any happen? Only the God formerly known as Lobsang Ludd will tell.
I heard somewhere that Terry Gilliam was going to be making a Discworld movie... But that's just another rumor I guess.
A girl can dream, can't she?
(Not that these are comparable to Discworld, but still....)
How about Douglas Adams? He started a "rumour" himself when he was still alive, and how long did it take for H2G2 to make the screen? Poor sod...
Well, unless Pratchett is in danger of dying any time soon, then I'm not worried.
well as far as DW films go,
I was presant when some man who writes books didn't tell us about a film not taken from the Hogfather was not being made and would not be ready for Hogswatch 2006.
I was presant when some man who writes books didn't tell us about a film not taken from the Hogfather was not being made and would not be ready for Hogswatch 2006.
Yep! Sounds like the same man I was quoting
I guess we'll see in 11 months or so
Well, that would make very many people incredibly happy. Myself included. Thanks for that bit of information.
Speaking of films, what do people think of the animated versions? I recently watched the 1996 animated series of Soul Music, which was, I felt, very cool indeed. I hadn't been that gripped by the book, but the animation really brought it to life. Quality-wise it's no Disney or Studio Gibli, but it was still great fun to watch, and I felt the characters were wonderfully done.
The amazon.co.uk symopsis is funny, too:
"An animated version of the Terry Pratchett novel 'Discworld'. Death is missing and a replacement is sought..."
Anyone else like (or hate?) it? What about Wyrd Sisters, which I've not yet seen? Are there other animated Discworld series' out there?
I've seen Wyrd Sisters and preferred it over the book myself, but I'm not a huge Lancre Witches fan (they sound like a sports a team!
)
I actually convinced our English teacher to show it to the class when I was in school, because we were studying MacBeth at the time, and she said it sounded good for a comparison. (I was just fed up with studying Shakespeare and wanted to do something more fun!)
If only my English teacher were that cool... Ah well.
There is a brilliant puppet-movie of "Truckers".
Really a must see!!!
Thanks for wasting your time...
Re: Discworld porn?
Idly one day, I randomly typed in "Discworld Porn". What I found horrified me beyond words.
You obviously came eye to eye with one of my naked squirrels eh...
Don't worry, they only use their acorns on "innocent" passers by !!
Thanks for wasting your time...