Mark Reads ‘The Last Continent’: Part 19

In the nineteenth and penultimate part of The Last Continent, I don’t know that I understand this, but I’m going to try. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read Discworld. 

Okay, so, HUGE convergence in plots here, but I’m a little confused about how this came about. I SHALL NOW PUBLICLY TRY TO FIGURE THIS OUT you can start laughing at me now.

“They always interfere,” said Ponder. “I don’t know what it is about wizards, they can’t just watch.”

Let’s first appreciate the joke that the duck-billed platypus was created by committee, and that committee was made up of bickering wizards. I still want to hang out with one, though.

“How high is this?” he croaked.

“On the outside About half a mile, we think,” said the Archchancellor.

“And on the inside?”

“You climbed it. Two stories.”

“You’re trying to tell me you’ve got a tower that’s taller at the top than it is at the bottom?”

It’s like a reverse TARDIS? Or a backwards TARDIS? My brain can’t handle it. But something about this tower inspired Rincewind to head back to the cellar of the “haunted” brewery, and it utterly confused me. This tower is something special, all right, but why? Why does it matter? It’s immediately after this scene that Pratchett has the Librarian play with a bullroarer, which causes ABSOLUTE CHAOS.

My theory, then, is geographical: what if Rincewind was at the exact same place the wizards were, just thousands of years in the future? And what if the wizards are responsible for the utterly unreal amount of thaumic/magic energy in this spot, which is why that tower does… the thing? I DON’T EVEN UNDERSTAND IT. I mean, if the wizards weren’t there, then the old man who drew all those creatures in the rock wouldn’t have drawn them into it, too. Which… messed up the rain???

Yeah, I’m lost there. I get that the weird afterimage/ghost thing that Rincewind sees is the wizards somehow poking through time – time being a sensitive, strange thing in Bugarup – but I’m still lost otherwise.

There, on a door, someone had drawn some pointy hats, in red. They glistened in the light.

And this is the point where I start getting truly lost. Someone painted that image on the door, which led to the second cellar, which hid the giant cave, which held the exact place where the wizards were pulled into the present time. That’s a lot of preparation, you know? Who did all of that? Except… it just appeared, of course, because of the magic of time travel. The wizards upset time and it appeared just then to exist for thousands of years.

I think.

Which is why when Rincewind draws the wizards on the limestone in the cave and they appear, the cave reacts violently. They aren’t supposed to be there! It’s time trying to correct itself!

Except how does this solve the problem of the rain? I still get how this all went wrong! Well, I’ve got one last part left, so maybe it’ll make more sense then. I hope.

http://youtu.be/wuP1GCf4lk8?a

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