In the ninth part of\u00c2\u00a0Pyramids<\/i>, Dios and Teppic begin to quietly face off with one another. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Discworld<\/i>.<\/p>\n
HOLY SHIT, SO MUCH IS HAPPENING.<\/p>\n
Grinjer<\/b><\/p>\n
I once went through a period about four years ago where I decided to foster an obsessive relationship with LEGOs. During this time, I went on a date with some guy and decided that hey, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m gonna take him home. This was an utter failure in many regards, namely that I desperately should have gotten to know him beyond a four hour date, but such is life. Hindsight is always clearer. I had repurposed an old entertainment center as a massive display for my LEGO creations, all of which I had joyously assembled precisely as the directions required. I am a perennial klutz and have severe problems with visualizing anything in three dimensions, and sometimes, I think my brain cannot process depth perception. IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S A PROBLEM. Which is why LEGO sets excite me and satisfy me so much: they allow me to entertain the notion that I\u00c2\u00a0can<\/i> build things with my hands without severly injuring myself.<\/p>\n
This was something that was utterly lost on this man. (Who, at the time, was eight years older than me.) I was attracted to him because he was bookish and quiet, a drastic contrast to a lot of the men I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d dated in the seven years prior to him. He was very thoughtful about what he said, and he was a\u00c2\u00a0fantastic<\/i> listener. This was apparent on our date, it was apparent on the BART ride to Oakland, and it was apparent on the twenty-odd minute walk from the BART station to my house.<\/p>\n
And then he saw my LEGO sets, built and displayed, many of them\u00c2\u00a0Harry Potter\u00c2\u00a0<\/i>and\u00c2\u00a0Star Wars<\/i> related, and he opened up. I wish that was a positive thing, but he began to tell me about the availability of sets, and then he began to tell me about the design flaws in the Hogwarts set and how it was a piss poor gift to the LEGO community, and then he began to lecture me about supporting sets that constituted a slap in the face to real LEGO collectors, and then he began to tell me that it was clear that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d never had LEGO sets as a child, since I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t demonstrate the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153creativity\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that comes with exploring the potential of any set of pieces, and he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stop for nearly forty-five minutes.<\/p>\n
I just wanted to make out with him, and it never happened. I sent him on his way not long after that.<\/p>\n
Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be Grinjer, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no fun.<\/p>\n
King Teppicymon XXVII<\/b><\/p>\n
LOOK, WHENEVER HE SHOWS UP IN THE TEXT, I AM CONSUMED BY SADNESS. How is Pratchett able to do this to me, time and time again??? I think it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in the way he talks; there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s always this futility present in his tone, as if he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s resolved himself to this horrible fate of his. He does want his son to stop the construction of the pyramid, but he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have much hope that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll actually happen. Plus, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all the times where he talks to his son, even though he knows he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll never respond, and IT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S TOO MUCH.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m so sad.<\/p>\n
Doppelgangs and Pyramids<\/b><\/p>\n
HOLY SHIT, THEY DID IT. At times, it was hard to wrap my around the temporal contradictions, but I think that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the point. Ptaclusp manipulated the potential of the paracosmic powers of the pyramid (holy alliteration) to create countless copies of his sons\u00c2\u00a0and<\/i> the workers. Some are from the future; all of them are confused about how to navigate the world if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re time clones. Oh, and they also cloned the money. Oh, AND EVERYTHING IS A HORRIBLE DISASTER. I mean????<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The problem is,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d one of them continued, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153that after the initial enthusiasm a lot of the workers looped themselves unofficially so that they could stay at home and send themselves out to work.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ridiculous,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Ptaclusp protested weakly. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not different people, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re just doing it to themselves.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s never stopped anyone, father,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said IIa. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153How many men have stopped drinking themselves stupid at the age of twenty to save a stranger dying of liver failure at forty?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n MY BRAIN. But I think I get this; they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not clones in the traditional sense. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re time-looped versions of the same person, so everything that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s happening is still going to affect that person? Sort of? Okay, maybe I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand it all that well. But that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s all right, since Pratchett makes it clear that this is unnatural. This is not what is supposed to happen. Pyramids are not supposed to be used in this manner at all!<\/p>\n The original builders, who were of course ancients and therefore wise, knew this very well and the whole point of a correctly-built pyramid was to achieve absolute null time in the central chamber so that a dying king, tucked up there, would indeed live forever \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or at least, never actually die. The time that should have passed in the chamber was stored in the bulk of the pyramid and allowed to flare off once every twenty-four hours.<\/p>\n OH.\u00c2\u00a0OH MY GODS<\/i>, I GET IT. This helps put this\u00c2\u00a0new<\/i> pyramid into the proper context, since I get why it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a nightmare. And doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t this also explain the value in Djelibeybi\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s burial rituals? They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re meant to\u00c2\u00a0literally<\/i> help the dying king in his state of eternal undying.<\/p>\n But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gotten so, so twisted over the years. OH GOD, THE SUBTEXTUAL COMMENTARY ON RELIGION, I GET IT. I GET IT NOW.<\/p>\n Which brings us to Teppic and Ptraci, now perpetually awkward because after all the talk of sex and attraction and whatnot, we get this:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I<\/i>\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve come back for her,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0<\/i>said the king vaguely.\u00c2\u00a0\u00e2\u20ac\u009dShe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s your sister, you know. Half sister, that is. Sometimes I wish I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d married her mother, but you see she wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t royal.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/i><\/p>\n OH.\u00c2\u00a0OH<\/i>. WELL, THIS IS REALLY UNCOMFORTABLE. Look back on these last two sections, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d say that Ptraci doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t<\/i> know that Teppic is her half-brother. She\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s never hinted as such, but perhaps she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been trained not to talk about it. If Teppic reveals his identity to her, she might tell him the truth, but that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ifs\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and also WHAT THE HELL.<\/p>\n The original text contains use of the words \u00e2\u20ac\u0153mad\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stupid.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=xErmGcTdfbc<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a> I’ve got a community page up that I’m running. Guaranteed shenanigans! In the ninth part of\u00c2\u00a0Pyramids, Dios and Teppic begin to quietly face off with one another. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Discworld.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[463,484,248],"class_list":["post-3064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-pyramids","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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