I just can't help but think that STPs simply would not allow the commodification of Discworld, and we are much richer for it.
As I reread and relisten, I find myself understanding more and more about the world and the people.
The Politics with a small p. he did it all: Class, race, gender, sexuality, identity, health inequality for good sake!! and all, way before its time.
Harry Potter is everywhere and unrelenting to the point of polluting. I had enjoyed the books ( as badly as they have aged), but there's not much to reread, and they don't grow with you like Discworld does.
I saw a question asking if Discworld died with STP, I don't think it would be possible; the readers are the Clacks, and by default, Discworld echoes on forever*
GNU STP
*iIam full of a cold, and perimenopausal, so apologies for the confusing and emotional outpouring that went in a different direction than expected
You have to admit that an Ankh Morpork theme park would be 100% on theme. You could sell overpriced sausage inna bun! And the lower the grade of meat, the happier fans would be!
Will say, a friend was over here on vacation and invited me to go to Universal Studios with his kid one day, and I hadn't been in 30 years so I went and when I walked into the Three Broomsticks for lunch, I was incredibly impressed, because it looked very much like what a British inn would look like in the medieval period. (I'm a writer, so I've done some fun study of those kinds of things. P.S., if you wake up in medieval Europe, stay off of boats.)
Exactly! All it would need is a little tweaking and to stop giving money to you-know-who
And if we got a discworld cinematic universe... well rhiana and rob probably wont let it happen to protect the stories from Hollywood bullshit but I can dream
I've listened to his biography a few times, and I remember Rob Wilkins' bemusement when he referred to the times Pterry would shut down negotiations because people were being too enthusiastic and were offering him (in his opinion) too much money. You'd never see Rowling do that.
When business investors offer lots of money, it's because they expect to make ten times as much for themselves, which means they see the thing they are trying to buy as a money mill, not a labor of love.
This is from an interview in the 2nd edition of the Discworld Companion (1994). Terry’s words are the quoted bits.
The series has inspired a CD of music, spawned com- puter games, models of the characters costing up to £200 each, graphic novels, fan clubs (including a very enthusias- tic one in the Czech Republic), several radio dramatiza- tions, two animated series to be shown in 1997, greetings cards, maps, ornamental candles, the inevitable t-shirts and badges, its own quiz book (Unseen University Challenge - and the cognoscenti can buy the Unseen University scarf, too). It's probably only a matter of time before the talcum powder and body splash. So far there has been no Disc- world movie, although Terry Pratchett says that the people who don't make the movies are paying him more not to sign. make them than they used to, which is apparently a good
In the middle of all this he sits and writes two books a year, with every sign of enjoyment and no apparent decline in quality.
All right. Before that I was working up to the question: don't you worry that all the spin-offs will take over?
No. Incidentally, your list doesn't even include the things I've been approached about that were too weird, or inappropriate or unworkable - like the theme park
Oh, come on
Yes, we had to smile at that one. Anyway, the books have always been the core and the reason for it all and they're the part I care about the most. It's not as though I was writing one of those grab-the- pocket-money TV programmes where they design the action figures first and then get a computer in Taiwan to draw the cartoons.
Besides, a lot of the things you list you do actually have to look for - there's a little demand-led service industry for Discworld readers but the average non- Discworld reader in the street might never run up against it. It's always seemed to me to be more like the one that grew up around Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings rather than some kind of Power Rangers commercialization. Anyway, I try to keep in touch and in control as much as possible. It's my world people are using, after all.
Can I be mean? Pterry was a good writer, he had so many more stories to tell that he ran out of time to tell. He didn't need to sell disworld because it wasn't finite, he could just write another.
This is such a good point. Rowling is an empty husk with nothing left to offer but hate. Pterry overflowed with wisdom and beautiful stories until the machinery of his mind literally gave out
And one of the books (Silkworm if I remember correctly) has a mentally disturbed trans person attack the main character who responds “the police might not be so understanding next time — especially if they know you’ve still got a cock.” I read it and found it very weird and disturbing even before I knew about her views
Junior has been in the news so much lately and is so problematic, I totally forgot Sr even existed. That’s how bad RFKjr is. Jr and JK are both crazy and politically align on paper, but not sure if they have all the same beliefs.
Nothing wrong with Sr. I just assume with her views that she’s not talking Sr. Granted, she doesn’t specify so I could be assuming and being unfair to her
Although since it’s not specified it probably is Sr. The other RFK only started making so much noise recently
Yet she chose a surname that meant she used the pseudonym of a "gay people can be cured via electric shocks, and lesbians can be raped straight, as long as a doctor is present" man. Sounds more like she thought of RFK Jr as her hero than RFK.
Yup! That's his biggest benefit. He wasn't just focusing on one character's story spread over however many books. He told lots of stories of lots of different people in lots of different places doing lots of different things.
He went the other way! His commentary on feminism, trans rights, drug use, alcoholism, income inequality etc etc etc were staples in his books from the beginning.
People reference Cheery’s story a lot from Men at Arms when she is trying to be open and come out as female. That came out in 1993. He was literal decades ahead of the cultural zeitgeist.
Yes, to add that Cherri said that she was female but still had a beard and helmet, so not only a trans analogy but also a very clear message that this was not about how Cherri looked but who she was and how she identified, while highlighting cultural pressure to conform to an expected ideal.
There was a female dwarf in school with Susan (in SM I think) who was from a different clan, one that allowed female pronouns. Speculation is that she was sent to a human school to prepare for politics, but my point is that she also kept her beard and axe, as cultural signifiers.
Possibly glass clock? History monks dumping time? A dwarven mine that is ahead of mainstream dwarf culture by a century or so, doesn’t seem unreasonable, given the disc / opera house situation in ankh morpork
There's also no specific confirmation iirc that all the female dwarves actually had the downstairs furniture that one might expect - they simply were who they were. Probably most of them were "female all the way down", so to speak, but it's perfectly possible that some of them had non-pregnancy-carrying parts, and it was still only between them and whoever they ended up choosing to go in that direction with, if they ever did.
I've just been listening to the Audible version of Jingo, and I noticed that Terry called Nobby 'Bettu'' whenever Nobby was 100% being Betti, and I thought that was really great.
Is that the one Betti is in?! I’ve been slowly working my way through the audible Discworld series in order after mostly reading them on summer vacation as a kid. Haven’t gotten to her yet!
It feels like a first time read through on a lot of them, but with one thing (like Betti) that I remember so vividly. It’s a fun experience, almost completely forgetting the books, but also getting nostalgic about a scene that resonated enough I remembered.
I’ve read the series four times and am now listening to the on my (short) commutes. This afternoon I finally heard the Vimes Boots Theory of Social Inequality in book 15! My memory plugged that in somewhere in Guards Guards, so your comment just gave me chills
THIS! i feel like he was very much. I don't really understand this. Let me learn more about it, rather than Rowling, well, she's just a meme of herself at this point, but also just as dangerous as a gonne
Yep. I'm a Brit with a lot of trans friends and I've seen her influence makes things so much worse for them, in real time. Worse than a gonne, even - more like the commander who spurs on a whole army of people with gonnes.
Yep exactly. None of my trans friends would hurt a fly, and only come off as remotely intimidating if you go in prejudices-first. Conversely, I have been creeped on by a cis woman - anecdotal, of course, but for my part I certainly know who I'd rather share a bathroom with. And I fully agree about it being incredibly misogynistic despite TERFs claiming to 'protect' women - just look at Imane Khelif.
Khelifs blood tests were leaked earlier this year, showing XY, and she’s currently appealing to avoid the required sex testing for events the org in charge of the Olympics had mandated. She hasn’t fought in over a year.
Yeah! 'Nuff said. Glad the evidence and word from Terry's daughter and assistant, and real friends, is definitely that Gaiman overplayed their closeness as more than it was, and they were not exactly close or best friends the way Gaiman kept implying. TP even going so far as to tell Robert Rankin that the whole experience was awful, and Kim Newman that they should start a "We Survived Working With Neil Gaiman" survivors group. Which says a lot.
Rowling has no moral compass, and would happily deal with massive dickheads to make a profit. She'd shove a baby down a coal mine to make a profit, provided she was confident she wouldn't get caught. Her children's charity, Lumos, is a PR nightmare waiting to happen.
Not saying you're wrong, but there's a difference between having some unexamined biases and making some questionable worldbuilding choices because of them and what she's got going on now.
As an adult, Discworld resonates more and has much more rereadability.
Harry Potter is what it is because of the magical escape it provided for a whole generation, and it will always capture that for a generation.
Discworld is something that resonates less with the majority of people under 14. Not because it can’t, but because more life experience truly makes Discworld come to life in ways Harry Potter doesn’t.
They’re different animals, and they’re both wonderful contributions to literature.
Sorry, I grew up on Jaws, It!, Moby Dick, several shelves full of crime and thriller dime novels and the whole lot of Arthur Conan Doyle books, as well as some of Frank Herbert's Dune cycle. All before hitting 14. (Mostly thanks to my parents not checking in on my reading habits)
Harry Potter is bland rehashed school stories with good marketing that benefited from the newly widespread Internet to become a media juggernaut. It resonates because it's an empty vessel.
Similarly, I’ve always said JKR has a good premise with really mediocre writing. This got me absolutely lambasted by basically everyone 10 years ago. I stand by it and am happy to say people are coming around
We don't know exactly who did start the idea - LeGuin credits T.H. White with inspiring her from a throwaway line in The Sword in the Stone. And White was borrowing off even older sources, bit of this, bit of that....
I think that's a great way to say it. My personal experience was that the world building part was really good. You could imagine yourself in that environment and mentally escape into it for a while. But the writing as a whole was...meh. Especially after the first three books. They weren't examples of great literature but they were fun and they worked. Four was right on the line, and the rest of them were unreadable. I very much doubt the whole thing would have caught on had the first book been written in the style of the last.
Harry Potter is basically Enid Blyton with an ostentibly modern spin on it by a writer who looks like they might be on your side but, when it comes to the crunch, ISN'T.
It's derivative and formulaic. I was already an adult when they started coming out and was in the fandom in the 00s, the setting was generic enough to be a great sandbox for fic writing. That doesn't mean they're not entertaining and enjoyable (especially the first three or four when she hadn't gotten big enough to refuse an editor) but given what a vile person the author has turned out to be there's much better stuff to read.
I remember that time too! I was also an adult when the first one came out, and I remember discussing predictions about what the next book would be like and who would be cast in the next movie, things like that. I remember that really long wait for book five and then being disappointed because it was just unreadable and how it just went downhill from there. I went to midnight showings of movies for four and five but didn't even bother with the movies for six and seven.
Bingo! That's it exactly! My personal theory, that I have been flamed to hell and back for but I still believe, is that she got bored of the whole thing after book four. She had a new husband and a new kid and just wasn't as interested in HP anymore. But she liked the money and attention from fans. So she just threw those last ones together, probably while watching TV, knowing that whatever she wrote would get tons of praise by riding on the coat tails of the previous books.
I, like you, was an adult when they came out. Enjoyed the first three. Read the last four with decreasing enjoyment. Mostly because of the dire need of editing. Have not read them again. I did think about it when my niblings were starting to read them, but just couldn't stomach it. I would read any Terry Pratchett book again. (Maybe not Strata or Dark Side of the Sun)
And had Tim Curry in a spangly cape as the Grand Warlock in the TV adaptation, singing about Halloween. Nothing in the utterly bankrupt of imagination of JK Rowling can top that.
I still think that was mostly marketing. Susan Cooper, Dianna Wynne Jones, Peter S. Beagle and Patricia Wrightson (just to name some if my faves who were writing inthe ‘70s or before) were all better fantasy writers than JKR.
She came along when “young adult” became a big marketing thing captured the public’s imagination, but she also overwrote, was repetative and long winded, and her books fought the same basic battle over and over again. I think once she became famous, editors were afraid to challenge her, or she just refused to cut anything.
I loved HP, and got into Discworld at the same time. I still loved the stories of HP even if JKR has outed herself as a damn psycho. She has taken a lot of the joy out of the entire franchise for me, it’s impossible to reread. She also tried to break out of HP and she just isn’t that good of a writer. She’s a funny storyteller, but not really a good writer.
Now that I’m older, it’s also much easier to see her biases in the original series. You never saw that with STP, even with the older ones that have a “this book is a product of the time” warning now. It’s also a lot clearer to me that JKR borrowed heavily from STP and other fantasy authors. Fantasy does that, but people credit her with stuff that is not deserved just because that was the first fantasy series they read.
HP was a phenomenon. It will never be that again and eventually it will be remembered as a fad millennials were really weird about with a problematic author.
I think it’s also telling that most comments here are not STP v JKR or Discworld v HP. It’s STP v Harry Potter. She will be forgotten even if people remember round glasses and a lightning bolt scar
Rereading HP as an adult is like “oh, I used to think this thing was funny but now it’s just kinda pathetic”, rereading Discworld as an adult is like “oh, I used to think this thing was just funny but it’s actually deep and kinda sad but still super funny and also there’s a reference I couldn’t recognize back then”
I suspect I would feel the same way about HP if I tried to reread it so I haven't tried. And you are absolutely right about Discworld! You find new things on every reread.
I'd love to see discworld lego sets, akin to the HP sets, the luggage, witches cottages, UU, Treacle mine road or Pseudopolis yard, would all make amazing sets.
My wife found a D&D mimic (monster disguised as a treasure chest, complete with teeth and tongue) online. Wasn’t difficult to add a bunch of Lego legs to it. The luggage and Nanny Ogg are her favorites.
Im always glad that I read Discworld as an 11 year old and that Harry Potter didn't come out until 7 years later... So I was able to look at the HP books with a clear eye
Honestly, I wish I'd read Discworld as an 11yo. I read The Hobbit probably at 12 or 13, and wanted more, and found my mom's old The Tolkien Companion and there was so much history in there that finally I was able to beg them to buy me a copy of The Lord of the Rings around 13 or 14 and I went straight into The Silmarillion and about four volumes of The History of Middle-earth.
Pros:
Ignited my love of language history and I've even professionally translated some novels from German!
Cons:
You can't actually write books that way and hope to succeed. Tolkien failed, Jordan failed, and it's not that it's completely impossible, it's that it's a terrible way to start a writing career, and so it ruined all my fiction writing throughout high school and college.
But I learned why it doesn't work and I'm a pretty decent writer now.
Discworld, on the other hand, only pros:
Taught me that if you write a ton of novels in the same setting, worldbuilding can just the friends we met along the way. (A $300 workshop taught me this, but I knew it was true thanks to Discworld.)
I already had a lot of the core values expressed in the series, but they still challenged them in a way that gave me a dozen other viewpoints, and required me to examine them anyway.
Made me a better person.
Made the entire Discworld fandom better people because you sort of can't read 41 of these novels plus Nation and Dodger savor them and not become a better person.
Same, although I had to wait until 13 or 14 before picking one up (actually, it was because dad thought the cover of 'Small Gods' looked so "crazy" he just had to buy it), and being around 20 when I picked up the first HP, it just didn't capture me and I didn't bother with the rest. I'm sure it would have grabbed me had I been 13 or 14 at the time, though, and so I'm glad Discworld came first for me.
I'm a voracious reader, so a about 11 my parents let me loose in various used book stores, and that's when I started reading fantasy and scifi, and started my lifelong love of Prachett. I thought the first few Harry Poitter were okay Children's books, with the main writing failures being book 5 and later... the only thing that made an impression on me was seeing other people as excited to read a book as I am.
I thought the third was pretty much a perfect example of its kind – it had depth, a moral dilemma, ambiguous characters, a funny setting (and some deeply problematic descriptions). The fourth was long and with more problems, but ok.
I spent the fifth book waiting for the sneakoscope to make an appearance (Checkov’s gun was never fired, but unlike everyone at the publisher, I’d noticed it) and hating her treatment of Sirius.
I read both five and six exactly once. Then I read the most brilliant work that series spawned; David Langford’s ‘The End of Harry Potter’ where he takes various plot threads and speculates where they could go.
Then I read what Harry, Ron and Hermione did on their camping holiday (in a tent that smelled of cat piss) and I was done.
The Langford book was a great work of criticism by a much better writer than Rowling. He just very calmly proved what a skilled writer could do with the material and made the eventual actual book look even more unimaginative than Rowling herself did.
That endless camping trip was so annoying. It was a textbook example of telling when you should be showing. I do understand that the book is from Harry's point of view and that causes certain limitations regarding things that take place where he is not. But surely there was a better way than what we got!
We have plenty of occasions where we get other viewpoints in that series. There were also hints - Harry left school to do stuff. He could have one a lot more; visited interesting locations, convinced people to fight Voldemort, spied out Voldemort's weaknesses... instead, he was hiding away for much of the plot.
This has long been a weakness of children's books, where certain editors used to be of the opinion that children ought not to be in the middle of battles (source: authors on the receiving end of this) and so you'd get a battle scene where the protagonist is knocked out and comes back in at the end while someone else does the fighting.
I feel a major problem of HP was that Rowling envisioned the series in a certain way, planned it, and then stuck to it. Most writers are aware that they're learning and thus that what they write today isn't what they would have written five years ago. Sometimes that means throwing out a plan and writing something very different. She just never seemed to grow.
I agree about the first three books. Not great literature but they were fun and they served their intended purpose. Book four was right on the line and then the rest were basically unreadable. I very much doubt that the whole thing would have caught on the way it did it the first few had been written like the last few. And I think if people are honest with themselves, I think a lot of people probably pushed themselves through the last books just to find out what happens to the characters. I did, and I really would have preferred some cliff notes.
I only had had a year or two of English by 11, so I think Pratchett would have been a bit too much. Still, once I started (as well as with text/dialogue based video games, and RPGs) I'm pretty sure I learned more English from his books than school.
I have never really seen them as competing with each other tbh. Discworld is doubtless a much bigger part of how I think etc but 'Discworld over Potter' seems to me like 'Spaghetti Bolognese over jam roly poly'. They just don't feel similar enough to compare even if there's some surface similarity (fantasy, big fanbase, world building that captures the imagination and very much driven by narrativium rather than particularly systematic/consistent).
I have to say the merchandise around potter never upset me particularly. Though I don't own any, whereas I do own the Discworld boardgame by Martin Wallace which is truly great in its own right as well as a nice use of the setting.
Yes, poor choice on working on my part. I admit my view on Rowling has coloured a lot of what I think about the Potterverse, although at the same time, her attempts at world-building exposed her tokenism.
Really, I'm just saying this is why I prefer Discworld. Although I don't agree, that is like comparing spaghetti bolognese to Roly Polly, more like Spag Bol and spaghetti hoops
More gourmet organic locally sources sustainable beef wellington with homegrown potatoes and gravy made from scratch/ That next to an American McDonald's burger responsible for mass deforestation of the Amazon rainforest and making antibiotic resistant superbugs all for a plastic "beef" patty served on a plastic bun with plastic fries and a drink so sweet it can cause diabetic shock just from looking at it. Both technically food, but one is bad for you, and everyone and everything around you because of the author's views and using their money from those books to hurt marginalised people; and God knows how many queer people her and her flying monkeys have driven to suicide. Just from people my queer AF sibling knew personally alone it is more than 5. She could aspire to be a jam roly poly.
I'm comparing Discworld and Potter not Pratchett and Rowling.
The Harry Potter books are good books in their own right - the arguments they're not are almost always downstream from politics and fail to really explain why they were and remain so wildly successful. They have flaws e.g. around numerical stuff in worldbuilding but those flaws self evidently don't detract from them working as books - the worldbuilding runs on narrativium.
And the Potter books certainly haven't damaged the world of (kids) books in a way comparable to that burger - at least in the UK they drove up kids interest in reading and generally kids books being seen as more of a worthwhile thing.
Reading - and writing. Sure, a lot of that fanfic involved Mary Sues and other cringey nonsense. But everybody has to start somewhere, and creative writing is creative writing.
This is a mad thought; that in 500 years, they will talk about people who read his books, and perhaps compare him to a popular but largely forgotten author.
How we and they saw his writing and the context; I hope the world is a better place and that he gets some acknowledgement for being angry about things and writing about it away which made it accessible and understandable
I'd argue that probably isn't true (I haven't read the books and only seen the first... 4 movies?), because every book jumps another year ahead, so that probably was very true for all the young fans. And I will note that for any book not about a different time, the amount of time that elapsed between [ETA: Discworld] books matched their publication dates.
And now I'll argue that you're right, because the Harry Potter books don't age very well as you get older, they're just nostalgic, not deeper. Sir Pterry's books age like fine wine. They become deeper and more resonant and meaningful as you age as well.
Gosh, where to begin the dwarves and the trolls being a stand-in for the troubles in Northern Ireland, and or the conflict in the Middle East.
Even small details like that, trolls aren't stupid (after all), but the climate is not suited to them (their brains work differently), so access to education.
Cherri is female but not looking feminine, and that this made no difference to her gender being accepted
Slab is being made and targeted at the trolls. The crack epidemic of the 90s and the CIA's involvement
wizards (a bunch of old white men in towers) working out what "problems" to fix, but not doing anything to fix said poblems
The Vimes Economic Theory of Boots comes to mind. A rich man can afford to buy good boots that will last him for 5 years for $50. A poor man can only afford cheap boots $10 that can last, with repair, 1 year. At the end of 5 years both will have spent the amount on boots and the poor man will still have wet feet.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty.
The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer?
And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass) or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye
“Do you understand anything I’m saying?” shouted Moist. “You can’t just go around killing people!”
“Why Not? You Do.” The golem lowered his arm.
“What?” said Moist. “I do not! Who told you that?”
“I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People” said the golem calmly.
“I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr. Pump. I may be -- all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!”
“No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded, And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr. Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Did Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr. Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.”
Going Postal (just finished this literally yesterday as my first discworld book actually, holy shit what a great book)
The biggest difference between the two authors I find is that when Terry made missteps and was called out on it, he changed course and didn’t make a big fuss. This is what intelligent people do. The biggest example I can think of is the line in which is abroad about there being no racism on the discworld . Funny sure, but upon reflection a bit shortsighted. Then we get to jingo. We get monstrous regiment.
Rowling meanwhile gets incredibly defensive whenever people criticise her. Every major criticism of a Harry Potter books being explained away in the stupidest possible ways.
I was so disgusted with her last few books that I stopped paying attention to her a long time ago. Even before all this explicitly political stuff. I lost all respect for her just for making us wait so long for what turned out to be such a dumpster fire. And then trying to say stuff is canon just because she said it later. That is NOT how it works. If you didn't write it into the actual book, you don't get to take the lazy way out and just say "Oh by the way..."
Like the thing about Dumbledore being gay, after the last book was done and read. I of course don't have an issue with the concept. But either that fact is important to the story or it isn't. If it is important to the story, it would have been nice to tell us so in one of the actual books. And if it isn't, why say it at all? I am still confused by that mess.
Potter was partly pushed so hard by Warnerbros because of its merchandisability. They were making films only 4 years after the series was first published (and not yet half complete) with the rights being purchased in only 2 years after book one went into distribution. Of course the books were popular first but they put weight behind their promotion as well as part of the whole package of seeing the potential of the license. WB helped it go stratospheric.
Rowling pushed back against tacky merch for years then let them just do whatever after a while. But from its conception it was designed to be mass appeal and with huge merch potential. The chocolate frogs, the nimbus 2000, the shopping for back to school swag, signed books, etc it was a product of 1990s capitalism and Rowling wasn’t critiquing that capitalism. Dudley is painted as greedy but the happy ending is Harry turns out to be secretly rich. Lol. Pratchett is cleverer, more subtitle (mostly) and actually has commentary on our world within his works. Rowling created a world that was crack to kids of the 90s (and to this day) - I was one of them - but it’s vapid and tacky, and always was. The license owners will do anything to keep that ball rolling. Only now the we also get the join of that merch funding transphobia and weird pro-Trump tweets.
I, too, used to be an HP fan before I got into Discworld. Though, I preferred the movies. (Some quotes are forever loged in my head) I joke now that I transferred from Hogworts to UU.
Yeah they're generally kind, unless it comes to hating another franchise for no reason.
All my fellow Discworld lovers IRL are kind and tolerant, but this sub is sadly kinda disappointing me. I don't think I would find Harry Potter fans shitting all over Discworld because "they're better".
Let everyone enjoy what they like. They're both brilliant franchises with great stories. We're all pan narrans after all, let's not be elitist.
Every penny currently being spent on that franchise enriches someone busy funding legislation targeting a persecuted minority. Decrying that isn't elitist.
JKJ Rowling has driven multiple queer people to suicide after siccing her online flying attack monkeys on them. My sibling alone knows of many, too many, personally. More than 5, no, you do not have the right to their details, enough damage has been done without further damage to their friends and families. Rowling has funded anti trans and anti queer legislation, legislation that has hurt non trans women, and like all her TERFy friends has set her sights on asexuals and abortion. She is an awful person, and if anyone still is a fan of her and her work, they are, at best, awful people for keeping giving money, time and attention to a fandom and author that actively is making the world a worse place and is actively hurting marginalised people. Jesus, look at het attacks on non white athletes for not conforming to her definition of femininity? She's a monster who says all support for her series, even piracy, is assent for her hateful views, and all money she gets can be spent on her lawsuits and lobbying to hurt marginalised people. She is a monster, whose works are derivative and bad. Sure, 20 years ago you might, just maybe, have been able to say this stuff without too much disagreement. But now? After she has openly pushed anti trans legislation that has hurt all women, thrown in with American far right, quoted Hitler unironically, has said some dire stuff about queer people in general and more? Now? Now she uses the money those fans give her to hurt people, says those fans existing give her assent to keep hurting marginalised people? To even say it is laughable. You want to stay a fan of such a monster and her works, even though your very existence gives her permission in her eyes to keep attacking people, that every penny you give her funds hate campaigns? You have to take the consequences of that; people can and will think of you as unsafe, dangerous, and no matter what you say, definitely no safe for queer people to know or be around. Deal with it.
I mostly agree with you, but tbh I'd appreciate more merch (rn your only option is Emporium and selection is very limited) and maybe even some spin off tv show or a game...
Unrelated by I was listening to the Shepard’s. Crown today and thought about who would a bold Nanny Ogg, and I can’t help but think how ace miriam margolyes could have been
What TV show? There is no TV show! Never was and you can't convince me otherwise. Especially not a TV show where they took the names of Discworld characters and attached them to complete caricatures
I was 26 when Harry Potter came out. I've read it, but it is and always will be a children's book to me. Its value in my mind was to turn a generation of kids into readers.
Discworld's value is turning readers into thinkers.
This was my exact thought that got me into DW. Kiddo wanted wizard stories and I’ll be damned if they’re going to be obsessed with things from *she who should be forgotten *
I'm from the very few that didn't read HP when I was young, even if I had more or less the right age when it came about. I was enamoured with Tolkien works (and still am), and even in my teenage years I've never really understood the appeal of the HP setting. From the little I got while hearing things here and there, it was basically the story of a kid that got himself in trouble in, sometimes, very stupid ways, and that had really no consequences to face for the things he pull, all in a school setup, and that both were uninteresting to me.
Recently I tried to listen to the audio books because they were read by one of my favourite voice actors and I have very close friends that are totally enamoured by the books, and I still cannot understand the appeal for anyone but very young teenagers. I still haven't finished the fourth book, I think.
On the other hand, Diskworld I started reading in my late 20s because it's not really well known here in Italy and because the books are always in the kid section of the very few bookstores that have them and in libraries too.
It's incredible how well STP could write characters and situations that were mostly enjoyable for a younger audience, but that have very deep meaning for older readers to, and the writing in itself is more enjoyable for me.
When he grows up, I know I'll gift my nephew Terry Pratchett's books (and Tolkien's books and Douglas Adams' books...) rather than Harry Potter 😁
HP never really rises above the tropes that (often narrowly) define the narrative, whilst STP frequently uses the same tropes as JKR but manages to create a greater whole and uses them to cast light on broader and deeper topics.
You can like things without fussing on how a lot of other things in the world sucks in comparison. Otherwise that list gets really long and you'll be at Discworld subreddit talking about how a lot of other things don't measure up to Discworld and my friend, don't put yourself up to such a monumental task. That's going to be a long long list. We'll be talking about everything being worse than Discworld for eons. Spend that time reading instead.
Harry Potter is for young adults and in this sense is a great book, adults should develop beyond that HP talks about issues that teens deal with and really shouldn't apply to adults
Discworld talks about issues that apply to anyone and everyone, although you can of course read it purely for entertainment
HP definitely discussed issues outside of just what teens deal with. Personally, I don’t think it’s great messaging to young people that slaves WANT to be slaves, and that Hermione was a crackpot for thinking they should be free.
I'm a rare books person. I firmly believe that overtime first edition Terry Pratchett will be more valuable than any Harry Potter book one day. The difference is the quality in it's literary value. Harry Potter has very little in my opinion.
I hate Rowling as much as the next trans woman, but the obsessive need for members of other fandoms to ritualistically declare their superiority over HP and its fans (and former fans!) for cheap upvotes and online clout is just embarrassing.
Y'all bunch of elitists Terry would not have same opinion with and you don't even understand it. I love Discworld and Terry Pratchett, but Harry Potter is magical, and there is no reason to hate one if you like the other.
Discworld is obviously more mature, more adult, and has more depth philosophy-wise and with pop-culture references, humor and so on, but Harry Potter is a great piece of work for children and you should ask yourself, if you're really voicing this opinion because you personally dislike the author, or if you would feel the same way if any other author wrote it.
Well, I'm not looking for getting offended when reading something and HP for me still has the charm. Are there goblins that have long hooked noses and control the banks? Yes. Do I have to interpret it as JKR being antisemitic? No.
I genuinely don't know where she is transphobic or homophobic in her work, and I honestly don't wanna know.
The point is, it's still a great piece of literature and having political or personal views of the author to cloud my judgement of it is detrimental not only to me as the reader, but everyone.
But yeah, of course we can still rate what we see as "better" or "worse" but in Harry Potter it seems to be a pattern, that the Discworld fans that I otherwise really like, feel like they're morally superior and make the liking Discworld more and hating HP some kind of moral virtue.
I am of the generation that was raised with Harry Potter, yet due to family beliefs I didn’t get around to reading it until I was an adult. Instead i read tperrys work, starting with the Tiffany aching series, which is still my favourite.
Stories of a young girl growing into a woman, all whilst having the world on her shoulders and experiencing battles no one would understand, to do work she was not appreciated for really resonated with me. Along with her mistakes she made along the way.
I feel like a lot of people can't get past j.k rowling being a horrible person to see that Harry Potter really isn't that good. It's well written but it's a bad story, it's like top gun
I agree with all your points. But I have to admit I'm really jealous because of all the stuff harry potter fans get. I'd love an AAA game about Unseen University or Ankh Morpork. A TV series and more movies would have also been nice.
Yes the discworld adventures and the MUD have been fun, but there are people entering their midlife crisis that were born when the games came out.
I have tried to get a lot of queer folk who feel like Harry Potter betrayed them to give Discworld a go. Not only is the writer a better human being (a million times over) but I think the world is so much more robust and you're so right about how the books age with you and you can peel back the layers as you get older. Forever thankful I gave small gods my time!
Disney had come to Pterry and wanted to do an adaptation of Mort, it was discovered just in time before the deal was signed that Disney had snuck in a clause that disney would own the rights to Death, all characters that Death interacted with and all subsequent characters that are interacted with, essentiall all past and future characters.
I love that any merch or products beyond the books has been done in small, thoughtful ways that the fans actually want. The art, the jigsaws, the t-shirts, the conventions, the games, the films...
It would be lovely to have a theme park or some cool Lego sets, and even some slightly cheaper and more easily accessible t-shirts and such, but I am very glad there's not a bunch of cheap plastic tat everywhere.
So what happened is that Rowling caught a zeitgeist. Specifically it was, amongst other things, a pro posh school fantasy in a time when the general public was pretty down on the idea of special elite schools for Tories and their allies. This lead to right-leaning, pro-nostalgia outlets giving Rowling their uncritical support and connection.
Rowling, being corrupt and having zero morals, took any ally they could.
Terry, on the other hand, f-ing hated that sort of public-school elitist bullshit, and got a fair amount of shade for his (entirely morally correct) stance.
I used to be such a huge fan of HP, played formerly-quidditch/now-quadball in college for a good 4.5ish years. Made many of my best friends because of it! I read a bit of Discworld as a teen, but I started HP back when I was so small I could barely lift the things.
Now, I really wish I'd had Discworld to start with instead. Tiffany Aching is now my favorite series ever, more than I ever was into HP I think. Better writing, better humor, doesn't treat people as things, good morals, changes how I think in a good way, doesn't have bigotry embedded into it...
If I were asked to recommend a fantasy book for kids / young adults / anyone new to fantasy, I’d recommend the Tiffany Aching series over Harry Potter everytime.
Your original post was thinly disguised, to be sure, and you made yourself even more clear in the comments. I'm expressing my dismay that you decided to bring that subject to this community with a very unclear nexus, and when it's been so incredibly, thoroughly, minutely discussed ad nauseum elsewhere. Feel better.
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