Making Money Discussion *Spoilers*

[rockershovel]

I didn't enjoy MM as much as GP, mainly because they were too similar.

As for the ring, I'd always pictured Vetinari having one, because it would be entirely in character for someone like him to have one and use it regularly.

[francis]

Hi folks,
Wayyyyy late to the party I know, but I've only just read MM and the court of inquiry scene really threw me for a loop. Basically Moist, who spent the entirety of GP coming to terms with the damage his criminal past has caused - not least to Adora, who lost her job, her inheritance and her father to his defrauding and the resulting run on the banks. Not surprisingly, she thought he was utter scum until he managed to convince her he'd changed his ways.

Yet in MM he cheerfully brushes off those crimes as no big deal - I don't have the text in front of me, but something along the lines of it being the banks' own fault for not catching on. This in a room where we're told Adora is sitting right in the front row - Adora, a woman who attacked bloody Detritus the day before in a fit of pique - and yet there's no apparent fallout at all!

I'm the last person to jump on the Moist-bashing bandwagon and I really like the turn Terry's taken towards nuanced characterisation and commentary, but that one felt like a real clanger... or did I miss something here?

[LilMaibe]

Hello and welcome to the site.

Depends on who you ask the answer to that question will either be 'yes' 'no' or something along the lines of 'RRRAARRGHFUIVh HOW Dare U critzice Sir Terry!??! Hes the bestest outhur EV4R!!!1!11!vufguuvkuefvc! '

My answer would be:
No, you did not miss anything. The ending to MM did feel rushed and forced, recycling ideas from Feet of Clay, Interesting Times and Going Postal to a degree and not caring much about the previous charactertraits that made Moist a very neat addition to the cast originally.

[francis]

:lol: You are soooooooooo literal!

It's nothing to do with feminism at all! - you said...

Everything she does for Moist, from pressing his pants to bringing his newspaper to getting him his breakfast are the actions of a lovestruck person.

Those are the actions of a female who's got over being lovestruck quite some time ago (Lovestruck is 2nd stage attraction - well 3rd perhaps after WOW and scraping your chin off the floor and then hanging around waiting for him to notice you - some kind of verbal interaction has to have taken place anyway ) and has gone onto the consolidation stages in showing the prospective long-term mate she's a keeper on the domestic front - like a mum...

I won't expect you to understand all that given your comments about dry cleaning etc *pats your head very hard*, but ask your wife and she'll explain better than I can perhaps A golem would certainly understand the trouser-pressing, newspaper smoothing etc because that's practical - it has nothing whatsoever to do with being in love or fancying you are, even if you're capable of having those emotions

Like males, the last thing on a female's mind whilst they're falling for a love object is putting slippers by the fire and keeping the glassware shiny - plumping cushions perhaps, but only in the bedroom and they're about to or have just squashed them up a lot and plumped away on them without the 'L' In present day Britain (and the US I daresay) doing the domestic chores is strictly something that couldn't happen until a couple are at least 'going steady' but in the equivalent time-frame (vaguely victorian/dickension) domestic bliss was something that didn't come into the courting equation in any way until after the wedding (or at least co-habitation as even then a piece of paper wasn't always needed). Then, yes - being a domestic godess was a proper expression of love or if they were rich enough the ordering the servants to do it.

Trust me, on this basis whatever romantic mush Gladys was reading away from the PO ladies domain, she would have been reading about post-marital, maternal or servant duties. Professional pride was wounded at the most (aside from the comedy aspect naturally) - golems aren't that naive and if she was, well what you don't know you don't miss. She'll have got over it quickly enough

My reading of this whole subplot was that Gladys is, as we've said, very easily persuaded when it comes to instructional literature (we see this at the end when Adora takes it upon herself to re-educate Gladys). The material Gladys was getting from the counter girls - books of etiquette, glossy magazines and the like - were written with the tone and deeply-internalised patriarchy* of the 1920s-1960s; a time when a man's secretary certainly *would* be expected to press his trousers and make his lunch, and when women in the workplace were routinely pressured/expected to develop sexual or romantic relationships with their bosses. To my mind this fits quite neatly with the whole world of banking that Terry's broadly trying to parody - one which up until the credit crisis was popularly depicted as pinstripes, long lunches and a workplace culture at least 30 years behind the rest of the world



*Not to say we don't have deeply-internalised patriarchal attitudes today, but that's a whole other thread...

[francis]

Hello and welcome to the site.

Depends on who you ask the answer to that question will either be 'yes' 'no' or something along the lines of 'RRRAARRGHFUIVh HOW Dare U critzice Sir Terry!??! Hes the bestest outhur EV4R!!!1!11!vufguuvkuefvc! '

My answer would be:
No, you did not miss anything. The ending to MM did feel rushed and forced, recycling ideas from Feet of Clay, Interesting Times and Going Postal to a degree and not caring much about the previous charactertraits that made Moist a very neat addition to the cast originally.

Thanks! But bouquets as well as brickbats, you know...

I really, really liked that short scene in Vetinari's carriage where he hands Moist the swordstick and asks the golems' secret. Moist is understandably puzzled, but to my mind it's such a beautiful resolution of Vetinari and Moist's relationship.

Call it conjecture if you like, but we've seen throughout GP and MM that Vetinari detests brutality and force in his dealings with Moist (for a relative value of 'force'). The most obvious one has been mentioned earlier in this thread I think, where Moist tacitly accuses Vetinari of killing the widow Lavish. Vetinari even says he's "extremely angry" at the insinuation, which is practically unheard of. And of course there's Vetinari's portrayal of himself as Moist's 'angel' and the repeated asides about tyrants. Yet throughout we see Moist on tenterhooks, convinced that Vetinari will have him dispatched as soon as he is no longer useful.

So what does all this have to do with the swordstick? Vetinari offers Moist a naked blade, then asks - asks - for the key, when he in fact already knows the answer. This little pantomime is about trying to momentarily balance out the power dynamic between them, so that Vetinari can prove to Moist that he is not a monster. Vetinari has no desire or inclination to threaten Moist with harm, because he knows he doesn't need to - Moist is an intelligent and above all civilised man, for all his rakish ways. Perhaps Vetinari even feels a kind of avuncularity towards Moist, both of them being experts at reading and manipulating people.

In fact now I'm really out on a limb, but Vetinari is getting on in years. With Moist, he's taken in a fellow trickster (Moist describes Vetinari at one point as the greatest con artist of all) and forced him to get to grips with a complex city infrastructure while instilling the values of public service and pushing him into quasi-political appointments. And I can't help but notice this is all juxtaposed with Cosmo's preening superficial understanding of what it is that gives Vetinari his power. Is Terry slyly trying to indicate that Vetinari's quietly grooming Moist as his successor?

[barrie]

I didn't enjoy MM as much as GP, mainly because they were too similar.

As for the ring, I'd always pictured Vetinari having one, because it would be entirely in character for someone like him to have one and use it regularly.

Sorry to jump in unannounced but I thought I might share the story of the ring..

I was asked to make this ring in early 2006. Declined for various reasons but was finally talked round in 2007. The brief was to make a ring to resemble 'stigium' a dense black metal that sucked the light out of the world. Had to have a V engraved and be used as a seal ring.
Made them and they were sold through the Cunning Artificer. From memory (which is hazy these days) I think the ring has been mentioned earlier (although it may have just been something mentioned by Terry in passing).

Anyway I made 3 rings for Charles Dance to wear in GP so I assume if they make MM into a film they may well use these rings.

Back to your discussion and for my 2p I enjoyed GP and think of it in my top 5 books, however MM was a complete letdown, full of small plot holes, hastily wound up threads and a fair few mistakes... Wernt too keen on UA either and Snuff didn't light my fire either...

[Tonyblack]

Welcome to the site, francis!

And always good to see you barrie! What metal did you use for the black rings?

[Ziriath]

Isn't it Vetinari's sealing ring?

Edit: Does it somewhere in the book actually say that the real Vetinari indeed wears that ring.
It could also be a rumour that he has such a device and people like Cosmo would be likely to fall for it.

He keeps that ring in a black velvet-lined box and takes it out only if he wants to seal a letter, doesn't he? He doesn't seem to me like someone who wears any decorative things, especially not the dangerous ones- it would be illogical.. My personal theory says he received it as a gift from someone.

[raptornx01]

Hi folks,
Wayyyyy late to the party I know, but I've only just read MM and the court of inquiry scene really threw me for a loop. Basically Moist, who spent the entirety of GP coming to terms with the damage his criminal past has caused - not least to Adora, who lost her job, her inheritance and her father to his defrauding and the resulting run on the banks. Not surprisingly, she thought he was utter scum until he managed to convince her he'd changed his ways.

Yet in MM he cheerfully brushes off those crimes as no big deal - I don't have the text in front of me, but something along the lines of it being the banks' own fault for not catching on. This in a room where we're told Adora is sitting right in the front row - Adora, a woman who attacked bloody Detritus the day before in a fit of pique - and yet there's no apparent fallout at all!

I'm the last person to jump on the Moist-bashing bandwagon and I really like the turn Terry's taken towards nuanced characterisation and commentary, but that one felt like a real clanger... or did I miss something here?

Adora lost her job because of moist, but it was Guilt that did everything else. and he didn't place blame on the bank for what he did. actually he didn't talk about them really at all in the trial. what you are thinking of is him basically saying the people he defrauded were trying to defraud him. that was in reference to all the smaller cons he's done, not the bank. there was nothing there for her to get upset about.

And him just blurting it all out, yes a bit casually, was because of Cosmo and Moist's former partner who were trying to use Moist's past as leverage against him. He needed to regain control of the situation. Coming clean the way he did was the only way to rebalance things in his favor. He was taking a risk Vetinari would throw him under the carriage, but he didn't have many options.

[barrie]

Welcome to the site, francis!

And always good to see you barrie! What metal did you use for the black rings?

Originally we looked at some strange 'real' materials. from hard carbons that we could machine, through the not so normal Titanium and Tungsten. All of these were rejected as cost was way too high to make them available to the public..
Ended up using a 'trick' of my trade. Sterling silver, tarnished with liver of sulphur, then burnished with a brass brush to give a 'golden black' appearance, then plated in 18kt yellow gold. With the final finish of black rhodium plating which cost me £1000.00 a gram (and we didn't make enough rings to cover the cost). This gave the rich shimmery black colour and gave me headaches because of the cyanide and acids in the chemicals.

Was fun though. If i didn't have a family to feed I might have carried on. We had planed to make the Death ring in lots of other metals to add to Terry's collection. Wont happen now, news a fan not a business to produce this sort of stuff.

[raptornx01]

god, how much was the titanium and tungsten if those were too high, but a 1000 pound finish wasn't?

and, basically, you are saying you were an alchemist for awhile?

[raisindot]

Adora lost her job because of moist, but it was Guilt that did everything else. and he didn't place blame on the bank for what he did. actually he didn't talk about them really at all in the trial. what you are thinking of is him basically saying the people he defrauded were trying to defraud him. that was in reference to all the smaller cons he's done, not the bank. there was nothing there for her to get upset about.

And him just blurting it all out, yes a bit casually, was because of Cosmo and Moist's former partner who were trying to use Moist's past as leverage against him. He needed to regain control of the situation. Coming clean the way he did was the only way to rebalance things in his favor. He was taking a risk Vetinari would throw him under the carriage, but he didn't have many options.

Yes, this is it exactly. He originally thought that Vetinari was expecting him to lie--to make up something about this past in order to protect his own life and Vetinari's reputation (for hiring him to run the post office). In exchange for backing up Moist's lie, Vetinari would expect Moist to reveal the secret of the Golems. But, after the epiphany of seeing the doggie scooting the room with the 'toy' in his mouth, he realizes the whole absurdity of life. All throughout the book he has been plagued by the loss of the thrill of 'risk' in his life; risk that he tries to artificially recaputure by breaking into his own post office. The courtroom scene--which for me is the best scene in the book and one of Pterry's best scenes ever, despite the other weaknesses of the book--allows Moist to ultimately take that risk--the risk of exposing his true nature in public and facing the consequences.

[=Tamar]

Moist's public confession in MM also forced Vetinari to publicly announce that Moist has been more or less pardoned, so Vetinari can no longer hold that over his head. The simmering conflict between Vetinari and Moist through the entire book has been turned in a new direction.

[KamexKoopa]

I've just finished reading this one, and I agree with most of the thus-far posts ... it was okay, but I didn't really care much about anything happening or anyone it was happening to, I was just like "that's nice". It was still a fun read and whatnot, but I was a bit disappointed, and wouldnt mind never seeing another Moist book ...

[Tonyblack]

Welcome to the site, KamexKoopa!