Thief of Time Discussion *Spoilers*

[poohcarrot]

I object to mouthy. For all you know I could speak in barely more than a whisper.

Unless you're just referring to Jan this time

I was actually referring to Susan. Quite a few people don't like her attitude in ToT, but I love it! I reckon men who don't like her attitude are scared of that kind of woman, and women who don't like her attitude are just plain envious.

[Tonyblack]

Susan's attitude seems to me to be based largely on the fact that she thinks she's 'alone' in the world. There's no one quite like her that she could form a meaningful relationship with.

This is actually the lever that Death uses to get her involved - he can't see Lobsang or Jeremy, but Susan can and she's intregued that there might be someone "like her".

I think she grows up in this book and has less of an attitude by the end. But I think she tends to look down her nose somewhat at mere mortals.

[CrysaniaMajere]

She's sometimes quite a difficult character, but i totally agree that's because she thinks, and in a way she's right in thinking she's alone. You know, she IS alone, she has adventures she cannot tell anyone! What's good in an adventure if you can't tell it to your parents, to your friends, once you're back home?
Maybe she has an attitude, or maybe she's just strong, fondamentally good and sometimes tired that she has to save a bunch of stupid people... she reminds me of the weatherwax .
I like Susan, and from her point of view the grandad is not as fun as he is for me

[Tina a.k.a.SusanSto.Helit]

I think that is why I like Susan, she is alone. The traumatic childhood issues and crazy mom made me different. Also, being intelligent made me an odd duck in any pond. Then throw in Catholic school for first through third grades with crazed nuns and evil rich snooty girls.

People who can think do not follow the crowd, cannot make friends easily, and tend to have quirks. Susan seems to become friends with Unity, hence the name change for Myria. She gains a grudging respect for her attempts to become human instead of just "filling the confusing suit".

In my apprenticeship, I was treated badly by many people because of
1)who I was married to... a dickhead foreman
2)who my mother was... a crazy bitch who made enemies
3)because I am female... yeah yeah yeah f&%$ing quotas and some men just suck.
4)I am smarter than most of my co-workers were and they resented the hell out of it.
5)who my father was, he made some enemies in the hometown and that hometown sucked. Still does...

I guess that makes me identify with Susan a lot. I had to keep a lot of secrets growing up and as an adult. Also had to keep secrets at work, and not go to Human Resources when abused by co-workers, abused by bosses or basically anything. Keeping secrets about awful people makes you seem "untrustable" and makes you not want to trust others.

Susan is actually quite sane considering what she is, and grew up like. I like that in Soul Music, she thought that there are people who "Should" be saved. She believed that "The System" is not fair. I agree, evil people should die early lol. I think good people should get good lives, but hey, life just isn't fair, and there is no justice.

About the book tho, I liked it. I did not understand it the first time I read it all those years ago, I didn't understand Pratchett all those years ago. I am not even sure I did not do more than speed read through it. I was a different person 7 years ago. It is a good book, BIKKIT!!!, and it shows a side of many characters that beg to be looked at closer.

It tears my heart out that Terry cannot have a cure. I pray to all the small gods that there will be one and he can continue to be, PTerry.

[poohcarrot]

Just out of interest, I thought TP didn't like football because of a comment by Lu-Tse when he said something like,

"There's a reason for everything, except football" (Not 100% accurate quote)

Just out of interest #2, why did Lu-Tse cut off the yeti's head?

[raisindot]

Just out of interest #2, why did Lu-Tse cut off the yeti's head?

I always found this a bit unsettling, too, but after re-reading, I think that it is a kind of semi-reincarnation or purification ritual--or even an organic 'rebooting' process. The yeti clearly expected and wanted it to happen. And, since Lu-Tse is always at "the right place at the right time," he was fulflling the yeti's wishes...probably not for the first time, either. Perhaps through this ritualistic 'reboot' the yeti cleansed itself of corruption, and returned to a "purer" state, even if that state was a few minutes ago.

If you want to get all "mistik" about it, you could interpret this almost as a parody-in-reverse of Abraham's aborted sacrifice of Isaac, with Lu-Tse in the partriarch's role and the yeti as the goat who took it in the fork for Lobsang. Only, in this case, the sacrifice saves a life rather than ends it. Or something like that.

Jeff in Boston

[Tonyblack]

The yeti thing was like a computer game where you 'save' the game before the tricky bit so you don't have to go to the start of the game again. I think that part of this was to do with showing that Lu Tze is still learning despite his great age and also to prelude his coming back to life later in the book.

By the way - Lobsang does the Stance of the Coyote when he falls off the roof in A-M. I suspect that's a bit like Wile E Coyote when he runs off a cliff and stays suspended in mid-air until he realises.

[poohcarrot]

The yeti thing was like a computer game where you 'save' the game before the tricky bit so you don't have to go to the start of the game again.

But which tricky bit? He'd already escaped from the hunters (which he could probably have done without Lu-Tse'ｓ help).

Does this mean Lu-Tse cuts off the yeti's head every time he meets him?

[poohcarrot]

If you want to get all "mistik" about it, you could interpret this almost as a parody-in-reverse of Abraham's aborted sacrifice of Isaac, with Lu-Tse in the partriarch's role and the yeti as the goat who took it in the fork for Lobsang. Only, in this case, the sacrifice saves a life rather than ends it. Or something like that.

Jeff in Boston

I must confess that I never even remotely interpreted as a parody in reverse of Abraham's aborted sacrifice of Isaac. Nice theory though.

So Jeff, you're from Boston. Do you know the other people from Lincolnshire on this site?

[kakaze]

I think he just did it to demonstrate the theory to Lobsang, and to set the reader up for the scene later on with the Auditors. It also allowed Susan to find them because, remember, Death couldn't sense Lobsang but he did have Lu Tzu's lifetimer.

[CrysaniaMajere]

i was thinking exactly like kakaze about it being just a demonstration to Lobsang. AND a demonstration to the readers as well I totally agree. He was constantly teaching something to Lobsang, in his own way.
I don't understand however the last part of your post. What has it to do with susan and with the lifetimer? I don't remember any connection..

Another question , if i may
at the end, unity is dead dead, right? She's not going to come back, right? When Death says It's just the beginning or something like that, he talks about the afterlife, 'cause in the discworld everyone seems to have his own afterlife, based on whatever each of them really believe.
But what can Unity believe? She barely know what death is...

About Susan, her only friends, her only connection to the 'real' world are the children, because she can be herself with them, without being afraid of being judged for what she is. She wants to be a normal girl, but she is not, she can never be, and people would be scared knowing who she really is. But not the children. So she found her place in the world at first babysitting, and then teaching to children.
I love this about her. She is strong. She doesn't stop to cry "why why can't i be like everyone else why?" , she goes on and she finds her own place.
Another thing. It's funny that she keeps saying "i want to be normal" and then she takes such "un-normal" lessons, bringing the class in the sky and stuff like that. I loved that moment. Her real self, enjoying who she is.


p.s.if i make mistakes with the language, please tell me. i learned english with american movies and english books expecially TP's

[raisindot]

So Jeff, you're from Boston. Do you know the other people from Lincolnshire on this site?

There will always be an England, but there will only ever be one Boston--the Hub of The Universe (and all Multiverses).

Jeff

[Jan Van Quirm]

Crysania - on other sites I post to people from all over the world whose english is far, far, better than any of my attempts would be using their various languages so I'm used to people's efforts and more than happy to make 'allowances' where needed. But I'd rate your English as excellent for someone's 'second' language and pretty good if you were a native English speaker.

The life-timer is a 'tracking' type device for Lu -Tse only, as he's a mortal depite being able to postpone his own death. Death couldn't 'see' either Jeremy or Lobsang because they were one person seperated and, being the son(s) of Time, immortal - so they can't have a lifetimer as they're not mortal as we would understand it, despite their father (Wen) being human. Death was otherwise engaged on the 5 riders of the Apocalypse side of things, so Susan, who was also not able to find either Jeremy or Lobsang (remember she's been living in the same city as Jeremy at least for years) used Lu-Tse's lifetimer to find him and Lobsang - and from there Jeremy and the clock...

Now - Unity!

.... Yep. Unity's definitely dead and, as Death says, about to start her afterlife which, for her, should be a doddle presuming she still has vestiges of her auditor life so she's able to handle disincarnation very easily... Or maybe ghosting isn't for her and she'll have a go at reincarnation?

Bringing us to another interesting aspect, since we don't see any other auditor getting met by Death (and surely, as they are his ultimate enemies, he would have been very busy with all of them before Unity arrived in the desert). Does this mean that the other auditors, not having been incarnate for too long, and not having learned anything about living, therefore haven't developed the very thing (supposedly) that they may have actually understood about human physicality - the soul or spirit?

In turn, does that mean that the auditors are in fact souls in their natural state and so cannot be taken by death as they're still the same entities merely clothed in hastily assembled flesh? Unity, having tried very hard to immerse herself into being human (and not having any other auditor around to infuriate or fight with her) has had the time to 'get' what's being human means. That's done in a limited way since she's picking up on all the sensate positives and so has investigated the aspects that appeal to her most, becoming a kind of analytical aesthete (instead of an analytical psychopath) and is impressed and wanting to know more so she does acquire a human-like soul that Death can take...

She's unique amongst her fellow Auditors who, to our current knowledge, hadn't been able to acquire a soul as they were not able to survive long enough to 'earn' one in effect as they either became criminally insane or completely bewildered and dysfunctional. Certainly they were not able to adjust to having bodies at all, unlike Unity, who seemed fairly unanimated at first when she was still unable to accept and explore the physical world; then pretty scared when she found she wanted to embrace her new existence, but rationally fighting it, as alien to the auditor culture; and finally throwing caution to the winds after studying the incomprehensible and irrational world of art and eating food. Death greets her which is the clincher that she has a soul to take. In the afterlife like you say she'd have any number of options and some of them, like becoming a ghost which perhaps would be attractive (or maybe not) as she's used to not having a body. However now she has other levels of consciousness and experience from briefly having been human, so she can appreciate truly living a lot more if there's a 'next time around'.

Maybe she'll try something like the Abbot and get reborn so she can learn to cope with being properly human at a slower rate

Now - something that's been niggling at me - Wen's servant (guess what - forgotten his name already ). Does he remind anyone else of Lu Tse?

[poohcarrot]

The life-timer is a 'tracking' type device for Lu -Tse only, as he's a mortal depite being able to postpone his own death.

Now - something that's been niggling at me - Wen's servant (guess what - forgotten his name already ). Does he remind anyone else of Lu Tse?

First paragraph; He can postpone his own death even longer now because of the decapitation trick. When he dies, he will be sent back in time to when he had his head chopped off, so won't make the same mistake again, so not die.

Second paragraph; No, because he's stupid.

[poohcarrot]

So Jeff, you're from Boston. Do you know the other people from Lincolnshire on this site?

There will always be an England, but there will only ever be one Boston--the Hub of The Universe (and all Multiverses).

Jeff

'Ere Jeff! Your "in Boston" bit's gone.