Discworld/Men At Arms/Headscratchers

• When Vimes was pointing the Gonne at the unarmed Cruces, it should've been empty. It was fired six times since Cruces last reloaded it: 1 - accidentally, while him and Vimes are fighting, 2 - Vimes gets it, shoots at Cruces, misses, 3 - shoots at a door, 4 - shoots at the ceiling, 5 - shoots at a chandelier, 6 - shoots a lock off. Yet, when Cruces is killed, the Gonne falls from his hands and fires at the floor.
  • Narrativium.
  • I actually noticed that! Remember, Cruces had two remaining sets of tubes. He fires five times outside, I believe, leaving one cartridge. Then he fires once and there's a long delay before he fires again (or was it he fires six times and there's a long delay)?
  • Presumably the gonne wasn't sure itself how many shots it had fired, what with all the excitement.
• Why'd Pratchett have to go and kill Cuddy? He was a great character and he would've been a great addition to the Watchmen in later books. /cry
• How is it that Carrot could smash the Gonne and yet still have it buried with Cuddy?
  • It was smashed, not atomized. The shell was still there.
  • He does it the same way that Mrs. Cake arms One-Man-Bucket with a piece of crockery in Reaper Man.
• When d'Eath is giving his history lesson to the other nobles at the start of the book, he very specifically mentions "Discworld dwarves." As opposed to what other kind?
  • Possibly Fairyland dwarves, although that a) veers heavily into Wild Mass Guessing (to begin with, whether there are such beings) b) still leaves the question of how d'Eath would know enough of them that he would think that it'd need specification.
  • Could be that one or more deities in Discworld's pantheon have dwarfs as his/her/its otherworldly servants, too.
  • i.e. as opposed to human 'dwarfs' - people whose limbs (for reasons of genetics?) do not grow to adult proportions. Since Discworld humans are the same they would have the same medical disorders.
  • He's just using too many words. People do that sometimes. Kind of like how the ads always say "Kellogg's Frosties" when they could have just said "Frosties".
  • But we don't talk about "Earth humans."
    • We do if we're as introverted and 'just a little off' as Edward d'Eath.
• We are told in other books that Angua's mere presence is enough to terrify and frighten other animals, especially dogs, into wary submission - they are intimidated by the presence of a werewolf. She could have used this power to break away from the Dogs' Guild? Yet it holds her prisoner on two occasions?
  • The Doylist explanation is Early Installment Weirdness.
  • The dogs are more scared of Fido than her.
• Thanks to this book, Discworld has finally given me two characters I love rather easily. Vimes, and Carrot. Carrot especially, because he comes off as the Dogged Nice Guy and maintains the strongest moral center in the series as to this point, having read no other Guards book. (I like Vimes for very different reasons, but at the same time, they both are so similar and yet, so different.) ...But something got to me. Something really hit me at the core that didn't feel right; When Carrot talks down Vimes with the Gonne, Vimes calls up both Cuddy and Angua as those harmed-and even killed-by the main criminal. Carrot claims that the important is not the same as the personal....and while I agree with the sentiment, I don't agree with that logic or that reasoning. Sometimes, what is personal is also important. Those feelings that Carrot felt for Angua from where I stand didn't seem like lies. That Cuddy was important to the Watch and to many wasn't a lie. It is personal, and he can't ignore that because it is so important. That hurts me a lot; I feel like I have to question if Carrot cares for Angua, or cared for Cuddy. That he would be willing to break someone for hurting people he is supposed to care about. I don't even care if he doesn't kill: I would want him to strike against someone who harmed those within the Watch-people I would imagine to be his friends and close confidants. Would he? Does he care about them? I don't see it as a lack of heroic tendencies to fight and care for the people that matter.
  • You are forgetting that carrot has a very literal mind. Personal is not the same as important. That is it. They are not the same for him and sometimes you have to do the important thing before the personal. That is at least a way to not overthink and take it literally.
  • Fine, but because of that mindset, it is not hard to make a guess that he may not really care for Angua as much as he-or she-would like to, or that he doesn't understand in the slightest what a Nakama is.
    • Well, he DID point out that he was fairly sure she wasn't actually dead. And he DID hesitate, down there in the sewers, when she first got shot. It's not that he doesn't care, it's that caring doesn't restrict his judgement. Angua, one way or another, is out of it, and Carrot needs to see to the living.