Death pulls out an hourglass,
he mumers to himself.
He looks at the fellow, and waits for his response to Tao's question.[hr]"Uh, okay... So... We've screwed up the world...." he said.
"Yes, yes you have. PONDER! GET TO WORK!"
Ponder runs out of the room to attempt to find the solution...
@Fur OoC: Think something like this. [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeirdnessCensor]
Code:
[b]W[SMALL]HERE AM I...[/SMALL] W[SMALL]HY IS IT NOT TICKING DOWN...[/SMALL][/b]He looks at the fellow, and waits for his response to Tao's question.[hr]"Uh, okay... So... We've screwed up the world...." he said.
"Yes, yes you have. PONDER! GET TO WORK!"
Ponder runs out of the room to attempt to find the solution...
@Fur OoC: Think something like this. [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeirdnessCensor]
In Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, the narrator explains that most humans have formed a very strong idea of what is "normal", and anything that doesn't fit into that idea is Invisible to Normals. This includes Death and other Anthropomorphic Personifications, and Talking Animal Gaspode the Wonder Dog (since "everyone knows dogs can't talk"). There are some exceptions, including witches and wizards, by training, and small children, because they haven't learnt what "normal" is yet.
Employed more subtly in the Discworld novel Interesting Times. Rincewind, on yet another foreign jaunt, figures out nobody really notices men on horseback because doing so tends to get people stabbed.
An unusual example is in Mort, where the titular character changes history by saving the life of a princess doomed to die, and everyone in the kingdom except a wizard find themselves unconsciously acting as though she had died, and feeling upset and nauseous when confronted with the fact that she still lives, then revert back to believing her dead once away from her.
Inverted in Maskerade, wherein the cast of the Opera House can't come up with the most obvious solutions because those just aren't theatrical enough.
Subverted in Wyrd Sisters: Death was visible because the audience expected he was an actor. He fit in quite well, since he forgot the lines just like the other actors.
The Weirdness Censor appears to have been (mostly) left out of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. When said rodents decide to have a talk with the townspeople, it takes a few minutes for most of the humans to accept the existence of talking rats.
Lord Rust in Jingo confirms that it's not just the supernatural that falls subject to this trope on Discworld: his personal Weirdness Censor is so strict that it even blots out his perception of rudeness, on the grounds that a lowborn churl like Sam Vimes wouldn't possibly dare snark off to an aristocrat like him.
Moreover, it is described in both Moving Pictures and Guards! Guards!! as a kind of permanent level of intoxication generated by the brain to be able to ignore things that could drive it to madness, which can happen if one were to ever become "knurd" (a state of sobriety so stark that the Weirdness Censor is shut off). Some people are born "knurd", or it can be achieved by, say drinking extra-strong Klatchian Coffee.
There's also Thief of Time, where an actual horse (Binky) walks into a library to pick up Susan. Except that everybody knows that that doesn't happen, so it's obviously not real and therefore nothing to be concerned about.
"The historians paid him no attention. Horses did not walk into libraries."
Employed more subtly in the Discworld novel Interesting Times. Rincewind, on yet another foreign jaunt, figures out nobody really notices men on horseback because doing so tends to get people stabbed.
An unusual example is in Mort, where the titular character changes history by saving the life of a princess doomed to die, and everyone in the kingdom except a wizard find themselves unconsciously acting as though she had died, and feeling upset and nauseous when confronted with the fact that she still lives, then revert back to believing her dead once away from her.
Inverted in Maskerade, wherein the cast of the Opera House can't come up with the most obvious solutions because those just aren't theatrical enough.
Subverted in Wyrd Sisters: Death was visible because the audience expected he was an actor. He fit in quite well, since he forgot the lines just like the other actors.
The Weirdness Censor appears to have been (mostly) left out of The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents. When said rodents decide to have a talk with the townspeople, it takes a few minutes for most of the humans to accept the existence of talking rats.
Lord Rust in Jingo confirms that it's not just the supernatural that falls subject to this trope on Discworld: his personal Weirdness Censor is so strict that it even blots out his perception of rudeness, on the grounds that a lowborn churl like Sam Vimes wouldn't possibly dare snark off to an aristocrat like him.
Moreover, it is described in both Moving Pictures and Guards! Guards!! as a kind of permanent level of intoxication generated by the brain to be able to ignore things that could drive it to madness, which can happen if one were to ever become "knurd" (a state of sobriety so stark that the Weirdness Censor is shut off). Some people are born "knurd", or it can be achieved by, say drinking extra-strong Klatchian Coffee.
There's also Thief of Time, where an actual horse (Binky) walks into a library to pick up Susan. Except that everybody knows that that doesn't happen, so it's obviously not real and therefore nothing to be concerned about.
"The historians paid him no attention. Horses did not walk into libraries."
