I just saw somebody express disappointment that the new Watch show is intended to be “modern and inclusive”
buddy. friend. pal. half the goddamn series is about Vimes unlearning his prejudices and the other half is about Vimes’s extreme dislike of people who abuse their power. if anything I’m willing to bet they’ll tone it down outof cowardice
Samuel Vimes is the embodiment of “always punch up, never down” and if you missed that I’m not even sure we read the same books
I reserve the right to bludgeon anyone who complains about this with hardcover copies of MonstrousRegiment and Snuff.
Anyone who complains about the show being inclusive is going to get a visit from the ghost of Terry Pratchett, who is going to beat the stuffing out of them
With his meteor sword.
Over the course of the books, the Watch has acquired:
a six-foot-tall cultural dwarf
a werewolf
an ex-‘splatter’ troll (like a bouncer, but hits harder)
a openly female dwarf from a culture that severely frowns on that
an ex-slave golem who set up an organisation to slowly buy the freedom of his people
a friendly-but-determined religious missionary from a desert country named Visit-the-Infidel-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets
a zombified revolutionary a-la Enjolras
a forensic accountant poached from the Patrician
a made-from-spare-parts mad scientist coroner
Nobby Nobbs
Over the course of the same books, it has developed from your standard medieval fantasy gang-of-thugs city guards to an extremely modern police force containing:
an alchemy-based forensics department
an aeriel traffic corps
a coroners office
a forensic accountants department
drug outreach programmes run by the ex-bouncer troll
a general community policing model
It has gone from a three man graveyard of a force to a political powerhouse capable of taking on basically any real or political power on the Disc, and it has done so in large part because of the reputation of its commander as a man who will tackle any crime, at any level, against any opponent, up to and including ancient demons and the gods themselves, or even the commander himself, to protect the rights of any Joe Soap on the street to be an idiot without getting shafted for it.
I mean. ‘Modern and inclusive’ don’t even cover it, you know?
She doesn’t know it yet, but she will soon. You see, the midterm paper on calls for students to write a collection evaluation for a library of our choosing. Now, I know that when she said that library does not need to be real, she meant that we didn’t need to pick a specific one. But what I heard was…
Dug around in my archive drives for Discworld fanarts. I have a lot of Feelings I can’t articulate very well soooooo I’m not going to, just enjoy the draws xD FYI Zombie Reg is still one of my favorite faces I’ve drawn of all time, ever!
MAN I just remembered how I sketched the Vimes family portrait after I read Thud! I should find that and finish it…
Discworld is nice Bc half the plots sound like shitposts
Skeleton quits job to become fry cook
Wizards play football
Malls are actually a hive mind who feed on cities
welcome in, have a seat, stay awhile.
first female wizard fights institutional sexism
wizard goes to australia
shakespeare play defeats evil king
labyrinth but with tiny scottish men
cinderella in new orleans
german tourist visits low budget middle earth
A secret society summons a dragon so they could have a “hero” who’d listen to them come and slay the dragon and be crowned a king. The dragon burns down the secret society’s place and gets crowned a king instead. Them the dragon gets arrested.
How the Grim Reaper Saved Christmas.
“Is Everyone Here Trying to Have a Mulan Moment?”
Join the revolution, be your own dad
‘Cop Was Worried His Holiday Would Be Boring…Until the Goblin Murders Began’
Teenaged Grim Reaper vs. eldritch guitar.
A teacher and two identical not-twins save the space-time continuum with chocolate.
repeat of ancient racially motivated battle is prevented by possessed man reciting a bedtime story in a cave
A local ransacked town is saved by bees, girl in ill-fitting armor, violent dancing, spite
Yet another reason I’m sad Terry Pratchett is dead is because I just know that the Discworld novel he would have written in response to recent developments in Britain and the world would be fucking scathing.
“A small but growing number of people believe we should magically summon a new world turtle and place Ankh-Morpork on its back in order to leave the Disc entirely, sir.”
“Intriguing.”
“It can’t be done, sir. Especially not the…” Drumknott consulted his paperwork. “…bit where, and I quote, Obviously we’ll leave all the foreigners behind. They seem divided on the precise definition of foreigner but it seems to include anyone who doesn’t look like them, and most people who do look like them but speak funny.”
“Ah, we’ve reached that part, where we define foreigner so we know who to give the boot to,” Vetinari sighed.
“It’s obviously not really plausible, sir, we’d lose a lot of good trade routes if there were no longer any external portions of the Disc attached to us, and having consulted with the alchemists there’s a strong sense among them that we would shortly run out of air to breathe should we leave the Disc’s protective weather systems.”
“Ah, but they can vote on it, you see,” Vetinari said. “They can campaign for it. And just knowing we ought to do it…”
He pulled a report across his desk, one in the crabbed, unmistakable schoolboy handwriting of Sir Samuel. “Crime is up, Drumknott.”
“I wasn’t aware we’d increased the Thieves’ Guild allotments this month, sir.”
“We haven’t. Nor the Assassins’ Guild. Unfortunately the crimes on the rise are of the go-back-where-you-came-from variety and there is, as of yet, no Bigots’ guild.”
“Do you think creating one would stop them, sir?”
“Not in this case, no,” Vetinari murmured. “I suspect we shall have to leave it up to human decency and the efforts of the Watch.”
Drumknott gave him the most horrified look he’d seen since the first time he suggested promoting Sir Samuel.
“Not really, sir?”
“Of course not. Good lord, Drumknott. I shall have some errands for you today, however, and you’d best fetch the Commander. And Mr. De Worde. Get De Worde here first, then bring in Sir Samuel when he’s had just enough time to get nervous in the waiting room. If Sir Samuel is at home, do bring her Ladyship along, otherwise I’ll see her at the dinner tomorrow night. Ah yes, and I believe I shall pay a visit to Mr. Von Lipwig tomorrow afternoon; please notify him of the impending surprise inspection of the mint.”
“But sir, what will you – “
“That will be all, Drumknott,” Vetinari said.
In the crevices of Vetinari’s mind, gears began to turn. Disorder, of course, was a natural aspect of any city, but unpleasantness of this sort led to much too much and the wrong kind of disorder. After all, at one time Ankh-Morpork had simply been a swampy plain; trace a family back far enough and everyone was an immigrant. The kind of thinking that led to one saying they were taking their city and leaving sooner or later led to metaphorical shoving matches over who looked a little too igneous to be allowed, or whose mother sent funny food with them to school, or who exactly was allowed to wear what kind of cloth on their head.
And the whole thing, as he knew from personal experience, could very well lead to unpleasantly large dragons.
Perhaps it was time to set some spinning tops in motion.
@copperbadge – what would we need to pay you so you could write that book … 🙂 ??
I might already have written an outline. It includes a Star Wars allegory and the phrase “vimes joins the resistance”, also “the return of our beloved long-fingered despot”.
It’s the 25th, and that means something. It’s a day for remembering, in that weird way where everyone who read about an event and was touched by it feels like they were there. And, one can argue, we were. We stood by Sam Vimes, we saw the the dead and the wounded, we lost hope and we found it again. Just like, in a similar manner, we were all with Sir Pratchett when me left us, and we stood by his grave from a distance, and we waved to Death.
Fiction can be meaningful. Fiction writers have the power to be, with that, the most meaningful people out there. They create stories that change our lives, or at least help us define them. They explain what was hard to understand otherwise. They help us cope. They are friends, and family, and always there, with their words. They are not always nice, or kind, because nice and kind don’t mean good or important, necessarily. They do the work that’s in front of them, and create the world that needs creating.
I haven’t read all the Discworld books. Some of them are being kept in a precious place, to visit when everything seems lost and hopeless, and when life outside books is not completely bearable. But the Watch books are, somehow, the ones I’m constantly returning to, reading all of them again and again, like old friends. And Night Watch has a special place, a particular meaning to me. It’s my favourite, yes, but that’s nothing but a definition, and this novel is much more.
I tried student politics once, quite a few years ago. I was at a University, and that’s the kind of thing people do there. It’s a long and frustrating story, but it made me very jaded when it comes to people selling revolutions. I like change. I love change. Life without a healthy dose of chaos is not worth living. But I’m a historian, and if there’s something we learn, is that change rarely comes from big, official and organized revolutions. It comes from people moving things around, changing little details, making their lives better.
And that’s Sam Vimes’ approach. He doesn’t waist lives, but he changes everything around him. He makes a difference.
Night Watch is a sad book. It makes you remember that human beings can be the most foul creatures on the planet. It makes you cry, and want to punch something, and feel bad about existing. It is also beautiful, and hopeful, and proof that we can be much more. It is one person changing the world not by being rich, or powerful, or well connected, but by thinking, and caring about the people around him, by trying to keep his street safe. It is proof that no gesture is too small, for good or bad, and that we have no clue how they will affect those around us. It tells us to keep trying to do the best we can, and not to find excuses.
Remembering the Glorious 25th is important because we all need it. It has a piece of us in it, and it holds part of what made us. It is truth, justice, freedom, reasonably priced love, and a hard boiled egg. It is the lilac in bloom, and Little Sam’s birthday. It is when we held the line, and weeped.
my favorite thing about Corporal Carrot is that he’s a romantic hero plopped right in the middle of the greediest cesspit of a chaotic neutral city ever to debase the pages of literature, and yet instead of having his shining idealism destroyed by an uncaring reality, he makes reality embarrassedly put down the weapons and agree to make nice, and then mutter an awkward “Good morning” whenever it passes him on the street.
It takes Pratchett to write the most surprising and exciting total lack of character development litterature ever whitnessed.
no but see Carrot does develop! that’s what makes it so cool – he does change and adapt to Ankh-Morpork, but not by losing his idealism. f’rexample, a lot of the Watch books deal with discrimination in its many forms, and Carrot, for all his kind-heartedness, is just as prejudiced as would be any nice country boy from an isolated mining community that holds its traditions dear. he’s disgusted by the undead, for all he can be quite civil to Reg Shoe when he mets him on the street. when he finds out Cheery is a girl, he is shocked and horrified and asks plaintively if she couldn’t maybe, you know, not tell anyone about her weird gender nonconformity. Carrot’s forced to confront his learned bigotry just as much as Sam Vimes, we just don’t see it as much because we hardly ever see inside Carrot’s head.
and even the idealism isn’t blind idealism. Carrot’s a cop – he sees more than enough of people’s unsavory sides. he learns a lot from Vimes and the rest about not trusting anyone half as far as you can throw them, and he manages to still believe that people are fundamentally good and just need a bit of a push sometimes.
and – AND! – he recognizes that it’s not right to always be pushing them. because he could, he could push everyone to Be Good all the time. people would do it, at least while he was watching. but he knows that that’s wrong in some fundamental way that’s wrapped up in choice and freedom and the difference between doing the right thing Because It’s Right or doing it Because Carrot Said To. and this takes developing, too – he doesn’t think this way when he first comes to Ankh-Morpork. he falls into the excitement of having a king in Ankh-Morpork just as much as everyone else, and it’s only after much internal conflict (most of which we don’t really see) that he changes his mind.
one of the major themes of the Watch books is “who watches the Watchman?” it’s explored and developed a lot in later books, and of course we get it all from Vimes’ perspective because he’s the one who thinks these sorts of thoughts. he’s the one who worries, constantly, that he’s going to slip up and act like the rotten bastard he knows he is, so he’s always watching himself. but the thing is that Carrot is just as much part of the Watch books and of their themes, and Carrot idolizes Vimes. so he also ends up watching himself, and that’s the thing – Carrot’s a good person in part because he’s constantly examining and reevaluating his ideas about morality and about people.
I’ve been on a Discworld re-read for about a year now, and it just struck me how Pterry gets progressively angrier and less subtle about it throughout the series.
Like, we start out nice and easy with Rincewind who’s on some wacky adventures and ha ha ha oh golly that Twoflower sure is silly and the Luggage is epic, where can I get one. Meanwhile Rincewind just wants to live out his boring days as a boring Librarian but is dragged along against his will by an annoying little tourist guy and honestly? Fuck this.
We get the first view of Sam Vimes, and he’s just a drunken beaten down sod who wants to spend his last days as a copper in some dive but oh fuck now he has to fight a dragon and honestly? Fuck this.
The first time we see Granny Weatherwax, she’s just a cranky old woman who has never set foot outside her village but oh fuck now she has to guide this weird girl who should be a witch but is apparently a wizard all the way down to Ankh Morpork and honestly? Fuck this.
Like, these books deal with grumpy, cranky people. But mostly, the early books are a lot of fun. Sure, they have messages about good and evil and the weirdness of the world, and they’re good messages too, but mostly they are just wacky romps through a world that’s just different enough that we can have a good laugh about it without taking things too much to heart.
But then you get to Small Gods, in which organized religion is eviscerated so thorouhgly that if it was human, even the Quisition would say it’s gone a bit too far while at the same time not condemning people having faith which is kind of an important distinction.
You get to Men at Arms and I encourage everybody with an opinion on the Second Amendment to read that one.
You get to Jingo, Monstrous Regiment, Going Postal (featuring an evil CEO who is squeezing his own company dry to get to every last penny, not caring one lick about his product or his workers or his customers or anything else and who, coincidentally, works out of Tump Tower. I’m not making this up).
And just when you think, whew, this is getting a bit much but hey, look, he wrote YA as well! And it’s about this cute little girl who wants to be a witch and has help from a lot of rowdy blue little men, this will be fun! A bit of a break from all the anger!
Wrong.
The Tiffany Aching books are the angriest of all. But you know what the great thing is?
The great thing is that Pterry’s anger is the kind of fury that makes you want to get up and do something about it. It upsets you, sure. But it also says It’s up to you to change all of this. And you can change all of this, and even if you can’t. Do it anyway. Because magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.
It’s the kind of anger that gives you purpose, and it gives you hope. And that concludes my essay about why the Discworld series is so gloriously cathartic to read when it seems like all the world is going to shit.
So go. Read them, get angry and then get up and fight. Fight for truth. Justice. Freedom. Reasonably priced love and, most importantly, a hard-boiled egg.
“Colon thought about it. ‘There’s always Lady Ramkin,’ he said. ‘Lives in Scoone Avenue. Breeds swamp dragons. You know, the little buggers people keep as pets?’
‘Oh, her,’ said Vimes gloomily. ‘I think I’ve seen her around. The one with the “Whinny If You Love Dragons” sticker on the back of her carriage?’
‘That’s her. She’s mental,’ said Sergeant Colon.“
(Guards! Guards! – Discworld #8)
Now we here:
”…he did this because Samuel Vimes, who had never gone into a place of worship with religious aforethought, worshipped Lady Sybill, and not a day went past without his being amazed that she seemed to do the same to him.“
Steel Phoenix Studios 