“You make enemies like a craftsman.”

Blog entirely dedicated to the Discworld book series by Terry Pratchett. Sam Vimes is my favorite character, so he probably gets the most coverage. This is a side blog, my main blog is @manyfandomsonelog :)

[not-equippedforthis]

absolute favourite thing is when, in accordance with moments in guards! guards!, people write vimes to completely lose all sense of fine conversational and motor skills in front of sybil so he's continuously doing the equivalent of stepping on a rake

[wistfulcynic]

happy glorious 25th of may to those who celebrate and also those who don’t, for the glorious 25th of may is for All Of Us

[wastrelwoods]

once again unequivocally lost in the sauce at the implication that younger vimes suspects that john keel!vimes is his dad who left when he was young. my favorite subtext of night watch i love the way it just sits there just out of focus

[wastrelwoods]

when sam says here's your hard boiled egg i bet you like your toast cut into soldiers and the yolk still runny. because i do. thats the culmination of 'this strange man looks like me and looks at me like he seems almost afraid of me, took me under his wing over every other person in the watch house and acts protective of me even when he doesn't need to. he just came in from pseudopolis but knows this city too well to be anything but a local. and not from the nice part of town, the roughest of the rough part, where i came from, too. he asked after my mum but blew me off when i told him she wanted to meet him. he asked after my dad and looked distinctly unsurprised to hear he wasn't in the picture. he seems to know what i'll do before i do it. sometimes looking at him is like looking in the mirror. there's a tightly coiled anger in him, i can see it, and it looks like something in me i've felt before. on our first patrol he taught me how to walk. i know him i know him i know him'

[judasisgayriot]

Has to be one of the best passages of a book I’ve read in a long time

[xekstrin]

​it’s not an understatement to say I think about this all the time

[arborealgargoyle]

[id: A picture of a page from a Terry Pratchett book. Italics on page marked with asterisks in this transcript. Page reads:

All witches are selfish, the Queen had said. But Tiffany’s Third Thoughts said: Then turn selfishness into a weapon! Make all things yours! Make other lives and dreams and hopes yours! Protect them! Save them! Bring them into the sheepfold! Walk the gale for them! Keep away the wolf! My dreams! My brother! My family! My land! My world! How dare you try to take these things, because *they are mine!* *I have a duty!*

/end id]

The notes say that this is from The Wee Free Men!

[confusedguytoo]

Did anyone ever consider the contradiction of this perspective and the other one given in Discworld that sin is when you treat people as things?

[iconuk01]

I don’t see it as anything approaching contradiction, to be honest.

The “treating people like things” is how you treat people when you are interacting with them, or having an impact on their lives.

The Tiffany quote is about motivation, not interaction.

So Tiffany’s motivation isn’t treating people as things, (no witch who wasn’t already predisposed to cackling could do that) it’s about treating everything as your responsibility, as being under your protection as their witch, and so being motivated to action by that responsibility.

You don’t even have to like them, or think them good people, but if they are your repsonsibility, you help them.

“Oh, no,” said Miss Level, genuinely shocked. “You can’t not help people just because they’re stupid or forgetful or unpleasant. Everyone’s poor around here. If I don’t help them, who will?”

Using her own selfishness to make sure that HER land and HER people are protected is the opposite of treating them like things. They are EVERYTHING to her, but as individual responsibilities.

[pratchettquotes]

There was muttering from the defenders. Most of them had a look Vimes recognized, because it was one he was trying to keep off his own face. It was the look of people whose world had suddenly been swept from under them, and now they were trying to tap-dance on quicksand.

He tossed away the stupid pompous megaphone. He cupped his hands. "Some of you know me!" he shouted. "I'm Sergeant Keel, currently in command of the Treacle Mine Road Watch House! And I order you to dismantle this barricade--"

There was a chorus of jeers and one or two badly thrown missiles. Vimes waited, stock-still, until they'd died away. Then he raised his hands again.

"I repeat, I order you to dismantle this barricade." He took a breath, and went on: "And rebuild it on the other side, on the corner with Cable Street! And put up another one at the top of Sheer Street! Good grief, you don't just pile stuff up, for gods' sake! A barricade is something you construct! Who's in charge here?"

There were sounds of consternation behind the overturned furniture, but a voice called out: "You?"

Terry Pratchett, Night Watch

[magpiesketchins]

Every year he forgot

[squeakowl]

Photography by Courtney Allison (source)

[onetobeamupart]

As the cauldron bubbled an eldritch voice shrieked: ‘When shall we three meet again?’ There was a pause. Finally another voice said, in far more ordinary tones: ‘Well, I can do next Tuesday.’

[moonmargaritas]

I'm reading The Truth, and the way Terry portrays Vimes in this book almost feels like a test for those who have read previous City Watch books. A reader who has read the previous books knows and trusts Vimes. We love him, we know he's a good man, we want him to succeed.

But in this book, he's almost an antagonist to William, at least initially. He's resistant and hostile to William's journalistic efforts, it seems like William is making his job harder, and my instinct was to be irritated with William about this. But as I've progressed through the book, I've realized that I fell into the Protagonist Trap with Vimes.

I, the reader, love Vimes. I trust Vimes. I want Vimes to succeed. But Vimes doesn't get to do whatever he wants just because I love him. William isn't doing anything illegal and he isn't doing anything wrong. And Vimes, irritated as he is, recognizes this.

It almost feels like Terry is leaning over the reader's shoulder to see if you were paying attention to the message of the other City Watch books, not just enjoying the adventure stories.

[boschintegral-photo]

Lilac

[ra-artblog]

Happy glorious 25th!!🪻⚔️

[unseenlibrarycardholder]

Jingo Terry Pratchett

[cosmicrhetoric]

pratchett is such an insanely good writer like it still floors me sometimes how good he was at putting together a book. you read the phrase "you do the job that's in front of you" one million times in night watch and sometimes it's about vimes stepping into his mentor's role in history and sometimes it's about cops who keep their heads down when bad things happen to people and sometimes it's about clearing off your own gravestone every year and sometimes it's just about surviving the barricades and the phrase picks up steam and meaning every single time until you get to the end. the revolution was always going to happen and the lilac was always going to bloom. they did the job they didn't have to do and they died for it🪻🥚

[aceofairships]

It is officially the glorious 25th of May. Enjoy the scheduled content and please go read a discworld novel. <3

[sphyrne]

hey do guys ever think about how if vimes didnt get yeeted to the past in night watch, he'd never have known or heard of mossy lawn (nor of his skills as a doctor) and in the present they might not have been able to save sybil.

[datsderbunnyblog]

Oh...

[eelisavi]

i fr can't pass by a dynamic between a cool unhinged threatening woman and a chaotic little silly freak of a man <3

[bakedbakermom]

terry pratchett (as always) gets it.