Jen Reads Discworld

Side-blog. Currently re-reading the entire Discworld series from the beginning.

[crocincrocsart]

unpopular opinion: Vimes is kind of drama queen

[mangaluva-deactivated20220930]

Sam “held a burning hot coal until it nearly took the skin off his hand while maintaining perfect calm and eye contact with the asshole in need of intimidation Just Because” Vimes? Sam “sitting on the stoop with a mug of cocoa and a cigar, cautiously aware of every inch of the scene he’s building” Vimes? Sam “could just tear his sleeve to show the mark of the Summoning Dark but instead tears off his whole goddamn shirt” Vimes? A drama queen? Reaching a bit don’t you think

[thestuffedalligator]

Yep, certainly doesn’t seem to describe Sam “pretends to eat poison as a power move” Vimes. Not Sam “buries an axe in the table in the Rats Chamber” Vimes.

[mangaluva-deactivated20220930]

I mean are we really talking about Sam “yes a whole room full of candles with wicks dipped in holy water is the best way to beat this vampire” Vimes, here? Sam “has fought bad guys on top of a speeding train AND a riverboat during a flood” Vimes, really? Definitely Sam “nearly gets shot in the head by a crossbow bolt that shatters his shaving mirror and then uses the bolt to prop up a shard of said mirror to finish shaving” Vimes we’re discussing here?

[davetheshady]

excuse me?????

vimes did not resign from his post in protest, observe the rest of the watch resign from their posts in protest, recruit them into a militia, sail to the country they were at war with, and attempt to arrest two different armies for disturbing the peace so you could sit here and call him a drama queen, as though drama was some myffic quality bestowed by an accident of birth and not the inherent right of every creatively petty and histrionic citizen of ankh-morpork 

vimes is a drama public employee

[discworld-heritage-posts]

Discworld Heritage Post

[ansatsu-sha]

I meant to post this photo after completing my reread of Maskerade & before starting Feet of Clay, but I forgot.

I love that Sir Terry actually did a special author photo in honour of Maskerade's opera theme. More than you can ever imagine.

GNU Terry Pratchett.

[sixth-light]

thinking about this post again and you know what I'd like to talk about the gender essentialism of in re: magic systems?

fucking Discworld, where for almost the entire series women do domestic magic and men do academic magic and never the twain do meet unless in exceptional circumstances. and I think Pratchett is a very good writer of women who engaged with feminism and in his later years trans issues in a thoughtful way! but why do we do endless rounds of 'Wheel of Time bad because magic system based on gender' but Discworld gets a complete pass on the issue? I WILL DIE ON THIS STUPID HILL

[asha-mage]

I think one of the interesting contrasts between Jordan and Pratchett is how the witch/wizard divide is Discworld is full of unexamined biases because, in theory it's not supposed to be about gender. Pratchett grounding his work in gendered tropes rather then gender itself means he ends up reinforcing gender essentialist ideas and themes far more then if he had just directly engaged with the idea.

Jordan on the other hand, by literlizing the gender divide in his world building and magic, forces the reader to confront uncomfortable questions about gender directly and gives himself space to comment on it. By saying the quite part out loud, Jordan brings it to forefront deliberately and makes it a conversation rather then background radiation.

[sixth-light]

Yes, this is it for me - there's a lot of well-meaning people in the notes of this post saying "but the witch/wizard magic thing is clearly meant to be social so it's not gender essentialism" and "Pratchett is satirising particular kinds of men's clubs/environments with the wizards". But here's the thing.

The academic environment he is primarily satirising simply was not as gender-segregated as the one he depicts. My own great-great-grandmother was at Cambridge in the 1880s; women couldn't get degrees but they could and did study. There are no female students at Unseen University. The wizards build Discworld's first computer. In the real world women designed and operated the first computers and the word computer originally meant 'a woman who makes mathematical calculations'. There are no women anywhere near Hex except domestic servants. The wizards are broadly meant to parody physicists at some points; I was recently reading a biography of Ernest Rutherford, a leading physicist in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the UK and Canada. He had female students and corresponded with female physicists of the day. They weren't abundant but they did exist (uh, Marie Curie?)

With Unseen University Pratchett has created a magical tradition so gender-segregated it doesn't have room for the Discworld equivalent of Marie freaking Curie, and in the real world the only way that happens is very significant levels of misogyny pushing women out of spaces, because otherwise you're saying that there is not one woman in Ankh-Morporkh smarter or more interested in magic than (checks notes) Rincewind. But the wizards aren't presented as raving misogynists deliberatly keeping out women with an academic interest in magic, because that would be wildly unpleasant. So it winds all the way around again to magic gender essentialism by implication.

And this is one of the primary ways misogyny works in fiction! By allowing women to be written out of places they exist or existed in the real world, even when those places are being satirised, to depict entirely unreal absolute gender segregation. (Pratchett of course knew enough to address this for the military in Monstrous Regiment, notably a book where he was actively thinking about the issue.) His disinterest in considering it regarding his magic-users, except at the very start and end of the series, deserves way more interrogation than it gets. Jordan is by no means doing a perfect thing but at least he's fucking asking the questions.

[thestuffedalligator]

I gotta ask: what does Gnu Terry Pratchett mean? I'm only two books into discworld; is it a reference to something there? some fandom in-joke? or was the late Sir Pratchett especially fond of the g-nicest work of g-nature in the zoo?

It’s a bit of an in-joke, I guess. In-memoriam, maybe?

The long version is that it’s a reference to a bit in Going Postal, one of the later Discworld books. In Going Postal there’s a lot of focus on the Clacks system, a sort of pseudo-telegram system run by people up in boxes on the tops of towers who send messages from one corner of the Discworld to the other by flashing semaphore codes to the next tower in the line.

In Going Postal, a new company has bought out the Clacks and is running it at high-speed at all times, even as the operators are dying of the company’s negligence to make ends meet, and the plot of the book is basically about restarting the city’s old postal service to break the company’s monopoly on long-distance communication.

It’s a fantastic Discworld book, by the way. It was my sister’s first Discworld book and she quotes it at me constantly. If you aren’t doing a publishing order read, it’s a great book to check out.

The point is that halfway through the book, we see a scene set inside one of the Clacks towers, where one young Clacks operator sees a code go through the semaphore again. She recognizes it as a “GNU” code - a code that means that the message goes ahead to the next tower (G), is not logged (N), and is turned around at the end of the line to go through the entire semaphore system again (U), but the whole message is just GNU and a name, meaning that it’s a name that just goes up and down the line constantly.

The name is that of an inventor who tried to start a rival semaphore system and was murdered by the new Clacks company so they could keep their monopoly. And the oldest Clacks operator in the tower (he’s called Grandad — he’s twenty-six) says that so long as the name goes through the Clacks, he stays alive in the semaphore:

“His name is in the code, in the wind in the rigging and the shutters. Haven’t you ever heard the saying: ‘A man’s not dead while his name is still spoken’?”

[stackofsnakes]

It's no mystery how Lady Sybil fell in love with Sam Vimes. She's quite used to caring for good hearted, self destructive little critters one occasionally needs to scrape off the floor

[archivistofnerddom]

This is the most accurate description of their romance I’ve seen in a while.

[shanehollanderfreckles]

Sam Vines is Dragon coded confirmed

[bloodydamnreaperofmars]

The Catalan Discworld edition is the best edition ever and you won't change my mind...

LOOK HOW PRETTY THEY ARE!!!

[nuttersincorporated]

You're right. These are so nice!

[johntherobotwanderer]

Discworld book where the auditors hear about the phrase "it's not over till the fat lady sings" and hire someone to kidnap all the fat ladies in the world to find the One who will end the world when she sings.

Lady Sybil Vimes is one of the ladies, so Sam Vimes is on the warpath until he can find her, while the watch desperately try to keep all infrastructure from falling apart without all the fat ladies who keep it together on a daily basis

It ends when Sybil leads a hoard of fat ladies into battle, which ends up being so glorious an unrelated time traveler who witnesses it goes back to his native time starts the myth of the Valkyries

[approximateknowledge]

ok so hear me out

[a-pod-of-seals]

but like actually. this is exactly what makes Discworld's worldbuilding so ... well, so what it is. it asks the kinds of questions science fiction stories ask and gives science fiction answers.

[the-tao-of-fandom]

So. Moist von Lipwig, formerly Albert Spangler/various other aliases, never kills people so he can’t really be all that bad, lovable rogue, right?

Wrong.

In a surface kind of way, yes, but an essential part of the Lovable Rogue is in never having to face consequences, and Going Postal starts with Lipwig being hanged for his crimes of embezzling, forgery, theft, confidence trickstery and various others. And that’s only the beginning.

Let me preface this with the fact that I love Moist as a character, and boy am I aware that he goes through character development, but he is by no means a good person at the start of the book, or even necessarily by the end. He’s definitely still a criminal in both cases, by the end it just happens that Vetinari is holding onto his leash and that Moist has made a moral decision.

He feels completely justified in committing the crimes he does, because everyone is dishonest, right? Anyway they’re all trying to trick him! And he never faces any consequences, because he’s always on the run to escape them, whether he’s aware of it or not, and so he believe that there aren’t any consequences - because he’s not there when they occur. After all, he’s mostly fooling other crooks, so it’s not like good and/or honest people ever feel the repercussions.

Except then he meets an angel. Or, as it turns out, several angels. While being possessed by the Letters/Spirit of the Post, he apparently says that ‘angel is just an old word for messenger,’ and I think I know Pratchett well enough by now so I can say that isn’t in there by coincidence. After all, the book is full of messengers and the delivery of messages (in the form of the old postmen, golems, various others) and many characters are referred to as being angels numerous times (notably Stanley, Vetinari and Adora Belle Dearheart) and enough parallels are drawn between Adora and the golems, particularly Anghammarad and Mr. Pump) that the two words should be taken to mean pretty much the same in thing the context. 

Vetinari remarks that you only ever get one angel, but maybe it arrives in a dozen or more people. Except these are far from being particularly nice ones - what they all do, in their own way, is to force Moist to recognize that all his actions have consequences. They very nearly march up in a line and say, ‘Look, son, you’ve messed up really bad, okay? I mean, just look at what you’ve caused, LOOK at it! What, you didn’t know it was there? Buddy, do you think that means it don’t exist?’

“Do you understand what I’m saying?“ shouted Moist. “You can’t just go around killing people!” “Why Not? You Do.” The golem lowered his arm. “What?” snapped Moist. “I do not! Who told you that?” “I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People,” said the golem calmly. “I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be–– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!” “No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.”

…Holy shit, Pratchett is not messing around. Because yeah, the Lovable Rogue is a fun character to read about. But does that mean he isn’t immoral as hell? Nope.

All throughout the first half or so of the book, Moist is convinced that he’s gonna turn around and trick everyone, up to and including Vetinari himself. He thinks pretty nasty and derogatory thoughts about the people around him such as Stanley, or Mr. Groat, or Mr. Pump, clearly blaming them for being stuck working for Vetinari when he thought his troubles would be over once he was hanged, even as he puts on his conman face and charms all of them (except Pump and probably Adora), because it benefits him and because he thinks he’s smarter than them and because it’s fun. But he never quite gets away with anything any more. He thinks he’ll win against the Brotherhood of Postmen, but he gets pretty banged up doing it. He makes plans to have Mr. Pump killed smashed up* or use his day off to escape, but when he has the chance he’s busy with Adora, along with the small matter of the Post Office being in cinders. It’s a clear contrast with how he later thinks about how he actually likes the printers working at Teemer & Spools, or the Smoking Gnu, simply because they’re decent people good at their jobs.

*Because even though he’s never killed anyone, he doesn’t think of golems as people.

Then along comes Adora, and it turns out he, personally, messed up her life by defrauding the bank she worked at, further adding to her family’s struggle when the Grand Trunk gets stolen and her brother is murdered. And when he challenges Reacher Gilt and the clacks companies, the Post Office gets burned down, the piles of letters destroyed, Mr. Groat is left seriously injured and the golem Anghammarad dead - it’s other people who suffer, not him.

Hello, Moist. Meet Consequences. They’ve been trying to catch up with you for a while.

I like to think Moist’s internal narration gets less condescending* at that point, because there is definitely a difference between the Moist who went out to eat with Adora and the Moist who still tries to keep the Post Office running in a blackened, burnt shell of a building. When he meets Reacher Gilt for the first time at Le Foie Heureux, he realizes how much better Gilt is compared to him and wishes they weren’t pitted against each other, just so he could learn how to be an even better** conman from him, even while knowing Adora hates him enough to want to kill him and that Gilt pirated the Grand Trunk and is out to destroy the Post Office. But later he thinks to himself:

“I’ll kill you, Mr. Gilt. I’ll kill you in our special way, the way of the weasel and cheat and liar. I’ll take away everything but your life. I’ll take away your money, your reputation and your friends. I’ll spin words around you until you’re cocooned in them. I’ll leave you nothing, not even hope.”

*Pun intended.

**Worse?

Talk about a sharp turnaround. And here Moist acknowledges the similarities between them, even though an easy-to-reach disclaimer could be included such as ‘but I never kill people.’ There has been an ongoing contrast between Havelock Vetinari, Moist von Lipwig, and Reacher Gilt throughout the book, particularly in Vetinari’s and Gilt’s definition of ‘freedom’. Gilt claims that property is the foundation of freedom, and Adora points out that ‘when [he] talks about freedom, he means his, not anyone else’s.’ Meanwhile, Vetinari:

“And no practical definition of freedom would be complete without the freedom to take the consequences. Indeed, it is the freedom upon which all the others are based.”

And what Vetinari largely does is force consequences upon Moist, and later Gilt - forces them to live with freedom in its entirety, not just the bits they like. The easy answer may be to kill them, but that is not consequences as such, as much as a permanent end to them. And in doing this he forces Moist to face up to everything he has done and how it has hurt people. And being stuck between these two masterful conmen, Moist realizes how short the slippery slope may have been for him to turn into just yet another Gilt: A conman with style, but a bully and a murderer all the same. Which is why he essentially uses all his genius in that field to defeat Gilt, because that’s the only way he can be defeated, not because it’s noble or heroic, but because he’s stuck: He’s been forced to look at all the people he’s defrauded and swindled, and now that he can’t look away he doesn’t want to see it happen to them again. He may be a bastard of a trickster, but he can chose to not be that bastard.

But Vetinari! You may ask. He manipulates and controls and has people killed all the time. It’s practically his job! Well, yeah. He’s incredibly good at it, he’s LEAGUES ahead of both Moist and Gilt, but the funny thing is that he does it entirely for the benefit of the city. He could be a one-man reign of terror over the entire continent, but as he confides in Unseen Academicals:

“[…] And that’s when I first learned about evil. It is built into the nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.”

And just in case you think he’s nothing but talk, remember that when his arrest was ordered in Jingo, he let himself be arrested. Sure, in the end he got away with it, but he took the consequences. Just letting himself be arrested probably changed the poltical landscape of the Circle Sea and Uberwald permanently. Because without consequences, freedom is meaningless.

[out-there-on-the-maroon]

This is not only one of the best character analysis I’ve read in some time, it managed to include REALLY GOOD PUNS into it, as the source material often does. 

I wanna print this off and put it on my shelf, goddamn.

[discworld-heritage-posts]

Discworld Heritage Post

[a-krogan-skald-and-bearsark]

It DEFINITELY changed the political landscape.

It’s also a sign of Vetinari’s success. Vetinari wants the City to WORK. And to keep working after he’s gone, and for that to happen, the Patrician cannot be a king in all but name, which is what had happened with Snapcase and Winder.

The moment Vimes arrest him is the moment that shows that in Ankh-Morpork nobody is above the law.

AND VIMES KNOWS THIS. He comments on this in Night Watch.

It’s an interesting parralel between Sam Vimes and his ancestor that they both invoked the law to remove their head of state, but in large part to Vetinari and Vimes work, when Sam did it they didn’t have to remove that head of states head. (They even call both of them ‘Old Stoneface’)

[elisabethdeep-blog]

Reread Equal Rites recently. I used to think it was about feminism and little girls getting the same opportunities as little boys. Which, it isn't not about that. But ALSO.

It's about an intersex kid.

It's about a little girl born with a staff.

And that's Not Right.

The adults in the room- her father, the 'medical professional'- attempt to remove the staff, by blade and by fire. The fresh little baby SCREAMS. So they agree to pretend it doesn't exist. She'll probably grow up just a regular little girl.

right?

But just around the onset of puberty..... it becomes apparent, not to her, but to the adults, that she's not going to be Regular.

The medical professional tries again to rectify matters. She tries to destroy the staff while the girl is unconscious. The girl screams. The adults give in. They aren't monsters.... but life will be so much harder, so much less foreseen, for this strange little girl....

They try to raise her 'right'.

If she won't be a conventional woman... maybe an unconventional woman. A Powerful woman- in the way that women can be powerful. Are permitted to be powerful.

But she's not a woman- she's a child. What will she be, when she's grown? A Witch. A Wizard. She can't be either. She can't be neither.

(The term 'warlock' is repeatedly invoked and scoffed. The etymology of 'warlock' is 'breaker of oaths'. Counter to the covenant. Rulebreaker.)

Right.

[sarah-ankh]

I think that's because he got it right on the one level where it counts:

"...And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.’

‘It’s a lot more complicated than that -’

‘No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts." -Granny Weatherwax in Carpe Jugulum.

[the-haiku-bot]

I think that’s because

he got it right on the one

level where it counts:

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[lyinar]

It's pretty much exactly like how he never intended how he handled Dwarf women to be such a powerful statement of support specifically for trans folk, it just happened completely naturally from thinking through the concept of riffing on Tolkien's in-universe "there only male Dwarves" misconception in LOTR and the cause Gimli attests for it, and eventually coming from there to realizing that maybe there are some Dwarfs who are annoyed that their culture defaults to 'present as male'.

Sir Pterry was a man who could be floored by people praising how much his specific and directed support meant because he was just coming at something close to their situation from such a fundamentally decent viewpoint that he lifted them out of darkness without even trying.

GNU Sir Terry Pratchett.

[frothlad]

"Fundamentally decent" sounds like it should be a basic epitaph, but it's one so many of us would like to live to up to that it marks an excellent, and aspirational, person.

[comicgeekscomicgeek]

I once saw someone here on tumblr describe Sir Pterry as having militant decency for how he demanded that we care about each other, yes, even those people. And those. And those.

And that seems right to me.

[aeshnacyanea2000]

The relationship between the University and the Patrician, absolute ruler and nearly benevolent dictator of Ankh-Morpork, was a complex and subtle one. The wizards held that, as servants of a higher truth, they were not subject to the mundane laws of the city. The Patrician said that, indeed, this was the case, but they would bloody well pay their taxes like everyone else. The wizards said that, as followers of the light of wisdom, they owed allegiance to no mortal man. The Patrician said that this may well be true but they also owed a city tax of two hundred dollars per head per annum, payable quarterly. The wizards said that the University stood on magical ground and was therefore exempt from taxation and anyway you couldn’t put a tax on knowledge. The Patrician said you could. It was two hundred dollars per capita; if per capita was a problem, decapita could be arranged. The wizards said that the University had never paid taxes to the civil authority. The Patrician said he was not proposing to remain civil for long. The wizards said, what about easy terms? The Patrician said he was talking about easy terms. They wouldn’t want to know about the hard terms. The wizards said that there was a ruler back in, oh, it would be the Century of the Dragonfly, who had tried to tell the University what to do. The Patrician could come and have a look at him if he liked. The Patrician said that he would. He truly would. In the end it was agreed that while the wizards of course paid no taxes, they would nevertheless make an entirely voluntary donation of, oh, let’s say two hundred dollars per head, without prejudice, mutatis mutandis, no strings attached, to be used strictly for non-militaristic and environmentally-acceptable purposes. It was this dynamic interplay of power blocs that made Ankh-Morpork such an interesting, stimulating and above all bloody dangerous place in which to live.* * Many songs have been written about the bustling metropolis, the most famous of course being: ‘Ankh-Morpork! Ankh-Morpork! So good they named it Ankh-Morpork!’, but others have included ‘Carry Me Away From Old Ankh-Morpork’, ‘I Fear I’m Going Back to Anhk-Morpork’ and the old favourite, ‘Ankh-Morpork Malady.’

-- Terry Pratchett - Reaper Man

[canvaswolfdoll]

something very fascinating about discworld as a setting is how the books are mostly set during a period of after

the color of magic and the light fantastic are set during the waning days of barbarian thug heroes. cohen and his cohorts are either old or dead, and the incoming generation isn't finding much profit in the hero business. tax fraud is more profitable than pillaging.

the mention of horrific wizard wars that are so old that even the aftermath of them are relegated to allusions instead of explicit description.

lancre is haunted by the spectre of black aliss, who never appears on screen and has been hansel and greteled by the time of granny and nanny being the witches of authority, and even they feel like their time coming to a close.[1]

uberwald is the remnants of a fallen evil empire.

ankh-morpork had kings, then despotic tyrants, but on page is governed bureaucratically by a man who, i will always argue, was working to ultimately get rid of his own job.

we are introduced to a city watch that has been defanged and recovering from several failed revolutions.

moist von lipwig is a reformed con man being forced to repair the damage done to public institutions by other con men, but we never truly see the shell games played by moist or others.

even small gods concerns itself with the reformation of a fire and brimstone religion.

basically, if epic fantasy is a party, discworld is the story of the people who have to clean up afterwards despite not being on the guest list for the event.

-

[1] the way that shepherds crown is not only an explicit conclusion to granny weatherwax's tenure, but quietly implies nanny receding from prominence herself is an aching sadness i wish pterry had the time to explore. tiffany is the person who arrives first to an empty but clean dance club.

[sarkywoman]

[asparklethatisblue]

The German book cover industry has been my sworn enemy since I was 11 years old. But just to demonstrate I want you to see this example of Pterry's Snuff, UK edition and German edition

look! a fun book cover and a beautiful illustration on its own merits, by Paul Kidby who did most of the novels and official art in later years.

now. same thing in Germany:

you understand

[derinthescarletpescatarian]

I thought I was prepared to scroll down and I wasn't. I wasn't prepared.

[discworldtour]

on Big Deal Moments in Discworld

Guards! Guards! has one of the first Big Deal Discworld moments for me, and I’m not very good at articulating what that means.

The moment I’m thinking of is the dragon’s speech to Wonse – “we were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. But…we never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.” That’s a passage that always makes me stop and reread it a couple of times. And it’s a small moment – it’s the only time we hear the dragon speak at all, and it’s a speech that has no bearing on the rest of the story. It could have been taken out of the book entirely and nothing would feel like it was missing. But the fact that it’s there is a Big Deal moment. The great big monstrous antagonist’s judgment of humanity is unavoidable in its accuracy.

And the Discworld series is full of moments like that. Sometimes it’s just one line, sometimes it’s a full scene, and most of the book is so full of shenanigans coming so quickly one after another that you don’t always see the Big Deal moments coming. We think of Pratchett as a humor/satire writer and yes, the books are hilarious, but in between the jokes are these Big Deal moments that casually rearrange our perspective and stick with us even after we think we’ve forgotten.

Then there are the other Big Deal Moments, that are Emotional Meteorite Strike Moments (e.g. the phrase “that is not my cow” can now instantly put me in the fetal position) but I’m having a hard enough time describing this one as it is so I’ll probably go on a tirade about those ‘round about that One Part in Feet of Clay. (You know the one.)

[poorlydescribedpterrybooks]

Suggestion: Reblog this with your favorite Big Deal Moment.

[discworldtour]

YES. It’s so fun hearing everyone’s Big Deal Moments! (although choosing just one is so hard…)

I think my favorite one changes, but right now it’s in Feet of Clay:

The vampire looked from the golem to Vimes.

“You gave one of them a voice?” he said.

“Yes,” said Dorfl. He reached down and picked up the vampire in one hand. “I Could Kill You,” he said. “This Is An Option Available To Me As A Free-Thinking Individual But I Will Not Do So Because I Own Myself And I Have Made A Moral Choice.”

“Oh, gods,” murmured Vimes under his breath.

“That’s blasphemy,” said the vampire.

He gasped as Vimes shot him a glance like sunlight. “That’s what people say when the voiceless speak.”

[badgerbee]

@copperbadge

[copperbadge]

All my Discworld books are packed, and usually I’m a City Watch guy, but the first moment like that for me, and still I think my favorite, was in the first Discworld book I read, Small Gods, where Didactylos the Ephebian philosopher is brought before the militant evangelist Omnian priest, Vorbis. 

Vorbis demands that Didactylos recant his claim that the world travels through space on the backs of four elephants who stand on the back of a giant turtle (which in Discworld is true). Vorbis insists that Didactylos agree that it is a sphere, as the Great God Om intended.

To all appearances, Didactylos easily and happily recants, saying something like “Sure, let it be a sphere” and Vorbis – for whom this is as much about humiliating Didactylos as it is about what’s “true” – decides to let him go. Didactylos gets all the way to the doorway before he turns, throws the lantern he carries into Vorbis’s face, and yells “NEVERTHELESS…THE TURTLE MOVES!” before legging it. 

I was thirteenish at the time and wrestling with religion, and I was familiar with Galileo and eppur si muove, but it’s never as satisfying for there to be a myth of a whisper when you want there to be a legend of a roar. Didactylos bashing Vorbis on the head and screaming the truth before beating feet was much, much more satisfying. And as someone who has never borne fools in power easily, it was an object lesson in how to do the thing. 

[telaryn-deactivated20221028]

There is so much I sympathize with, when it comes to Moist Von Lipwig, but if I had to cite a “big moment”, it’s when he’s deconstructing the idea of currency.

“But what’s worth more than gold?“ “Practically everything. You, for example. Gold is heavy. Your weight in gold is not very much gold at all. Aren’t you worth more than that?”

When you get your head around the idea that something’s worth is based on a subjectively agreed upon set of standards, it can rock your capitalist-based worldview right to the core.

He was also the first character to articulate what has kind of become a guiding philosophy for me:

“Make the change happen fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.”

[fandomsandfeminism]

There are so many for me, but the one that jumpstart out is death and Susan talking at the end of hogfather about the importance of believing in morality and goodness.

“Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.”

[fandomsandfeminism]

I want to add one more, because I just finished reading Raising Steam.

The bit where Moist literally throws himself under a train to save a pair of children had me in absolute tears.

A lot of that book is really good to be honest. This line is also really good. “That’s the trouble, you see. When you’ve had hatred on your tongue for such a long time, you don’t know how to spit it out.”

[bienmoreau]

One of the top ones for me is one that crops up a couple times and a quote/comment that I use in conversation frequently. I always remember it from in I Shall Wear Midnight;

‘What was it Granny Weatherwax had said once? ‘Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things.“

But of course it’s also in this conversation in Carpe Jugulum

Granny Weatherwax: “…And that’s what your holy men discuss, is it?” 
Mightily Oats: “Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin. for example.” 
Granny Weatherwax: “And what do they think? Against it, are they?” 
Mightily Oats: “It’s not as simple as that. It’s not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.” 
Granny Weatherwax:“Nope.” 
Mightily Oats: “Pardon?” 
Granny Weatherwax: “There’s no grays, only white that’s got grubby. I’m surprised you don’t know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That’s what sin is.” 
Mightily Oats: “It’s a lot more complicated than that–” 
Granny Weatherwax: “No. It ain’t. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they’re getting worried that they won’t like the truth. People as things, that’s where it starts.” 
Mightily Oats: “Oh, I’m sure there are worse crimes–”
 Granny Weatherwax: “But they starts with thinking about people as things…”

•People as things•

[puzzleaddictyomz]

I always loved the line from the Hogfather mentioned above, but one that usually sticks out more to me from the same book is Susan’s reminder that “Someone should do something” isn’t at all helpful if you’re not gonna end it with “and that someone is me” because nothing gets done if everyone just sits around thinking “someone should fix this” but no one actually gets up and tries to fix it I’ll also add another one of my favorites from Feet of Clay which is “Someone’s got to speak for them that have no voices” [I’m probably misquoting slightly but that’s the core of it] and on a larger scale is that the same book gives a voice to one of those voiceless- instead of JUST speaking for [over] them, one of the voiceless gets a voice of their own and a platform to speak from which is so important on so many levels

[the-tao-of-fandom]

“A watchman is a civilian, you inbred streak of piss!’

Just like that, in one angry  line, Commander Sam Vimes defines what a police officer is and by extension how they should act. A watchman is not a soldier, and therefor can (should) never act like one.

[discworld-heritage-posts]

Discworld Heritage Post

[prismatic-bell]

I can’t currently grab my book because there is a cat on me and I can’t sit up, but mine is from Going Postal and it’s someone accusing Moist of murder, and he’s like “no, I was just a small-time conman!” And they’re like “sure. You only stole the money people needed to live, not their lives themselves” and calls him out on the actual consequences of his actions and how what to him was just a lark was a death sentence for the impoverished people he conned.

[punxsutawneyphyllis]

Mr. Pump!

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” shouted Moist. “You can’t just go around killing people!”

“Why Not? You Do.” The golem lowered his arm.

“What?” snapped Moist. “I do not! Who told you that?”

“I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People,” said the golem calmly.

“I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be–– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!”

“No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.”

[prismatic-bell]

That’s the one.

[cunked]

lol

[mrskayathefrog]

the main thing I remember about Rincewind and women is that a bunch of scantily clad women on a tropical island offered him delights beyond his wildest dreams, and assumed they meant potatoes. He was so utterly convinced that they meant potatoes that the strength of his desire transported him back to Ankh-Morepork, where he got some potatoes and ate TWO of CMOT Dibbler's sausage-inna-buns. and lived.

[discworld-heritage-posts]

Discworld Heritage Post

[blurds]

Terry Pratchett started his career as a crypto-monarchist and ended up the most consistently humane writer of his generation.  He never entirely lost his affection for benevolent dictatorship, and made a few classic colonial missteps along the way, but in the end you’d be hard pressed to find a more staunchly feminist, anti-racist, anti-classist, unsentimental and clear-sighted writer of Old White British Fantasy.  

The thing I love about Terry’s writing is that he loved - loved - civil society.  He loved the correct functioning of the social contract.  He loved technology, loved innovation, but also loved nature and the ways of living that work with and through it.   He loved Britain, but hated empire (see “Jingo”) - he was a ruralist who hated provincialism, a capitalist who hated wealth, an urbanist who reveled in stories of pollution, crime and decay.  He was above all a man who loved systems, of nature, of thought, of tradition and of culture.  He believed in the best of humanity and knew that we could be even better if we just thought a little more.

As a writer: how skillful, how prolific, how consistent.  The yearly event of a new Discworld book has been a part of my life for more than two decades, and in that barrage of material there have been so few disappointments, so many surprises… to come out with a book as fresh and inspired as “Monstrous Regiment” as the 31st novel in your big fantasy series?  Ludicrous.  He was just full of treasure.  What a thing to have had, what a thing to have lost.

In the end, he set a higher standard, as a writer and as a person.  He got better as he learned, and he kept learning, and there was no “too late” or “too hard” or “I can’t be bothered to do the research.”  He just did the work.  I think in his memory the best thing we can do is to roll up our sleeves and do the same.

[some-triangles]

This post seems to be making the rounds again so here it is on the word blog

[odonata523]

GNU Terry Pratchett

[discworld-heritage-posts]

Discworld Heritage Post