I'm not a natural killer! See this? See what it says? I'm supposed to keep the peace, I am! If I kill people to do it, I'm reading the wrong manual!
Jingo

oozey mess

@theartofmadeline

Origami Around
Claire Keane

Discoholic đȘ©
Mike Driver

ç„æ„ / Permanent Vacation
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Sweet Seals For You, Always

Love Begins
One Nice Bug Per Day

JVL

#extradirty
Three Goblin Art
Misplaced Lens Cap
Not today Justin
d e v o n

No title available

izzy's playlists!

JBB: An Artblog!
seen from United States
seen from Germany

seen from United Kingdom

seen from Germany

seen from United States

seen from Germany
seen from Netherlands

seen from Germany

seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Argentina

seen from United Kingdom

seen from France

seen from United States
seen from Germany

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from Germany

seen from United States

seen from United Kingdom
@la-niolue
I'm not a natural killer! See this? See what it says? I'm supposed to keep the peace, I am! If I kill people to do it, I'm reading the wrong manual!
Jingo
Putting up a statue to someone who tried to stop a war is not very, um, statuesque. Of course, if you had butchered five hundred of your own men out of arrogant carelessness, we'd be melting the bronze already.
Jingo
"You can't arrest the commander of an army!"
"Actually, Mr. Vimes, I think we could," said Carrot. "And the army, too. I mean, I don't see why we can't. We could charge them with behavior likely to cause a breach of the peace, sir. I mean, that's what warfare is."
Jingo
In theory, because of the nature of L-space, absolutely everything was available to him, but that only meant that it was more or less impossible to find whatever it was you were looking for, which is the purpose of computers.
The Last Continent
Someone might have said, âItâs just books! Books arenât dangerous!â But even ordinary books are dangerous, and not only the ones like Make Gelignite the Professional Way.Â
A man sits in some museum somewhere and writes a harmless book about political economy and suddenly thousands of people who havenât even read it are dying because the ones who did havenât got the joke. Knowledge is dangerous, which is why governments often clamp down on people who can think thoughts above a certain caliber.
The Last Continent
Logic is a wonderful thing but doesnât always beat actual thought.
The Last Continent
He was not going to be found wanting when duty called. He did not intend to be found at all.
The Last Continent
Historians have pointed out that it is in times of plenty that people feel like going to war. In times of famine theyâre simply trying to find enough to eat. When theyâve just enough to go round they tend to be polite. But when a banquet is spread before them, itâs time to argue over the place settings.
The Last Continent
"At this time! In this place!" đȘ»đ„ Happy Glorious 25th of May to those who celebrate. GNU Terry Pratchett
âUse your gifts and your talents to greatest possible effect while you can. Spread joy wherever possible. Laugh at jokes. Tell jokes. Make puns and bugger the embuggerances. Read books. Read my books. You might like them. You might find something else you like even more than them. Look for these things in life.
Question authority. Champion good causes. Speak out against injustice. Do not tolerate bullies or bigots or racists or anti-intellectuals or the narrow-minded. Use your education to challenge them. Broaden their perspectives. Make the world you interface with a happier place.
These are your choices. Choices you have been fortunate to have been given, so donât waste them while you have them. Donât look back in years to come and wish you had grasped a fleeting opportunity. Grasp it now with both hands, Live. Strive. Love.â
from A Little Advice for Life taken from âTerry Pratchett: from birth to death, a writer.â
âSir Terry Pratchett; April 28, 1948 â March 12, 2015
One of the greatest compliments I've ever received is that I resemble Sam Vimes.
Mind how you go.
Happy birthday to Sir Terry. Mind how you go.
a BRILLIANT read, and even more incentive for me to make my own wizards trope-defying and excellent.
God itâs fascinating to look at the timestamp on this one and then realize that Pratchett went on to write his Witches Series and Granny Weatherwax, whoâs strong and fierce and brilliant and austere and so achingly, bitterly, intensely good. I think Granny Weatherwax would give Gandalf a hard look and Gandalf would remember he had a very urgent appointment three shires away and stroll off really fast.Â
Holy fuck, everybody go read this right now.Â
Pratchett is one of the people whose work is not only hilarious, but legitimately brilliant. I learned so much from reading his books. Even this talk is peppered with the kind of thing that makes you snort out loud and get stared at by coworkers:Â
No wonder witches were always portrayed as toothless â it was living in a 90,000 calorie house that did it. Youâd hear a noise in the night and itâd be the local kids, eating the doorknob.
And he fucking nails the witch/wizard dichotomy. Wizards = wise, powerful, organized, educated; witches = crones who give you warts. The Tiffany Aching series addresses this directly, as do the regular Discworld books focusing on the Lancre witches. Like Roach says, Granny Weatherwax is achingly, bitterly, intensely good, and thatâs partly because sheâs constantly aware of how easy it would be to be bad. How someone has to do the mucky jobs and help the obnoxious and stupid and never, ever take credit for anything you didnât do; how the hardest thing is to stay balanced just on the edge between extremes, maintain that equilibrium, do what needs to be done no matter how awful or difficult it may be. Wizards never have to think about this. They just forge straight ahead, eating big dinners and squabbling amongst themselves and taking their power for granted.
Come to think of it, thatâs one of the most significant divisions of power in Discworld: the men all gang up into this big elitist mob and loll around indolently, specifically not doing magic. Their magic is so powerful and dangerous that itâs a better use of their time to all keep each other down, all the wizard books basically revolve around âOh no, someoneâs doing magic, weâd better stomp them flat and then go home for second breakfastâ. They keep the world from turning inside out but not much more than that, and theyâre kind of a bunch of assholes about it too. Meanwhile the witches are just grimly slogging along, delivering babies and rousting out vampires and changing compresses, like, they stake out territories and then take care of everyone in it⊠while everyone still thinks that wizards are respectable and witches are shady.Â
The line about equal rites killed me, though. The insightful commentary (on the internet no less) here helped buffer that.
Discworld Heritage Post
Itâs the difference between status and value. Who does the necessary work, and who takes the credit. Who the world would actually fall apart without, and who reaps the rewards of being considered important.
Thereâs gender in it, but shades of poor-and-rich as well.
Whatâs marvellous I think here is that Pratchettâs criticism of Le Guin, on Earthsea, was made in 1985 - and in 1990, she wrote Tehanu, which is a fantastic indictment of the sexism and misogyny of the earlier Earthsea books. Doesnât meant she saw this, she probably didnât - her own unease with the earlier Earthsea books was evident in other places - but itâs what Pratchett himself is saying, reality creates fantasy creates reality.
Terry being brilliant, and read the comments.
Rincewind the Wizzard is literature's most... best... um... hang on. I know this one.
Ah, right, yes. Rincewind is literature's most average man reluctantly stuck in extraordinary times.
This is usually not his fault. He does not want to be here. But events (and seemingly everyone else) conspire to put Rincewind somewhere just long enough to take in the scenery as he runs away.
Technically speaking, Rincewind is the Disc's ultimate tourist. Not by choice, of course. But he has been, well, everywhere of note. The counterweight continent, Fourecks, even the Dungeon Dimensions. He even didn't volunteer to go to the moon!
As a literary device for world building, Rincewind is brilliant in conception and execution. His eventual title as Professor of Cruel and Unusual Geography is well earned. He has (briefly) seen almost the entire Discworld and has fled (rapidly) from almost all of its peoples while screaming in their own language (because the cultural distinctions are very important). And since we were with him on those adventures, we got to see those places and meet those peoples as well.
As a HERO, he is sorely lacking. Or, at least, he thinks he is. So does everyone else, for that matter. But when the chips are down, and there is literally no one else the world can turn to, Rincewind will save the day. He will complain the entire time, but he'll do it. When it comes down to nothing else, the Disc still turns because at some point, Rincewind will stick a half-brick in a sock and do some damage.
He has had help, of course. Twoflower helped him get into several... deadly situations. The Luggage has... contributed. Cohen has also... gotten Rincewind nearly killed a few times. Most to blame, perhaps, is the Lady; the goddess that favors Rincewind as a playing piece. It's no small tragedy that the woman who pays the most attention to Rincewind often does not have his own wants or well-being at the forefront of her mind.
But it has led to some interesting complications in Rincewind's life. More specifically, his lifettimer. Death keeps it on his desk as an oddity. Not even the Grim Reaper knows when Rincewind might die. This has led to an at least passingly cordial relationship between the two, as Rincewind IS notionally a Wizard and can therefore see Death.
Yes, a Wizard who can't do magic. Who can run like the wind. Who has saved the world at least three times, and been at least recently present for a few others. Who can speak almost every language on the Disc (or scream in it). He's been over the edge, and under the elephants, and to Cori Celeste and to the dawn of creation and to dimensions of terror and may even make it, somehow, to the end of the world.
And if he does, you can be sure he will be running in whatever direction is available to him. And if there are none? Well, the world will not be ending that day, because if you absolutely force him to, Rincewind the Wizzard will find a way to make it to tomorrow.
And, like anyone else confronted with extraordinary circumstances, he will absolutely let you know just how unhappy he is every fleeting step of the way.
Mustrum Ridcully (the Brown, but never to his face), Archchacellor of Unseen University, is literature's best and most astoundingly successful wrong man for the job.
Some context is important. Before ascending to the highest level of leadership within the Disc's premiere magical establishment for learning, the position of the Archchancellor was filled by whomever had successfully assassinated the previous occupant. The quickest way to move up in the world, literally speaking, was to make sure someone else dropped by an average of six feet. Of course, this led to a lot of power-hungry madmen who were convinced they could control the Forces Man Was Not Meant To Know, many of whom died with remarkably similar facial expressions when they were inevitably proven wrong.
Then along comes Mustrum. Unlike many wizards, he is an outdoorsman. He is loud. He is physically strong. He is a mountain man in a pointy hat who believes in keeping rare species rare by hunting them (and everything else he meets along the way). He is a sportsman and, generally, considered to be exhausting by the rest of the faculty.
He is also, seemingly, impossible to dispose of by the usual methods. On top of everything else, Mustrum Ridcully is a very powerful wizard. By the age of 27, he was a Seventh Level Wizard (out of Eight), and that was quite some time ago. Still, in a building of magical Oppenheimers and Einsteins, he is Theodore Roosevelt; loud, boorish, and utterly unmovable.
He has a one-track mind, and on that track runs the Ridcully Freight Train. He can focus like the sun through a magnifying glass when he wants to. He is not Stupid, but he can be a bit Daft. He would fight to the front of the line to push the button labelled 'Do Not Press, Ends World' before the paint can dry. As such, he can occasionally end up in situations no self-respecting Dumbledore or Gandalf would, but no one with half a brain would mention such things aloud for fear of being brought along on his next hunting trip or fishing expedition.
He mostly concerns himself with University affairs, taking particular glee in any legal motions a given idiot might attempt to bring against it. They have a whole pond full of people who have tried to sue the University, you see. But he also understands that the wizards, in order to be left to their own devices, should leave the world to all of the other devices.
Rare are the times when Ridcully NEEDS to step in to save the day. In fact, he never actually DOES so in any of the books. Certainly, he helps out. Does a thing here or provides a bit of information there. Despite this, however, there is never any doubt that were it absolutely required, Ridcully COULD end basically any conflict in the books with a pocket full of fireballs (9 times out of 10, anyway). That he does not, and that no one ever asks him to, speaks to the wisdom of the man and the face he shows to the world.
All the previous Archchancellors would have demanded to shape history and show off their power, you see. And they did.
But compared to his peers and especially previous holders of his job, Mustrum Ridcully is an extreme outlier and total oddity, but he is also the only Archchancellor of the UU to hold to job for more than one book. Obviously, it was the other Archchancellors who were wrong.
And Mustrum Ridcully is certainly the wrong man for the job. Here's hoping he keeps it forever.
Some PTerry quotes that feel especially salient at the moment:
"He asked you to shoot at people who werenât shooting back,â growled Vimes, striding forward, âThat makes him insane, wouldnât you say?â
âThey are throwing stones, Sarge,â said Colon.
âSo? Stay out of range. Theyâll get tired before we do."
- Night Watch
Odd thing, ain't it... you meet people one at a time, they seem decent, they got brains that work, and then they get together and you hear the voice of the people. And it snarls.
- Jingo
It always embarrassed Samuel Vimes when civilians tried to speak to him in what they thought was âpoliceman.â If it came to that, he hated thinking of them as civilians. What was a policeman, if not a civilian with a uniform and a badge? But they tended to use the term these days as a way of describing people who were not policemen. It was a dangerous habit: once policemen stopped being civilians the only other thing they could be was soldiers.
- Snuff
The poor devils. They thought a king would make them free.
- Feet of Clay
Beating people up in little roomsâŠhe knew where that led. And if you did it for a good reason, youâd do it for a bad one. You couldnât say âweâre the good guysâ and do bad-guy things. Sometimes the watching watchman inside every good copperâs head could use an extra pair of eyes.
- Thud!
Every time I give in to despair I read a Pratchett book. Well, when one is available near me.
Because those books are full of anger at the world and the state it's in. Real, actual, barely-concealed beneath clever puns anger. It's a rage, not the pretty "i'm mad" calligraphied in the page in white ink. It's something like "I'm angry and you should be, too" scribbled in red ink over the pages.
But these books are so kind. So hopeful. And it's not mindless kindness, either. It's not "I'm kind until it's not easy or convenient to be anymore". It's actual kindness from people who are angry but turn that into fierce, deliberate, stubborn kindness. And of course you can despair but you can also turn it into anger and then the kind of fierce kindness that you can change the world with.
These books were so important for me growing up, still are. I literally wouldn't be the same person without them. And I reread Night Watch today, as one does, and the terrible fairness of Sam Vimes struck me. The world is a terrible, unfair place, he said, and I'm not participating in that. I'm not adding misery to it. I'm gonna be fair and I'm gonna be good if it kills me. (the same goes, of course, with Granny. It's about choosing to be good. It's about being good if it kills you. It's about desperately hoping and never letting go)
Truth, Justice, Freedom, Reasonably-Priced Love and a Hard-Boiled Egg. And by gods if we aren't going to fight to get it.
Damn! Damn! Damn! Every year he forgot. Well, no. He never forgot. He just put the memories away like old silverware that you didnât want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart.