Also I need everyone to know that humans are just as ecologically important to the wilderness as wolves
We break the shells of invasive species in coral reefs with hammers, shoot invasive fish with guns and feed them to sharks, pick up cigarette butts off the ground, plant native plants where they never would have flourished naturally, create captive breeding programs for release in zoos, hunt deer and other game where there are no natural predators, make laws banning whale fishing, and a billion other small and large attempts to garden nature into a more hospitable place
It's true we caused a lot of the problems we help solve but like. Wolves kill cattle and people as well. They kill other wolves. It's okay that we're flawed as a species, we're trying. We're just animals too. Have compassion for the anxious monkey.
It's been years since I've read a Discworld novel and I don't remember what the actual plot of The Shepherd's Crown was.
What I do remember is fucking sobbing in my bathtub because of how obvious Pratchett made it that he was aware his time was coming and he wanted to face his own mortality, and did so by taking Granny Weatherwax with him.
For those who don't know Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimer's eight years before he died, and advocated for the legalization of medically assisted suicide. He was open about how he struggled with Alzheimer's, and how he wanted to die while he was still himself.
I don't remember the plot of the book, but I do remember Granny Weatherwax cleaning her home, taking a bath and dressing in her finest clothes, then altering her "I ATE'NT DEAD" sign to say "I IS PROBLY DEAD" before laying down to pass away.
I remember Death greeting her with a kind judgement when he came to reap her soul.
FOR I CAN SEE THE BALANCE AND YOU HAVE LEFT THE WORLD MUCH BETTER THAN YOU FOUND IT, AND IF YOU ASK ME, said Death, NOBODY COULD DO ANY BETTER THAN THAT.
Like, it's so glaringly obvious that Pratchett was expressing that control he craved over his own end. Dying with dignity and leaving a positive impact on the world. Granny Weatherwax knew it was her time and took every detailed preparation she could. I think Pratchett did the same with the Shepherd's Crown.
âwhere Nobby went wrong was in thinking small. He sidled into places and pinched things that werenât worth much. If only heâd sidled into continents and stolen entire cities, slaughtering many of the inhabitants in the process, heâd have been a pillar of the community.â
âPeople said that there was one law for the rich and one law for the poor, but it wasnât true. There was no law for those who made the law, and no law for the incorrigibly lawless.â
âThatâs how politics works in this city. Itâs a game of chess. Who cares if a few pawns die?â
âStupid men are often capable of things the clever would not dare to contemplateâ
âI'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!â
âBut we might go to war to keep some damn island that's only useful in case we have to go to war, right?â
âTheft was the only crime, whether the loot was gold, innocence, land or life.â
âIâve got to remember that. This isnât a war. This is a crime.â
âAnd, of course, any citizen has the right to bear arms. Bear that in mind, please.â âArms is one thing. Holding weapons in âem and playing soldiers is another.â
I really love Hogfather by Terry Pratchett, and not just for the Terry Pratchett of it all.
I love it because it actually fully articulates the message that has filled a hundred thousand holiday movies at this point, and that is that it is important to believe in things. It's important that you believe in things starting as early as possible.
(Also that your revenge against the greedy and compassionless evils of the world must be ruthless, violent and funny, which also crops up in a surprising number of Christmas movies.)
Usually the Christmas movie stops at the feel-good point of rewarding someone for believing.
But Pterry went deeper into that meat and actually full on explained that we need to believe in things, especially good things, when we're children. We need to believe in the grandeur and the meaningfulness in the otherwise clockwork mechanics of the universe because it's practice for adulthood as much as learning facts and nuance is. Belief is a story we tell ourselves, and everything we tell ourselves about reality as adults is, to a greater or lesser extent, a story based on whatever information we have. Reality shapes fantasy but, and this is key, fantasy also shapes reality, like water in a jug.
So it's very important we get into the habit of telling good stories. Of believing they must be true. Because that will, inevitably, shape how we view and interact with the real world and the people in it.
After I read Hogfather, so many of those other cutesy, twee, feel-good, tearjerker movies actually started to make so much more sense, in a deeper way, than they ever had before.
I'm not saying that I'm right but here's my theory:
So there's been a lot of discourse regarding why this shot is reversed. We all assume (probably correctly) that Guillermo Del Toro is too smart for this to be a mistake. It ate at me too but I didn't have a theory. Until now.
Last night I saw a user on here make a post about the use of mirrors in the film. So I watched the movie again tonight and paid particular attention to the use of mirrors, making sure to notice the scenes, and stories and characters, and the general themes at the times they were used.
And it started to remind me of something.
I started thinking about The Last Jedi. About how that film tackled perception and that part of its focus was on how perception can shape us and our beliefs.
So here's my theory on the use of mirrors and the reversed image at the end of Frankenstein:
All through the movie we are seeing the Creature through the perception of others, for good and for bad. Even when we are in the Creature's Tale we are still seeing how others see him, and we are seeing his assumptions about others. His story isn't just about revenge and about seeking love. It's also about knowing who he is. And this isn't just literal. It goes beyond him learning he's made from corpses. It's the most fundamental existential question we all have: Who am I and why am I here?
At the end of the film his vengeance is spent. He has made peace with his creator. He walks out to the sun and embraces its warmth. For the first time as his OWN person. Free from the perception of others.
I think this is why the image is reversed. It's saying: I am me now, whatever that is, whatever it may be. I am me.
Sooo I have some textual evidence to support this theory*. I too have been thinking about this image flipping thing for days now (honestly it's been bothering me ever since I first watched the movie, and op's was the first post I came across that addressed it, so thank you! It made me go back and rewatch the movie, and in particular some specific scenes). Anyway, so I found some things that support the "mirror and me" theory, and then I have additional thoughts about the filmmaking/narrative technique that del Toro used. Enough background, here's the further evidence - and, fair warning, this is going to be long:
Firstly, in Victor's Tale, when Victor is shaving the Creature's head and he keeps looking at the mirror - that's the first time the Creature is seeing himself (timestamp 1:08:57). So, in his own perception, that is how his own face looks, with the three forehead scars diverging from the scar on the right temple rather than the left (as is in reality).
You can zoom in and see him looking at himself, studying himself, with wonder. Victor already seems frustrated, and is constantly forcing him to orient his head in a specific way, which means that the Creature has been trying to study the image in the mirror repeatedly. So we can conclude that he has formed his self-image in his head, and this is how he looks to himself in his mind.
Sidebar: in the original novel, the 1818 version**, when the Creature first looks at himself, it's in a river, and he is repulsed by his own reflection:
"I had admired the perfect forms of my cottagersâtheir grace, beauty, and delicate complexions: but how was I terrified, when I viewed myself in a transparent pool! At first I started back, unable to believe that it was indeed I who was reflected in the mirror; and when I became fully convinced that I was in reality the monster that I am, I was filled with the bitterest sensations of despondence and mortification. Alas! I did not yet entirely know the fatal effects of this miserable deformity." (Shelley 104-5)
Here, the Creature looks at himself for the first time, and because he already has knowledge of humanity, he is repulsed; his self-image in his mind, how he saw himself in his mind's eye, does not match the reflection he is seeing, and so he is repulsed by himself. This is in contrast to del Toro's version, where the Creature is 'brought up' (for a small time) by Victor and is discovering himself without any such repulsions. So, his own self-image in his mind, informed by his reflection in the mirror, is normalized (as far as it can be; it's not as huge of a shock as it is in the book).
Secondly, in Creature's Tale, when he escapes from the tower and enters the forest for the first time, the shot is flipped. This is the first time shot-flipping happens (the second and only other time we see a flipped shot is at the very end, the screenshot op attached above). The timestamps are: 1:31:05-1:31:48.
As you can see in the screenshots, the scars are flipped. Nowhere else in the movie does this flipping happen again (except at the end). This is the first time the Creature is exploring the world on his own, and it is him telling the story here, with no one else present to perceive or see him. So, in his own telling of the story, because in these parts, no one else is present, we are seeing the scenes from the Creature's POV only (basically we are seeing his narrativised memories), and because in his mind, he is exactly as the mirror shows him, the image is flipped*. When he picks up the skull and compares it to himself, then too we are seeing as he sees himself.
As op wrote:
"Even when we are in the Creature's Tale, we are still seeing him how others see him..."
In isolation, unburdened by others' perception of him, or their characterization of him as a monster, this is how the Creature sees himself moving through the world. When any other individual (human or animal) is present, the narrative shifts to an omniscient camera, and we see the Creature as he is in reality (within the story's world), but in these two scenes, when he is completely alone, the narrative is from his own POV, and we see the flipped scars (a counterargument could be his escape scene from the tower, where also he is totally alone, but there we can argue that it's the omniscient camera operating and not subjective camera).
So, the final shot of the film being this flipped image of the Creature is as he is seeing himself, standing before the sun, free and forgiven, now able to be who he wants to be, unperceived or uninfluenced by any other individual's perception.
Here's further analysis (see: convoluted overanalysis) of the filmmaking/narrative technique, and more on the omniscient and subjective camera, under the cut. You can skip this, I'm just rambling atp.
The Creature's Tale is titled as such, but unlike the book where the Creature narrates his own story and only tells what he himself knows or has seen, in the movie, we are seeing a mix of what the Creature has seen/experienced, and what those around him have seen. This includes those scenes where William tells Victor he is the monster, or where we see Victor buying ammo and milk as he sets out to hunt the Creature (maybe Victor spoke in between and filled in the gap, idk out of guilt maybe). So, even though the parts are titled Victor's Tale and Creature's Tale, they don't necessarily reflect events as perceived solely by Victor or Creature. If that was so, there would've been another title card once the Creature ended, titled the Epilogue or something, and then the last part would've begun. Instead, we're seeing the story as told by an omniscient camera. Essentially, the title cards are indicating whom the story is about (and the movie is therefore divided into two main parts, two main stories, one of the creator and one of the creation), and the narrative includes all the events that are required to show the story to the audience. It's an omniscient camera, but one whose lens is, sometimes, influenced or subjectivised by the character it is capturing - which is how we see Victor's dreams, and the Creature's own view of himself.
In the book, Victor tells Walton of his own life, and then within that narrative, the Creature's narrative occurs, in which the Creature produces documents to support his own claims; Victor then tells the rest of the story, and towards the end of the book**, Walton is basically live-blogging, as he keeps writing letters in his journal to his sister of what is happening, with it all culminating in his own encounter with the Creature, who grieves Victor and then leaves. So the whole book is a bunch of letters to Walton's sister Mary Saville (MWS), and from a more broader viewpoint, all the letters are for the reader. In the film, del Toro is doing the same thing. As we, the readers, hold the book Frankenstein in our hands, told from the frame narrative of Robert Walton but telling the full story of Victor Frankenstein and his Creature, similarly the film Frankenstein begins from the frame narrative of Robert Walton and then proceeds to tell the complete story of Victor Frankenstein and his Creature.
Only, towards the end of the film, the focal character is the Creature, as he sees himself. And so the shot is flipped - it shows the Creature's perception of himself.
In the book, towards the end, the Creature says:
"You hate me; but your abhorrence cannot equal that with which I regard myself." (Shelley 215)
Remember his earlier surprise at seeing himself in the river - he was surprised because in his own mind, he did not look as his reflection showed him, and as others saw him, monstrous and evil; now, towards the end, his self-image is aligned to that reflection, and he too considers himself hideous and hates himself, and so promises to kill himself in the last paragraphs of the book.
del Toro's Creature, on the other hand, sees himself not as monstrous or evil, but as just another being on the Earth who has to live. And so, now fully free from the burden of his own existence or any guilt, this Creature looks to the sun and, as op said, embraces its warmth.
*I should confess here that even though I just wrote all this shit above, I am not a 100% sold on the whole idea of the flipped shots as intentional and having deeper symbolic significance (only 40% sold). It could just be that these specific shots looked better flipped, and so they were flipped. It might just be a logistics thing. del Toro himself said he loves accidents that happen during filmmaking, so he might've done this flipping to see how the shots looked from this perspective (and these shots were easier to flip, since there's no text in them nor any other characters whose movements might appear strange). After finalizing the flipped shots, we can then explain the reason behind them by using the mirror and everything. If it was just the final shot flipped, I might've been 80-90% sold on the intentionality, but because some of the forest shots are also flipped, my skepticism rises. But I do love op's theory and analysis of the mirror and explanation of the flipping.
**I'm quoting from the 1818 text here, because that's the one I have handy right now, and it's the one I reread just before watching the movie. I'm planning on rereading the 1831 text eventually, but for now, this is the one I have. It's the Penguin Classics edition.
"At her very point of origin, Shelley traded her life with that of her own mother. For less than two weeks she rested in the maternal arms before losing her mother to the grave.
Her only visitations were to her grave, and her joy was forever tainted by her pain and that most essential severance. Her origin was death and life her curse. Like her creature, she experienced the pain and steeled herself and found, in the learning of words, the only way to sing about her loneliness.
Much tragedy was to befall her, more than most contemporary minds could bear. It is entirely understandable that she might have believed herself accursed. Most everyone she loved, she lost, and posterity has never offered consolation to the artist. She has always impressed me in a way similar to how the BrontĂŤ sisters impress me: Most people would like to travel in time to meet great statesmen or explorers. I would love to travel back to contemplate life with these remarkable womenâto hear them speak, to walk by their side on cold beaches or moors and under impossibly steely skies. For I was born in a sunny place in the middle of a sunny country, but within me I had a kinship to the same spirit that animated their melancholy and art.
I had seen Whaleâs film, and I saw Shelleyâs novel in the form of a Spanish paperback from Bruguera (my go-to dark fiction publisher in the late sixties, early seventies). Being an import, the book was not cheap. I saved my Sunday allowance for a couple of weeks and bought it. I read it in one sitting, and by the end of it, I was weeping. It was my Road to Damascus. It illuminated the reason I loved monsters, my kinship with them, and showed me how deep, how life-changing, a monster parable could beâhow it could function as art and how it could reach across distance and time and become a palliative to solitude and pain.
And here we are, two centuries later, faithfully depositing flowers to this most exquisite storyteller, this extraordinary Galatea who refused to be shaped by her circumstance
and gave us all life. And we try, in return, to help her creature stay alive. We strive to turn a curse into a blessing.
We hope that in some way, somehow, our gratitude, our love, can reach him like a whispered prayer, like a distant song. And we dream that perhaps he can stopâamid the
frozen tundra and the screaming windâand can turn his head and look back. At us.
And we hope that then he might recognize in our eyes his own yearning. And that perchance we can walk toward each other and find meager warmth in our embrace.
And then, if only for a moment, we will not feel alone in the world."
-- Guillermo del Toro, in his introduction to The New Annotated Frankenstein
Of course it had to be this way. Of course. of course.
If Victor Frankenstein is the shitty, abusive parent, of course the Creature has to be the abused and neglected child but by God, did GdT commit.
He did not have to go this hard.
He did not have to film Jacob Elordi like that, curling in on himself, folding all his miles-long limbs up into the fetal position because no one else will hold him. Watching a leaf float away, out of his cold, dark prison, with nothing short of wonder. Gazing at the camera with his big, soulful eyes. Meeting a wild and dangerous creature and gently feeding it a berry.
Being able to speak only one word, the most important one, Victor, because this - his father - is the only thing in the world to him.
And of course Victor, tragically commonly unequipped to handle the responsibility of parenthood, resents him for it. He built the Creature from the ground, exactly as he wanted, carefully chose every bone, every muscle, every neuron in his body. And yet, when he comes to life, when he breathes, and moves, and needs, Victor recoils. All his hard work, the toiling that drove him to near insanity, was only just the beginning. But this, this slow caretaking, this is different: there's no glory in it. Not the excitement of discovery, not the grandiosity of defying God and nature. This work is repetitive, frustrating, exhausting, and Victor very quickly tires of it.
I do not need to explain the metaphor.
This is usually where the story turns around and says, well, it can't be denied that the Creature is horrible to look at. He is violent and dangerous. Victor may have failed but really, can we blame him?
Well. Yes we can.
GdT certainly thinks so, as he cradles the Creature in his arms and tells him, You're perfect, you have never done anything wrong. I have seen people say that this Creature is too sympathetic, the film lacks subtlety and nuance, but damn, don't we need this. Don't we need to fully and unequivocally sympathise with that which is labeled grotesque, and don't we need to condemn people who fail in their responsibility to those under their care.
Small gods is a masterpiece and one of the most important moments in it deserves more attention.
I think this exchange gets overlooked a lot because it happens right before the big climax, but I think it shows the basic principle of the book boiled down to its most essential core. The importants of humanity and view people as people.
"Think logically, will you?" he said. "You're a philosopher, aren't you? Look at the crowd!"
Urn looked at the crowd.
"Well?"
"They don't like it,." Simony turned. "Look, Brutha's going to die anyway. But this way it'll mean something. People don't understand, really understand, about the shape of the universe and all that stuff, but they'll remember what Vorbis did to a man. Right? We can make Brutha's death a symbol for people, don't you see?"
Urn stared at the distant figure of Brutha. It was naked, except for a loin-cloth.
"A symbol?" he said. His throat was dry.
"It has to be."
He remembered Didactylos saying the world was a funny place. And, he thought distantly, it really was. Here people were about to roast someone to death, but they'd left his loin-cloth on, out of respectability. You had to laugh.
Otherwise you'd go mad.
"You know," he said, turning to Simony. "Now I know Vorbis is evil. He burned my city. Well, the Tsorteans do it sometimes, and we burn theirs. It's just war. It's all part of history. And he lies and cheats and claws power for himself, and lots of people do that, too. But do you know what's special? Do you know what it is?"
"Of course," said Simony. "It's what he's doing to-â
"It's what he's done to you."
"What?"
"He turns other people into copies of himself."
Simony's grip was like a vice. "You're saying I'm like him?"
"Once you said you'd cut him down," said Urn.
"Now you're thinking like him . . .
"So we rush them, then?" said Simony. "I'm sure of-maybe four hundred on our side. So I give the signal and a few hundred of us attack thousands of them? And he dies anyway and we die too? What difference does that make?"
Urn's face was gray with horror now.
"You mean you don't know?" he said.
Some of the crowd looked round curiously at him.
"You don't know?" he said.
This is such a profoundly important part of the message of small gods, it's what makes Vorbis that monster that he is and what makes Brutha the man that he is.
The thing that Simony cannot understand, and that Vorbis never did is summed up best by granny Weatherwax in Carpe Jugulum
'There's no greys, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, iswhen 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.'
Simony just sees Brutha as a martyr, a tool to strenghten his rebellion and rally around, he's not seeing the person bound on the burning turtle, just how he can use its ashes.
Vorbis always thought like this, in fact he never saw people at all, his mind was never open to a single other person, he was the very embodiment of sin as viewed by granny, he never saw a single person as a person, only ever as a thing.
"So," said Vorbis. "The desert. And at the end of the desert?"
JUDGEMENT.
"Yes, yes, of course."
Vorbis tried to concentrate. He couldn't. He could feel certainty draining away. And he'd always been certain. He hesitated, like a man opening a door to a familiar room and finding nothing there but a bottomless pit. The memories were still there. He could feel them. They had the right shape. It was just that he couldn't remember what they were. There had been a voice . . . . Surely, there had been a voice? But all he could remember was the sound of his own thoughts, bouncing off the inside of his own head.
Now he had to cross the desert. What could there be to fear? The desert was what you believed.
Vorbis looked inside himself.
And went on looking.
He sagged to his knees.
I CAN SEE THAT YOU ARE BUSY, said Death.
"Don't leave me! It's so empty!"
Death looked around at the endless desert. He snapped his fingers and a large white horse trotted up.
I SEE A HUNDRED THOUSAND PEOPLE, he said, swinging himself into the saddle.
"Where? Where?"
HERE. WITH YOU.
"I can't see them!"
Death gathered up the reins.
NEVERTHELESS, he said. His horse trotted forward a few steps.
"I don't understand!" screamed Vorbis.
Death paused. YOU HAVE PERHAPS HEARD THE PHRASE, he said, THAT HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE?
"Yes. Yes, of course."
Death nodded. IN TIME, he said, YOU WILL LEARN THAT IT IS WRONG.
The fact that the desert is empty for him because, even when he was alive he never saw the people infront of him so how could he now? He never listend, never learned, never took in the perspective of anyone else, just had his own thoughts echoing inside him.
Then there's Brutha who always saw people as people, he helped Vorbis through the desert when he had every reason to kill him, and when confronted with the same task again, he chose to help him across the black desert of death. In the same way he was the only person to believe in Om, he was the only person to actually see Vorbis. Not just as a monster, or the head of the Quisition, or a prophet or whatever other ideas of him people built up in their minds, he still saw him as a person in the end.
comics as an art form make me insane. theyâre so difficult to do well. thereâs so many different ways to make sequential art work and most of them are deeply unintuitive. onomatopoeia that feels completely ridiculous to put down often reads seamlessly. panels on a page become a fractally nested image composition challenge thatâs only possible to lose because if you do a good job no one will notice. you have to direct the readersâ eyes on a specific path across the page but also account for the fact that they wonât follow it. comic time isnât linear. if the order of events isnât crystal clear the story becomes incomprehensible. sometimes you need to do this on purpose. all this for a medium almost universally considered less effective than animation and less respectable than plain text. even its own name doesnât take it seriously
rereading small gods for the fourth?? fifth?? time and it's really just dawning on me how absolutely BRUTAL this book is. i mean this book was my very first discworld novel and i had nothing to compare it to but rereading it now its soo obvious that it's different from other books. dont get me wrong other discworld books can be and ARE brutal but there's something unflinching about small gods. it showcases the violence of the church and the violence people will do for the church and the unnecessary amount of blood that comes from religion and its one of the only books where you can particularly TASTE terry's anger in every single sentence. it's truly the best book i've EVER read on organized religion and the harsh plainness terry portrays it is truly brilliant
[My fatherâs] funeral showed me that [he] meant many things to many people, and we were all grieving for different versions of him, when he felt most ours. For my mother, it was their early years together when they were semi self-sufficient, grew their own vegetables and had goats in the front garden and chickens in the back. For his manager Rob, it was sitting side by side, helping him keep the words flowing and making him the odd âglugââa coffee with a tot of brandy. Or, on harder days, a brandy with a tot of coffee. For me, the dad I grieved most for, and still do, is the one I remember as a kid.
We didnât have much money, but I hardly noticed when there were woods and fields to run around in, trees to climb, and animals to play with. Dad and I often walked around the countryside while he taught me which wild plants were edible and showed me hidden caves and pools in the middle of the forest. He used to whistle loudly. I could never get the hang of it, so instead he taught me the words to The Rhubarb Tart Song and Whose Pigs Are These? We would sing them loudly, joyfully, the wildlife fleeing before us.
Dad was someone who committed to the narrative of a situation rather more than the practicality. So he would wrap me up and take me out of bed in the middle of the night to show me the glow-worms in the hedge or Halleyâs Comet blazing across a star-filled sky. For him, his daughter seeing these marvels of nature was much more important than sleeping, which I could do any time. He didnât teach me magic, he showed me it.
âRhianna Pratchett
(taken from âTerry Pratchett: His Worldâ)
Guards! Guards! has one of the first Big Deal Discworld moments for me, and Iâm not very good at articulating what that means.
The moment Iâm thinking of is the dragonâs speech to Wonse â âwe were supposed to be cruel, cunning, heartless and terrible. ButâŚwe never burned and tortured and ripped one another apart and called it morality.â Thatâs a passage that always makes me stop and reread it a couple of times. And itâs a small moment â itâs the only time we hear the dragon speak at all, and itâs 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 itâs there is a Big Deal moment. The great big monstrous antagonistâs judgment of humanity is unavoidable in its accuracy.
And the Discworld series is full of moments like that. Sometimes itâs just one line, sometimes itâs a full scene, and most of the book is so full of shenanigans coming so quickly one after another that you donât 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 weâve forgotten.
Then there are the other Big Deal Moments, that are Emotional Meteorite Strike Moments (e.g. the phrase âthat is not my cowâ can now instantly put me in the fetal position) but Iâm having a hard enough time describing this one as it is so Iâll probably go on a tirade about those âround about that One Part in Feet of Clay. (You know the one.)
YES. Itâs so fun hearing everyoneâs Big Deal Moments! (although choosing just one is so hardâŚ)
I think my favorite one changes, but right now itâs in Feet of Clay:
The vampire looked from the golem to Vimes.
âYou gave one of them a voice?â he said.
âYes,â said Dorfl. He reached down and picked up the vampire in one hand. âI Could Kill You,â he said. âThis 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.â
âOh, gods,â murmured Vimes under his breath.
âThatâs blasphemy,â said the vampire.
He gasped as Vimes shot him a glance like sunlight. âThatâs what people say when the voiceless speak.â
All my Discworld books are packed, and usually Iâm 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.Â
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 âSure, let it be a sphereâ and Vorbis â for whom this is as much about humiliating Didactylos as it is about whatâs âtrueâ â decides to let him go. Didactylos gets all the way to the doorway before he turns, throws the lantern he carries into Vorbisâs face, and yells âNEVERTHELESSâŚTHE TURTLE MOVES!â before legging it.Â
I was thirteenish at the time and wrestling with religion, and I was familiar with Galileo and eppur si muove, but itâs 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.Â
There is so much I sympathize with, when it comes to Moist Von Lipwig, but if I had to cite a âbig momentâ, itâs when heâs deconstructing the idea of currency.
âBut whatâs worth more than gold?â
âPractically everything. You, for example. Gold is heavy. Your weight in gold is not very much gold at all. Arenât you worth more than that?â
When you get your head around the idea that somethingâs 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:
âMake the change happen fast enough and you go from one type of normal to another.â
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.
âHumans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.â
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.
âThatâs the trouble, you see. When youâve had hatred on your tongue for such a long time, you donât know how to spit it out.â
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;
âWhat was it Granny Weatherwax had said once? âEvil begins when you begin to treat people as things.â
But of course itâs also in this conversation in Carpe Jugulum
Granny Weatherwax: ââŚAnd thatâs what your holy men discuss, is it?â
â¨Mightily Oats: âNot usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin. for example.â
â¨Granny Weatherwax: âAnd what do they think? Against it, are they?â
â¨Mightily Oats: âItâs not as simple as that. Itâs not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.â
â¨Granny Weatherwax:âNope.â
â¨Mightily Oats: âPardon?â
â¨Granny Weatherwax: âThereâs no grays, only white thatâs got grubby. Iâm surprised you donât know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. Thatâs what sin is.â
â¨Mightily Oats: âItâs a lot more complicated than thatââ
â¨Granny Weatherwax: âNo. It ainât. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means theyâre getting worried that they wonât like the truth. People as things, thatâs where it starts.â
â¨Mightily Oats: âOh, Iâm sure there are worse crimesâââ¨
Granny Weatherwax: âBut they starts with thinking about people as thingsâŚâ
I always loved the line from the Hogfather mentioned above, but one that usually sticks out more to me from the same book is Susanâs reminder that âSomeone should do somethingâ isnât at all helpful if youâre not gonna end it with âand that someone is meâ
because nothing gets done if everyone just sits around thinking âsomeone should fix thisâ but no one actually gets up and tries to fix it
Iâll also add another one of my favorites from Feet of Clay which is âSomeoneâs got to speak for them that have no voicesâ [Iâm probably misquoting slightly but thatâs 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
âA watchman is a civilian, you inbred streak of piss!â
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.
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