#dog botherer

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Bored in a meeting doodles of Downey and Vetinari

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

1, 17 and 37 for Vetinari?

Ahhh our difficult to pin down patrician!! A classic and a favourite <3 <3

1. Canon I outright reject

Hahaha well. I mean. TP wrote a Trope, a caricature, not a character with Vetinari. He's too perfect to be believable as a real person*. So, you know.

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*I get why. Vetinari can't have any real fuck-ups, because then TP would be writing a different series than one-offs "the baddie of the week," which is what his bread and butter was. To have Vetinari be a real man would mean there would be true mistakes and real repercussions that couldn't be resolved as easily as TP liked to wrap up his stories. And that's fair! He wasn't writing complex political fantasy. But that does mean the canon is limiting and 2D when it comes to side-characters, including Vetinari.

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I suppose, I reject the portrayal of Vetinari at seventeen in Night Watch because lol like hell is that any seventeen year old I've ever known. And I've known (and was my myself) "firm head on your shoulders, grounded, hyper realistic about the world" sorts of kids. They're still kids. Vetinari in Night Watch was just Mini-Patrician.

And I reject that whole-heartedly. This is one of those instances where TP really shone with his bit-characters because Downey is a perfect Stroppy Posh Obnoxious Dick-swinging Prick as only a fundamentally rich, privileged seventeen year old boy can be. Vetinari is very bland in comparison. Again! Too perfect. It's boring.

So yeah, I prefer an Awkward, Weird, Posh Prick of a seventeen year old to whatever TP wrote with Vetinari. He can still inhume a patrician. Just give him pimples and make him awkward and weird. The Tiger Scene is a small recompense - and even then, it feels too....adultish? In a weird way? That just doesn't jive with me.

17. Quotes, songs, poems, etc. that I associate with them

Too many to list outright. Fuck. Here are a very, very few that I've compiled offhand. Honestly, this is deserving of a whole second ask.

Poems/Books

Blitzed Out, Lauren Turner (poem) - granted, I apply different aspects of this poem to almost all characters.

The Glass Essay, Anne Carson (poem)

Willful Subjects, Sarah Ahmed - a full book on the concept of will and willfulness. Particularly of the concept of "willfullness" as a charge to be laid against others in a means to remove their will/agency. Anyway, it's always struck me as a book Vetinari would have on his bookshelf.

Coyote in the Dark, Coyotes Remembered, Mary Oliver (poem)

Two Atheists Banking on an Afterlife, Lauren Turner (poem)

The Awake and Sleeping Ye, Anne-Marie Turza (poem)

The Undying, Anne Boyer - another full book. Granted Vetinari doesn't have cancer, but her writing on illness and disability are things I lean on when writing Vetinari.

Litany, Billy Collins (poem)

Songs

Feel It Still, Portugal - the Man

Bury a Friend, Billie Eilish

When We Were Young, The Killers

If I had a heart, Fever Ray

Devil's Backbone, The Civil Wars

Fair, The Amazing Devil (this is truly The Downey/Vetinari song)

They Provide the Paint, Streetlight Manifesto

Drinking Song for the Socially Anxious, The Amazing Devil (another Downey/Vetinari one lol)

Quotes

"If God exists he isn't just butter and good luck. / He's also the tick that killed my wonderful dog Luke." - Mary Oliver excerpt from "At the River Clarion"

"To love rightly is to love what is orderly and beautiful in an educated and disciplined way." - Plato's Republic

"When we cut the ripe melon, should we not give it thanks? / Aand should we not thank the knife also? / We do not live in a simple world." - Mary Oliver excerpt from "At the River Clarion"

"What I want to say is / that the past is the past, / and the present is what your life is, / and you are capable / of choosing what that will be, / darling citizen." - Mary Oliver excerpt from "Mornings at Blackwater"

"I don't know what God is. / I don't know what death is. / But I believe they have between them / some fervent and necessary arrangement." - Mary Oliver excerpt from "Sometimes"

(Honestly - every Mary Oliver poem has a small set of lines somewhere within it that will remind me of Vetinari. Or, rather, I will call them to mind when I write him. Obviously, when I am reading Mary Oliver I am too busy weeping over small and gargantuan beauties to be thinking about fanfiction.)

"Regardless, I want to spell out that, in Judaism, a person can do real, profound, comprehensive repentance work and even get right with God—experience atonement—even if their victim never forgives them. Repentance and forgiveness are separate processes.” - Danya Ruttenberg excerpt from On Repentance and Repair

"Monuments are interesting mostly in how they diminish all other aspects of the landscape. Each highly perceptible thing makes something else almost imperceptible." - Anne Boyer excerpt from Garments Against Women

"It took me so long to realize / there are people who start fires, not to tend them, / but to see how things burn, and it took me even longer / to realize some places need fire simply to survive." - Caitlin Scarano, excerpt from “During the Wildfires” (this is also a Grima quote, honestly)

37. What they really think about themselves

As noted in the first question - Vetinari is a hard one to read and write because he's two dimensional in the text but given enough that he's not a full blank slate. But it's also a lot of nonsense we're given to work with. Masks, really.

And I think that's partially it - does Vetinari know what he thinks about himself? Or is he wholly Patrician, now? When he looks in a mirror, what does he see? Ghosts of previous patricians hovering in the hinterlands? Nothing so melodramatic as that, likely, but maybe. He has his maudlin moments in the books.

Fundamtenally, though, I think Vetinari's biggest trick is that he isn't faking anything. There's no mask. There's no cover. This is just who he is as a person. Cold, ruthless, calculating, cunning - but also given to a dry sense of humour, partial to moments of sentimentality, of being maudlin or philosophical when the mood strikes - also loves his irony and sense of occasion or moment and so on.

I think he has a fairly grounded sense of self. We're never given reason to think there's misalignment between how Vetinari sees himself (practical, efficient, capable) and how he behaves as patrician (practical, efficient, capable).

I'm not sure I'm really get at this question. But that's what I have to say on it for now. More may come to me later.

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Thank you so much!! I do love talking about this weird freak of a man. Bless him that scag.

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

God I have such Downey/Vetinari brain worms tonight. They’ve just gone and taken over, those little scags

[pratchettpatricianpages]

The reader sighed and sat back as Downey gave the pages a cursory flick.

“Well, look here, you fellows,” he said. “Dog-Botherer is reading a picture book.” He held it open. “Color it in yourself with your paints or crayons, did you, Dog-Botherer?”

The former reader stared up at the ceiling. “No, Downey. It was hand-colored to his instructions by Miss Emelia Jane, the sister of Lord Winstanleigh Greville-Pipe, the author. It says so on the frontispiece, you will note.”

“And here’s a lovely picture of a tiger,” Downey plowed on. “Why’re you looking at pictures, Dog-Botherer?”

“Because Lord Winstanleigh has some interesting theories on the art of concealment, Downey,” said the reader.

“Huh? Black and orange tiger in green trees?” said Downey, turning the pages roughly. “Big red ape in green forest? Black and white zebra in yellow grass? What’s this, a manual on how not to do it?”

Again there was a round of chuckles, but they were forced. Downey had friends because he was big and rich, but sometimes he was embarrassing to have around.

“As a matter of fact, Lord Winstanleigh also has an interesting point to make on the dangers of intuitive-”

“This is a Guild book, Dog-Botherer?” Downey demanded.

“No, Downey. It was privately engraved some years ago and I succeeded in tracking down a copy in-”

Downey’s hand shot out. The book whirled away, causing a table full of younger boys to scatter, and landed at the back of the fireplace.

-Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

[pratchettpatricianpages]

Downey turned back to the table, and a movement – or, rather, a lack of movement – caught his eyes. Toward the far end of the table one young Assassin was sitting reading, with a book stand positioned in front of his plate. He was intent on it, an empty fork halfway to his mouth.

With a wink at the others, Downey selected an apple from the bowl in front of him, stealthily drew his arm back, and let fly with malicious accuracy.

The fork moved like a snake’s tongue and skewered the apple out of the air.

The reader turned a page. Then, eyes never leaving the print, he delicately brought the fork up to his mouth and took a bite out of the apple.

The rest of the table looked back at Downey, and there were one or two chuckles. The young man’s brow furrowed. Assault having failed, he was forced to try scathing wit, which he did not have.

“You really are a scag, Dog-Botherer,” he said.

“Yes, Downey,” said the reader levelly, his eyes still intent on the page.

“When are you going to pass some decent exams, Dog-Botherer?”

“I really couldn’t say, Downey.”

“Never killed anyone, right, Dog-Botherer?”

“Probably not, Downey.”

-Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

[pratchettpatricianpages]

Downey’s hand shot out. The book whirled away, causing a table full of younger boys to scatter, and landed at the back of the fireplace. The diners at the top tables looked around, and then turned back in indifference. Flames licked up, for a moment, the tiger burned brightly.

“Rare book, was it?” said Downey, grinning.

“I think it may now be said to be nonexistent,” said the one known as Dog-Botherer. “That was the only extant copy. Even the engraved plates have been melted down.”

“Don’t you ever get upset, Dog-Botherer?”

“Oh yes, Downey,” said the reader. He pushed his chair back and stood up. “And now, I believe, I will have an early night.” He nodded at the table. “Good evening, Downey, gentlemen…”

“You’re a scag, Vetinari.”

“Just as you say, Downey.”

-Night Watch, Terry Pratchett