kylorenedict
replied to your post “on Big Deal Moments in Discworld”Vimes’ thoughts on “Us vs Them” in Jingo is my favorite and one of the reasons why Jingo is my favorite book
You know, I’ve been thinking about Jingo so much recently. I guess current events are always bringing it back around. Vimes has so many good bits in that one; Jingo is just bursting with Big Deal Moments.
And then he realized why he was thinking like this.
It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to
imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by
privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this
sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the
fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who
brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of
then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It
was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to
think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s
fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all I’m one of Us. I
must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.
Tag: gnu terry pratchett
Describing Terry Pratchett’s books is difficult. Someone asked me what the book I was reading was about, and I had to tell them it was about banking and the gold standard, but like in a cool way with golems and action.
I don’t think they believed me.
welcome to the club
It is so, so difficult to explain to people that your favorite book is about transgender feminist dwarves, Nazi werewolves, and the mystery of a missing piece of really old ritual bread. And Opera saves the day.
yes, give us those sweet, sweet, terrible descriptions
A tortoise who’s really a god, finds an allegory for Jesus and they go on adventures in an ancient greece like place and then a desert
The chief of police averts a rerun of an ancient war, partially despite and partially because of being possessed by a dying dwarf’s graffiti
A mysterious island rises from the pcean starting a war over who gets to claim it that is only stoppec when both armies are arrested.
A bunch of time-travelling monks send a man back to become his own mentor, he tries to fix things but nothing changes, never gets a hard-boiled egg.
It wasn’t a decision that he was making, he knew. It was happening far below the areas of the brain that made decisions. It was something built in. There was no universe, anywhere, where a Sam Vimes would give in on this, because if he did then he wouldn’t be Sam Vimes any more.
&
He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew… then it was too high.
&
‘Quis custodiet ipsos custodies? Your grace.’
‘I know that one,’ said Vimes. Who watches the watchmen? Me, Mr Pessimal.’
‘Ah, but who watches you, your grace?’ said the inspector, with a brief smile.
‘I do that too. All the time,’ said Vimes.
&
When people are trying to kill you, it means you’re doing something right. It was a rule Sam had lived by.
&
‘Ramkins have never run away from anything’ Sybil declared.
‘Vimeses have run like hell all the time,’ said Vimes, too diplomatic to mention the aforesaid ancestors who came home in pieces. ‘That means you fight where you want to fight.’
&
‘Taking a force there now could have far-reaching consequences, Vimes!’
‘Good! You told me to drag them into the light! As far as they’re concerned, I am far-reaching consequences!’
sam ‘no, you move’ vimes
Just some warm fuzzies on the Friday before classes start. The phases of a Sam Vimes/Sybil Ramkin hug, I commissioned it from pmendicant, please check out pmendicant’s art at http://pmendicant.tumblr.com/ (it is wonderful).
Doesn’t matter, I’m your dad now.
Sam Vimes, to every new Watchman (or Watchwoman)
hey do you know what’s super cool
each Discworld series has a sort of set of key themes, which match the key characters, and all the books in that series centre round the theme
for example the Witches’ books are all centred around words and their power, so it’s all theatre and plays and stories and fairytales and opera and shakespeare – because on the Disc the power of witches comes through words
and the Death books are all about great big capital-lettered human concepts, like Justice, Oblivion, Hope, Belief, and Time, because after all, that’s what exactly Death is (only he happens to have developed a conscience and a like of cats)
and then the Vimes books are all about people, and people in charge of other people, and how the people in charge of other people are perhaps best suited to not being people at all, and instead being something much more harmless like a teapot, and so you’ve got so so many repeated themes of mobs of people and kings of people and the importance of caring about the little people because the big people are too busy being big to give a damn and each Vimes book has more and more types of people, dwarves, werewolves, trolls, gargoyles, feegles, zombies, goblins, even vampires… because the whole point of Watch is people – to keep the bad people away from the not-currently-bad-people & keep the occasionally-alright-people safe.
anyway, basically, Terry Pratchett’s a genius.
I have never noticed this before. What about Rincewind’s stories? Is there a theme there?
ok so compiling what some lovely people (x, x, x, x, x) have said about the main themes of Rincewind’s:
running, destiny, running, sanity in an insane place, running, the world (and all it’s dangers), science (and all it’s dangers), anything and everything you really don’t want to do, running (including the planned benefits of running and the accidental benefits of running), fear (and how it’s actually a pretty smart thing), cowardice (and how it’s also a pretty smart thing), trust, screwing your reputation up the buttock, screwing your destiny up the buttock, self-acceptance, self-realisation, running, survival, accidental survival, survival through running…
so, to summarise, I guess the Rincewind books are about screwing up destiny/reputation/science/the world by running away from them as fast as possible in the opposite direction
@insomniabug, these are gr8 precis for each subseries!
Hey dets 😉 I was just wondering what your favourite Terry Pratchett novel is, as I know you’re a fan too. (You don’t have to choose-I love them all😂 especially Tiffany Aching) I’m glad you’re better tho and I love all you fics to bits
oh god, that’s difficult, so hard to choose. But. Okay, yeah, I have a winner. It was a very tight race.
*sings softly*
all the little angels rise up, rise up,
all the little angels rise up high
how do they rise up, rise up, rise up,
how do they rise up, rise up high?
How To Tell If You Are In A Terry Pratchett Novel on the-toast.net
No matter what country you find yourself in, someone always offers you a cutthroat deal on very dubious-looking sausages in buns.
Sometimes people die. Then they campaign for the rights of the undead.
It is a dark and stormy night. “Bugger this for a lark,” you grumble. “I don’t see why we have to meet at night, and even less why we should meet in a storm. It’d be much more sensible to just lunch at the Ritz.”
You’ve sung every verse of “All the Little Angels,” which at first seems silly, but then gains significance until the very question “How do they rise up?” makes you unexpectedly weepy. Soldiers’ songs are alike that way: sentimental with naughty bits in, and sung by voices you hear only in your memory.
You are a member of the Seamstress’s Guild. You don’t know how to sew, but you’re being considered for a leadership role if you know what I mean.
Someone you know has taken an aphorism or a metaphor to its illogical conclusion.
You drink to forget. You’re so successful at it, you no longer remember what it is you wanted to forget in the first place.
You have a matter-of-fact way of explaining complex systems of institutionalized social inequality using household objects; i.e., socks and boots.
You are a witch, and can turn anything into anything, particularly weaknesses into strengths, and selfishness into selflessness.
You can save the world because it is yours.
You ATEN’T DED.
You see little blue men. You haven’t been drinking. They are happy to change that for you
You are a recovering vampire who’s bandaged over your addiction to blood with another powerful, but less dangerous craving. You would literally kill for a cup of coffee.
You are an angel whose main goal in life is to never sell a single book.
You know the difference between stories that want you to believe what you are told, and the ones that want to help you learn. There is nothing so powerful as a story — and nothing so human.
You may live in a ridiculous world full of lies, but you hold fast to the important lies of fairness, mercy, and human dignity. Even if you never find a single molecule of fairness, the fantasy of it is what unites the falling angel to the rising ape. It’s what makes us human.
Read more at http://the-toast.net/2015/03/16/how-to-tell-terry-pratchett-novel/#ViJwyFUV2FQe8JFp.99
Alternatively:
Lawful Good: Mr. Nutt/ Brutha/ Susan Sto Helit/ Carrot/ Granny Weatherwax
Lawful Neutral: Ponder Stibbons/ The Librarian/ Rufus Drumknott/ *Death/ Lady Margolotta
Lawful Evil: Lord Hong/ The Queen/ Dee/ Mr. Slant
Neutral Good: Tiffany Aching/ Otto Chriek/ *Death
True Neutral: *Death/ Cohen the Barbarian/ The Bursar/ Sacharissa Cripslock/ *Fred Colon/ Havelock Vetinari
Neutral Evil: *Greebo/ *Teatime/ Alice Weatherwax/*Fred Colon
Chaotic Good: Nac Mac Feegles/ Teppic/ Maurice/ *William de Worde/ Mustrum Ridcully
Chaotic Neutral: Nobby Nobbs/ Mort/ *Greebo
Chaotic Evil: *Teatime/ *Greebo
Aw Yiss 