Y’know an awful lot of Terry Pratchett’s books are concerned with how powerful women are when they get angry and how important anger is as a driving force to defend what is right and to tackle injustice.
A lot of his most interesting and most deeply moral characters are angry ones. Granny Weatherwax, Sam Vimes, Tiffany Aching. All are to a large extent driven to do good by anger.
And that honestly means a lot to me.
Terry was an angry man. This is not the same as saying he was a bad man. He held a righteous fury, the kind that comes from looking at the world, and knowing just how much better it could be if only we stopped being bastards. He held a genuine belief that people can and do change the world for the better, not by big things, but by the little. He believed in the kindness of others, and that kindness means more than wishing well and prayers. He knew the difference between being good and doing good, and that you technically couldn’t be the first without the latter.
He was angry at the world because he loved it, and he wanted us to feel the same, to not feel helpless, to know that something can be done, to know that anger is not just the tool of abusers and tyrants but the chisel by which The People might chip away at oppression and fear and bring it crumbling down. He gave us the drive needed to believe in hope. because he wanted to make the world better with words and not violence.
I hope he knows that he did.
i can always count on tumblr to make me cry over Terry Pratchett from time to time, thank you
