Agent of Chaos

I've seen the theory that Vimes, Vetinari, and Moist are a coven. Makes sense. So much of Vimes' character seems to reflect a lot of the 'headology' we see from Weatherwax and Tiffany Aching. But I don't think I've seen anyone talking about how witches form covens to keep other witches in check; to 'keep them from cackling' and going mad with power.

Time and time again, we see how important it is that Vimes, Moist, and Vetinari need other people to keep them in line. If it wasn't for Vetinari, Moist would revert back to his con-artist ways. And Vimes? How many books revolve around Vimes wanting to use his authority in ways he knows are unjust in order to solve a problem? Like with witches, being a police officer comes with knowing when not to exert power unnecessarily. Then there's Vetinari. Omg. Vetinari is sort of fascinating-- in some ways, you'd think he'd be the most likely to cackling. The man is a literal tyrant. But he and Vimes are always keeping the other in check-- basically always reminding the other not to step out of line.

I know that most of this boils down to Pratchett's own philosophies about human interaction. But, idk. I think with the coven theories it's just a cool idea I haven't seen discussed too much.

Something I love about Terry Pratchett's books, and why i love the ankh morpork books so much, is that he also loved civilisation.

And i don't mean "force technological progress, all hail harsh and unforgiving bureaucracies, plow down everything that was before", i mean that when a bunch of people live together, then you need to organise The Public to make their lives good. And not against, but in service of the people living there. The small minded, unpleasant, nosy, selfish people. All of them.

And civilisation needs tireless small acts and work to build something that is larger than the sum of it's parts, and it's annoying, and sometimes hard to see the big picture, and you cannot do it alone.

But, when you don't forcibly stop them, many many people will look at a bunch of resources at their disposal, and say "so how can we organise them so that they help people the most efficiently, that we can make life easier for all people".

And that's why i weep with joy when i see this happening in real life, whenever there is something structured with the goal of people living there (and not just existing and being wrung dry for the benefit of others).

And i feel like Terry Pratchett felt the same.

And while you can also see it in the witch books, and very clearly at that, many people like to idealise rural life and write off urban life as hollow. And that's why i singled out the ankh morpork books, because ankh morpork has all the things people claim as negative about city life, and still says "look at the beauty of humanity and being alive".

The utter beauty of the postal service, of bureaucracy, of maintained streets and the white chalk horse. Of streets so old they burrowed into the ground, of canalisation, of records maintained since thousands of years.

Terry Pratchett about writing near 75% of Good Omens, ArmadaCon III 1991 (video)

Terry: We worked on the phone who did what. I did a bit more than Neil of lthat anyway. But, it also felt to me to do an awful lot of the glue that no one wanted to do - because it was easy to do 'set piece scenes' and written on a kind of... on the kind of plot somewhere, you know: 'get A and B to F' and ' X and Y have got to see T'. And then, well, that really is about 3000 words where you have to move people around and then, you know, shove extra bits in. So I ended up probably probably doing near 75% of the book.

I'm a little more than halfway through reading Terry Pratchett's Night Watch (yes I know, it's taken me a while, hush) and my dad, who introduced me to them when I was in high school, told me this was the first Discworld book he'd ever read. That made me feel all sentimental anyway, but this evening I realized this book has been part of my life far longer than I'd realized.

Young Havelock Vetinari, student at the Assassin's Guild school, has been researching different forms of camouflage found in the animal world, and thus is breaking Assassin tradition of wearing all black. It's stylish, but it's pointed out several times in this book that black silhouettes still stand out in the shadows. So he's taken to wearing grey and dark green, muddy colours. And reading that, I was overtaken by the memory of my dad, years ago, when I was just little, explaining to me that if you want to blend into the night, don't wear black, because the night isn't black, it's dark blues and greens and greys, and black will still stand out. I don't remember why he was giving me this Assassin instruction, but it stuck with me forever. And now, here I am, finding the man who taught my dad all those years ago. I love these books so much, they're such an intrinsic part of my heart, sometimes in ways I don't even realize yet!

It has been said before but it bears repeating: if you are struggling to divest yourself of the Harry Potter franchise, may I suggest getting into Discworld, not as a replacement but as an UPGRADE? Perks of Discworld include, but are not limited to:

-41 books (no, you don’t have to read them in any given order, most work as standalone although there are some that are arguably part of a series)

-specifically British charm

-magic (including different systems of magic and not just one poorly explained type)

-funny af

-author isn’t a transphobic POS

-golems (including an arguably transgender golem named Gladys)

-EXTREMELY expansive world building that takes place over a long time, covering different populations, the Industrial Revolution, magical AND non-magical groups, and even a whole section of “science” books which discuss the physics, biology, and so on

-well-written female characters

-nuanced moral messages

-death is a cat person

The science books do not explain the science of Discworld. They explain our world's science through the framing device of Discworld. Which imo is even cooler.

The vibe I get is that as much as Pratchett hated hereditary monarchy, he did love the fairytale concept of nobility, so he’d have a bunch of characters who fill the role of good and noble royalty before he’d stop the plot and go “But they aren’t the king because of herrydeterry. It’s important to me that you know that.”

Low kingship amongst the dwarves is an elected position. Being Diamond King of Trolls is heavily implied to be a genetic quirk that gets thrown up at random once a century. Carrot is the rightwise king of Ankh-Morpork, is naturally noble and kind and good and born to be the kind of king who’d rule under an oak tree, and he abstains. The only traditional hereditary monarch I can think of is Verence, who’s a sweet and pathetic wet rat of a man who’s only kept as king out of politeness, and he wasn’t even the actual heir to the throne.

This is all to say that I’d like to think that when he was invited to be knighted, he agreed to do so less out of deference to the royal family and more out of the spirit of “Cheerio crackers Gromit I want to be a knight like my good friend Aragorn”

What haunts me about this post is that I know for a fact Neil Gaiman has liked it. This haunts me. The only thing Neil Gaiman has seen me make is a post where I have Terry Pratchett talk like Wallace from Wallace and Gromit

Aww, that might not be true, Neil Gaiman might have seen dozens of your silliest shitposts as well as this

if he was still alive I know in my heart that Terry Pratchett would have done a bit about Igors and Igorinas doing gender confirmation surgery by now. going into a lab full of bubbling vials and picking out a penis from a tank the way you pick a lobster. that one, please. you gotta be careful though because they'll really try to upsell you into getting two or three installed. people going to the clinic as pairs and just having parts swapped out for a discounted rate. maybe you actually just trade brains, that's even easier. Igorth have already been doing that thurgery for thenturieth.

#one day an igor forgets the lock the cage and a pack of penises escapes into ankh-morpork#the watch spends the next three weeks rounding them up

how DARE you leave this in the tags (affectionate)

Everyone knew it was best not to look too closely at Igor's jars.

Vimes was beginning to wish he had looked more closely at the most recent additions before Igor came lurching up the stairs to inform him:

"They have ethcaped, thir."

"Escaped. What has escaped, Igor."

"Thome of my.. appendageth, thir."

"Appendages."

"Yeth, thir. Of the... intimate variety."

"Of the intimate..." Vimes trailed off as the dawning horror overwhelmed his vocal cords.

He rallied. "Igor. HOW have they escaped? They are not known for their... perambulatory abilities."

"Really, thir? I've alwayth found them to have a mind of their own at timeth."

Vimes was staying calm. Yes. That was it. He was staying very calm. Definitely NOT thinking AT ALL about how Vetinari and... Good lord, The Times, would react to marauding pack of penises. Would it be a pack? Or would they go off on their own?

"I wath exthperimenting with cuthtom grown oneth, you know. For thothe who cannot grow their own."

"Err... what? Of course you were. I mean. Very good."

Pictured: An Igor harvesting appendages

#[a loud crash is heard from the lab] #[another igor runs past with a giant butterfly net. stopping briefly at the door to shriek 'THE VULVATHS''] (via @the-wave-finally-broke)

It turns out to be a brilliant feat of advertisement, as the people too shy or uncertain to go visit Igor rightaway effectively get a chance to discretely window-shop in public.

An unfortunate side effect being that a small girl, denied of her rightful need to be a Horse Girl by the limitations of being a native Ankh-Morpork child[1], would have adopted one of the larger Appendages of the pack and named it Free Willy. Her insistence that she could understand her pet through a bond of mutual sympathy was both touching and troubling, as was her announcement that Free Willy did not want to be attached to a governing body and forced into service, saddled with clothing, or made to perform tricks for audiences. With no Igor having the heart [2] to take it from her, the child was allowed to keep Free Willy, who lived for five healthy years in her family’s pigeon loft and eventually passed away from natural causes after a battle with another fighting cock. The child went on to write a well-acclaimed children’s book, The Willy that Would Be Free, which was, necessarily, a pop-up book.

[1] where an ordinary working class child CAN form a magical bond with a horse, in the form of a pie, labeled as beef.

[2] ha

Look, it got longer.

So did Free Willy.

a tiny bit of pTerry magic, thank you everyone, well done those tumblrs

Would this be Free Willy? Or does "Free" actually mean "Reasonably Priced" but with a hard-boiled egg included...?

And how does he rise up, rise up, rise up? (The question is rhetorical, no examples please!)

:->

one of the differences between good omens the show vs good omens the book that will always fuck me up is the post-bookshop fire scene. crowley goes from picking himself up, dusting himself off, accepting the loss of aziraphale and Just Driving Anyway to completely falling apart. i do get why people have gripes with it being changed so fundamentally, and i've thought about it a lot myself, but i've never been able to bring myself to get mad about it. i always circle back to how the book was written by two best friends. that drunken, wrecked, grief stricken scene was written in a post-pratchett world. he lost his best friend.

HE LOST HIS BEST FRIEND jesus christ

I may never be well again… he lost his best friend

Good Omens is a different story through this lens. And it should be viewed through that lens.

He lost his best friend.

Jamie Anderson said, "Grief, I've learned, is really just love. It's all the love you want to give, but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in the hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.”

Except that we can take all that love, and we can make something beautiful with it. And that is what Neil did.

The way Terry Pratchett handled police in the Discworld continues to be one of the many, many things I love about his works. I certainly don’t have time to describe all the details of why he wrote such good policing, but I think the best summation of it is the arc that Sam Vimes had in many of the books.

I haven’t read all the watch books, but in the ones I have, there’s often a similar plot structure. We meet a truly detestable criminal Vimes is chasing down (think the Deep Downers in Thud, or Carcer in Night Watch). They show themselves to be truly awful people who do awful things, and they’re also just plain jackasses. They’re characters you hate to read about, the grind the audience’s gears. They also grind Sam Vimes’s gears. 

Throughout the story, they commit more and more crimes. Horrible crimes, like torturing and killing innocent people, or practicing violent religious extremism. They do things that personally target our protagonist, like go after his wife and son, or relentlessly taunt him and try to kill him and his past self. They consistently do bad things, and even as Vimes is chasing them, they do more bad things. You want them to be punished.  Finally, at the climax, we get some sort of final confrontation between the villain(s) and Vimes. In a different book, Vimes might kill the people who sent people to hurt his infant son, or tortured and killed innocent people, and the audience would probably cheer. In fact, Vimes wants to kill them. 

But he doesn’t. Every time, he suppresses the urge to enact his own justice, and he doesn’t kill them. He arrests them. Because, as he says many times, if you’ll do something for a good reason, you’ll do it for a bad. Even when there’s every excuse as to why this particular villain doesn’t deserve to live, he just arrests them. It’s not his job to decide how they should be punished for their crimes.

I think this is a masterful takedown of police brutality and Punisher style characters. Vimes isn’t a perfect person, it’s not that he could never dream of killing the bad guy. He can, and he does, often. But he never follows through, he understands why he can’t do that, so no matter how tempting it is, he doesn’t.

Because in this story, the hard boiled cynical cop truly believes in following the law. The message is always that law enforcement killing a criminal is never ok, even if they’re undeniably guilty of something truly dreadful. Hell, police brutality is personified as a millennia old demonic quasi-deity possessing Vimes, one that’s never been beaten before, but he beats it and doesn’t give in. I think that’s a really unique message in cop stories, and another reason as to why Pratchett was such a good author. 

This is the highest compliment I can bestow, but Dungeon Meshi reads like it was written for, if not by, Terry Pratchett.

Oh, you have a dungeon with monsters and adventurers? How does it work? Who pays? How do you get enough supplies? People will eat anything when hungry; do they eat the monsters? People will cook feasts from rotten meat and weeds; what feasts can you make with monsters?

By the way, here is a terrible pun about soup.

You want heroes to have peril, but also to live? Easy! Just have a ressurection spell. Well how does it work? What's the point? What would people give to live forever? What would people give to die?

Here's a dwarf whose magical shield is a wok.

And if they come back, it still hurts right? Do people remember? What happens if they forget that, outside of the dungeon, they can't come back? What if the thing that brings them back also ties them to the dungeon more and more, changes them, makes them different without knowing why.

Whilst you were thinking about that, the halfling founded an adventurers guild. It's an actual union with dues etc. btw he's a deadbeat dad apart from this.

The dwarf from earlier carries familial trauma that will haunt you for the next decade. The protagonist holds his sister's skull as the first proof that there is anything left of her. The two female leads share a love so deep that giving it a name would pollute it. The protagonist's sword is a mollusc.

...okay, you might have just convinced me to watch this.

Wait, Aziraphale canonically might have a porn notebook!?

Yep. But he doesn’t want to just pay for it, so he’s hitting up hotels across America for his free two minutes. Someone wrote a fic involving this that’s still in progress. As of last update, Aziraphale’s porn schedule has been interrupted by some Heavenly and Hellish bullshit and he’s Mad About It.

What 😳

So, I googled this and it took me to a fanfic that had a transcript from a book signing Neil did in 2005.

just performing a some light reblog necromancy to remind everyone of

Aziraphale’s Softcore Porn Notebook

I HAD SOMEONE IN REDDIT TELL ME THAT HE ALSO WAS SUPPOSED TO BE DOING IT “FOR RESEARCH ON HUMAN STUFF” HAHAHAHHA

I know virtually nothing about that but my my… If that ever happens now I think we all know the context then 🤭😭😭😭😭☠️

“Research” 😂 the hedonistic angel simply must investigate all of life’s pleasures.

Another fic I just read that was inspired by this story

To pretend everything about Discworld is perfect and "unproblematic" goes against everything PTerry wanted readers to get out of it.

He addressed real problems where he could and encouraged critical thinking, growth and a healthy sense of humour.

I think The Nights Watch books are some of his best work to see this in (personally my faves are the Witches books).

One of the reasons that I really respect PTerry is that he worked to improve himself, and it showed in his writing. He's one of several authors that I know of (including Tamora Pierce) with a decades-long writing career who rose to the occasion of changing societal pressures instead of their work souring like old milk.

Both Terry Pratchett and Tamora Pierce had their first works come out in 1983 (the color of magic and Alanna: the first adventure, respectively). That's 40 years ago!! And these books were modern for their times! And the books that came after that were steadily popular - they could have stayed on writing stuff that was cutting edge in the 80s/90s and been reasonably successful. But they rose to the occasion! They worked on including more racially diverse characters, more gender-diverse characters, more religious diversity, more scathing social commentary.

These two authors really raised my bar for how an author should react to changing times. It makes some other authors in the fantasy genre look pretty bad by comparison.

I think that it's also worth mentioning that there's a phrase for writing what would be considered moderately enlightened and up to date by 2020's standards in the 1980s.

Career suicide.

Seriously. As someone who was there, I cannot emphasize enough to those of you who weren't that the casual racism/sexism/classism/{string_variable}ism that looks so absolutely blatant (and abhorrent) to you as a child of the oughts was just part of the air we were breathing in the 80s. If they'd written something appropriate to the 2020s then, they'd have never been published again.

As another commentator put it about homophobic humor in 90s television, no it's not ironic; that's just the type of fag-bashing that was considered mainstream appropriate in the 90s. And there's a vital piece of context that is frequently missing. It was an improvement. It meant that television was acknowledging that homosexuality existed. For a very, very long time, by regulation, that wasn't allowed. Literally in the studio standards and practices style guide.

Looking at STAR TREK as a quick and imperfect gauge of the arc of this:

Another potentially useful marker about this, in case it's been lost to the mists of time. My late husband enlisted in the US Air Force straight out of high school in the late 70s. In the early 80s, he was discharged for being a homosexual. Before Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the rule was Don't.

Speaking of DADT, back in the 90s, part of Bill Clinton's radical proposals in his communist remake of America (/sarcasm) was allowing gays to serve openly in the military. Every member of Congress went ballistic. There were months and months of non-stop bipartisan gay-bashing hearings about how this would destroy the fighting readiness of the entire United States military (who knew gays had so much power?). In 1993, a compromise was reached that Clinton signed into law. This became known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell. In short sum, stay in the closet and you can serve. Come out and you'll be discharged. In theory, the witch hunts for LGBTQ people were supposed to stop. It practice... not so much.

If this sounds an awful lot like the current paroxysms of trans-in-the-military bashing going with Republicans in Congress, that's because it's essentially identical. They're running exactly the same rhetoric with a search-and-replace on "gay" for "trans."

DADT lasted until 2010. The exact same arguments from 1993 were trotted out before it was repealed, and precisely none of the dire predictions came to pass. It's been less than two decades since one could be openly queer in the military. It's been less than a decade since we could be legally married (and brother is that in serious jeopardy right now).

Look at those two timelines again and then look at the date something that reads as problematic today was published. It had a context. And if that doesn't get you over the hump of being able to enjoy it, understandable. But take a moment and reflect where the rest of the entire world was at that moment before you climb on your high horse and imagine that you could have done it differently given the state of the world around it when it was created.

The things you write today, your children will look at with the same raised brow that you look at Pratchett or Pierce's early work. You will be accused of bigotries that you can't yet see or don't think of as bigotry.

if he was still alive I know in my heart that Terry Pratchett would have done a bit about Igors and Igorinas doing gender confirmation surgery by now. going into a lab full of bubbling vials and picking out a penis from a tank the way you pick a lobster. that one, please. you gotta be careful though because they'll really try to upsell you into getting two or three installed. people going to the clinic as pairs and just having parts swapped out for a discounted rate. maybe you actually just trade brains, that's even easier. Igorth have already been doing that thurgery for thenturieth.

<3 Awwwwwww <3

Things Terry Pratchett Did

Made fun of the “unnecessarily naked/scantily clad woman,” “sacrificial virgin,” and “sexy heroine” tropes in his first two novels.  The first was described as being the most powerful of her clan of dragon-riders and the nakedness was properly treated as unnecessary in a clear parody.  The second turned out to be one of the more level-headed (while not well-educated) members of the party after her initial introduction, and also had a spine and knew (and got) what she wanted.  The third was described as wearing sensible clothes, was pretty but not sexualized at all, and was practical and smart.

Wrote an entire novel to critique the unequal treatment of “men’s magic” versus “women’s magic” in the fantasy genre.  Portrayed witches as just as if not more capable than wizards (when it comes to actually helping people, in particular), and also generally having more common sense than them.  Nevertheless created a little girl character with wizard powers, and had her decide neither wizard nor witch magic was sufficient and develop a new kind of magic all her own.

Included sex workers in his worldbuilding.  Made jokes about them the same way he did every other kind of person of any profession, but was also highly respectful and never critical of these jobs.  Described the head of the ‘Seamstresses’ Guild as one of the most influential people in the biggest city in the world.  Never showed or described in detail any sexual violence, including against these workers.  In fact, made sure to say that anyone in the city who harmed a sex worker would be dealt with painfully, embarrassingly, and/or lethally by two fearsome elderly ladies.  Even his more ditzy stripper character quickly smartened up and learned some true self-respect–not by quitting her job but by realizing she didn’t have to take any shit from men.

Included strong female friendships aplenty.  Included female enemies who were enemies over things other than men.  In general constantly passed the Bechdel Test and not only that, left it in the dust and had way more meaningful and realistic representation.

Five words: Dwarf Women Are All Trans.  More words: And there’s no way to know if some of them were trans in the way we Earth humans would understand it, too, and he clearly didn’t think that sort of genitalia-based gender labeling mattered.  Did not turn his trans dwarfs into a joke, but treated them simply as people–including a scientist/forensics officer in a police department, a prominent fashion designer, and the literal King of all dwarfs (who subsequently came out as Queen).  Portrayed transmisogynists as unequivocally wrong, and had protagonist characters stand up for and protect their trans colleagues and friends.  See also: had genderfluid characters in two of his books and at least one trans man, as well as confirming canonically that there are gay wizards, one of whom is really good at football.

One of his mainest of main characters was a blunt, bad-tempered, prideful old woman who is also good to her core.  Didn’t gloss over her unfriendliness or excuse it, but made her complex and interesting and overall likeable despite all that.  Also had a very amiable old lady character who also had a temper and would throw hands with anyone who’d mess with her family or best friend.  In general, steel-souled old ladies, wow.  Also steel-souled young girls.  

Said he was incapable of writing a weak, wilting female character, and honestly I can’t think of a single one in any of his books.

Please feel free to add to this list with other Things Terry Pratchett Did because I definitely didn’t say them all!

Monstrous Regiment, full stop.