It's been rattling around my head recently that Discworld is almost anti-whimsy, and I mean that in a good way.

Whimsy, as I define it, is when something magical is put in just to wow the reader. A magic thing that doesn't really effect the story, but its fantastical. Pots cleaning themselves? Moving paintings? A fantastical creature used as set dressing? A spell that does something cool but we'll never hear about it again? What do they mean? Why are they there? Doesn't matter, we're moving on.

But Discworld always applies Logic to these things.

e.g. The old idea of all dwarfs having beards? Ha ha, even the women have beards. How silly.

But that means all dwarfs are men. But there are female dwarfs, right? Are they happy being men? What if you gave one the chance not to be a man? Oh, sure, they'd still have the beard, the helmet, the axe, those are cultural, but what if a dwarf wanted to be a woman? How would other dwarfs react? Would there be biting insults? Snide remarks? Jealousy from other female dwarfs trapped in their society? What if the Low King were a woman? What then?

Pratchett always had this tenacity to follow a whimsical idea until it was ground down in its own grim reality. It's like those old conversations about what would really happen if Superman caught you falling from a high building. You'd smash on his arms because you're still hitting something indestructible at terminal velocity. But the comics would never show that.

Pratchett shows that.

Introduces a werewolf? She has a constant identity crisis and feels like a dog sometimes, between human and wolf, and she's discriminated against in places for being undead. A conman running a bank? Forces everyone to realise how useless gold really is in a scathing indictment of economics. Death becomes Santa? But WHY DOES THE LITTLE MATCH GIRL NEED TO DIE? WHY THE UNFAIRNESS IN THE WORLD? WHY?

What can the harvest hope for, if not the care of the Reaper Man?

It's what sets these stories apart from so many others. Magic is never the solution, reality is usually the solution. And little is introduced without Pratchett delving the idea to its depths, sooner or later.

Island Universe - William H. Hays

American, b. 1956 -

Colour linocut reduction on wove paper, 9 x 12 in. 23.5 x 31 cm.  Ed. 100

Yaremche by Leon Vychulovskyi, 1910s

Angua and Cheery in color! commissions/store/ko-fi/instagram

House with Chimaeras, Kyiv, Ukraine

russia has committed at least 137,000 war crimes in Ukraine

"As of today, there are at least 137,000 reasons for us to continue this work and to bring it to an end. 137 thousand is the number of war crimes committed by russia at the moment - that is what is known. Crimes against peace and humanity, against our state, against our people." - Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Friendly reminder that it's Kyiv, not Kiev. Chornobyl, not Chernobyl. Odesa, not Odessa. Ukraine, not the Ukraine.

Art by J.R.R. Tolkien

Shattered

(inspired by this absolutely heartbreaking piece by thyinum)

trigger warning: dissociation, self-harm, grief, implied character death, hint at violent imagery, hint at suicidal ideation

it genuinely pisses me off that ukraine has to resort to pointing at its civilian death count to garner sympathy and action from the world.

can you even imagine how many of our soldiers have laid down their lives to push russia back? for some reason, there is this belief that soldiers’ lives do not matter once they become combatants, yet before they took up the role they were ordinary civilians just like the rest of us. they were teachers, bakers, students. they had peaceful lives, they have families, and they just want ukraine to be safe and at peace so that they may return to those lives.

they matter, they count towards our death toll, yet people see news of our soldiers passing and dont even spare a second glance. they are ukrainians too, they matter. with every day that russia invades us, ukrainians are dying, whether they are civilians or not.

heroyam slava 🕯️

Smaug the Terrible

Sometimes I wish westerners could read ruzzian. Or at least use google translate when writing articles about ruzzians and their opinions.

"Russia believes they have a right to invade a foreign country because russian speakers are being bombed."

But what ruzzian news says is...

"Ukrainians and Ukraine never existed. This is our historical territory. We need to flatten "ukraine" and take back what is ours! They are all dogs and bugs anyways!"

And that is news channels with millions or ruzzians watching and supporting. They will legit say the most rancid dehumanizing shit possible about Ukrainians and western media still tries to "portray the situation evenly". They still say "innocent russians in russia dont know! They have no idea whats happening! They dont support the war!". I'm sorry they have no idea? All their news outlets are covering the war and talking about how Ukraine is their land. ruzzians still have access to other media. They CHOOSE to support and believe that Ukrainians are subhuman and deserve to die because they dared not to be ruzzian and dared not to speak ruzzian.

Why aren't westerners covering what pootin says? What he actually says about Ukraine and Ukrainians? Most articles never bring up the batshit crazy things he says out loud about Ukrainians. If we compile the shit pootin says about Ukraine and Ukrainians then you will not be able to tell the difference between him and hitler or mussolini. Or even the north American churches when they spoke of natives. If anything with how much he says out loud he would probably come off even worse.

My friends dad even said that "she [me] doesnt know everything about whats going on in Ukraine and Russia." His claim was this was actually all about resources. Guess how many languages he understands? One. English. Me? The holy trinity. Ukrainian, Russian, and English.

They are completely ignorant of how much moscovites hate us and for how long they have been appropriating our history and culture. They have no idea how many excuses under the sun moscovites will use to push away and hide the real reason for all of this.

Slept on this and it made me think further.

I don't think they understand the difference in insults between Ukrainians and Moscovites either.

ruzzians will be insulting Ukrainians for existing. For speaking Ukrainian. For wanting to preserve our culture. For being "lesser ruzzians". For writing Ukrainian. For simply existing and maintaining our way of life and rejecting ruzzian supremacy (as we see in Belarus where they dare not even speak their native tongue without it being seen as a political stance... Have you seen Lukashenshit speak about the Belarusian language? While appeasing ruzzians?)

ruzzians insult Ukrainians for not doing.

Ukrainians call ruzzians orcs, murderers, katsaps, invaders, moskals, for invading and murdering us. For torturing and raping women, children, men, and elderly. For kidnapping our children and adopting them into ruzzian families. For forcing Ukrainians in occupied territories to send their children into ruzzian schools where they are taught propaganda. For destroying Ukrainian literature. For stealing Ukrainian artifacts. For executing Ukrainian citizens in broad daylight. For bombing childrens hospital and maternaty wards. For bombing children's schools and daycares. For targeting publishing houses. For harassing Ukrainians across the globe. For not even leaving the dogs alive when massacring a family trying to escape.

Ukrainians insult ruzzians for trying to genocide us and ethnocide us.

It is in no way a "both sides are bad!" Or "civil conversion". You can not be comparing the two when there is such a clear distinction of the nature in insults and the reasons for it. Not a single generation of Ukrainians were left without feeling ruzzian aggression. If only they put that much effort in understanding the severity of the issue than policing Ukrainians for their reactions and language around their country and families being in danger and continuously assaulted for no other reason than being Ukrainian in Ukraine.

You wouldn't tell a jew not to speak negatively of Germans who murdered and tortured their family in the past, why is it not okay for Ukrainians to speak negatively about ruZZians who are doing the same currently?

I wonder if it's a sign of better or worse mental health when you wake up to loud explosions outside your window and immediately go back to sleep because "they sound closer to another neighborhood than mine" and "unless the explosion shakes my house, sleeping is more important"

Yeah

[For those who can't read Cyrillic: these are the sounds of explosions and the buzzing of murder drones. I'm too lazy to rewrite them using Latin]

--Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

if you're feeling powerless right now—and god knows I am—here's a reminder you can donate to the National Network of Abortion Funds, the Trans Law Center, Gaza Soup Kitchen, the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, and hundreds of other charities that will work to mitigate the damage that has been and will continue to be inflicted

life continues. we still have the capacity to do good, important work. that matters