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Kesper North posted:To me everything after the first encounter with the Summoning Dark is Vimes dissociating and depersonalizing trauma to get himself through stuff. He's talking to his Inner Watchman, the part of him that stretched and grew as a person during his encounter with the Summoning Dark and which has detached itself from his core identity in order to serve as a sort of internal check, to ensure that he himself does not become a monster. It shows back up in Snuff - he interviews the darkness at a crime scene. I can't think of it in any other books, with things like the Vimes Elbow taking out werewolves being mostly a dirty street fighter catching over confident assholes unaware because they're just used to prey not fighting back. Even in Raising Steam he's just described as an older dude with Pratchett's usual take on tough old guys, like the grocerer from Going Postal. Him having excellent night vision goes back to The Fifth Elephant as well i think.
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Jul 15, 2021 01:36
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It definitely does some overtly supernatural stuff, and tells Vimes things that he wouldn't be able to know by himself. Pretty sure there's a passage in Snuff where he's going into a tunnel with Constable Upshot and Upshot's like "oh poo poo it's pitch black in here" and Vimes realizes he can still see perfectly. I would prefer your headcanon too, honestly, but even then it's not really a useful thing to graft onto the Vimes character. He's always done that sort of thing internally anyway to compartmentalize and deal with his anger, he's just called it The Beast up until then.
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Jul 17, 2021 22:03
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Phenotype posted:It definitely does some overtly supernatural stuff, and tells Vimes things that he wouldn't be able to know by himself. Pretty sure there's a passage in Snuff where he's going into a tunnel with Constable Upshot and Upshot's like "oh poo poo it's pitch black in here" and Vimes realizes he can still see perfectly. drat, that's disappointing. I dunno, seeing an arc involving the metamorphosis of his coping with those feelings would have been cool. Him starting to think of it as the Summoning Dark - a more evolved predator, I guess - would be just one stage in that arc.
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Jul 17, 2021 23:07
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Phenotype posted:It definitely does some overtly supernatural stuff, and tells Vimes things that he wouldn't be able to know by himself. Pretty sure there's a passage in Snuff where he's going into a tunnel with Constable Upshot and Upshot's like "oh poo poo it's pitch black in here" and Vimes realizes he can still see perfectly. I never saw that as a continued occupation/possession, but as an indication that whenever you're in pitch darkness, the Summoning Darkness is there. It doesn't really have anybody else to talk with.
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Jul 18, 2021 00:12
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I've been re-reading all the Discworld novels in order this year, well, re-listening to the audiobooks, and I have to say the readers are really loving great. Nigel Planer reads most of them. I already thought he was great, but I realized he was incredible when he did the gargoyle voices in 'Men at Arms'. I only wish Celia Imrie had read more of the witches' novels than just 'Equal Rites' and 'Wyrd Sisters'.
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Jul 19, 2021 15:06
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Conversely, I didn’t like Tony Robinson’s ones.
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Jul 19, 2021 15:24
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The_Doctor posted:Conversely, I didn’t like Tony Robinson’s ones. It sucks because Tony is great but all the versions he read are abridged.
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Jul 19, 2021 15:25
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I'm sad to inform you that TERFs are on their bullshit again https://twitter.com/rhipratchett/status/1421250250019426305
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Jul 31, 2021 14:07
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I've been following this development, waffling between rage and befuddlement. Like, he has an entire book whose theme is taking outdated gender bullshit to the woodshed. He has a book where the bad guys are GCs allied with fascists. He has a book where he outright says "we have extra pronouns here". It seems their entire thesis comes from a very bad interpretation of Equal Rites.
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Jul 31, 2021 14:22
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https://twitter.com/setoacnna/status/1421198596922294277 This is one of the dumbest things. Just saying "Yeah, I think Granny Weatherwax would have totally been on our side," without adding anything else, and....where to begin? Monstrous Regiment, enormous chunks of the Watch series, Gladys in Making Money. Speaking of the witches, this person either didn't read Shepherd's Crown, or more likely, is just straight up ignoring it just to push their awful brokebrained trash. Edit: https://twitter.com/setoacnna/status/1421199737676513283 They are such garbage people. IBroughttheFunk fucked around with this message at 14:39 on Jul 31, 2021 |
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Jul 31, 2021 14:32
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“GC”?
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Jul 31, 2021 14:51
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What the gently caress. I wonder if it's from a bad reading of The Fifth Elephant
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Jul 31, 2021 14:52
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SaintFu posted:“GC”? "Gender critical" which is just window dressing for transphobic. I really don't want to know what Margaret Atwood is being mentioned for.
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Jul 31, 2021 14:53
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angerbeet posted:"Gender critical" which is just window dressing for transphobic. It's nothing bad, Atwood was telling them to gently caress off and to learn to read because TERFs were trying to use Handmaiden's Tale as an example of what the trans agenda wants or some poo poo.
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Jul 31, 2021 14:57
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All transphobes are evil fucks, but not all are quite as wild as the ones who think there is a trans agenda. Like Rowling may be (she is) an anti-semite, but I don't think her antisemitism and her transphobia are particularly connected beyond being a monstrous piece of poo poo. She just thinks that transpeople are mentally ill lunatics. But the whole trans agenda is the misogynistic and nearly always anti-semitic idea that there's a conspiracy by the Jews or some stand-in for them to destroy the white race by turning its men into women. Or to just turn men into women generally because they're nihilistic satanists and also women are innately garbage so there can be nothing worse than to convince people to become women. Like by the time someone's going on about a trans 'agenda' of any sort, they're pretty much well past the point where you can even remotely hope to reason them back into being a functional member of a civilized society. EDIT: Also how in God's name can anyone read the Dwarf stories and think that Pratchett would have been a transphobe?
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Jul 31, 2021 15:10
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:
By seeing that women are inherently want to wear dresses and completely ignoring the satirical irony that makes the bigots the real target
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Jul 31, 2021 15:16
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SaintFu posted:“GC”? It's basically "TERF, but but would condense into a shrieking ball of rage-plasma if they got called a Feminist". TERFs are Gender Critical, but not all GCs are TERFs. Jaren Karen Terfling is a TERF. James Lindsay is GC. Devorum fucked around with this message at 15:40 on Jul 31, 2021 |
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Jul 31, 2021 15:36
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RoboChrist 9000 posted:EDIT: Also how in God's name can anyone read the Dwarf stories and think that Pratchett would have been a transphobe? Right? There’s so much trans narratives in the Dwarf stories, it’s absurd to read them and think “this is a guy who’d hate trans people”
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Jul 31, 2021 16:10
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Cheery Littlebottom is a hero to anyone who feels themselves stuffed into a gendered box they don't feel comfortable in, cis or trans.
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Jul 31, 2021 16:32
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And Dee is a cautionary tale.
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Jul 31, 2021 16:40
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angerbeet posted:"Gender critical" which is just window dressing for transphobic. You'd think calling yourself gender critical actually meant that you'd, you know, view the whole two genders thing critically. Transphobes calling themselves "gender critical" is such a war is peace thing.
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Jul 31, 2021 17:20
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It's hard for me to even put myself in the headspace where whether the fact that a dead author of (even admittedly excellent) fantasy novels would agree with my politics or not matters at all. Like, if Sir Terry had repugnant politics I was supporting somehow by giving him money, or if they bled through into his work, that would be important to me, but I don't feel any need to imagine his views on a subject in order to validate my own and it's hard for me to imagine being someone who does.
Imagined fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Jul 31, 2021 |
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Jul 31, 2021 19:01
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It's possible to read the dwarf story-line as being about women forced to present as men, which plays into a certain kind of feminism pretty effectively, and I can imagine these TERFs insisting that because the biology/genitalia matches up with the female gender performance, by definition these stories can't be about trans-people. Complete nonsense, of course. When I taught an entire semester of Pratchett, I had multiple stories assigned covering the Cheri/Cheery story, through and including Raising Steam, but I was planning to soft-pedal the trans context because I didn't want to proscribe a single way of reading the books. But then I ended up with a classroom full of students who had never read Pratchett; the only fan (who'd read almost everything) was trans, and was willing to talk and write about it, and he opened my eyes (as well as the other students' eyes) to just precisely how Pratchett is clearly and calculatedly exploring the trans experience of gender performance through the changes to dwarf culture. By the time we got to Feet of Clay, I was just drawing the students' attention to how early the publication date was in terms of cultural discourse about gender identity, and we all got to marvel at how far ahead of the curve Pratchett was. In fact, Angua's story also plays interestingly with concepts of gender and bodies, and it's interesting to see that, after helping Cheri redefine herself over the course of Feet of Clay, it turns out that Cheri is actually far more comfortable with living as who she actually is than Angua is. Angua's not only not comfortable being a werewolf, she's not very comfortable being a woman, which is why she has all this clothing she isn't using and can loan to Cheri. An interesting aside about Rowling/Harry Potter: I was having a conversation the other day, and the upshot of it was that Rowling's Harry Potter falls neatly in line with her present TERF behavior down to the level of the structure and design. As something that's fundamentally a mystery, the story tries to lock everything down at the end: "all is well," the few terrible evil people who didn't end up loyal to the guy worse than Hitler receive a bit of recognition for being not that evil and their being terrible is forgotten, and the "puzzle" at the heart of the books has been resolved. Nothing more need be said. Everything worked out. Of course, the House-elves are all still slaves, the Goblins are apparently still treacherous and evil and that justifies the wizarding world treating them as subhuman, and God knows what the centaurs are supposed to be, but they aren't enfranchised either. In fact, none of these subspecies even WANT more rights, except the Goblins, and gently caress them, amirite? So "all is well" applies even though appalling race-based evil is still being done by mainstream wizarding society. Thanks, JK. Compare to Discworld mysteries. Feet of Clay is a great example: the lot of golems has been slightly improved, perhaps, but that's an issue that will need to be worked on through the remaining books. Cheri's gender presentation is just the start of a slow revolution. And the villain of the piece may have had his undeath's work ruined, for now, but he still occupies an influential position and he can afford to bide his time. Kingship and class haven't been eliminated, they've just been dealt a temporary blow. We can feel satisfied at the conclusion of this story, but all is definitively not well, and the work has to continue. And then, in subsequent novels, it does! In Pratchett, the mystery EXPOSES something, a larger source of decay and rot within culture, government, society, etc, and while the resolution makes a meaningful difference, it does not solve the problem, merely creating the possibility of working slowly and persistently towards a solution. In Rowling, the resolution of the mystery REVEALS Harry's essential goodness, and that's pretty much all that's required to solve the problem in a fairly conclusive way. Evil is still out there, but Harry is still fighting it, so we have nothing to worry about. In Pratchett, then, goodness is an action, an ongoing process of behavior (and changing behavior) over time that depends upon the relationships between people, including neighbors, families, foreigners, strangers, tourists, and beings not traditionally treated as human. In Rowling, people are pretty much what they are, essentially, and behavior is a layer plastered over that essence that can either reveal or conceal who someone really is. Choices matter, sure, but while Harry chooses to be good, he also IS good, and there's no hint that Voldemort has the choice to not be evil, just that he has the choice to repent and be redeemed (by whom, exactly? God? Harry Christ?). Dumbledore talking with Snape implies, not that Snape was evil and has slowly changed his ways, but that he was essentially good the whole time and it just wasn't obvious yet. And goodness, apparently, isn't determined by how you treat others, because Hermione's attempts to free the House-Elves are ridiculed even by our hero, who treats Dobby well across most of the series but is abominable in his treatment of Kreacher; when that changes, apparently we are being taught that if you treat a slave well, he will be happy and become good, not that treating ANYBODY as a slave is wrong even if that's the way it works right now. The Golden Rule, for Rowling, seems to involve treating people nicely until they screw you over (Griphook) and then wishing them dead because they are evil in essence. Nobody claims at the end of the HP series that they should return Gryffindor's sword to the Goblins now. It is obviously, and essentially, owned by the dead human who paid for it, even though it just as clearly has no specific human owner. No surprise, then, if Rowling is a gender essentialist, too. Or that she seems increasingly convinced that anyone disagreeing with her is evil, not just wrong.
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Jul 31, 2021 19:28
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Fuckin TERFs are so delusional that when looking at an author who was an avowed humanist, a very left thinking dude and they're like oh yeah he'd be a fuckin transphobe, he's one of ours.
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Jul 31, 2021 19:47
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Imagined posted:It's hard for me to even put myself in the headspace where whether the fact that a dead author of (even admittedly excellent) fantasy novels would agree with my politics or not matters at all. Like, if Sir Terry had repugnant politics I was supporting somehow by giving him money, or if they bled through into his work, that would be important to me, but I don't feel any need to imagine his views on a subject in order to validate my own and it's hard for me to imagine being someone who does. Evil needs to justify its existence, and all it needs to do that is to have one good person who supports it. Then they can point at that person and say "Well they agree with me". In the absence of such a person, they will always try to ascribe their beliefs to good people.
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Jul 31, 2021 22:10
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I've always enjoyed setting this against the issue of dwarven beards. Cheery is a woman, and yet her concept of dwarfishness means she doesn't even think for one second about getting rid of her beard: quote:'You sure you want to keep the beard?' quote:Cheery had retained her beard and round iron helmet, of course. It was one thing to declare that you were female, but quite unthinkable to declare that you weren't a dwarf. And yet it's not that simple, because Carrot is both six feet tall and can't even grow any kind of beard, and yet... quote:'You have to understand, sir, that there's a sort of big debate going on,' said Carrot. 'On how you define a dwarf.' That theme then gets picked up on and explored more thoroughly in Thud, where we get to see what deep-downers make of Carrot, and Bashfullson: quote:'Why do you carry no axe?' Ardent snarled. It's an enduring disappointment that he clearly had so much more in mind to explore on the question of identity, what it is, and where it comes from; and simply ran out of time to do it.
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Aug 1, 2021 01:21
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https://twitter.com/FreyjaErlings/status/1421437165670703107
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Aug 1, 2021 11:17
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My favorite part of Monstrous Regiment is at the end, when Sergeant Jackrum is wondering what to do after the war, and Polly tells him "it doesn't matter how awkward you feel, you need to put on a dress and stop telling everyone you're a man, and go home to be a mother to your son."
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Aug 1, 2021 15:01
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I'm legit trying to think up of some of Pratchett's politics or philosophy that I'd find uncomfortable/disappointing and I'm coming up blessedly short. And arseholes trying to pressgang him in death to their side getting called is great.
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Aug 1, 2021 15:35
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Future proofing your legacy against bigots. https://twitter.com/scalzi/status/1421857179926241280?s=20
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Aug 1, 2021 16:56
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citybeatnik posted:I'm legit trying to think up of some of Pratchett's politics or philosophy that I'd find uncomfortable/disappointing and I'm coming up blessedly short.
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Aug 1, 2021 17:05
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Xander77 posted:Gun control in Night Watch? I don't recall that being a thing unless it's a metaphor that I missed. There's the Gunn in Feet of Clay but even that was "wtf why didn't you let the loving people trained in guarding guard this loving thing?" Followed by "holy poo poo this is a terrible thing!" And ending with Carrot breaking it and burying it.
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Aug 1, 2021 17:23
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citybeatnik posted:I don't recall that being a thing unless it's a metaphor that I missed. There's the Gunn in Feet of Clay but even that was "wtf why didn't you let the loving people trained in guarding guard this loving thing?" Followed by "holy poo poo this is a terrible thing!" And ending with Carrot breaking it and burying it. quote:There had been that Weapons Law, for a start. Weapons were involved in so many crimes that, Swing reasoned, reducing the number of weapons had to reduce the crime rate. (Mind, there wasn't really a lot of dagger control etc).
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Aug 1, 2021 17:31
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There's also the part where Lord Vetinari wins pretty much.... Every single conflict ever? He is by all accounts a murderous authoritarian. But a lot of stories contort themselves to make him right all along. Or people who question/defy him or his plans are painted as fools. He's never humbled, he never has to learn his lesson or grow as a person. Whenever he is given some backstory it often just tries to humanise him or justify him. But that's just a small personal observation. Pratchet was a better person than I could ever dream of being. I won't throw dirt at his legacy.
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Aug 1, 2021 18:09
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Yeah it's kinda brushed off but ankh-morpork essentially has a benevolent dictator who is practically omniscient
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Aug 1, 2021 18:55
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What are you talking about? Ankh-Morpork is a shining example of that cornerstone of democracy, "one man, one vote."
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Aug 1, 2021 19:11
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Feliday Melody posted:There's also the part where Lord Vetinari wins pretty much.... Every single conflict ever? I mean, he walks with a bad limp ever since Feet of Clay because he went "yeah let's just let the assasains look after this thing" and Mr. Pin did manage to take him down in The Truth. But i do get what you mean.
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Aug 1, 2021 19:20
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citybeatnik posted:I mean, he walks with a bad limp ever since Feet of Clay because he went "yeah let's just let the assasains look after this thing" and Mr. Pin did manage to take him down in The Truth. Wasn't he shot in Men at Arms?
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Aug 1, 2021 22:23
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bunnyofdoom posted:Wasn't he shot in Men at Arms? Yeah i hosed up which book was which - that's the one i've been meaning. He's poisoned in Feet of Clay but figures it out. I also always read him coming out on top throughout the books as just being really good at rolling with the punches such as in Making Money or even Jingo. He was ready to go to war (and lose!) in the latter until Leonard made an off-handed comment to him. It's in the later books (Unseen Academicals coming to mind along with Snuff and Thud!) where he's at the point that Feliday said. Basically once Morpork has "modernized".
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Aug 1, 2021 22:54
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I think Pratchett spends enough time contrasting Vetinari with a plethora of autocrat/oligarch/nobility antagonist types who are clearly awful that the message of the character becomes 'a machiavellian strongman can only be effective if they are a ridiculously clever and talented person but also are extremely weird with no vices or personal desires at all'. Pratchett is also very careful to be realistic about the nature of despotism - Vetinari never actually has absolute power, he's in charge because he's got the support of the various factions in the city and he needs to regularly keep those factions happy. He also never achieves anything by waving his hand and saying 'make it so' (although he does exert pressure on people), he's effective because he identifies other people of talent and nudges them towards whatever he wants getting done.
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Aug 2, 2021 00:06
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