“Jeremy tried to be an interesting person. The trouble was that he was the kind of person who, having decided to be an interesting person, would first of all try to find a book called How to Be An Interesting Person and then see whether there were any courses available.”
The canonical fact that Vimes doesn’t play chess because the only thing he can think about is that the pawns really should unionize and overthrow their useless king is one of my favorite tidbits in a series full of great little details
Dracula revival clashing with my Discworld brainrot is really making me revisit the sadly off-screen adventure where a recent graduate on a truly horrible ivy league frat boy eurotrip comprised entirely of assasins and an ancient evil entity help each other become the girlboss of their dreams and then stay lifelong penpals
thinking about the end of Guards! Guards! where we return to relatively benevolent Havelock Vetinari, and looking down at the city of Ankh-Morpork, which had obediently rolled over for a king they’d never even heard of the second one showed up, and when a dragon killed him, they made the dragon the king
and as the dragon’s appetite demanded that they sacrifice their daughters to it, no one stood up to protest this except for the people who had daughters, and when THEY were killed, everyone trembled but no one wanted to stand up an do anything
the leaders silently begged for help from the others, and none of them were willing to be the first one to say something or do anything. ‘cowards,’ they think of the others, even as they refuse to do anything themselves.
and the dragon, learning of human nature, is horrifiedto learn of human history, how willing we are to torture one another and call it good, to ignore any moral failing or compromise
and here Vetinari says, that there are people down there who will worship any evil obey any dragon, follow any kind of evil.
Not because they are bad in the really creative way of the truly awful and creative sinners, but because they don’t say no. A hum-drum, very ordinary kind of evil, without a shred of originality. The evil of banality, and normal-ness.
And then we look at Vimes, who has spent the book cursing out the people of Ankh-Morpork for refusing to stand up for their neighbors, for giving into authority the second it rears its head, perhaps the last man in the city who really believes and acts on things like honor and duty, even as he complains about it and has spent most of his career drinking himself into oblivion over it.
None of those things Vetinari has noticed apply to him; he’s spent the whole book rallying against that normality, that banality of evil.
Vetinari comments that there IS no good in the world. There’s no good guys and bad guys, he says, no simple lines to be drawn. There’s just bad people. Sometimes, they’re on opposite sides.
Vetinari, who works for nothing but the prosperity of the city, no matter how thankless it is.
Vimes, who is a walking antithesis to everything Vetinari has said, asks him why he bothers getting up in the morning if he really believes that.
“Oh, go on home, Vimes,” says VEtinari. “There’s a goodman.”
So the book ends up on a note of ambiguity, questioning whether Vetinari is right or not. We go to the Watch, humble men who simply did what they did because they thought it was their job, and for Carrot, because there was nothing to do BUT the right thing, and at the very least, its the first glimmer that in the end, Vetinari really is wrong.
And that, most pointedly, he gradually only acquires his propensity for being borderline omniscient once he begins to truly get that sometimes people are motived by something beyond base self-interest. There’s good people in this world too. They’re crabby, or naïve, or grumpy grouches resenting the hell out of the world for needing them to do this, or they’re asocial weirdos who don’t fit in any where and know it, but they’re there. More of them show up, over time.
So it begs the question, of whether or not Vetinari believes what he’s saying, or that he DID believe it, but the events of the book and Carrot in particular put a big ol’ question mark on his thoughts.
“Sorry?” said Carrot. “If it’s just a thing, how can it commit murder? A sword is a thing” – he drew his own sword; it made an almost silken sound – “and of course you couldn’t possibly blame a swordif someone thrust it at you, sir.”
The man went cross-eyed as he tried to focus on the sword.
And, again, Angua felt that touch of bewilderment. Carrot wasn’t threatening the man. He wasn’tthreatening the man. He was merely using the sword to demonstrate a…well, a point. And that was all. He’d be quite amazed to hear that not everyone would think of it like that.
Part of her said: Someone has to be very complex indeed to be as simple as Carrot.
New edition ! Recipes from Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook are marked with a *, all the others are creations from talented fans (shout out to @fantasyfeasts, for providing most of these, and @sewuniversebacktogether for attempting to make troll food). Discworld themed food for everyone ! (last update 12/08/17)
Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler splashing stripes of paint onto cheap white flags and trying to sell them at a premium because they’re new, exclusive genders, made only 5 minutes ago by a gay council on a mountain somewhere
Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler selling genuine gender fluid, extracted by monks from the famed trans-continental trees of the Forest of Skund.
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
