“fraternizing” is such a fun type of relationship. like you’re not supposed to hang out with that guy so we’re going to use a word for it that makes it sound as cool and interesting as possible for you to hang out with that guy.
“they shouldve fucked raw” actually is the most insightful and thought provoking commentary and analysis that can be said for any media and if you disagree you’ll never make it in this business
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.
