#and it makes so much of vetinari's character make so much sense

[andromeda3116]

"One day when I was a young boy on holiday in Uberwald, I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs. A very endearing sight, I'm sure you will agree, and even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half-submerged log. As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature's wonders, gentlemen: mother and children dining upon mother and children. And that's when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior."

--Lord Vetinari, Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett

#discworld #gnu terry pratchett #lord vetinari #havelock vetinari #discworld quotes #i love that philosophy and feel it in my gut and bones: #''if there is a higher power then it's our prerogative to be better than it'' #like that quote from nation about the gods letting you down and how kneeling to them would be bowing to murderers and bullies #or the whole theme of small gods where the higher power needs to learn to care about the people he demands worship from #pratchett often returns to this theme of ''what do you do when your god(s) fail you?'' #and having once felt like my god absolutely failed me - although i didn't have the words to see it like that at the time - that resonates #i've said before that that was such a revelation: those were the words of my last unanswered prayer #i have many intellectual reasons now to be an atheist but at the core it's... #if the universe is chaos then it cannot be cruel. there is no one who could have saved you but didn't for their own opaque reasons #if there is no god then no god failed me or left me drowning in despair for a whole year #small gods helped me conceptualize that in ways that defy words and literally changed my life and perspective for the better #anyway. this quote is magnificent. ''mother and child feasting upon mother and child'' #and it makes so much of vetinari's character make so much sense #he looked at the world through cynical and bitter eyes but instead of becoming a nihilist who manipulated the cruel world for his own gain #he said ''we can and must be better than this'' #(this is why i feel like kaz brekker - under inej's influence - should grow up to be like havelock vetinari) #(the one who clenches his fist and fucking *fixes* this goddamned place)

[notbecauseofvictories]

I'm re-reading the Discworld series for reasons, and honestly the most relatable part of reading these as an adult is how many of the protagonists start out being tired, used to their little routine and vaguely disgruntled by the interruption of the Plot. Sam Vimes wants to lie drunk in a gutter and absolutely doesn't want to be arresting dragons. Rincewind is yanked into every situation he's ever encountered, though he'd much rather be lying in a gutter too. (Minus the alcohol. Plus regretting everything he's ever done said witnessed or even heard about fourth-hand in his whole life.) Granny Weatherwax is deeply suspicious of foreign parts and that includes the next town over; Nanny has leaned into the armor of "nothing ever happens to jolly grannies who terrorize their daughters-in-law and make Saucy Jokes"

Only the young people don't seem to have picked up on this---and that's fortunate, because someone has to run around making things happen, if only so Vimes and Granny and Rincewind have a reason to get up (complaining bitterly the whole time) and put it all to rights. Without Carrot, Margrat, Eric, etc. these characters don't have that reason; they're likely to stay in the metaphorical gutter and keep wondering where it all went wrong or why anything has to change.

............well, that's not quite true. You get the sense that Vetinari knows how much certain people hate the Plot. And as the person sitting behind the metaphorical lighting board of Ankh-Morpork, he takes no small pleasure in forcing the Plot-haters specifically to stand up, and say some lines.

#I finished guards guards just yesterday and I forgot that vimes and wonse were set up to be mirror images #both boys from the shades of very different natures; who made good (ish) in wildly different ways #also it's interesting reading this books from an adult perspective; my mind isn't blown that these books exist #anymore; plus I've read so many good books since #and they're not perfectly constructed novels! especially these early books; #there are plenty of spots where I can feel the narrative get thin; where there's more handwaving than I remember #but each book IS better and tighter; the jokes are funnier and the irony sharpens; the footnotes are better utilized #the characters are getting more interesting and complicated as opposed to set-ups for jokes. #it's an illustration of someone getting better at their chosen field and that in itself is more impressive than I was anticipating. #discworld

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

1, 3 and 7 with Discworld?

Hahah that's so vague! So I'm going for overarching stuff, as much as possible. Rather than character specific.

1. Canon I outright reject

Moist von Lipwig is not tall. I refuse to accept that. He should be average in all things: facial features, coluring, height. Deeply, deeply average. Mediocre, even. Nothing to write home about. You wouldn't notice him.

Because that's the point.

Oh - I refuse to accept that the merchant's guild was a relatively new creation (as per the timeline of the series). Ankh-Morpork is a fundamentally mercantile society - it makes no sense for it to be so recent an establishment.

Therefore, I reject TP's world building on that front because it doesn't fit the world itself.

3. Obscure headcanon

Not sure if it's truely obcure, but obviously I head canon Madam as Vetinari's mother rather than aunt. They just fudged things to ensure in the eyes of Polite Society he had ""Proper Parentage"" and wasn't the offspring of a sex worker and one of her favoured johns.

7. Age/height/weight headcanon

I'm not sure! Most people fit with their descriptions pretty well so I've not augmented much in my headcanons. I've just drawn things perhaps a little firmer?

I know fandom prettifies people, so I tend to try and make sure Vetinari isn't described as this handsome man but rather weird looking and Beauty is Very Much In the Eye of the Beholder with him.

I also like characters to have a bit of weight on them. Downey is in his fifties - people put weight on with age, for the most part. He's not going to be a svelte twenty year old. Same for Vetinari - he's in his fifties and he's less mobile than previously due to the gunshot wound. He's going to be carrying more weight in the paunch than when he was young. Ditto for Vimes and Boggis and Sybil and all others of a Certain Age.

I just like these people to have aging, changing bodies. It's important that their skin hangs a little loose, that there are squishy bits that weren't like that when they were twenty-five or thirty, that there's weight on hips/thighs/stomach/arms, that there are wrinkles and lines and skin pores and random black hairs that show up overnight and all that stuff that is part of the beauty and grace of aging.

-----

Thank you! <3 <3 <3 <3

#discworld #lord downey #vetinari #ask #reply #anon #ask meme #ask game #writing

[worrywrite]

A continuation of my assessment of Discworld books.

I have read Feet of Clay.

Heck.

Not exactly sure what more I can say.

Well. I'll try to get more in depth.

I haven't heard many good things about this one (mostly neutral opinions), which is a shame. If you've read the watch books in order, G!G! is a great start for Discworld overall and Men at Arms is a stellar follow up. But Feet of Clay makes everything make sense. It shows us why and how Vimes exists (because Vetinari sculpted him and put words in his head), what the watch is really capable of, and it is a better analogue to our real world than any prior book.

Feet of clay is about 3 different kings. The king made by kings who knows better than to rule, which is Carrot. The King made by lords and wealthy men who doesn't want to rule because he knows it's a figurehead position, which is Nobby. And the king made by the oppressed that could not be a good king despite trying, which is Meshugah. It is interesting that all three of the first watch novels have this obsession with kingship. In G!G! The villain wants to be king because he wants power and wealth and money and so on. In Men at Arms, the inciting incident is that someone realizes there is a "proper" king to be had and it would only be right and proper by the lord's and ladies of the city to have him installed. But in Feet of Clay everyone seems to want a king; not for power per se, but because they envision a king as a savior in a time of crisis. But they don't realize what Vetinari and Carrot know as of the end of Men at Arms, that kings fail and the throne is rotted hollow behind the gold leaf. And this is the point of the novel, I think. To have feet of clay means to be mighty and powerful but simultaneously weak or to have a particular weak point. It seems that kingship in and of itself is a weakness. No good king could be a good king because no good king represents a cohesive community, no great kingdom can be ruled by one man because it is inherently fragmented. And a good king in a position where he cannot be a good king is driven to madness. It happens to Nobby when he jumps out of the window and wholesale rejects the offer of kingship. It happens to Meshugah right when he's made, because he comes into being with the role of king and no way to fulfill his role. And Angua fears that it is happening to Carrot, that he is so close to snapping but unable to let himself snap.

Personally, my favorite part of Feet of Clay is Dorfl. Dorfl is the ideal person in the book, almost as much the hero/protagonist as Vimes and as much of a self realization story as Cheri. Because Dorfl starts out wanting a king, believing he must have a master and that there must be a savior for his kind. Dorfl is one of the golems that makes a king. And it is literally Dorfl's feet that become the feet of clay upon which the golem king Meshugah stands. When Dorfl realizes that he can be his own master, that he can own himself and his actions and his body, he realizes that the king he made is more his responsibility than he is its responsibility. And so he goes about trying to dismantle the king he made, because of all the people that make a king in this book Dorfl is actually capable of assuming responsibility for the king he helped create.

It also doesn't hurt that Dorfl is just a cool character. He gets to catch a javelin fired from the Piecemaker at near point blank range, he gets a fantastic fight scene, and he does something that I think no other golem ever does in Discworld which is he lives by his own words.

There is more to love about the book, of course, like the scathing take on capitalism and property (though I don't think that is as pertinent now as when it was written), and the whole matter of Cheri (who I also love and will perhaps write more about later) and her manifesting her self.

Anyway. It is worth reading the watch books to get to Feet of Clay. And I imagine Feet of Clay is worth reading for the rest as well.

#discworld #feet of clay #terry pratchett #gnu terry pratchett #post read essay

[des-fangirl]

Tell me some of your discworld headcanons, fellow discworld obsessed person :))

Ahhh dear hello IM SO SORRY FOR TAKING THIS LONG TO ANSWER I didn't mean to ignore, just at the time i got this ask I didn't know what to answer - I didn't have any hcs at all 😭 it's always a hard topic idk why...i think i do have headcanons always but i dont think of them as ones? LET'S BE HONEST I DON'T THINK EVER but that's not the question

First of all VIMES' NOSE. YEAHH. I did draw him with some lines over a nose and didn't think about it much, then saw @/magpiesketchins' art and went WOAH. OH WAIT THAT MAKES SENSE!! And now i LOVE Vimes with a broken nose and yes my style is kinda noseless but it's here i promise!!! You gotta do what i gotta BELIEVE

Khm, the second one and I guess my favourite of em all is.. Vetinari ace! :] I am also ace and im not sure if that's projecting onto my fav character but..i think it suits him! Ohh he's so into work that I can't imagine him having sex. Ok i CAN because I've read fanfiction & seen some art but- nahh in my head he's asexual forever

Moist & Adora being bisexuals!! It's pretty popular for all i know and i like that it is, i like this hc very much

Otto&William&Sacharissa polycule >:) i like their trio and it just makes me happy to imagine them hanging out together enjoying eachother's company and being little annoying bitches together (/pos)

Also i like to draw Angua with a big nose if that counts..ok not big maybe, idk how to explain it but i think it's noticeable in my Angua art. And i add her some facial hair too! Im still trying to figure out how i want her hair to look but the facial hair stays here that's for sure

#ask #HOPE IT WAS WORTH THE WAIT #fellow discworld obsessed person🥺🥺 #ily puddle #IS IT OK TO CALLYOU PUDDLE #the username is too long and i dont remember your name if it's written in blog AND I CANT CHECK NOW #you're puddle now. #:3 #discworld #hcs #des-shitpost #maybe I'll add mooore #when I think about it long enough there's actually some things to talk about #but now nooow #it's almost 3 am.

[bracketsoffear]

Lord Havelock Vetinari (Discworld) "Lord Vetinari is the patrician of the largest city on the Disc, Ankh Morpork which he, quoting another character "plays like a fiddle". He came into the role and totally changed how the city works, pulling apart some old structures and repurposing others for himself. He is aware of virtually everything happening in his city and uses them to his advantage. He is never straightforward with people, constantly manipulating people so that they best serve Ankh Morpork. He is always in control, even when locked up in his own dungeons he controls the lock to the door, even when ousted from his position for a military commander to take emergency power his plans hold steady and he managed to avert the war through trickery. He is a puppetmaster who will hand the puppet their strings because he knows they'll do what he wants them to do anyway."

Director Lee Harvey Oswald (The Department of Truth) "In The Department of Truth, the protagonist’s boss (and the director of the titular department) is a much older Lee Harvey Oswald, though it’s not explicitly known which version of him he is. As in, what story of the assassination is true? Is he the CIA stooge? The innocent patsy? The lone gunman? Our protagonist muses this question in the second issue and can only conclude: “He’s probably not the one killed by Jack Ruby.” And looking at the picture the comic paints of who he is now, he seems much more the type to spend his time in Howard Hunt’s circles than Kerry Thornley’s, if you know what I mean. He has become the image of the perfect Cold War-era fed with his browline glasses, dark suit, quips about a new generation gone soft, and an ever-present cigarette. And that’s because he always has been that. He joined the Department as an agent when he was 19, working to counter the Soviets and gain information on their country’s equivalent of the D.o.T. And we, the reader, do not know what happened on November day in Dallas, but neither does he, it seems. Kennedy stood against the Department and it was his job to take him out, but in that book depository, he saw the Scarlet Woman (see the Extinction poll) holding a sniper rifle, ready to tear apart the country’s sense of truth with a bullet. (Well, three.) But as the story of the assassination spread, so did the idea of Lee Harvey Oswald, the concept of the shadowy assassin that was seen on the front pages, the conflicting theories and paranoias made manifest. To quote Hawk Harrison (another character), “the living embodiment of every horrible thing people think the government is capable of, filled up into a man-shaped thing.” No matter how human he may or may not be, he might as well be American paranoia personified in function. He’s a man desperate to do whatever it takes to uphold the ideal of what America is supposed to be, that Shining City on a Hill; a man fighting in a war of propaganda and information and disinformation, a war of stories and ideas. To quote Indrid Cold, he’s simply a “dream this country is having.” 

History is, of course, written by the victors, and facts can be rewritten by them as well. After Lee’s “death”, the previous Director (Frank Capra) put him in the Department’s archives to try and figure out who the Scarlet Woman was, only for him to use the research to find a new way of doing things, a way to shift reality through manipulating what people believe to be true on a large scale through media, and symbolic imagery, and simple lies that serve to reinforce what the public wants to believe about this country, and for that, Richard Nixon appointed him to the job we know him in, Director of the D.o.T. Director Capra was a naïve idealist who truly believed that the American Dream was not only real but could be achieved through hard work. Lee knows that the American Dream is a lie, but my god, he will do what it takes to make it real, no matter how underhanded the tactics. If you can control the narrative, you can control the Truth. 

For most of his tenure, it was the height of the Cold War, there was a distinct enemy to push against. It was a conflict of countries, of ideologies, of two superpowers trying to keep their way of life at the expense of the other, and it was the U.S. that won out. There is another version of the 20th century, the one that was once real, where the founding ideals of the USSR were much closer to being realized within its border, it was something better than what it became, but the U.S. won the propaganda war and what was once simply a fact had become a hazy fiction that never happened. And so the victor rewrites history. 

And how does one become the victor? Through whatever means necessary, from fabricating events that later became real, to assassinations, to media manipulation, to the creation of the Satanic Panic itself, playing off paranoia and Christian nationalism to strengthen the idea that America is something that exists, that the American Dream is worth fighting for. (And of course, in the case of the latter, to deflect media attention from the whole Iran-Contra Deal.)

Finally, I leave you with this monologue: “I know you don’t trust me. I don’t care. I’ve done enough bad shit, and spent the last sixty years of my life lying through my teeth every goddamn day. I don’t need you to trust me. But I need to trust you to know that the ends justify the means. You’re sour over your star-faced man. Hawk told you that he stoked the fire there, tried to make it seem realer than it was. That we had a vested interest in people believing that Satan was lurking behind every corner. I was younger then. I was stepping boldly. I was trying to defend the dream of what America was supposed to be. Not let those Russian fucks dictate our future. I’ve done many things that haunt me, more than you can imagine.”

This description has been abridged. Click link for Director Oswald's full description.

#web poll #the magnus archives #the web #poll #discworld #the department of truth

[theygotlost]

the end of the watch 1.11: this is (not) discworld (episodes 7 and 8 double feature!)

sally shows up and accosts carrot in a bar restroom. no fucking joke she acts like one of those weird ageplay bitches on tik tok who do a disturbing little girl voice and pouty face. its literally fucking UNBEARABLE and i wanted to kill her so bad. btw she and death are the only characters with american accents.

vimes swaps bodies with Evil Vimes In Another Dimension, who's incarcerated in the tanty. he's thrown to "The Beast" for insubordination, which turns out to be Detritus

Detritus is apparently the "the best friend [vimes] ever had". they do a very heartfelt and slightly homoerotic forehead bump.

carrot and sybil are wardens of the tanty what i will refer to hereafter as the mirrorverse. mirrorverse carrot has a really scary middle part.

death asks carrot, angua, and cheery which one would be most likely to eat the others so he can "arrange his schedule". then he very shyly performs a 37 minute freestyle for them while playing the theremin.

in the mirrorverse carcer is captain of the watch after betraying vimes.

sybil somehow realizes vimes is an impostor when she kisses him. angua can also tell the impostor is sus by the type of aftershave he wears, which doesnt make sense bc they swapped minds and not physical bodies, so he would still be wearing the same aftershave???

this entire series has been building toward stopping the noble dragon but I genuinely forgot about the dragon because up to this point hasnt even been rampaging the city at all after the first episode? it just disappeared? and now its back?

vetinari locks himself in his "dungeon" which is actually a sick bachelor pad with sexy couches citing the line from gg that "you should never build a dungeon you would never want to stay in yourself". he chills out in a cunty red gown listening to jazz music. which tbh was pretty awesome

death asks to join vimes' emo band.

carcer stabs wonse for basically no reason.

throat dibbler is made head of the thieves guild.

carrot plans to lure the attention of the dragon bc he's a virgin and the dragon only attacks virgins. carrot has to learn to not be ashamed of his virginity like it's a gay coming-out narrative.

the matt berry talking sword requests to be worshipped as a "sex-ual deity"

im pretty sure angua they/thems cheery at some point but I might have just misheard her

in order to stop the dragon the watch puts on the best damn talent show ankh morpork has ever seen!!!! (they play in a rock band AGAIN.) cheery shreds the fuck out of the saxophone.

sybil intentionally sends goodboy out to seduce the dragon and it works.

carcer disintegrates from existence back to the future style and im still not sure why. the watch doesnt remember carcer and thinks wonse did all his crimes instead. as revenge wonse isekais vimes into an evil pocket dimension in what was likely meant to be a setup for a season 2 that will never happen.

and that's the show! many people have told me how brave i am for watching it and thanked me for my service but I want to be clear that i could NOT have done it on my own. this was a journey that @vampirejuno , @fealtyfaggot , and I embarked on TOGETHER. nico and ciarán deserve as much appreciation for their sacrifice as I do. ive also engaged in a lot of day drinking for this so sorry everypony please drink responsibly.

#the watch watch

[ijustkindalikebooks]

I recently finished reading all of the books in the Discworld series, the expansive series written by Terry Pratchett that follows a range of characters that live on the same disc? (This was never completely clear, but I assume so?) Our main leads being Sam Vimes, Tiffany Aching, Rincewind and Moist Von Lipwig.

Probably one of the greatest fantasy series of all time, Discworld is makes you cry, makes you laugh, makes you think, and it makes you kind of mad, but all in all, it is a very human experience on a world that is completely incredible (and has a monkey for a librarian, and is there anything better than that?).

These are my favourite books from the series.

Going Postal (book 33) - Moist Von Lipwig is a conman who is then moved into running the Postal Service by Lord Vetinari and what a job to get to be honest. This story is funny and I was laughing out loud several times. The characters are fantastic especially those that work in the post office and it makes for an incredible introduction to the character of Von Lipwig who truly is a great lead character and it makes sense why Pratchett used him in more books.

Monstrous Regiment (book 31) - Truly the story of war? what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Monstrous Regiment is the story of Polly Perks who is looking for her brother on the frontline and ends up in Vimes' monstrous regiment. The characters are endearing and funny, the plot moves fast and really allows you to invest in everyone in the story and leaves you thinking and that for me is truly the sign of a good book.

Mort (book 4) - I loved this book so much and really appreciated the incredible plot, the amazing characters particularly that of Death. Mort is the apprentice of death and it makes for a good life, freedom to the horse, board and a wage, and it makes for a pretty good adventure too. I wasn't sure if I wasn't going to continue the series at this point, but this one made me keep going and I am so glad I did.

Witches Abroad (book 12) - Granny Weatherwax is probably one of the best characters in this series, and this book is so good. The plot is to stop a happy ending of a prince ending up with a servant girl it really does make for a funny and also a thought provoking read. The quote from Granny Weatherwax in this book:

“Listen, happy endings is fine if they turn out happy,” said Granny, glaring at the sky. “But you can’t make ’em for other people. Like the only way you could make a happy marriage is by cuttin’ their heads off as soon as they say ‘I do’, yes? You can’t make happiness…” Granny Weatherwax stared at the distant city. “All you can do,” she said, “is make an ending.”

Witches Abroad is iconic.

Night Watch (book 29) - I do feel as the series goes on, the better it gets and Night Watch is definitely one of those books where you are left with an incredible array of characters, a story that pulls you in and a way in to a series that you will never want to end. Vimes is probably one of my favourite characters in a series ever, this book is one of the reasons why.

Also this quote is from Night Watch Men At Arms and it's spot on:

“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of okay for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles. But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet. This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socio-economic unfairness.”

To take this series apart is a difficult one, even if they can be read separately. I really appreciate how connected these books feel and the different perspectives we get. I like the spotlight we get on people's lives as we move through the series and how even in the maddest of moments there's a moment you can relate to.

I loved reading this series, and it bookslumped me when I finished it, so I hope if you're going to do this and read them all I highly recommend some books to reread you love to save yourself.

GNU Terry Pratchett.

Vee xo.

#terry pratchett #books #discworld #fiction #fantasy #booklr #bookblr #book #quotes #book quotes

[lonepower]

@curlyparmesan Replied to your post “.............i think i should not have binged the...”:

Ah yeah, that sucks. But supposedly movie!Nimona...

oh, movie!Nimona was fantastic (for the...12 mintues of it that I saw...), she's so cute! I'm obsessed with the beat right at the beginning where she asks Blackheart if he got to keep his severed arm - when she looks over at him her head, her left eye, and her right eye all swivel at sliiiightly different speeds and it's just noticeable enough to be extremely unsettling & make it really clear she's not human, it's great. also chloe grace moretz is literally the only possible casting for her. A++++ no notes

the ending of the comic wasn't too unhappy actually! I did find it somewhat abrupt- everything just sort of concluded all at once and left a lot of things up in the air in a way I'm not 100% sure was by design? that is to say: it was meant to be a short story with a decisive end, and it would make sense if the abruptness was by design, but the execution of it felt more "rushed" than "decisive" in my own personal opinion. so restructuring that for a film adaptation would be the right call, it's mostly the character choices that threw me. comic!blackheart is basically "if lord vetinari were megamind" and so movie!blackheart being all noble misunderstood sad wet puppy eyes instead of THE most dramatic morally grey mad scientist theater kid just did not do it for me. like I said, I probably would have liked it a lot better if I hadn't finished the comic and started the movie in the space of about 5 minutes, lol

also goldie & blackheart being a Thing from the beginning instead of the embodiment of the kate beaton nemesis comic + crunching down the timeline to a matter of days(?) just takes away so much of the Aesthetic of it!!! like! where's the 20 years of PINING, the rivalry, the banter, the letting-each-other-escape-by-the-plausibly-deniable-skin-of-your-teeth, the wondering what-if...... C'MON.

#and also a MAJOR theme of the comic was that the Only difference between blackheart and goldenloin is publicity. like ambrosius is a Genuin #ely Shitty Person but he's got the director vouching for him & making him out to be a hero #while blackheart is Also a Genuinely Shitty Person !BUT! he's also Just a shitty person and not The Root Of All Evil that the director mak #es him out to be #so like i get what was being Done with the changes that were made in the adaptation - it's just not what I was looking for ;;; #curlyparmesan #replies

[sepulchritude]

I’ve been listening to the audiobook for Going Postal and literally from chapter one I could already tell why everyone is so in love with the discworld series. I love this

#moist von lipwig is not the kind of man i expected him to be based off the name #and yet it makes so much sense #also not to be incredibly on brand for myself but like literally within a few lines of lord vetinari being introduced #i was like oh favorite character #bastard spotted #sepulchritudinous

[edgelordteach]

Ooh, please do elaborate on why vimes/vetinari is a great ship but not for canon! When I read your post I immediately agreed, but then realised I couldn't quite explain to myself why—so you putting that into words would be A+

Thanks! let’s see if I can put it into words. I’m not sure exactly if I can explain it well (I am very good at rambling but not so good at being comprehensible). Also, of course, this is my opinion and I don’t want to act like I’m the authority on this because I am absolutely not.

Before we start this was written over the course of a couple tired hours, I’m not sure if it will make sense or if I’m missing something, or even if my opinion will change the more I think about it. I very well might add on, or amend to this answer at some point but for not let’s-a go-!

So Vetinari and Vimes are really great characters, I absolutely love them both. Vetvimes is a pretty great ship, it definitely lives in my mind rent free. However, unlike some pieces of media where it feels like a ship going canon would make the story, theme, plot, characters, etc stronger and it not going canon is a major disappointment, I think an explicit relationship between the two wouldn’t exactly work within the canon. (Please don’t think of this as me dunking on the pairing, as stated I adore these two, I’m just elaborating on this point)

Vetinari and Vimes are somewhat meant to represent the best you can get for their respective positions, and this is a big part of their characters (Vimes’ especially). Vimes is a good copper (an oxymoron, I know). He wants to be what a copper should be in an ideal society, and makes a conscious effort to be the best copper he can be in a realistic society. A big part of his character is the conflict between his moral responsibility as a policeman, and his more human desire to deal with things in his own way, even if they’re morally dubious, (I believe Nigh Watch is the culmination of this idea but all the books deal with it to some extent), the conflict between his idealism and his cynicism. His character arc involves a lot of restraint, the keeping tabs on his actions so he doesn’t cross the line; he may not be a perfect person like Carrot but he sure as hell is trying to be the most moral policeman he can be. And that means following the rule of law when it’s just, it means being accountable for his actions. Following this idea of accountability, it is very important that Vimes has to answer to his government, which is Vetinari. He keeps himself in check but he also relies on Vetinari, among others, to do so (a good example of this in action that scene at the end of jingo that I’m not going to spoil but I hope you know it).

Vetinari’s character is meant to contrast with those that came before him in that he allows himself no personal indulgences. He’s an ideal autocrat in that he devoted himself pretty much entirely to running his state as best he can. Running it the best he can, being better than winder and snapcase seem to be his core motivation as a character. Having Vimes around becomes extremely important because Vimes can now keep him from crossing the line. Vimes could arrest Vetinari if Vetinari messed up, just as Vetinari could demote or even fire Vimes if Vimes crossed the line. These characters rely on each other to keep them in check. Vimes has to answer to his government, Vetinari has to answer to the law. That’s the point that they are working towards throughout the watch books. They have a responsibility to the city as powerful public figures to not mess things up and to keep each other (and everyone else in a position of power) in check.

A romantic relationship between the two would undercut this idea. If the two most powerful men in ankh morpork were romantically involved they could no longer be trusted to hold the other accountable because they have a personal agenda. This doesn’t necessarily mean they wouldn’t still be able to perform those roles (as carrot says, personal is not the same as important), but the way it would appear on the surface would be the same regardless of them as individuals. They wouldn’t just be Vimes and Vetinari together but the Patrician and the commander of the Watch. This would somewhat interfere with the message that pterry conveys about accountability of those in positions of power (who watches the watchman and such). Now I’m not saying that this topic wouldn’t be fun to explore, the intersect and conflict of romance, politics, and power. I think it’d be really interesting if looked at deeply, but I’m not sure if the watch books is the place to so it. Also it’s important to note that pterry never seemed particularly interested in writing romance. When romance did pop up in his books it was very rarely the focus. A relationship as nuanced as this one would be requires a lot of time and detail devoted to it in order for it to even make sense. I’m sure he could do it, I’m not sure he would have really wanted to. I think that a romantic relationship would clash with the characterization he already established for the both of them. As stated above, both of them want to serve the city the best they could and I think both of them would be very aware that a relationship would be somewhat of a risk to the city.

To be completely honest I also think that even wanting a relationship would be sort of out of character for Vimes. I think I’d he had feelings he would definitely find some way to repress them mightily, and even if he realized them, I think his loyalty to Sybil is too strong, and even if she said it was okay, Vimes would still see it as something that’s unacceptable given their respective positions. I think Vetinari would be closer to realize his attraction and I think that he’s more interested in Vimes that Vimes is in him but again I think he’d view a relationship with Vimes as a risk, an indulgence, and that could be used as a weapon against him.

All of this things definitely aren’t reasons why it’s a bad ship but they are reason’s why I don’t think they would work well in the canon. There would be a lot of effort needed to develop this relationship and still be able to stick to message about the accountability of authority figures and as much as it would be interesting to see, I’m glad that we got the series we did.

But this also means that there’s tons of room for fanworks! These characters are very complex and a relationship between them would be super interesting for all the reasons above. Fan fiction is a great place to explore that relationship. We love to see it!

PS: in case anyone was interested, in my personal interpretation of this relationship, it’s very one-sided. I like to read Vetinari as a gay man, I also like to project my feelings as a homosexual on to fictional characters and so my personal interpretation of him is somewhat lonely. I like to interpret him as being in love with Vimes since about Men At Arms, but also being painfully aware that that love won’t be reciprocated. Don’t ask me why, maybe I am just evil. I made a pretty incomprehensible post about something similar to this.

I hope this answers your question. If it doesn’t then I hope it at least leaves you with more questions than before.

#I apologize if this isn’t super eloquent #I feel like I left out a lot of the points I had #I might revise this later #I also want to reiterate how much I really adore this ship #because here it feels kind of like I’m dunking on it and really I am not #I like these two I just don’t think there was room form them in the canon #discworld #vetvimes #havelock vetinari #sam vimes

[fortunatelyfresco]

A Holistic Integration of Type 1 Narcolepsy into the Reading of Moist von Lipwig

Literary Interpretation, Disability, and Finding Yourself Between the Lines

As it goes, "I wrote this for me, but you can read it if you want." It might be a fun ride for anyone who is very interested in Moist von Lipwig, or narcolepsy, or both, and/or anyone who enjoys collecting small details from within a body of work and arranging them into threads that are supportable by the text, without being actually suggested by it.

Personally, I find it very interesting to read the meta behind different headcanons, and see how creators can unintentionally write a character who fits certain criteria. There are only so many traits, after all, and some of them tend to travel in groups! Humans are pattern seekers, etc etc.

The first step of reading Moist von Lipwig as narcoleptic is wanting to read Moist von Lipwig as narcoleptic. Being narcoleptic myself and relating heavily to Moist, this step was very easy. I invite you to take my hand and come along, at least briefly, if you were interested enough to click the readmore.

Once you have taken that step, things start falling into place. At least they do if you're intimately familiar with narcolepsy, or if you first learn about it in detail through, for instance, a Tumblr post with an agenda :)

I'll break this down symptom by symptom, citing only the ones I both have personal experience with and see textual support for.

I'll be using OverDrive's search function to catalogue "evidence" in (the American editions of) Going Postal, Making Money, and Raising Steam, so I might miss passages that don't use certain keywords.

Please take any statements along the lines of "being narcoleptic means X" with a huge grain of salt. Sometimes it's just more succinct. Narcolepsy can manifest in many different ways, and is still being actively studied. Don't base your entire understanding of it on a fandom essay I wrote to cope with the crushing pressures of capitalism. I have not even fully read the scientific studies linked here as sources.

Here we go! Spoilers abound.

I. Excessive Daytime Sleepiness (EDS) and sleep attacks.

Being narcoleptic means (salt now, please) that your brain does not get adequate rest while you sleep, no matter how much you sleep. This is because of a disturbance in the order and length of REM and NREM sleep phases. This leads to constant exhaustion. Some sources describe narcoleptic EDS as "comparable to [the sleepiness] experienced by a healthy individual who has been sleep-deprived continuously for 48–72 hours."

(Source.)

Sleep attacks can come on gradually or suddenly. In my case, I become irritable and easily overwhelmed, and nothing matters except finding a place to lie down. A more severe attack, under the right circumstances, can put me to sleep while I'm actively trying to stay awake and engaged.

Moist refers to 6:45 am as "still nighttime." He is "allergic to the concept of two seven o'clocks in one day" and is "not good at early mornings," and the narration even cites this as "one of the advantages of a life of crime; you didn't have to get up until other people had got the streets aired."

In Going Postal, he repeatedly falls asleep at his desk. I can only find two instances, but the first one describes it as having happened "again," so it happens at least three times over the course of one week. Both of the times I found were after Mr. Pump cleared his apartment, giving him access to a bed, and I can't find any reference to the fire destroying it—just that his office is "missing the whole of one wall." His presumably wooden desk is still intact, even, just "charred."

There's also no build-up either time. No direct narration of the time right before he falls asleep, just retroactive accounting for it.

Which is primarily a function of stories not showing us every boring second, and secondarily one of the smaller ways we're shown Moist being overwhelmed and racing to keep up with himself, but tertiarily it's a great set dressing if you've already decided he's narcoleptic. Sometimes sleep is just a thing that happens, without any deliberate transition. Sometimes you sit down to catch your breath or get some paperwork done, and wake up several hours later.

I've found only one example in GP of Moist waking up in his actual bed at the post office: the morning after being possessed by all the undelivered letters. Presumably either they put him there, or Mr. Pump did.

There are two points in Making Money where Moist, in an effort to be a comforting and/or guiding hand, advises people to get some sleep. First Owlswick Jenkins, and then one of the clerks (Robert) who is worried about Mr. Bent.

I take the optimistic view that this is Moist genuinely caring about these people, not just trying to get them to do what he wants. He has always done some combination of those things (GP opens with him having befriended his jailers, after all), but there's definitely a thread of him learning to treat both himself and those around him more like real people. (See also.)

Looking at this thread through narcolepsy-colored lenses, you get Moist perhaps drawing from his own experiences in an effort to be helpful. In Owlswick or Robert's position, what is something he would want to hear from the man currently in charge of his fate, or at least his job? "Get some sleep."

If we accept this as a pattern, it culminates in Raising Steam, when Moist starts to worry about "Dick Simnel and his band of overworked engineers," fixating particularly on their lack of sleep.

What sleep they got was in sleeping bags, curled up on carriage seats, eating but not eating well, just driven by their watches and their desire to keep the train going.

[...]

"People are going to die if we push them any further," he said to Dick. "You lot would rather work than sleep!"

[...]

The young man swayed in front of him and Moist's tone became gentle. "And I see now that part of my job is to tell you that you need some rest. You've run out of steam, Dick. Look, we're well on the way to Uberwald now, and while it's daylight and we're out of the mountains it's going to be the least risky time to run with minimum crew. We're all going to need our wits about us when we get near the pass. Surely you can take some rest?"

Simnel blinked as if he'd not seen Moist the first time, and said, "Yes, you're right."

And Moist could hear the slurring in the young man's speech, caught him before he fell and dragged him into a sleeping compartment, put him to bed, and noted that the engineer didn't so much fall asleep as somehow flow into it.

Moist then recruits Vimes to help him talk the rest of the engineers into getting some rest. The two of them briefly commiserate about people not realizing how important it is.

"I have to teach that to young coppers. Treasure a night's rest, I always say. Take a nap whenever you can."

"Very good."

II. Insomnia.

This is a lesser-known but very common symptom of narcolepsy. Or a comorbidity, depending on how you look at it. It seems counterintuitive if narcolepsy has been presented to you as "sleeping all the time," but it makes sense once you know it's really a matter of disruption in the brain's ability to regulate sleep cycles.

The case for this symptom is flimsier, and I fully admit I'm just reading my own experience into it. But here are two excerpts from Going Postal that I find quite suitable for my sleepy agenda:

1. "A man of affairs such as he had to learn to sleep in all kinds of situations, often while mobs were looking for him a wall's thickness away."

I latched hard onto this detail the first time I read GP.

At my worst, I could not get more than a couple hours of sleep in my bed. I kept taking naps in the bath because it was one of the few places I could sleep. It seemed to fulfill some of the criteria (isolation, temperature control, etc) that my brain demanded in exchange for playing nice.

We're told over and over again, throughout Moist's books, that he functions best under pressure.

(Brief aside: This is often cited as a reason to interpret Moist as having ADHD, which I'm also fully on board with. Not coincidentally, narcolepsy and ADHD share a few symptoms, have a notable comorbidity rate, and are treated with some of the same medications. Source.)

So again, if you're already inclined to read Moist as narcoleptic, the following is an easy jump:

"Moist thinks he's good at sleeping in strange places under strange circumstances. This is because A) his basis for comparison is a disordered attempt to sleep in normal places under normal circumstances, B) something about danger satisfies his brain into running more smoothly, and C) he's a resourceful person who is 'not given to introspection,' and so is less likely to wonder why his body demands sleep at strange times and more likely to focus on finding a place for that sleep to happen, and chalk this up later as a skill."

And returning briefly to EDS: Why would someone like Moist waste time finding a safe place to sleep while people are actively trying to kill him? At the beginning of GP, he leaves Vetinari's office and immediately goes on the run. In multiple books, when he feels threatened, his brain instinctively launches into complex escape plans. We see him successfully blend into an Ankh-Morpork crowd at least once after becoming a public figure.

So why bother? After all, a safe place to sleep is also a safe place to change clothes, or at least remove whatever distinguishing features he's given himself. Why wouldn't he just become someone else and leave town immediately?

The obvious answer is that sometimes things just happen, and an author doesn't need to know or explain every single detail of a character's past.

I would suggest, though, that one of those things might be Moist reaching a point where sleep is just not optional. A point where he not only doesn't, but can't, care about anything else. Where he is too tired to think straight, too tired to talk his way out of trouble, too tired to even contemplate the long journey from one town to the next.

2. "Moist knew he ought to get some sleep, but he had to be there, too, alive and sparkling."

Sometimes (especially in combination with underlying mental health issues) narcoleptic sleep deprivation can bypass everything I've described so far, and lead straight into a manic state. You won't necessarily find that on Google, but it's been my experience.

That's obviously not what the text is implying. "Alive and sparkling" is just a very relatable description. And we do often see Moist getting away from himself, speaking without thinking, making absurd promises that he justifies immediately afterwards as Just Part Of Being Him, always raising the stakes.

And here are a couple of excerpts from Raising Steam that could be interpreted as Moist being a light sleeper, AKA struggling to get deep sleep:

1. "And slowly Moist shut down, although a part of him was always listening to the rhythm of the rails, listening in his sleep, like a sailor listening to the sounds of the sea."

2. "All Moist's life he'd managed to find a way of sleeping in just about every circumstance and, besides, the guard's van was somehow the hub of the train; and although he didn't know how he did it, he always managed to sleep with half of one ear open."

Moist is exactly the kind of opportunist to see that as a useful tool, isn't he?

III. Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Hallucinations.

These are hallucinations that come on as you're falling asleep or waking up. They can also happen during REM intrusions while you're awake. My most memorable ones include piano notes, someone calling my name, being trapped in the waves of a large body of water, and a huge truck going over a guard rail and tumbling down a hill. These are often, but not always, accompanied by sleep paralysis (and sleep paralysis is often, but not always, accompanied by hallucinations).

In GP, Moist casually cites his own hallucinations as proof that what is happening at the post office is not one.

"They're all alive! And angry! They talk! It was not a hallucination! I've had hallucinations and they don't hurt!"

Obviously that's not true for everyone, but it's true for Moist, and he has enough experience that he immediately recognizes the difference.

At one point while awake, Moist "[snaps] out of a dream of chandeliers" to realize someone has approached him to talk, while he was busy having visions of what the post office used to look like/could look like again.

Now, that's cheating, because we're probably supposed to assume it's a side effect of being possessed, but... I'm putting it here anyway.

There is also perhaps a case to be made for the tendency of Moist's internal monologue to lapse into extremely specific and prolonged hypotheticals. The lines between hallucinations, waking dreams, and "regular" daydreams have always been very blurry to me. I'm especially curious about the example at the end of Going Postal, which goes like this:

"Look, I know what I'm like," he said. "I'm not the person everyone thinks I am. I just wanted to prove to myself I'm not like Gilt. More than a hammer, you understand? But I'm still a fraud by trade. I thought you knew that. I can fake sincerity so well that even I can't tell. I mess with people's heads—"

"You're fooling no one but yourself," said Miss Dearheart, and reached for his hand.

Moist shook her off, and ran out of the building, out of the city, and back to his old life, or lives, always moving on, selling glass as diamond, but somehow it just didn't seem to work anymore, the flair wasn't there, the fun had dropped out of it, even the cards didn't seem to work for him, the money ran out, and one winter in some inn that was no more than a slum he turned his face to the wall—

And an angel appeared.

"What just happened?" said Miss Dearheart.

Perhaps you do get two...

"Only a passing thought," said Moist.

In-universe... what is Adora reacting to? What did just happen? The fact that these incidents are not isolated to Going Postal is a point against it being some sort of literal timeline divergence caused by The Spirit Of The Post.

So maybe Moist visibly zoned out. Maybe he had some kind of minor but noticeable cataplexy attack (more on those later) as part of a REM intrusion, brought on by the intense emotions he's currently struggling with.

IV. Vivid Dreams.

Again, at least some of this is probably supposed to be part of the possession, but I've been professionally projecting myself onto the surreal dreams of magically afflicted characters for years. Do try this at home.

1. "Moist dreamed of bottled wizards, all shouting his name. In the best tradition of awaking from a nightmare, the voices gradually became one voice, which turned out to be the voice of Mr. Pump, who was shaking him."

2. Moist is uneasy about the Smoking Gnu's plan, and then he has an extremely detailed dream about the Grand Trunk burning down.

This culminates in "Moist awoke, the Grand Trunk burning in his head," followed by a paragraph of him thinking things through and starting to form his own alternative plan, followed immediately by "Moist awoke. He was at his desk, and someone had put a pillow under his head."

So he fell asleep at his desk, woke up from a vivid nightmare, was awake just long enough for a coherent train of thought, and then passed back out. Which once again is not "proof" of anything, but fits the predetermined interpretation like a glove.

V. Cataplexy.

Cataplexy is a sudden loss of muscle control, usually triggered by strong emotions. This is thought to be a facet of REM intrusion—waking instances of the atonia that is meant to stop us from acting out our dreams.

The most well-known manifestation is laughter making your knees buckle, but it's not always that severe. My own attacks range from facial twitching, usually when I'm angry or otherwise extremely upset, to all-over weakness/immobilization and near-collapse when I laugh. My knees have fully buckled once or twice.

This is the biggest stretch. This is the one that is absolutely only there if you've already decided to read entire novels between the lines. It's also not even necessary for the broader headcanon; plenty of people have narcolepsy without cataplexy (or such mild cataplexy that it's never noticeable, or very delayed onset, etc).

However. I am doing this for fun. So I want him to have it. It's also become a major part of how I imagine Moist engaging with emotion, and I'd like to make a case for that.

There are a few scattered references to Moist's legs shaking, or being unsteady, or outright giving way, but there's usually an external physical reason, and/or enough psychological shock to justify it without a medical condition.

The most compelling example I've found so far comes from Moist and Adora's conversation about people expecting Moist to deliver letters to the gods.

"I never promised to—"

"You promised to when you sold them the stamps!"

Moist almost fell off his chair. She'd wielded the sentence like a fist.

"And it'll give them hope," she added, rather more quietly.

"False hope," said Moist, struggling upright.

"Almost fell off his chair" at first sounds like casual hyperbole, but then "struggling upright" implies it was a bit more literal. It's also an accurate description of me recovering from my more severe attacks, supporting myself on a wall or my spouse, or pushing myself up if I've fallen over in bed.

That happens to me multiple times per day, by the way. It doesn't bother me, and I didn't realize there was anything unusual about it for a long time. I barely think about it, except to fondly note that my spouse is good at making me laugh.

Which is to say, even severe cataplexy is not always noticeable or debilitating. Sometimes it absolutely is! It can be downright dangerous, depending on where you are, what you're doing, and whether you have any other conditions it might exacerbate. I don't want to undermine that.

I am just hell-bent on justifying the idea that this fictional character could have repeated attacks throughout the canonical narrative that are so routine they don't merit an explanation, or even a description. Especially for someone who is used to hiding his few distinguishing features behind false ones that are much more memorable. (See also.)

(That link goes to my own fanfic. Sorry.)

On the milder side, between Going Postal and Making Money, there are three instances of Moist's mouth "dropping open" when he's shocked, upset, confused, or some combination of the three. This is the kind of thing that shows up a lot in fiction, but rarely happens so literally in real life.

(There's technically a fourth instance, but I'm not counting it because it seems to be a deliberate choice on his part to convey surprise.)

And then there's laughter. Or rather, there isn't. I could be missing something, but I've searched all three books for instances of laughter and various synonyms (not counting spoken "Ha!"s), and what I've come up with is:

Moist laughs once in Going Postal, when he receives the assignment for the race to Genua.

Two packages were handed over. Moist undid his, and burst out laughing.

There's also an instance earlier in the book where Moist nearly "burst[s] out laughing."

I find the specifics here interesting, and, for our purposes, fortuitous. Cataplexy is complicated and presents differently for everyone. In my case, when laughter triggers an attack, one of the effects (which is sometimes also a cause) is that I laugh very hard, with little or no control. "Burst out laughing" is quite apt.

Let's move on to Making Money, and start with a quick tangent:

Mr. Bent explains that he has no sense of humor due to a medical condition, and that he isn't upset about this and doesn't understand why people feel sorry for him.

Moist immediately starts in with "Have you tried—" before getting cut off by the frustrated Bent.

Out-of-universe, "Have you tried" is such a well-known refrain to anyone with an incurable condition, I'm not at all surprised to find it in a book written by someone who had at least begun the process that would lead to a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's. And Pratchett has certainly never shied away from portraying ignorance in his protagonists.

In-universe, it feels a little odd. Moist's tongue runs away from him all the time, but usually in the form of making ridiculous claims or impossible promises. Moist's entire stock-in-trade is People Skills, and it feels strange for him to make this kind of mistake immediately after being told Mr. Bent is not looking for solutions.

But if one were reading with, for instance, the idea in mind that Moist himself has an incurable condition related to laughter and is enthusiastic about, but still relatively new to, the practice of drawing on his own experiences to help people... it is easy to imagine the gears in his head turning the wrong way, superimposing those experiences over the tail end of Mr. Bent's explanation. Disabled people are not immune to these well-meaning pitfalls.

There is another Mr. Bent moment that I want to discuss, but we'll circle back around to it later.

I found two instances of Moist himself laughing in MM.

1. "He said it with a laugh, to lighten the mood a little."

This is deliberate laughter, employed as a social tactic. A polite chuckle, probably. Not the sort of thing that generally triggers cataplexy.

2. "Moist started to laugh, and stopped at the sight of her grave expression."

The first and only involuntary laugh in MM. It doesn't always trigger attacks...

Which brings us to Raising Steam. Compared to the first two books, Moist laughs a lot here. I count nine instances. Two of them are "burst out laughing"s, a couple include him as part of a group, some of it comes off as deliberate, and some of it doesn't.

I've always seen a lot of... rage in Raising Steam. Combing through it for laughter, I realized Moist's emotions in general are much closer to the surface here, and he's much less concerned about letting people see them. He laughs with friends and acquaintances, he cries in front of strangers, he shouts at Harry King, he has that entire conversation with Dick that boils down to "I'm very worried about you," etc.

Opinions vary wildly and sharply on Raising Steam. I have my own hangups with it, as I do with most books in the series. (Every time I make a new Discworld post, Tumblr passive-aggressively suggests the tag "my kingdom for a discworld character who is normal about women and other species.")

But I like this particular change in Moist, and I choose to see it as character development. He's trading in the professional detachment of a conman for the ability to grow into himself as a person and make meaningful connections.

So, what does that have to do with cataplexy? A lot.

I don't want to get too maudlin, so I'll just say I have plenty of personal experience with emotional repression masking cataplexy symptoms. And so, I believe, does the version of Moist we've put together over the course of this post.

Which brings us back to Making Money, and Mr. Bent. He says something about Moist that I find very interesting: "I do not trust those who laugh too easily."

Unless I've missed something, at that point in the book, Moist has never actually laughed in front of him. And Mr. Bent is a man who pays very close attention to details.

So, what is the in-universe explanation for this? I'd like to propose that Moist is very skilled at seeming to laugh, without actually laughing. He smiles, he's friendly, and he makes other people laugh, which is another thing Bent dislikes about him. He gives the impression of being someone who laughs a lot. (He certainly left that impression on me; I was very surprised by the lack of examples in the first two books.)

Even staying strictly within the bounds of canon, it's easy to imagine why this might have become part of Moist's camouflage in his previous life. He wasn't looking to get attached to anyone, and he didn't want anyone getting inside his head. Engaging with people genuinely enough to laugh at their jokes would run counter to both of those things, but some of his personas still needed to come off as friendly and sociable.

Still working within the canon, it makes sense to assume he's similarly distanced himself from emotion in general. He sits in a cell for several weeks without truly believing he's going to die. He's bewildered when Mr. Pump points out that his schemes have hurt innocent people. He has no idea what to do with his feelings for Adora. Etc.

Interpreting Moist as having cataplexy adds an extra element of danger. Moist thrives on danger, but there's a difference between the thrill of a con and the threat of sudden, uncontrollable displays of vulnerability. And so it becomes even easier to see him stifling his own emotional capacity.*

We meet Moist at a moment of great upheaval. He is forcibly removed from his cocoon of false identities, and pushed out into the world as himself. And we are shown and told throughout Going Postal that he does not know how to be himself. (See also.)

He is repeatedly stymied by his own emotions. He gets tongue-tied and confused around Adora, he snaps at Mr. Pump, he lashes out at Mr. Groat, he gets lost in school flashbacks when he meets Miss Maccalariat. This thread continues in Making Money, where the sudden reappearance of Cribbins immediately rattles him into making an uncharacteristic mistake.

I called him Cribbins! Just then! I called him Cribbins! Did he tell me his name? Did he notice? He must have noticed!

Later in the same book, Moist misses a crucial opportunity to run damage control on the bank's public image... because he's excited to see Adora.

The Moist of GP and MM is not used to feeling things so deeply. It throws him off his game. I'm not at all suggesting cataplexy is the only (or even primary) reason for that, but I do think there's room for it on both sides of the cause and effect equation.

With or without the cataplexy, I find Moist's relative emotional openness in Raising Steam... really nice. (It's a work in progress. He's still getting a handle on anger.)

Cataplexy just adds another dimension. A physical manifestation of emotional vulnerability, which would have been especially untenable for a teenager on the run. Just one more facet of the real, human, fallible Moist von Lipwig who spent years buried beneath Albert Spangler and all the rest.

Another piece of himself that Moist is growing to understand and accept, as he learns to more comfortably be himself.

The Moist of Going Postal runs into a burning building to save lives without fully understanding why he wants to, and justifies it on the fly as an essential part of the role he's trying to play.

The Moist of Raising Steam mindlessly throws himself under a train to save two children, and then blows up at Harry King about the lack of safety regulations. Freshly traumatized by the murder of several railway workers and his own violent, vengeful response to it, he still offers, in the face of Harry's own grief, to be the one to inform their families. On a long and dangerous journey with plenty of moving parts to think about, he worries about Dick Simnel and the other engineers, and pushes them to take better care of themselves.

He also meets a bunch of kids who nearly derailed a train as part of a childish scheme. His admonishment is startlingly vivid.

"Can you imagine a railway accident? The screaming of the rails and the people inside and the explosion that scythes the countryside around when the boiler bursts? And you, little girl, and your little friends, would have done all that. Killed a trainload of people."

[...]

"I'll square this with the engine driver, but if I was you I'd get my pencil and turn any clever ideas you have like this into a book or two. Those penny dreadfuls are all the rage in the railway bookshops."

Maybe what he is also saying, between the lines, is:

I left home at 14 and began a life of smoke and mirrors. I was empty inside, and I thought everyone else was, too. It was all fun and games, and then a man made of clay told me I was killing people. Nip it in the bud, child. Write books.

------------

*There are studies suggesting that in addition to deliberately employed "tricks," people with cataplexy may experience physiological reactions in the brain meant to inhibit laughter. (Source 1, Source 2.)

Most of the information here is way over my head, but that second link also says "one region of the brain called the zona incerta (meaning 'zone of uncertainty') was only activated during laughter in people with narcolepsy, not in controls. Research on the zona incerta in animals suggests that it also helps to control fear-associated behavior."

The linked article about that (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-03581-6) is also over my head, but I would certainly describe Moist von Lipwig as having unusual fear responses.**

**Narcolepsy is a fun roller-coaster ride of constant scientific discoveries about exactly which parts of your brain are paying too much attention, not paying enough attention, or trying to eat each other.

#moist von lipwig #narcolepsy #discworld #disabled headcanons #oh my god this got so out of hand #earned itself a title AND a subtitle #mr. cybulskis i'm sorry i fell asleep in your class every day it was at the exact wrong time and temperature and lighting

[avatarvyakara]

Answering @kazoosandfannypacks (so sorry about that, I had asks turned off and didn’t realize it until you mentioned it):

B - A pairing you initially didn’t consider but someone changed your mind

Ooh, that’s a tricky one. Let me see...probably Carmen Sandiego with Graham Calloway/Crackle from the modern rendition of the show. Still not 100% keen on it (largely for its treatment of Devereaux more than anything), but I’ve always been a sucker for best-friends-to-slightly-more-than and these two have some surprisingly soft moments together. Took reading a couple of stories to really notice what went on in the show...

(Nope, haven’t written for these guys yet. Worth a go?)

E - Have you added anything cracky/hilarious to your fandom, if so, what

Nobody knows how old Shorty is. Even Zhan Tiri.

(In other news, did you know Old Lady Crowley and Uncle Monty have been in a long-distance relationship for sixty years or so? Or that Friedborg does parkour? Cassandra has a Wardrobe for her weapons and a Peacedrobe for her clothes? I actually have a fair few of these, come to think of it...)

L - Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves (chars you’re neutral on are fair game, as are chars you dislike)

So far I’ve found it genuinely difficult to get behind a backstory for Hookfoot or even Hookhand. But the fact that Hookfoot was willing to enter a relationship and admit that he didn’t know what he was doing but had enough faith in his crush to ask to try again and made an effort to get it right this time...that’s worthy of kudos right there, sir. And then going back to help your friends despite getting it right? Hook of steel but a heart of gold, that one.

U - 5 favorite characters from 5 different fandoms

In no particular order:

Season 1 Cassandra and Season 3 Varian from Tangled: the Series (plus Owl. Can’t forget Owl. And the Captain. Ooh, and the Strikers, I really liked the Strikers, the parallel progression with the adults’ issues while making sense of their own lives? Masterful)

The Tenth Doctor from Doctor Who, with Donna Noble hot on his heels (that lady is amazing)

Literally any and all Spiders from Into the Spider-Verse (possibly with the exception of Miguel but only because he didn’t get enough air-time for me to make a proper decision)—but of those probably Peni Parker and Noir (the A-Team of Miles, Peter B, and Gwen next, Blond Peter next, Ham last—sorry, Porker)

Johnathan ben Mordecai from The Roman Mysteries

...there are a lot to choose from in the Discworld series, so I’ll just say that Death, Granny Weatherwax, Vimes, Tiffany Aching, Lu-Tze, Ronnie Soak, Nanny Ogg, Lord Vetinari, Brutha, Om, Lady Sybil, the Abbot, Cheery Littlebottom, Detritus, Leonard of Quirm, Rincewind, and Pretty Butterfly all are jostling for a position here.

Z - Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go (prompts optional but)

Look, I’ll be honest, I don’t much like movie-made Next Generation stuff. I don’t like a lot of the fandom stuff either, to be fair, but with the fandom stuff? People actually are allowed to care about the characters from the original. They don’t have to reset them into bland and frankly rather boring stereotypes of “people who made mistakes” (barring the favourites, of course), they take the time and effort to create new life and new people from characters they already love and appreciate. That’s worth a heck of a lot, to my mind. And when the children get a proper life of their own, adventures of their own on a smaller or grander scale? That gets even better, because now even if you’ve got good characters in the form of parents to compare it to you can still root for the kids and feel their trials and tribulations. When your parents have had all these adventures, when they’ve made the mistakes and pulled through, it’s hard not to feel second-best. But you’re not. You’re the next best. And fandom authors? So often—certainly more often than most sequel-writers, who usually insist on the newbies being the actual best—they get that. So one more kudos for all those who make new-generation stories that put kid and adult on equal footing instead of ignoring one or squashing the other.

(It did say ramble...)

#answered #rebellious birds #carmen x gray #carmen sandiego #tangled the series #rapunzel’s tangled adventure #shorty #old lady crowley #uncle monty #friedborg #hookfoot #tangled cassandra #varian #angry and Catalina #captain of the guard #tangled owl #tenth doctor #donna noble #into the spider verse #spiderman noir #peni parker #the Roman mysteries #discworld #(all of them)

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

1, 20, 39 for Downey and 9, 16 for Krennic?

Ooooh yes, Downey and Krennic!!

1. Canon I outright reject

Downey is a hard one because there's relatively little with him. However, there are scenes intending to paint him as an absolute idiot and that I reject. (They can be read as being refuted by other scenes. Pratchett was never good at consistency in side characters)

I can see him being blind to certain things - since he is the epitome of privilege. But which of us doesn't have massive blind spots? But to survive Snapcase, while living in Ankh-Morpork, is no small feat.

(As I always point out, Vetinari got to leave during this horrid time. To the best of canonical knowledge, we don't know if Downey left! He might have! But it's equally valid to assume he didn't. It's a literal "who knows" moment. What we do know is that he is a "jumped up" lord according to Venturii/Selachi. So he's a class climber. He is the utmost Gentleman. He is doing Class Drag and has been since he was ten. We know Downey comes from a rich family, but what kind of richness are we talking about? Ramkin wealth that could sink the Disc with gold or average wealthy merchant who can propel their son into the lordly class sort of wealth? One of these has no limits, the other has finite limits that are clear cut. I hedge bets on Downey being part of the latter option.)

Then, having survived Snapcase, he was savvy enough to climb the ladder to position himself as the head of the Assassins' Guild once Cruces' carked it. And he's remained head of the Guild for years? I recognize falling upwards as a thing, but it just doesn't fit for the Assassin's Guild. Especially as TP has drawn Ankh-Morpork and Vetinari's very evident iron-tight grip over City institutions. Which includes the Guilds.

Vetinari is a relatively ruthless dictator with standards. If you don't meet them, you're fucked. If you do meet them, you're fine.

Essentially, I reject Pratchett's crappy world building in favour of consistency and what Makes Sense. (since there are scenes when we're shown he's not a fool. Pratchett is just a bad writer at times and it shows when you look too closely.)

20. scars

I have a head canon that Downey has quite a few on his hands and forearms from a mix of accidents over the course of his life (who doesn't have scars on their hands from Life Happening?) and also defensive/job-related wounds.

I am sure he has a few scars here and there on legs as well - again from Life Happening and also due to his job. Nothing major, though. Because he's always written as physically able-bodied, and with no clear aches/pains/favouring one side over the other etc., I presume he's been lucky/skilled enough to avoid major injury.

39. favourite game

Lacross. I know TP didn't incorporate lacrosse into Ankh-Morpork games but since he never did racial minorities terribly well, it's probably a blessing we don't see him attempting to explain how a First Nations game came to the city.

However, I've decided through colonization and other sordid aspects of Ankh-Morpork's past, all of which are canon, the city has lacrosse and it is now been appropriated into being a posh white person sport. So, Downey plays it.

As it stands, it is the perfect combination of true technical skill with men being idiots and hitting each other with sticks. Downey embodies both of these things perfectly.

----

ooooh now on to Krennic!!

9. Scene that first made me love (or hate) the character

I mean, the first time he walked onto screen as a flamboyant, evil villain come to give great zingers and one-liners to all and sundry in his presence. Amazing.

This was cemented by his work-place drama with Tarkin over who gets custody of the Death Star. (Krennic was robbed, obviously.)

Overall, I prefer Krennic in the books to what they did with him on screen. He's a much more competent and a worthy adversary for the rebels and a credible rival to Tarkin in the books than what we saw in Rogue One. But still, he Worked It on screen and I love him for it.

16. Deepest darkest secret they won’t even admit to themselves

oooh God I don't know. I think part of him did want something like a relationship - however that might have looked - with Galen and was truly devastated when Galen betrayed the empire. Which Krennic read as a personal betrayal of him rather than Galen jumping ship whole-hog ideologically.

Mostly because I don't believe Krennic has ideology outside of belief in himself and his work. Therefore, a full betrayal must be personal and cannot be understood in the broader context of Empire.

Like, I know we get Krennic giving some good lines that are, to great ironic effect, echoes of Tarkin's own views, about the role of Empire in creating a sense of calm and peace and control and stability etc. But he happily would have said as much for the Republic, or whoever was footing the bills for his projects. He obsessively wants to create, create, create. Empire is incidental.

Therefore, I understand him as a person who does take things in a weirdly personal manner.

Like for Krennic it's very, "Yeah, sure, ok Galen fuck the Empire, Whatever. Who cares. But how dare you betray me and my work? The work we did together? How dare you seek to destroy what we created?"

And he is hurt by it! He'll never admit it. He'll never look it in the face and call it by its proper name: griefanger.

(The two words are supposed to be super-glued together there. Griefanger is what Krennic feels and will never, ever admit it. At least, he'll not admit the grief part. Anger he can work with. Grief? That speaks to vulnerability and emotions and stars, hasn't Krennic said, he does Do Any of That.

----

Oh man my friend, you caught me in a Spicy Mood(tm)! Just letting it rip out here lol

Anyway - thank you so, so much! :D :D

#ask game #ask meme #lord downey #krennic #orson krennic #ask #reply

[noirandchocolate]

What bugs me about BBC American changing the genders of several Discworld characters for the Watch series is kind of hard to explain, but I’ll try.  I promise, it’s NOT a matter of me being ‘a purist’ about an adaptation, or being ‘closed-minded’ or ‘a misogynist.’  This isn’t a case of me being a douche moaning because ‘a woman can’t be in charge of a city’ or ‘this is just SJW bullshit’ or whatever.  This isn’t the same as neckbeards being pissed when Thor is a lady.

The thing is, one of the integral Things about Discworld is that Terry Pratchett took established tropes and messed with them.  He took tropes from fiction and lampshaded and subverted them.  And he also created characters that reflect real-life ‘tropes’ and used his stories to poke fun at, and poke holes in, social norms, traditions, stereotypes, and such.

For example:  Lord Havelock Vetinari is presented as a trope character.  He’s a tall, thin, aquiline man with arched, quirking eyebrows who says things like ‘commence’ and ‘do not let me detain you.’  Part of the point of Vetinari is that he appears to be the quintessential Evil Machiavellian Tyrant.  And the rest of the point of him is that he’s not just that, and doesn’t conform wholly to the traits the casual reader/viewer will immediately ascribe to him based on those superficial similarities to the trope.  Part of the trope is that Vetinari is an aristocratic man.  A woman Vetinari simply does not fit even those superficial trope characteristics.  And therefore a woman Vetinari cannot subvert OR lampshade the trope.  And therefore a woman Vetinari is not Pratchett’s Vetinari.

For example:  Dr Cruces, along with many, many others among Pratchett’s Ankh-Morpork-dwelling characters, is the embodiment of the Rich White Man, both in fiction and in real life.  Pratchett’s white aristocratic male characters tend to fit a certain mold, and they certainly aren’t portrayed kindly.  Instead, Pratchett tended to punch upward at that type of character, and therefore that type of real person, by emphasizing their flaws like racism, general closed-mindedness, sexism, classism, etcetera.  Part of the trope is, actually, the maleness of it.  That’s not to say that rich white women can’t be awful too, but Pratchett specifically chose to criticize men of that ‘type,’ when he created certain characters.  Having a woman be Dr Cruces, or filling more of the aristocratic Ankh-Morpork roles with women, dilutes that criticism.

For example:  Vetinari and Cruces are both Assassins (though only the latter is active presently), and in describing the Assassins’ Guild Pratchett was pretty clearly at least in part sending up British boarding schools and Old Boys’ Clubs of all kinds.  Canonically, the Guild hasn’t until more recently admitted women at all--and Pratchett meant it to be that way, not because he as the author was being sexist, but because part of that particular trope and that particular real-life type of organization is No Girls Allowed and he wanted to critique that and make it seem laughable.  Having a woman be Cruces, the head of the Guild, and having a woman be Vetinari, a well-known and prominent graduate of the Guild School, makes the Guild look much more progressive than it was intended to be.  And thus, it makes the overarching storyline of Ankh-Morpork gradually becoming more progressive and inclusive over time seem more unnecessary.  

Anyway, in sum, a lot of the point of the Discworld books was that Pratchett was messing with tropes.  Some of those tropes include the genders of characters.  So, while normally I’d be like ‘Yes!  Yay more women!  This is great!’ about adaptions of other media, I just don’t think this particular case makes a lot of sense, and that in some instances it actually detracts from what Pratchett was trying to say.  IDK if it makes sense or if I’m saying what I am feeling in a coherent way, but anyway that’s what I think, more or less.

#kidk says stuff #terry pratchett #discworld

[specialsituationsgroup]

A Study of Discworld

Light Fantastic

Twoflower has a tectonic shift of character.

Let's start with the general stuff.

Light Fantastic is as cretive, insightfull and funny as Color of Magic, but there are changes.

The patrician and the politics with Agatea are completely dropped, replaced by the internal politics of Unseen University. Which is ineresting and funny, but still - continuity. This is symptomatic of Pratchett hiding changes between books, especialy his way of dropping things that happened 'far enogh' that the reader forgot about them. And there is so much happening in his books that it's easy to forget about stuff if there's no callback to them.

The plot is still episodic, but now the through-line of being chased by agents from Ankh-Morpork is explicit, not implied.

Some of the new characters come back in other books and become part of the main crew, like Cohen the Barbarian and Buggy Swires. Cohen is iconic for his cometary on aging, and the reveal of Swires' home is hillarious.

Bel Shamaroth and his connection to the Octavo are also dropped. This is necessary, because the role of the Spell changes completely, from a threat in the background to something hiding in Rincewind's mind, and protecting him from certain death. The reveal of what the eight spells are for is awesome, and also a brick joke from the very start of Color of Magic. It seems that Pratchett had the role of the Spells planned all along, and that the 'episode' with Bel Shamaroth and and the dryads was shoved in because... I guess Pratched liked the ideas therein (hyper-dimensonal trees, old magic, timelss temple of abomination, entities form the dungeon dimension that are worse than evil etc) and wanted to show them, even if that 'episode' contradicts the setup of the main plot? Which is fine I guess. Undermines continuity but the continuity of this story is fudgy anyways, so... Whatever.

My one big dislike is Twoflower's change of character in the end of the book.

See, Twoflower was always innoffensive and oblivious of subtext, always assuming the best of everyone.

"Everything could be sorted between people of good faith and common sense."

This is the guy who tried to talk things out with Bel Shamaroth.

But then suddenly, at the very end, he burtaly berates Rincewind for running away from problems.

And he does so at the one moment that Rincewind isn't trying to run away, but is in fact about to fall to his death. And the only reason Rincewind kept running is so he wouldn't die. Which makes Twoflowers's scathing criticism completely ill timed.

And this is somehow supposed to be an improvment on Twoflower? Like, making him deeper? But he was already deep enough, with his dreams of exploration, superior power of Imagination, and moments of briliance like spiting at the hydrophobic wizards.

And I can't help but be reminded of Carrot, who went from earnest and oblivious to a shrewd steamroller. He also lost apeal to me, because this isn't improvment. To explain why, allow me to compare them with two other charracters.

First is Sybil: She is friendly with everyone. She understands everyone. She likes nearly everyone. She takes care of dangerous animals. She sympathizes with the Dragon even as it is about to eat her. She sees bad people as being foolish children. She sees people for who they are, but also where they come from and what they could become.

When Sybil is suddenly smarter than she seemed, she isn't mean about it. The way Sybil gets people to be better is to call on their better angels, not to berate them.

Next is Vetinari. He will order you first, use reverse psychology second, threats third, and violence as the last resort. And he's honest about all of it. Moist knows that Vetinari "gets you to pull your own strings."

When Vetinari pretends to be igonrant to outsmart vilains, the book doesn't claim that he's "advanced simple."

Carrot bluffing with no cards is not simplicity, it's three layers of complexity. It's obfuscating stupidity. Which is a cool trait, but not when the text insits that it's still simplicity. That's just lying to the audience. And so is suddenly having Twoflower be aware of Rincewind's flaws all along. Of acting oblivious throught the entire book, instead of being oblivious.

So this habit of taking earnest, oblivious characters and making them smarter, but also mean and/or manipulative at the same time, and then implying this somehow makes them deeper...

No, just. Ugh.

#discworld #studying discworld #literature #the light fantastic #twoflower #carrot ironfoundersson