#DiscWorld

[vanilla-extracter]

I just wanted to say I ADORE how you draw Magrat. She's exactly how I pictured her when reading the books

omggg thank you so much i love drawing her shes real as fuck and she keeps serving incredible fits

[rookamell]

Looking up Discworld quotes and it's always so fun because one quote will be like

"Homo Sapiens? You could keep it."

And the next one will be

"LORD, WE KNOW THERE IS NO GOOD ORDER EXCEPT THAT WHICH WE CREATE... THERE IS NO HOPE BUT US. THERE IS NO MERCY BUT US. THERE IS NO JUSTICE. THERE IS JUST US. ALL THINGS THAT ARE, ARE OURS. BUT WE MUST CARE. FOR IF WE DO NOT CARE, WE DO NOT EXIST. IF WE DO NOT EXIST, THEN THERE IS NOTHING BUT BLIND OBLIVION. AND EVEN OBLIVION MUST END ONE DAY. LORD, WILL YOU GRANT ME JUST A LITTLE TIME? FOR THE PROPER BALANCE OF THINGS. TO RETURN WHAT WAS GIVEN. FOR THE SAKE OF PRISONERS AND THE FLIGHT OF BIRDS. LORD, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?"

And now I'm crying because of one man's overwhelming love for humanity and the fact that he wrote 44 books in which one of the overarching themes is just... take care of one another. Even the bad ones.

[leona-florianova]

Constable Dorfl and Constable Visit-The-Infidel-With-Explanatory-Pamphlets discussing religion.

a gift for @chechula

[chaoschenoo]

I grew up on these! This and Soul Music were some of my favorite VHS tapes we had.

Discworld: Wyrd Sisters Director: Jean Flynn | Studio: Cosgrove Hall | UK, 1997

[jurijurijurious]

What kind of man would put a known criminal in charge of a major branch of government? Apart from, say, the average voter.

--Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

[gentlemanjimcraddock]

I think William de Worde gets underrated as a Discworld protagonist. His book is great but it's not as riotously funny as some of the others. Moist basically replaced him as the not a Watchman Ankh-Morpork protagonist. The Truth often gets lumped in with Moist's books as "the industrial revolution series".

William is basically the opposite of Vimes. Vimes and his family clawed and scraped for everything they ever had. He's seen first hand what it means for the little people when the rich thinks the rules don't apply to them. That's why he does what he does. Vimes makes the law an equaliser, rather than a tool of tyranny.

But William is a pompous, arrogant, entitled, privileged little twit. At first, he hates it and tries desperately to be his father's opposite. He's the well meaning liberal. He knows racism is bad and abhors it, but he still treats trolls and dwarfs and vampires with kid gloves so he doesn't accidentally offend them. He doesn't stop to think about the food he's taking off of people's plates when he doesn't get his engravings done. He just sort of assumes the dwarfs at the press work for him rather than with him. Multiple characters called him out in this throughout the story, and he never really has a answer for them.

But like Otto says, he tries, and trying is how you get there. And William does get there, not by overcoming these flaws, but by using his privilege as a weapon against the rich and corrupt, like Vimes uses the law.

He takes the jewels, basically buys the dwarfs' loyalty with them. (Attempts) to blackmail his dad with them. Does blackmail Slant. Uses his little notebook to protect free speech against people like Vimes and Slant. Backs Vetinari into ensuring Harry King's daughter has a wedding overflowing with the rich and powerful, ensuring Harry will supply him with paper out of gratitude. His first response to a problem to either annoy it into leaving him alone or offering it a job.

William doesn't become a hero of the working class, not really. But he uses his pompous twittery to give them chances. To get a job, sure. But also to learn the truth. To help draw the lines that the rich can't just cross without fear of reprisal. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.

[mushroom-punk]

was going back and forth on whether or not to post these, and then i remembered that theres three people total who have drawn this man and one of them is paul kidby. so. anyways. i didn't particularly like Jingo as much as the other watch books but 71 hour Ahmed has a lot of potential as a character and is just kind of unnecessarily cool. i enjoy him

[dvdmitri]

I keep catching myself thinkin that Discworld's witches are ment to be single and/or viriginal, but every time I keep remembering that Nanny Ogg exists. A delightfully dirty old woman whose progeny constituted a decent percentage of the Ramtops popualtion.

Maybe I'm just overexposed to Star Wars media, but I've been a bit exasperated with the trope where "special" people of the setting are not allowed to have romantic/sexual relations of any sort, so Mrs. Ogg has been a breath of fresh air.

Besides, Pratchett already did it with the wizards. They are the ones who aren't allowed to bang.

[leona-florianova]

[theonevoice]

Am I closing the last lesson of my course on the narrative representation of prejudice with that quote from sir Terry Pratchett about the impulse to make up enemies and conspirators in order to put the blame for anything wrong on a "them" who we can then torment?

Hell yeah I am.

[klinefelterrible]

So to sum up, Vimes is good not because he is good or the police forces are good or the policemen are good, buy because someone HAS TO BE GOOD

Discworld is an interesting beast in the age of ACAB. Like, the city watch books are a story about police and the way in which a good police force can help and protect people. Which would make it copoganda. And I'm not going to say that the City Watch books are completely free of copoganda, but they also do something interesting that fairly few stories about heroic police officers do, and I think it has a lot to do with Samuel Vimes. A lot of copoganda stories like, say, Brooklyn 99, are perfectly capable of portraying cops as cruel, bigoted, and greedy, but our central cast of characters are portrayed as good people who want to help their communities. The result is that the bad cops are portrayed as an aberration, while most cops can be assumed to be good people doing a tough job because they want to help protect people from the nebulous evil forces of "Crime". The police are considered to be naturally heroic. Pratchett does something very interesting, which is provide us with Vimes' perspective, and present us with an Unnaturally heroic police force. In Ahnk-Morpork, the natural state of the watch is a gang with extra paperwork. It's the place for people who, at best, just want a steady paycheck and at worst want an excuse to hit people with a truncheon. Rather than be an army defending people from the forces of Crime, the Watch is described as a sort of sleight-of-hand, big burly watchmen in shiny uniforms don't stand around in-case a Crime happens in their vicinity, they stand around to remind people that The Law exists and has teeth. The Watchmen are people, when danger rears it's head, their instinct is to hide and get out of the way. When faced with authority, their instinct is to bow to it out of fear of what it might do to them if they don't. Carrot is a genuine Hero, but his natural heroism is presented as an aberration. Normal Cops don't act like Carrot does. The fact that the Watch ends up acting like a Heroic Police Force is largely due to the leadership of Sam Vimes, but Vimes himself is a microcosm of the Watch. The base state of Sam Vimes would be an alchoholic bully of an officer, one who beats people until they confess to anything because that makes his job easier. Vimes The Hero is a homunculous, an artificial being created by Sam Vimes fighting back all those instincts and FORCING himself to behave as his conscience dictates. Vimes doesn't take bribes or let his officers do the same because, damnit, that sort of thing shouldn't happen, even if doing so would make things a lot easier. Vimes doesn't run towards sounds of screaming because he WANTS to, he forces himself to do so because somebody needs to. It's best summed up in Thud “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Your Grace.” “I know that one,” said Vimes. “Who watches the watchmen? Me, Mr. Pessimal.” “Ah, but who watches you, Your Grace?” said the inspector with a brief little smile. “I do that, too. All the time,” said Vimes. “Believe me.”

In the hands of another writer, or another series, this exchange would be weirdly dismissive. To whom should the police be accountable to? Themselves, shut up and trust us. But from Vimes, it's a different story. Vimes DOES constantly watch himself, and he doesn't trust that bastard, he's known him his entire life. The Heroic Police are not a natural state, they're an ideal, and ahnk-morpork only gets anywhere close. Vimes is constantly struggling against his own instincts to take shortcuts, to let things slide, but he forces himself to live up to that ideal and the Watch follows his example. Discworld doesn't propose any solutions to the problems with policing in the real world. We don't have a Sam Vimes to run the NYPD and force them to behave. We don't have a Carrot Ironfounderson. But it's at least a story about detectives and police that I can read without feeling like I'm being sold propaganda about the Thin Blue Line.

[pratchettquotes]

"You know, I still think it would help if we thought of all this as a valuable opportunity," said Ridcully.

"That's true," said the Dean, sitting up. "It's not many times in your life you get the chance to die of hunger on some bleak continent thousands of years before you're born. We should make the most of it."

"I meant that pitting ourselves against the elements will bring out the best in us and forge us into a go-getting and hard-hitting team," said Ridcully. This view got no takers.

"I'm sure there must be something to eat," mumbled the Chair of Indefinite Studies, looking around aimlessly. "There usually is."

"After all, nothing is beyond men like us," said Ridcully.

"That's true," said Ponder. "Oh gods, yes. That's true."

Terry Pratchett, The Last Continent

[klausisdrawing]

The most ✨glorious✨romance in 30 years

[reneaxel]

a rather old sketch that I really don't like, but nonetheless here it is

[beardedmrbean]

Sausage in a bun time