#sort of based on that one Terry Pratchett quote about Vetinari

[sox-rok68]

Lupin: "Man, you gotta hand it to Fujiko🥰"

Jigen: "Sure you do. If you don't, she takes it when you're not looking😑"

[rokkster]

With the whole 'Sir Terry Pratchett would be GC if he were still alive'* thing, I've been thinking about the sort of representation Discworld books actually had. So here's a non-comprehensive list off the top of my head.

Properly catered for disability - When we first meet Detritus he's quite literally 'dumb as a rock' to outsiders. He's pretty much the embodiment of that quote about a fish believing it's stupid because it can't climb a tree. He's in a world where everything is hot and sticky and that makes him slow. Getting locked in a freezer brings his brain to a place where he can not only match his non-silicon-based peers but far surpass them. And when one of those peers realises this, he makes Detritus a helmet that helps cool his brain down, essentially adding a cooling fan to an over-clocked CPU. Detritus is not a stupid person. He's a quite literal person (although not as literal as early-stages Carrot) and a lot of his influence comes from being very big and carrying a siege weapon as if it were a child's toy, but he speaks Dwarfish enough to defend his fellow officer in the Fifth Elephant. He's come a long way from the bruiser we first saw in Guards! Guards!, because someone saw the best way to accommodate some pretty simple but previously overlooked needs.

Identification outside of social norms - In human terms, Cheery is cisgender. She was born female, she identifies as female, end of. However Cheery was not born into a human society. She was born into a dwarven society, essentially assigned dwarf at birth. Her push against this classification is an important part of her character development, she wants to be seen for who she is, not who people think she ought to be.

transgenderism/gender 'appropriate' roles - Equal Rites and The Monstrous Regiment. And The Shepherd's Crown. Just... read them. Please. I've seen it posited that Nobby Nobbs might also fit in here and it's not my head canon personally (I see him more as... so misaligned by others that femininity and masculinity are pretty equal to him) but I can understand where it comes from.

Fat representation and fatphobia - The wife of one of the main characters is fat. Except she's not fat because she's also rich as heck, so society wouldn't call her fat. But she is plus-sized and she is capable and at no point is it suggested that she might need to lose weight to fit in better or whatever. This is a woman who is not your skinny heroine type, who can nevertheless manage to escape from a group of werewolves by shinning down a bunch of bed sheets. There's also Agnes 'but you've got a great personality' Nitt, equally capable and somewhat more derided for her size because that it a thing that happens. The people who know her best don't see any reason to mention it, but people will be cruel. Agnes is also something of a representative of internalised fatphobia, but being a witch means this internalisation is... practically there, in her head, a not-quite-separate entity that she can't get rid of.

Greysexuality - Granny Weatherwax. I don't think she was ever aware of the terms surrounding the aroace spectrum, but nevertheless I think they fit. This might just be me head canoning rather than any actual intention on the author's part; to me Lords and Ladies suggests a level of demisexuality in that there were alternate universes where she could see herself settled with Ridcully and it feeling possible to her even though she knew it hadn't happened to her.

Neurodivergence - It's there. Vetinari reads sheet music instead of listening to it. He also has an acute eye for detail and seems to see things just that little bit differently to other people. Leonard da Quirm exists. Bloody Stupid Johnson was a person. Moist von Lipwig. Sir Samuel Vimes thinks in straight lines in a world of curves. More than one of the recruits in The Monstrous Regiment has some sort of trauma based thing going on.

*no, no he wouldn't. His daughter and his friend and several interviews/anecdotes already show this. If you believe he would be GC, please crawl back under your rock and stay there.