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#Thud!
yeehawpim · 4 months
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thestuffedalligator · 6 months
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So there’s this bit at the end of Thud! where they’re in the king’s cave, and Bashfullson explains the nature of the Summoning Dark, and Angua says she believes him, and Sam is presented with proof of the dark and he starts. Rationalizing.
…his mind worked fast, flying in emergency supplies of common sense, as human minds do, to construct a huge anchor in sanity and prove that what had happened hadn’t really happened and, if it had happened, hadn’t happened much.
It was all mystic, that’s what it was. Oh, it might all be true, but how could you ever tell? You had to stick to the things you can see. And you had to keep reminding yourself of that, too.
Yeah, that was it. What had really happened, eh? A few signs? Well, anything can look like you want it to if you’re wound up enough, yes? A sheep can look like a cow, right? Ha!
And I laughed when I first read this because it’s very Sam Vimes, but now that I’m thinking about it. I think this is the only time we ever see a Discworld protagonist do this.
Other characters get to see the squiddy, weird underbelly of the universe, the invisible magic and the world of the supernatural and acknowledge it. Moist hears the whispers of the words, Tiffany can see the Nac Mac Feegle and so on but Sam never does. Carrot and Nobby and Fred have all seen Death enough to greet him in public, but in I think? Fifth Elephant? Sam says he’s never seen Death before, and in that case only saw him because he was fighting for his life.
It’s like the opposite of First Sight. Sam has Second Sight so hard that he can look into First Sight, close the door, and block the way with huge bricks of rationalization. The only character who comes close to that is Susan, who tries to ignore the supernatural but knows she never can.
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the-wine-dark-sea · 23 days
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I love their dynamic lol
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magpiesketchins · 24 days
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I'm sorry I didn't sign up to be emotionally eviscerated by Sam Vimes reading to his son.
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stickandthorn · 1 year
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The way Terry Pratchett handled police in the Discworld continues to be one of the many, many things I love about his works. I certainly don’t have time to describe all the details of why he wrote such good policing, but I think the best summation of it is the arc that Sam Vimes had in many of the books.
I haven’t read all the watch books, but in the ones I have, there’s often a similar plot structure. We meet a truly detestable criminal Vimes is chasing down (think the Deep Downers in Thud, or Carcer in Night Watch). They show themselves to be truly awful people who do awful things, and they’re also just plain jackasses. They’re characters you hate to read about, the grind the audience’s gears. They also grind Sam Vimes’s gears. 
Throughout the story, they commit more and more crimes. Horrible crimes, like torturing and killing innocent people, or practicing violent religious extremism. They do things that personally target our protagonist, like go after his wife and son, or relentlessly taunt him and try to kill him and his past self. They consistently do bad things, and even as Vimes is chasing them, they do more bad things. You want them to be punished.  Finally, at the climax, we get some sort of final confrontation between the villain(s) and Vimes. In a different book, Vimes might kill the people who sent people to hurt his infant son, or tortured and killed innocent people, and the audience would probably cheer. In fact, Vimes wants to kill them. 
But he doesn’t. Every time, he suppresses the urge to enact his own justice, and he doesn’t kill them. He arrests them. Because, as he says many times, if you’ll do something for a good reason, you’ll do it for a bad. Even when there’s every excuse as to why this particular villain doesn’t deserve to live, he just arrests them. It’s not his job to decide how they should be punished for their crimes.
I think this is a masterful takedown of police brutality and Punisher style characters. Vimes isn’t a perfect person, it’s not that he could never dream of killing the bad guy. He can, and he does, often. But he never follows through, he understands why he can’t do that, so no matter how tempting it is, he doesn’t.
Because in this story, the hard boiled cynical cop truly believes in following the law. The message is always that law enforcement killing a criminal is never ok, even if they’re undeniably guilty of something truly dreadful. Hell, police brutality is personified as a millennia old demonic quasi-deity possessing Vimes, one that’s never been beaten before, but he beats it and doesn’t give in. I think that’s a really unique message in cop stories, and another reason as to why Pratchett was such a good author. 
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theygotlost · 9 months
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family iconograph at koom valley ♥
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ghastmaskzombie · 11 months
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God I really do love when the stakes in a narrative are deeply, unapologetically personal. Reading Sam Vimes drag himself through the dark beneath the world (again) with quite possibly some broken bones, maybe bleeding out, only a snowball's chance in hell of him making out of this cave alive, no way he's bringing his humanity home with him if he does, whole countries ready to go to war if he doesn't, and I'm crying sobbing because he's not going to make it in time to read a picture book to his baby boy tonight. And I'm like 95% sure that's just what Sir Terry was going for.
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pratchettquotes · 6 months
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"I have to tell you, sir, that Lady Sybil has found out about the bacon sandwich arrangement. She said to tell you the game was up, sir."
"I am the commander around here, you know," said Vimes, with as much hauteur as he could muster on an empty stomach.
"Yes, sir. But Lady Sybil has a very quiet way of being firm, sir."
"She has, hasn't she," said Vimes as they strolled toward the building. "I'm a very lucky man, you know," he added, just in case Carrot may have got the wrong impression.
"Yes, sir. You are indeed."
Terry Pratchett, Thud!
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sainamoonshine · 1 year
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Having a lot of fun thinking about Vimes being made officially Blackboard Monitor by the king of dwarves (as mentioned in Snuff) because « the one who erases the words that are there so new words can be taught » is exactly what he did by opening the Cube at the end of Thud! He « erased » the inaccurate version of The Things Tak Wrote and he revealed the real version, and now the dwarves can learn that one instead. The deep-down dwarves were scared of the « erasing » part of the title but the king, in fifth elephant, seemed more intrigued by the part where it makes place for new words. A new lesson. New teaching. And how someone would have to be very trusted to be allowed to decide what words need to go so that something else can replace them.
(Also: monitor = guarding. Who is the blackboard monitor, if not the guarding dark?)
And the king of dwarves, who knows enough about Anhk-Morpok to competently put a spy in the watch, probably a) knows its not an actual human title but also b) knows how much Vimes hates getting titles.
So the king probably looked at the opportunity to make this a real dwarf title and foist it upon Vimes and thought « oh this is gonna be so funny »
Plus there is the whole thing about how you need to reward a hero at the end of the story so people can feel like something important happened but also reassure them that it stopped happening now, it’s over. All the problems have been solved. Vetinari explained it at the end of Guards! Guards! and this is why Vimes keeps getting new titles lol. King Rhys probably thought along similar lines.
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aeshnacyanea2000 · 7 months
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You scum, you rat-sucking little worm eaters! You headsdown little scurriers in the dark! What did you bring to my city? What were you thinking? Did you want the deep-downers here? Did you dare deplore what Hamcrusher said, all that bile and ancient lies? Or did you say ‘Well, I don’t agree with him, of course, but he’s got a point’? Did you say, ‘Oh he goes too far but it’s about time somebody said it’? And now, have you come here to wring your hands and say how dreadful, it was nothing to do with you? Who were the dwarfs in the mobs, then? Aren’t you community leaders? Were you leading them? And why are you here now, you ugly snivelling grubbers? Is it possible, is it possible, that now, after that bastard’s bodyguards tried to kill my family, you’re here to complain? Have I broken some code, trodden on some ancient toe? To hell with it. To hell with you.
-- Terry Pratchett - Thud!
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nightfoot · 1 year
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One of my favourite bits in Thud! is when Detritus shouts at Vimes about how he treats trolls.
“What you doin,’ Mister Vimes? Why you go on askin’ questions? Wi’ the dwarfs you have pussy feet, must not upset ’em, oh no, but what you do if dey was trolls, eh? Kick down der door, no problem! Mr. Shine bring you Brick, give you good advice, an’ you talk like he bein’ a bad troll! I’m hearin’ now where Captain Carrot, he tellin’ the dwarfs he the Two Brothers. You fink that make me happy? We know dat lyin’ ol’ dwarf lie, yes! We groan at it lyin,’ yes! You want to see Mr. Shine, you show humble, you show respec,’ yes!” [...] “Should I take anything, Sergeant?” The troll thought about this. “No,” he said, “but maybe dere’s some finkin’ you could leave behind.”
It feels like it's not just Detritus pointing out that Vimes doesn't respect trolls, but also Pterry acknowledging that he hasn't shown much respect to trolls, either. Dwarf culture has been extensively built up, we've dived into the lives and perspectives of werewolves and vampires and feegles and golems and anthropomorphic personifications, but despite being present in the series from the very beginning, there's no troll book.
A few pages later, I once again feel like Mr. Shine is talking to the reader as well when he tells Vimes how little he really knows about trolls.
“You really know very little about us, Mister Vimes. You see us down on the plains, shambling around, talkin’ like dis. You don’t know about the history chant, or the Long Dance, or stone music. You see the hunched troll dragging his club."
This little bit fills me with so much longing for a troll book he never wrote! I want to know about the history chant! I want to see the Long Dance and read about stone music!
We're told frequently that the trolls in Ankh-Morpork are operating at a slower processing speed but that they thrive in the icy mountains, and I'm so sad that we never got a book set in a troll cultural centre.
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valeroyeaux · 5 months
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as always feeling very emotional about otto chriek my good friend otto chriek
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"Coffee was only a way of stealing time that by rights belonged to your slightly older self"
- Terry Pratchett, Thud!
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cephalopod-celabrator · 8 months
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Three Critical Rules For Surviving In Discworld:
Do not threaten Sam Vimes Jr, definitely not while Sam Vimes is in the room
Do not disrespect Granny Weatherwax
Do not let Lord Vetinari detain you
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paradises-library · 10 months
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'What would you do if I asked you an outright question, Vimes?' 'I'd tell you a downright lie, sir.'
-Thud!, Terry Pratchett
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sparkly-angell · 3 months
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"To see the light is to be blinded. Do you know that in the darkness, the eyes open wider?"
Thud!, by Terry Pratchett
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