Hi my name is Lord Havelock Vetinari and I am the tyrant of Ankh-Morpork (that’s how I got my name) with cunty politics and a lot of people tell me I look like a predatory flamingo (AN: if that could exist!). I’m not related to king lorenzo the Kind but I wish I was so Vimes would fight me (hot!). I’m not a vampire but im not not a vampire. I’m the Patrician, and I live in the Patrician's Palace, where I’m mostly in the Oblong Office (i love spreadsheets). I’m a goth (in case you couldn’t tell) and I wear only black. I love Hot Topic and I buy all my clothes from there. For example today I was wearing a long black robe with a long black undershirt and long black trousers. I was taking my carriage. It was snowing and raining so there was no sun, which I was very happy about, so my black on black coat of arms blended in even more. A lot of powerful people stared at me. I raised my eyebrow at them and told them dont let me detain you.
Dreams's youtube project that hes been working on with his close friends that will literally change the mc creator scene and Sam starting up his own smp where multiple kinds of players (building, grinding for items, lore/acting based) will be accommodated oh we are so back this summer will be good to us 🙏
Something I love about Terry Pratchett's books, and why i love the ankh morpork books so much, is that he also loved civilisation.
And i don't mean "force technological progress, all hail harsh and unforgiving bureaucracies, plow down everything that was before", i mean that when a bunch of people live together, then you need to organise The Public to make their lives good. And not against, but in service of the people living there. The small minded, unpleasant, nosy, selfish people. All of them.
And civilisation needs tireless small acts and work to build something that is larger than the sum of it's parts, and it's annoying, and sometimes hard to see the big picture, and you cannot do it alone.
But, when you don't forcibly stop them, many many people will look at a bunch of resources at their disposal, and say "so how can we organise them so that they help people the most efficiently, that we can make life easier for all people".
And that's why i weep with joy when i see this happening in real life, whenever there is something structured with the goal of people living there (and not just existing and being wrung dry for the benefit of others).
And i feel like Terry Pratchett felt the same.
And while you can also see it in the witch books, and very clearly at that, many people like to idealise rural life and write off urban life as hollow. And that's why i singled out the ankh morpork books, because ankh morpork has all the things people claim as negative about city life, and still says "look at the beauty of humanity and being alive".
The utter beauty of the postal service, of bureaucracy, of maintained streets and the white chalk horse. Of streets so old they burrowed into the ground, of canalisation, of records maintained since thousands of years.
thinking about the grief vimes must've felt after coming back from the past and seeing everyone remember keel as him. mmmm. god. like that scene in the cemetery where nobby, colon and throat talk about keel really shows that he WAS a good person before vimes. that he genuinely touched people's lives on his own and touched vimes's life even more. bc he tried to be good like him. he tried to honor him like he deserved. but really, he could never be truly sure he did it right. and then he came back and no one knew him anymore. everyone remembered vimes, not the man who changed so many lives in few days. no one would remember john keel, only the john keel vimes tried to be. fuck