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this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2024
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I don't think people get how reactionary the captain vimes books are. look at what's happening in them. in plain english, you have a cop and his band of good apples + adorably bad apples saving the ass of a dictator again and again, because sometimes you just need a clever steady hand in charge. Pratchett was informed by liberal humanist values, and there's plenty of great stuff about tolerance in there. but the foundation of any vimes novel is an institutionalist urge to bootlicking. it just has to be the right boot
It sucks to have to decolonise your darlings. It sucks that a lot of our most enjoyable stories are copaganda. Even the most redeemable stories about cops have probably inspired people to become cops.
@sc_griffith
I think Pratchett understood that, despite people romanticizing revolution, revolutions often end up opening the door to something as bad or worse. Especially in a place like Discworld.
@sc_griffith
In Night Watch:
“Vimes/Keel tells Ned Coates not to put his trust in revolutions "They always come around again. That's why they're called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes" This is a common theme in Pratchett regarding authority figures”
That said Vimes does participate in a revolution of sorts in that book, as “John Keel”, in the past.
yeah that's the conservative spirit right there
Books would be really boring if the protagonists were all just the author speaking as themself but using various funny voices.
there's not a lot of ambiguity in what the novels are getting at, so no offense but this line of argument is not worth engaging directly. but I will point out that I didn't say what pratchett's views were. part of why people don't look askance at these books is that his other work is at odds with the realpolitik message I'm pointing out. I can't and I don't draw conclusions about his 'real' views based on the vimes novels
@sc_griffith
The novels may be trying to say something, but how it plays out still needs to make sense in the world of the novel and be coherent with the characters as depicted.
Vimes is basically a stereotypical jaded and cynical old-timer who has ideas about how things could be better, but has seen enough to know that the powerful would never allow it.
Incremental improvements are made but larger changes are difficult except sometimes in places that are even worse than Ankh-Morpork.
@sc_griffith
It's kind of like all the people who are aware of what's likely needed to prevent climate change disaster, but are also aware that they don't have the power to make it happen and that the forces of inertia and corruption are powerful enough to block or roll back anything remotely significant.