On This Glorious 25th Of May, Im Thinking About How Night Watch Isappropriately, And Despite All Its

On this Glorious 25th of May, I’m thinking about how Night Watch is—appropriately, and despite all it’s humor—the darkest of the Watch books. It revolves around a failed revolution, around men that “did the job they didn’t have to do, and died doing it” while the people in power betrayed and abused them. It’s really, unfortunately, a book for our **interesting** times.

And this darkest and most despairing of Discworld books ends with the promise of sunrise. It ends with birth—the birth of Baby Sam, and also, way back on Treacle Mine Road, of Sam Vimes the Copper, who will one day crawl out of the gutter and out of the bottle and drag Ankh-Morpork kicking and screaming into the light. It ends with our Vimes, older and exhausted and still dragging justice along by the collar, trudging home to his family as the night watch ends. Compared to most of Discworld it’s a damn dark book but it ends with just…this quiet and tired and ceaseless hope. The world turns, the turtle moves, and morning comes. Rise up high.

a few days ago i woke up thinking: snails are cute, but what if they had legs?

so i made this, and i was like "aww yeahhh such a funny animal"

and then a second image popped up in my head

what if they acted like dogs?

YEAAAAHHHHH HAPPY PUPPY SNAIL

The thing that scares me the most about BBC America’s adaptation of The Watch is the possibility that Pratchett’s stance on police brutality will be diluted or distorted or even omitted entirely from the show. And I want to make it clear that this post isn’t specific to the current situation in America, it has applications in every single country.

This time, I’m not even going to talk about all those quotes from Night Watch, Thud! and Snuff on police brutality that always get trotted out; although they are profound and breathtaking, I actually don’t need to; because Pratchett’s views run much deeper than those quotes, and they are at the heart of every City Watch book.

I’m going to talk about Commander Vimes’s horror at being described as a “military man” during the war council in Jingo. He’s not a “military man”, he’s a policeman. He keeps the peace. I’m going to talk about the fact that despite fighting for his life with Carcer, a serial killer who has murdered policemen in cold blood, Vimes does everything in his power to bring him in alive and to see that he gets a fair, public trial, and that justice is done. And that coppers trained by Vimes are head-hunted by Watches in the other cities on the Sto Plains, and are prized for their principles and their integrity.

I’m going to talk about the fact that Lord Vetinari defunded the police. There is a clear Discworld precedent for defunding a police force that has gone wrong. Perhaps that was pure, cold, logical pragmatism, because the Thieves’ Guild was a cheaper solution, but I don’t think this is Vetinari’s only motivation. In Night Watch, we see a young Havelock Vetinari, with the weight of the world already on his shoulders, living under Lord Winder’s brutal, violent regime. He then lived under Mad Lord Snapcase, who would have kept the Particulars on if their headquarters hadn’t been destroyed. Vetinari was different, he decided not to keep on a corrupt organisation that wasn’t fit for purpose, and he only built it up again when he found the right man to command the Watch and was certain that it wouldn’t go back to the way it was before.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

That message is so clear in the books. And I just hope that they don’t use Sir Terry’s name to spread a different message, because that would be absolutely heartbreaking.

I just posted a new long spooky-ish (??) sci-fi-ish (???) comic to Patreon! I collaborated with the super talented @jdebbiel to do the backgrounds and she absolutely KILLED IT!!!! You can read the whole thing on Patreon for as little as $1, and you’ll get access to lots of other fun stuff. If you’re already a patron, please don’t spoil the ending!!!!

https://www.patreon.com/posts/44945718

This popped up again on reddit today, and I realized I’d never posted it here. Possibly Sir Terry’s best interview response, ever.

WOLFWALKERS (2020) dir. Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart