Night Watch - Tumblr Posts
The quiet, bookish recluse [who seems lonely but at least they have their pidgeons and plants on the communal roof space to keep them company]: Don't mind the protests too much, folks here just care a whole awful lot about everything. Join in when you can, don't be a dick when you can't. Ya know, if you're lucky, you can catch sight of the blooming lilacs across the way each year. Makes up a bit for the ruckus, in my opinion. We like to remember what a good man spent his life trying to teach us.
Let's all share a fond laugh when we hear the stomping march of our comrades, fix a sprig of lilac to our lapels, and join in with cries for "TRUTH! JUSTICE! FREEDOM! REASONABLY PRICED LOVE! AND A HARD-BOILED EGG!"
Using tumblr is like living in a low class apartment building. You just get used to the landlord not fixing things, and then someone new moves in and you’re helpfully like “oh yeah don’t drink the tap water, it’s got stuff in it that makes you sick” and then your neighbor you’ve had forever goes “oh they took the stuff out actually” and you’re like “what? when was this?”
“like two years ago”
“you mean i could’ve been drinking the tap water all this time?”
“yeah. they gave us individual mailboxes too finally, you don’t have to dig through the communal bin anymore”
“are you for real right now?? i just redirected my mail, i didnt know”
and the new tennant is like “why did you guys even live here if it was so bad”
“we like it.”
“I kinda miss the communal mail bin tho”
The only good cops are in the Ankh Morpock Night Watch. Not the Day Watch though, those guys are shit.
But, much to my dismay, they're all fictional. So i agree - all cops are bastards
Welp that was the most I’ve ever cried to a fanfic how dare you recommend something so beautiful
The gun is cocked. I'm sobbing and shaking.
"Say it."
"I can't!"
They push the gun into my temple. "Say it now."
"ACAB includes Sam Vimes, OK, are you happy now?"
“When I die,” said Lawn, inspecting the patient, “I’m going to instruct them to put a bell on my tombstone, just so’s I can have the pleasure of not getting up when people ring.”
-Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch
“One thing Vimes was learning fast was the natural vindictiveness of old ladies, who had no sense of fair play when it came to fighting soldiers; give granny a spear and a hole to jab it through, and young men on the other side were in big trouble.”
-Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
“People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so, the children of the revolution were faced with a problem: it wasn’t that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people.
As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn’t measure up.”
-Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
“I don’t think I can do much about the dead one,” said the doctor. “How do you know he’s dead? I realize that I may regret asking that question.”
“He’s got a broken neck from falling off a roof and I reckon he fell off because he got a steel crossbow dart in his brain.”
“Ah. That sounds like dead, if you want my medical opinion.”
-Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
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.
Happy lilac day, guys.
I drew this lilac for a different reason, but for 25 of May it fits perfectly
All the little angels rise up high!
There were plotters, there was no doubt about it. Some had been ordinary people who'd had enough. Some were young people with no money who objected to the fact that the world was run by old people who were rich. Some were in it to get girls. And some had been idiots as mad as Swing, with a view of the world just as rigid and unreal, who were on the side of what they called "The People." Vimes had spent his life on the streets and had met decent men, and fools, and people who'd steal a penny from a blind beggar, and people who performed silent miracles or desperate crimes every day behind the grubby windows of little houses, but he'd never met The People. People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness, And so, the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up.
-- Night Watch
Truth, justice, freedom, reasonably priced love, and a hardboiled egg. Did Ankh-Morpork get those things, in the end?
They got truth, there was a whole book about it. Vimes didn't want it when he got it, or at least he didn't want the political cartoon section of the newspaper, but Ankh-Morpork got the free press whether anyone liked it or not.
They got justice, thanks first to Carrot and then to Vimes, forcing the City Watch to reform into an organization that helped the citizenry and would arrest the patrician or a whole invading army if it had to. Vimes had to wage a constant war with himself not to turn into just another gang leader, but he waged it.
They did not get freedom. Pratchett was very clear on that. Things got comparatively better, and immigrants flocked to the city despite it being a hellhole, because the dictator didn't care about persecuting any minority groups or whether or not people made fun of him, but it was still a dictatorship. When Pratchett was alive, fans speculated that he was subtly training Moist von Lipwig to become the new government leader- the Lipwig books always had an emphasis on Vetinari getting older- and Lipwig would have had nothing to fear from an election by popular vote, but that's all fanwank and speculation.
They got reasonably priced love right away. That may have even been one of Vetinari's first acts as patrician, since Mrs. Palm is leader of the Seamstress's Guild at least as far back as the early Watch books.
John Keel's grave got a hardboiled egg every year.
Four out of five ain't bad.
Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. I pledge my life and honor to the Night's Watch, for this night and all nights to come.
Vow of the Night Watch; Game of Thrones
Don’t put your trust in revolutions. They always come around again. That’s why they’re called revolutions. People die, and nothing changes.
Samuel Vimes, Night Watch; Terry Pratchett
Walking slowly at night
Rolling up clouds
The sound like the wind chimes came from distant place
That are stars gently hitting each other
The moon is sleeping
This moment belong to stars
Lost stars, please follow me.
If you have had pieces of flaking
Please let me help you find it
Please follow me.
Morningstar Ithaqua
Every year May 25th comes around and every year I have the need to put into words just why this book stayed with me for so long. But mostly it comes down to this: despite Night Watch’s sudden shift to a darker, heavier tone, it avoids being unnecessarily cruel to its characters just for the sake of plot. And of course, this is true of all the Discworld books, people striving to be better, to do better, but I think it’s significant in context of how dark this book is - especially since going by chronological reading order, this is the bleakest book we encounter up until this point.
This Ankh-Morpork that we’re submerged in is so alien at that point in her timeline, it’s gruesome and cruel and oppressive because it’s under a gruesome, cruel and oppressive tyrant. Yet despite that, there is still kindness in the heart of the book - it values old Vimes’ mercy and young Sam’s innocence, it values the fact that Vimes wants to avoid undue violence, to save as many as he can, and shield people from the tyranny for as long as he can.
It’s such an emotionally charged book and there is a lot of darkness in the story itself- a blood-thirsty serial killer, power-hungry men, ruthless paranoia, and the awful, inhumane underbelly of a regime - but where most other books would have done so, it avoids traumatizing its characters just to establish that. Darker shifts in tone so often entails that the narrative doles out meaningless suffering and trauma just to establish itself. Night Watch ultimately avoids that, because it uses other means to make the text feel heavy and oppressive. Part of it is from the plot itself, in that Vimes knows what happens behind closed doors, he know what Swing is capable of and the knowledge of that threat is high-risk enough to let readers know of the stakes.
The main emotional conflict instead comes from Vimes battling with himself, reconciling with wanting to go home versus, well, Sam Vimes being Sam Vimes, which means doing his best at saving everyone, history, timeline and causality be damned. We know that young Sam will become cynical and bitter and drunk somewhere down the line, we know that half the Night Watchmen will die, we know that the city will remain cruel despite this Hail Mary attempt at revolution. Which is why the narrative is so intent on telling us that Vimes’ kindness matters - in mentoring young Sam, in getting the prisoners off the Hurry-Up Wagon, in preventing undue riots and undue brutality, in keeping the fighting away from Barricade as long as possible. The city’s going to hell in a hand basket, might as well make people’s lives easier.
Vimes can’t save Ankh-Morpork from history taking its due course, but the powerful emotional catharsis is seeing him coming to the decision to try and save everyone anyway – simply because he can’t envision himself not doing it. So he digs his heels in and makes whatever difference he can in the moment.
Because Night Watch in an inevitable tragedy - only one of the two stories can have a happy ending and in order for Sam Vimes to go back to the present, to his wife and his son and his Watch and his city, the revolution has to fail or else that timeline ceases to exist. There is no way for him to save both his men and his future but he’ll be damned if it doesn’t try - he wouldn’t be Sam Vimes otherwise. Every time it I re-read it still feels like he’s that close to succeeding.
It could have so easily been grimdark and ~gritty~ but ultimately it avoids because it centres on a few basic themes that forms the core in the story. The heart of it is about camaraderie of a handful of men too weird and incompetent and ugly, the tentative hope in the uprising, and the sheer bloody determination of Sam Vimes’ refusal to give up on the people around him.