The Nightwatch Series

2024-05-19T02:32:56Z

I've been re-reading the Nightwatch Discworld sub-series, by Terry Pratchett. Contrary to what some might think, it's not 'copaganda'. Terry Pratchett portrays his cops (the Day Watch and the Night Watch) as very real characters, and most of them are either lazy and corrupt, lazy drunkards, lazy petty thieves, petty thugs, or petty authoritarians--up until Carrot joined the Night Watch and cleaned it up. (See the story Guards! Guards! for that.) Even Sam Vimes, the character we follow through all the Night Watch novels, who understands what a cops job should be, thinks nothing of using trickery and intimidation to get suspects to talk. The time-travel novel in the series, Night Watch, has a lot of Sam Vimes the Elder laying down what lines a cop should not cross and what a cop's job is. (Thesis: It's "Keep the Peace". Cops are supposed to de-escalate fights. For a cop, whole point of arresting criminals and putting them in front of a judge should be to keep victimized people from taking the law into their own hands, and to stop people from doing things to other people that make them want to do that. That's the whole point of having laws in the first place--"every man for himself" is a bloodbath.)

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Terry Pratchett's "Moving PIctures"

2024-04-02T13:24:58Z

Thesis for discussion: Moving Pictures is Terry Pratchett's Discworld retelling of H.P. Lovecraft's prose-poem Nyarlathotep.

Crossposted to Tumblr.

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Dragoness Eclectic's Journal

The Nightwatch Series

Terry Pratchett's "Moving PIctures"