The Glorious 25th Of May - Tumblr Posts
Ayup i ain't dead. Just been a while time lately, so im here to give y'all UPDATES
I got an F in math and later got splashed with water bc a car passed through a puddle right in front of me. Never felt like Rincewind more then in that moment.
I got surgery, something minor so don't worry.
And i know im late but HAPPY GLORIOUS 25TH OF MAY DISCWORLD FANS!!! THIS IS MY FIRST TIME CELEBRATING IT BUT I HAVEN'T EVEN READ THE BOOK GAAAHHH
I love the Discworld books for a lot of reasons: the characters, the humour, and most of all the words. I’m keeping it simple on this glorious 25th of May and designing a scarf that is almost entirely Pterry’s words, with just a little bit of pattern thrown in.
If/when I knit it, I’ll use the double knitting technique with 3.25mm needles and dk weight yarn. However, I have other favourite words to design layouts for first, so I can pick my favourite!
“He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew… Then it was too high.”
➽ Idris Elba old Vimes // John Boyega as young Vimes
Reblogs for sample size are greatly appreciated ❤️
I miss Terry. This year more than last year I think.
Maybe it’s a bit weird, missing someone I never met, who never knew of my existence.
But Terry has been part of my life for years, since I was sixteen and reading Equal Rites for the first time.
And ll this time his words helped me. Through his work, he’s always been there for me when I needed it.
And when I was feeling gloom, on those days when the world seemed darker than usual, I took comfort knowing that he was there, somewhere. The man who taught me that “sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness”.
It made my day a little brighter then. It’s just not the same now.
“A man is not dead while his name is still spoken” - it’s true, and probably even more so today, the Glorious 25th of May.
Today we speak his name and tell his stories and we remember and we celebrate and we mourn.
I’ll reblog art and quotes and fics and I’ll cry a bit and I’ll laugh too, and I won’t be alone doing so. Not a bad way to spend the day. With good memories and good company.
But shit, guys, I miss him.
‘I’ve met a few incorruptible men,’ said Madam Meserole. They tend to die horrible deaths. The world balances out, you see. A corrupt man in a good world, or a good man in a corrupt one… the equation comes out the same way. The world does not deal well with those who don’t pick a side.’
'I like the middle,’ said Vimes.
'That gives you two enemies. I’m amazed that you can afford so many, on a sergeant’s pay. Please think of what you could be giving up.’
'I am. And I’m not going to help people to die just to replace one fool with another.’
~ Night Watch by Terry Pratchett
25/5/2019 ~ Heads up high
Here’s to Reg Shoe.
Barricade boy became a zombie out of sheer revolutionary fervour and betrayal by the state. Buries himself each year in solidarity with the dead.
(My digital colouring leaves a lot to be desired for, but I learnt a lot doing this - and I’ve wanted to draw something for 25th May for a long time).
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.
The Glorious 25th May, how do they rise up?
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.
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.
I love the dynamic in the Discworld fandom on this site, I think it's mainly because there are a lot of dormant fans, if you will, who've read and loved the books for years but haven't engaged much recently, who sort of reappear whenever a fun post is doing the rounds. It's fantastic. We get the cozy small fandom vibe without the screaming matches, but also get the popular posts from time to time, y'know?
Hey guys! Today is May 25th, y'all know what that means...
-deep inhale-
JUSTICE!
FREEDOM!
TRUTH!
REASONABLY PRICED LOVE!
AND A HARD BOILED EGG!!!
We get, rightfully imo, pretty sad and somber and naval-gazey about Discworld and Sir Terry on the 25th of May but I need everyone who might be discovering this series through this annual outpouring of love and sadness that these books are mostly just really fucking funny. Like, they're heart-wrenching and poignant but really they can only pull that off because they're also the funniest books ever written. There's a line near the end of Hogfather that, when I read it, made me feel more deeply connected to, like, the concept of humanity then I ever have before, but the book was only able to deliver that because the rest of it is about what if Santa Claus got kidnapped and a Big Skeleton had to take over his job? It's a patently ridiculous series but that is absolutely also where it's power comes from.
‘You’d like Freedom, Truth, and Justice, wouldn’t you Comrade Sergeant?’ said Reg encouragingly. ‘I’d like a hard-boiled egg,’ said Vimes, shaking the match out. There was some nervous laughter, but Reg looked offended. ‘In the circumstances, Sergeant, I think we should set our sights a little higher-’ ‘Well, yes, we could,’ said Vimes, coming down the steps. He glanced at the sheets of paper in front of Reg. The man cared. He really did. And he was serious. He really was. ‘But…well, Reg, tomorrow the sun will come up again, and I’m pretty sure that whatever happens we won’t have found Freedom, and there won’t be a whole lot of Justice, and I’m damn sure we won’t have found Truth. But it’s just possible I might get a hard-boiled egg.’
- Terry Pratchett, “Night Watch”
(x)(x)
It’s the Glorious 25th of May! For the first time, I’ve done art in advance. Out of all these, I’m proudest of the first one.
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