Children playing with Barbies in media:“This is Sally. She’s the mommy. She loves fashion, swimming, and she drives a convertible! She has a baby with Ken and sometimes they kiss.” OR “Look, I ripped Barbie’s head off! Ha ha ha! I’m a boy.”
Children playing with Barbies in real life: “This is Aurora, the fallen goddess of the sky. She has been banished from her kingdom and bound to a mortal body by her sister, who rose to power by human sacrifices. She now leads an army of cannibal water spirits who eat men. Sometimes they have orgies. They dismembered a traitor and keep her head on a Popsicle stick as a warning to others. Aurora can turn into a wolf and uses battle magic to paralyze her enemies. The king of the stuffed animals developed rabies and she had to slay him to save his people, but they do not understand that it was an act of mercy and kindness and are sending assassins after her for regicide. This is Aurora’s soulmate, Crystal, but her soul is trapped in a gemstone while an evil spirit pilots her body and attempts to murder her friends.”
She got on with people. Practically from the moment she’d been able to talk she’d been taught how to listen. And when Sybil listened to people she made them feel good about themselves. It was probably something to do with being a… a big girl. She tried to make herself seem small, and by default that made those around her feel bigger. She got on with people almost as well as Carrot did. No wonder even the dwarfs liked her.
She had pages to herself in Twurp’s Peerage, huge ancestral anchors biting into the past, and dwarfs also respected someone who knew their great‐great‐great‐grandfather’s full name. And Sybil couldn’t lie, you could see her redden when she tried it. Sybil was a rock. She made Detritus look like a sponge.
Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant (via gadding-about)
Have I mentioned how much I love lady Sybil? (which is how almost every one of my DW posts starts but I LOVE EVERYONE IN THIS BAR OKAY)
But! Lady Sybil. Sybil starts out as a joke character, the fat aristocratic eccentric cat- dragon-lady, but like all of Pratchett’s characters she quickly evolves. Not that there aren’t hints right from the start, she does face down a dragon. And she marries Sam Vimes, that’s a pretty big giveaway too.
But on the surface of things, Sybil doesn’t look that exceptional. Sybil is kind. Sybil is polite. Once married Sybil leaves the financial side of things to her husband. While Vimes is running around the city doing exciting things, Sybil sits at home and organises parties. Sybil’s just a housewife, the Discworld equivalent of a soccer mom.
And I have very little doubt that in the hands of a lesser writer this would have frustrated me to no end, but this is Pratchett, which means that Sybil takes being a housewife and turns it into a weapon of mass destruction.
Not that she doesn’t have other moments of awesome: in The Fifth Elephant, the first book after Guards Guards where Sybil’s more than just a background character, she happily subverts the Damsel in Distress trope and escapes herself, knocking out a werewolf and crawling from a window. But the true defining moment of Sybil’s general amazingness comes after, when she successfully negotiates a trade agreement while Vimes is seconds from passing out.
Sybil has a different kind of power than Vimes. While she does keep her cool during the attacks on her in The Fifth Elephant and Thud, it’s clear she’s very upset about it (and if someone even dares to use this as an argument against her I’m going to stab them with a fork. okay? okay.). We mostly see Sybil through Vimes’ eyes, which means that it takes a few books before we recognise the full extent of Sybil’s influence and power. In what Vimes describes as “The Ladies Who Organise" Sybil is the lynchpin of a massive network of powerful people that she’s able to manipulate. It’s what wins the day in Snuff: while Vimes’ detecting and coppering is important, it’s Sybil’s networking that turns the events in something more than just another crime solved and possibly starts a social revolution. Sybil, through the calculated use of Christmas cards and inquiries after people’s children, wields a kind of influence that’s only comparable to Vetinari’s. Just a housewife? Please. Lady Sybil Ramkin can fuck your shit up with one letter and a polite smile.
(And that’s Pratchett’s general message: there are many ways to be a Strong Female. You want to wear armour and fight? Cool! Look at Angua, look at Polly and Mal. You don’t like fighting much and would like to focus on your family? Fabulous! Here’s Sybil and Nanny Ogg. You want to stay single? Hello Granny Weatherwax. There is no wrong way of being a woman, and you can be just as important whether you know how to swordfight or not.) (via Pasiphile)
