Month: June 2018

notbecauseofvictories:

Angua balked when the Patrician—old enough that the cane was no longer a statement but a necessity, and Drumknott sometimes loudly announced that Lord Kniepper was to his left, sir, yes, a little further left than that—informed her she was to be named a Duchess.

“Sir,” Angua said, and then found herself drawing several blanks at once, all of them equally unhelpful. She hoped His Lordship’s eyesight was bad enough that he couldn’t see her boggling at him. He was smirking, very slightly, which made her think he could. “With respect, but—why?”

“Tradition, Commander,” Vetinari said smoothly. “The Commander of the Watch, historically, is a ducal title. It seems only right that with the…passing of Sir Samuel, and your own ascendancy to—”

“Mister Vimes was only a duke because he married Lady Sybil!” Angua interrupted, too aghast to care about the breach of protocol. But then Vetinari beat her to it, with such a ludicrous suggestion; she was a von

Überwald, she knew how pedigree worked.* No one got to be a duke except by marriage or blood.**

“Commander,” Vetinari said silkily, “are you contesting tradition?”

“How is it tradition if it’s only been one man?” Angua said wildly, and then, at the look on Vetinari’s face very quickly added, “Sir.”

“All traditions begin with one man, Commander,” Vetinari answered, steepling his fingers before him. “For example, you will remember how, not so long ago, Ankh-Morpork was a dictatorship. They were dark times—but now we embrace a proud democratic tradition.”

Angua blinked, thinking about how just the other day Young Sam had been complaining to her about the fact that there was no mechanism to force the Patrician to listen to the new Witmoot.*** 

“Yes, sir.”

Vetinari looked at her, and the chilling effect was somehow compounded by the milky-white pupils, and the fact that he was staring somewhere over her right ear. “I insist, Commander von Überwald. Furthermore, Lady Vimes has agreed.”

“Oh, good. Er…agreed to what?”

“That the title of Duke—or Duchess, in your case—of the Ankh should pass with the command of the Watch.”

Angua stared.

She opened her mouth to—then shut it again with a quiet click of her teeth. And then, possibly, stared some more. “I’m sorry, I think I misheard you, my lord,” she finally said, in the same tone of voice she’d once asked Wolfgang where he got all that red paint from.****

“We both know your hearing is excellent, Commander.”

“What would—Young Sam will be the Duke of Ankh, when Sybil passes. That’s how….that’s how it works.” Angua felt as though she’d somehow stumbled into an alternative dimension. The wizards talked about those; Carrot had dragged her to a dinner lecture just the other week by Esk Smith, who’d talked at length about the trousers of time and the starched shirt of twelve-dimensional space. It’d sounded like a lot of silly buggers to Angua, but the wine had been good.

“Mm,” Vetinari said solemnly, a gleam somewhere in his deep-set eyes. “That’s how it worked, Commander—worked, past tense. We must move with the times, you know. And as of—oh, this Sunday, shall we say—the Duchy of Ankh will be a title granted and revoked with the command of the Watch.”

“Why?” Angua asked, though it sounded some very undignified combination of petulant and incredulous. Her hair was almost entirely grey these days, but something about Vetinari made her feel young and very snotty, all of five years old.*****

Vetinari shrugged, and it was so startling that Angua almost missed his next words. “Why not, Commander?”

.

“This is insane,” Angua moaned. The brand new armor clanked when she buried her face in her hands, it was extremely unfortunate. (All she could hear was Vimes’ voice in her head, complaining about the damn shiny dress armor, all the metal eagles and hippos and flourish-y nonsense. But Angua’s armor had molded breasts, so she felt fairly certain she’d won this round.******)

“Don’t be silly, dear,” Lady Sybil said, leaning forward in her chair—Angua could heard it creak—to pat Angua’s hand. “You know how Sam cared for you.”

“Mister Vimes hated being a duke, he’d only ever wish it on his worst enemy,” Angua snapped, and then immediately felt horribly guilty. She lifted her head up, grimaced at Sybil. “Sorry, your ladyship, that wasn’t…”

Sybil was laughing, Angua could see her shoulders shaking with it. The hand covering her mouth was faded to papery white, deeply lined; Angua felt an unexpected pang, the evidence that Sybil was not the indomitable and fearsome woman she had been. It wasn’t as though Angua had missed the last few decades—Young Sam becoming a man, Colon retiring and Mister Vimes quietly preparing to follow; new cadets every year, growing into their armor and even leaving, starting watch-houses elsewhere. There were Sammies wherever there were clacks towers these days, and some places too remote for clacks towers to reach.

Just last month a young woman had marched into Angua’s office clutching a notice from a Borogravian general, asking if they would please train her up as a Sammy, and then send her back post-haste. They had a peacetime law-and-order to be getting on with. (Angua mostly remembered the signature, “Polly” and crossed out, “Oliver” crossed out, and then just “Perks”.)

“He did,” Sybil chuckled. “Sam hated everything to do with it. More proof, I suppose,” she said. At Angua’s curious look, Sybil shook her head, smiling ruefully. “That he loved me. Enough to outweigh the rest.”

Angua decided not to mention the tears in her eyes.

“Why, then?” she asked, gesturing helplessly, and Sybil smiled. 

“Havelock has this idea,” she said, and it took Angua a moment to remember that the Patrician had a given name. “That eventually, he’ll die. And it’ll be harder for the various lords and dukes and—suchlike to fight over who will be patrician after him, if they’re all busy with the Witmoot, or trying to run guilds, write for the Times, and command the watch. If it’s expected that they have made themselves useful, in the interim.”

Angua blinked. “I thought Young Sam…?”

“Goodness, no. Havelock’s asked him, of course, but he’d rather community organize and have people pour Ankh-water on his head when he tries to register them to vote. He was the one who suggested we give up the title, you know.”

Angua thought—not for the first time—that Young Sam was an odd sort.*******  

“So making me the Duchess of Ankh—”

“Not you, Angua. The Commander of the Watch. When you retire, you will be recusing yourself from the title, and your successor will be knighted in turn. Havelock’s assured me it will all be very orderly. He made provisions for it.”

“Oh, good,” Angua said faintly.

Sybil smiled in a way that, in a less charitable light, might have been referred to as a smirk. “Exactly, Commander. Now, pull yourself together so you can wheel me out. I imagine it’s almost time.”

Angua exhaled gustily, and stood. (The armor clattered, which was still unfortunate. She wondered if she should have tried harder to change it, maybe Cheery could have buffed the nipples out—) Gripping the posts of Lady Sybil’s chair, she pushed her out of the tent, and toward where the crowd had gathered around the makeshift stage.

“Just…” Angua stared blindly ahead, her mind churning over. “Do you think he’d be proud?”

Sybil reached up, and squeezed Angua’s hand very tightly. “Dear girl,” Lady Sybil said. Her other hand was tight around the hilt of the sword—a blunt, ugly thing, standard watchman-issue, and Angua swallowed to see those knuckles so white around the hilt. “I very much think he already was.”

---

 * In several senses of the word.

** The blood did not have to be yours. There were many ducal coronets snatched up from corpses and plunked down on the victorious bastard’s head; saying, “You and what army?” tended to have that effect. But blood was blood, it would out. Especially if you stuck someone full of holes.

***

The name was from the Old Morporkian, meaning a “Meeting of the Minds.” But as Mrs. Crisplock-Worde had written, it was something of a misnomer. While their meetings were frequent, there were very few minds involved.

This made the Witmoot either A Grand Experiment In Republican Representation, or the most ill-conceived band of young gadabouts elected to public office.

Before his death, Vimes had had some very interesting to things say about his son’s preoccupation with “cobblestone-level politics” and “community organizing.” Namely, that communities weren’t meant to be organized (an acceptable level of hectic chaos would do) and if the gods meant Vimeses to get into politics, they wouldn’t have given them axes.

**** Between being a watchman and being a wolf, Angua had a lot of experience talking to people whose grip on the ins-and-outs of reality was tenuous. Some of them were even people.

***** In human years, not dog years. The canine part of her brain put Vetinari in the same category as her Uncle Jorgen, who had once snapped a bear’s neck between his jaws, and still insisted on carrying her around by the scruff of her neck. It was the same sort of—terror and awe, the knowledge that gentleness was a choice. Not a natural state of affairs.

****** Angua could imagine Vimes now, going purple in the face and chomping on his cigar, insisting that his was clearly built for a bigger man, and wasn’t that embarrassing, a deliberate slight—but Angua’s had nipples. 

*******  Sometimes crossing a purebred with a mix resulted in a stronger bloodline. Other times, all the deliberate inbreeding collided with the bloody-minded perverseness of a mutt, and the result was a ball of wiry-haired crazy that enjoyed savaging bigger dogs. Young Sam was very much the latter.

theunitofcaring:

So I haven’t posted about this since college because I don’t think it’s ever happened to me since I got out of college, but a recent conversation reminded me that it’s still negatively affecting lots of other people, so:

Lots of people find it distressing to be asked their pronouns. They might be trans and not out, or trans and out to some of the people present but not all of them, or not sure if they’re trans, or entirely cis and just really hate being asked to think about the question. I personally freak out about ‘preferred pronouns’ because it makes me go “uh, I don’t really prefer ‘she/her’, I’d much rather be parsed as a genderless amorphous being, but I don’t prefer that strongly enough to go through the hassle of trying to get people to actually see me that way, especially since I’m not really sure it’d work, and people will get confused by ‘they/them’, and if I express a pronoun preference then I’ll be more upset about people getting it wrong than if I don’t, and aaaaaahhh I prefer not to be in a social context where I have to have this thought process it makes me sad!!!”

Other people find it affirming, and that’s legitimate too. There are definitely competing needs here. But I think, since there are competing needs, you at least need to allow for an exit strategy for the people who will be harmed by pressure to come up with an answer.

So: “nametags are here, also feel free to put pronouns on your nametag if you want” is great. “nametags are here, put your name and pronouns!” or “why aren’t there pronouns on your nametag?” are going to cause stress and potentially cause harm.

“Share any of ‘favorite animal, best concert you’ve been to recently, and preferred pronouns, but feel free to skip any of those if you’re coming up empty’” is a decent way to handle competing needs if you’re doing “go around in a circle and introduce yourself”. And if you’re doing introductions with pronouns and someone doesn’t volunteer a pronoun, don’t remind them; the risk they skipped it on purpose and you’re putting them on the spot is not worth the benefits of getting an answer if they just forgot.

Gender sucks. When we’re trying to make it better for people, we need to keep making sure there are doors open to flee screaming ‘aaaah fuck gender’.

roachpatrol:

huinsutt99:

notbecauseofvictories:

Listen, I hear what you’re saying, but Young Sam being the deadly combo of his mother’s powerful Ladies Who Organize tendencies, and his father’s stubborn anti-authority pragmatism makes him an ideal community organizer. He’s cheerful and unflagging and drinks coffee at a rate that would impress even Maladict; he has a dartsboard in his office with an iconograph of Lord Downey II pinned to it, and when asked his response is invariably a chilly, “he knows what he did.” 

When you look deeply in his eyes you can see the abyss looking back. 

(It wants to know if you’ve signed that petition yet.)

#discworld#………look mostly I want a discworld novel about young vimes grappling with his own kind of guarding dark#a guarding dark that protects against a more slippery kind of dark; a waiting dark#cool and patient and careless; as in it doesn’t care about the blood or the death or the cost—it only seeks to further its own darkness#the kind of darkness that lingers in locked bank vaults and unsafe mines and private clubs; places where the darkness is a feature#rather than something to be guarded against#yes exactly I want sam vimes the second Kicks Off The Labor Movement#the Vimes Boots Theory of Wealth Inequality deserves nothing less#also I couldn’t figure out how to turn it into a joke#but the reason you can’t call it “grassroots” politics is because there isn’t any grass in ankh-morpork#“cobblestone level” politics is the closest they get  @notbecauseofvictories

cobblestone politics: you pick one up and throw it at the rich bastards keeping you down. then you pick up another one.

citizenpublius:

chuplayswithfire:

I’ve been re-reading the Animorphs books for the last month or so and I’m up to 20 now, but after reading #19 The Departure I’ve been struck once more by the whole idea that I’ve seen while lurking in the fandom tags – that, especially because of Aftran, people seem to have a ton of sympathy for the Yeerks, or at least more interested in giving them positive species headcanons in comparison to the Andalites, who seem to be loathed a lot more in comparison, and I’m pretty curious. Anybody got ideas or feelings about the topic?

Personally I love examining both groups, but I think it’s rooted in the fact that the Yeerks wouldn’t have been in the position of being violent colonizers if the Andalites hadn’t colonized them first. They were just chilling on the Yeerk Homeworld, just being an alien race that co-evolved to be parasites to the Gedds (and the ratio of Yeerk-to-host was so low that most Yeerks never took one), and then came these Andalites telling them they were an uncivilized species. Before the Andalites showed up, they didn’t care about militarism or imperialist expansion. Judging from Esplin’s interactions with his brothers and sisters in “The Hork-Bajir Chronicles,” it seemed most of them at one point even found the idea of a complex host species to be a frightening thing, and that had they not had enough hosts to go around, they would have lived contented lives in their pools (“But there were no host bodies available, not on this spacecraft. So we lived in our pool. As
simple Yeerks must. And I would have lived happily enough.
But then came the day when it was my turn to take ‘training.’”). They were content on being what they were, until the Andalites showed them what they were missing. 

The Yeerks were a naturally-curious and quickly adaptive species. They took everything Seerow taught them and learned very fast. And we have reason to suspect the Andalites weren’t being entirely truthful when they said the Yeerks betrayed them; we see that the Andalites called them “filthy slugs” and the like before they rebelled. We know that while the Andalites love lording around the galaxy, they don’t like sharing their toys. They told the Yeerks everything they were missing, told them they were a disgusting sub-species for having the audacity of evolving as parasites, and then told them they couldn’t have spaceships to try and make their lives better. Had the Andalites – an imperialistic, xenophobic, militaristic nation – not been the first alien species that the Yeerks came into contact with, things might have gone very differently. Or if the Andalites had just shared with them the morphing technology – so that the Yeerks could get their senses without taking an involuntary host – things might have again gone very differently. 

It might also tie into how we the audience are first introduced to each species. Thanks to Our Lord and Savior Elfangor, we’re first taught that the Andalites are going to be the allies of humans in this war, and that the Yeerks are a Pure Evil species. Then we learn that, no, most of the Yeerks are in a diaspora and can’t go back home (thanks to the Andalite barricade), and have been brainwashed by their Council of Thirteen into emulating the Andalites and trying to build an Empire as quickly as possible so they aren’t killed off by their enemy; and yet it took only 30-40 years of running a Yeerk Empire for them to start questioning the morality of taking involuntary hosts. 

We learn gradually that the Andalites’ idea of “cleaning up” their messes involves a lot of attempted genocide. They’re embarrassed over what happened with the Yeerks? Wipe out the Yeerks. They can’t keep the Yeerks from enslaving the Hork-Bajir (who the Andalites also treated as a sub-species)? Wipe out the Hork-Bajir. Earth’s massive human population would serve as the most perfect hosts for the Yeerks? Wipe out the humans. 

So while the Yeerks’ actions are not condonable, we the readers learn the root cause of their problems, of the entire war, goes back to the Andalites.