The Patrician leaned forward, gripping the arms of his chair.
“I want to be clear about this,” he said coldly. “Are we to believe that you are asking for a petty wage increase and a domestic utensil?”
Carrot whispered in Colon’s other ear.
Colon turned two bulging, watery-rimmed eyes to the dignitaries. The rim of his helmet was passing through his fingers like a millwheel.
“Well,” he began, “sometimes, we thought, you know, when we has our dinner break, or when it’s quite, like, at the end of a watch as it may be, and we want to relax a bit, you know, wind down…” His voice trailed away.
“Yes?”
Colon took a deep breath.
“I suppose a dartboard would be out of the question–?”
hey I just want to talk about this bit for a sec cause it’s a favorite of mine
I wouldn’t say Guards! Guards! is the darkest Discworld book, but it’s up there. it’s a book about corruption and the abuse of power and the willingness of people to blindly follow any higher authority no matter how terrible. it’s a book that begins with its protagonists at their lowest: the last three remaining Watchmen, having just buried a comrade, who have seen their institution crumble into nothingness, who have no power left, who have nothing left, who are so beaten down by life they have given up everything but wandering drunkenly through the gutters, with no hope of affecting any change in their rotten city. it’s a book where the–largely accidental–saving of the day is capped off by Vetinari’s blisteringly cynical speech about how there are no good people, only bad people on different sides, which leaves even Vimes utterly speechless and unable to argue.
and then. and then this happens. the Watch are told that they can ask for any reward for saving the city. any reward. Vetinari and the assembled nobles clearly expect them to ask for something pretty big. this has, after all, been a story about how awful people will be if you give them any leeway.
…and the extravagant reward the Watchmen ask for is… for a five dollar raise, a new kettle, and a dartboard.
and Vetinari, the chessmaster, the manipulator, the man who always seems to be ten steps ahead, who seems to know everything and predict everything, who a few pages before outlined a world view so dark that “the only thing to hope for is that there is no life after death”–Vetinari is surprised. the man who anticipates everything did not anticipate this.
it’s this glorious little gleam of light, after a book full of associating mundane humanity with the awful, the humdrum evil and petty bigotry, that suddenly turns around and says sometimes mundane humanity is tea kettles and dartboards and silliness. sometimes people will do terrible things because it’s easy, but sometimes people will do great things because what the hell, someone had to.
this is what makes pratchett such a genius.
any sophomore can write a story about how everything is terrible and nothing matters. it takes wisdom and skill to take that story and then convince us that, actually, there IS light, and it’s in ordinary people and ordinary things.
i never met the man but i miss him as if he was a personal friend.
i think that… approximately 100% of the time, parents, teachers, etc… have this misconception that neurodivergent kids & teens don’t know anything about how to handle their neurodivergence.
for years, i suffered through people making suggestions of things that were things i had done, and either weren’t worth the effort or they actually made things worse. i told them this, and if i was still having any issues with the same problem they’d say something about “well if you’re not gonna listen to any suggestions…” when I did. they’re the one who didn’t listen when i told them that doesn’t work for me. They assume that because I didn’t try it in front of them (which is often impossible), I never tried it. I tried doing my homework as soon as I got home. I tried doing my homework at the table, I tried working where I was comfortable. I tried listening to music, I tried working in silence. I tried using a planner, I tried setting reminders on my phone, I tried. I tell people that I have executive functioning issues and they say that I have to work on it like I haven’t been doing that as long as I’ve had to do things and it’s so much better than it was before. I’m as able as I am now because I’ve spent 18 years working on it.
One of my friends has ADHD, and at one point when her grades dropped her parents took her phone, despite her telling them that the only way she can focus on her homework is to listen to music, for which she needs her phone.
I was in a study hall with another friend, who also has ADHD. Sometimes, they would be able to focus and do their work. Others, they would end up being entirely unable to and would do other stuff. The “instructional support” person would start bothering them about it, insist that they try. As if they hadn’t already done so.
I am tired of watching people assume that neurodivergent people aren’t trying, or we haven’t tried. We’re always trying.
When Adora first left the Horde she told Catra she was leaving because the Horde was evil, did monstrous things to innocent people, and had been lying to them the whole time. And Catra responded, “what, you didn’t know?”.
And there’s so much to unpack there, but what really killed me was when I thought about why that was. Why was Catra so cynical when Adora bought the propaganda?
It’s because of how they were raised. Shadowweaver raised both of them abusively, but they got different flavors of abuse. Adora was the Golden Child and Catra was the Scapegoat. They were both abused, but Catra caught the brunt of the most violent abuse. She knew the Horde hurt innocent people because she was one of them.
And that puts a whole new twist on how angry Catra was when Adora wanted to leave. When Adora said “what the Horde is doing is wrong and we should leave because of it”, Catra’s response wasn’t really “you’re just learning the Horde hurts innocent people now?” it was, “it wasn’t enough to make you leave when they hurt me?”.
That’s why she’s so angry. From her perspective, Adora was willing to leave the Horde because of what they did to these random people they’d never met before. But she’d never offered to do the same for her.
Catra refused to go with Adora because, just by asking, she broke her heart.
Friendly reminder that one of the changes to asgard loki made as king was to put barriers on the bifrost…
I’m not saying he was scared of falling again but…
HE WAS SCARED OF FALLING AGAIN
I need a little drabble about this. Side note: This puts into context just how shaken and pissed Loki was when Dr. Strange let him freefall for 30 minutes. Enough to want to cut a bitch!
Evil brother steals the throne…
First acts are to install safety barriers on dangerous bridge and encourage community theater.
