Need to let loose a primal scream without collecting footnotes first? Have a sneer percolating in your system but not enough time/energy to make a whole post about it? Go forth and be mid: Welcome to the Stubsack, your first port of call for learning fresh Awful youāll near-instantly regret.
Any awful.systems sub may be subsneered in this subthread, techtakes or no.
If your sneer seems higher quality than you thought, feel free to cutānāpaste it into its own post ā thereās no quota for posting and the bar really isnāt that high.
The post Xitter web has spawned soo many āesotericā right wing freaks, but thereās no appropriate sneer-space for them. Iām talking redscare-ish, reality challenged āculture criticsā who write about everything but understand nothing. Iām talking about reply-guys who make the same 6 tweets about the same 3 subjects. Theyāre inescapable at this point, yet I donāt see them mocked (as much as they should be)
Like, there was one dude a while back who insisted that women couldnāt be surgeons because they didnāt believe in the moon or in stars? I think each and every one of these guys is uniquely fucked up and if I canāt escape them, I would love to sneer at them.
(Semi-obligatory thanks to @dgerard for starting this)
@sc_griffith
In Night Watch:
āVimes/Keel tells Ned Coates not to put his trust in revolutions āThey always come around again. Thatās why theyāre called revolutions. People die, and nothing changesā This is a common theme in Pratchett regarding authority figuresā
That said Vimes does participate in a revolution of sorts in that book, as āJohn Keelā, in the past.
yeah thatās the conservative spirit right there
Books would be really boring if the protagonists were all just the author speaking as themself but using various funny voices.
thereās not a lot of ambiguity in what the novels are getting at, so no offense but this line of argument is not worth engaging directly. but I will point out that I didnāt say what pratchettās views were. part of why people donāt look askance at these books is that his other work is at odds with the realpolitik message Iām pointing out. I canāt and I donāt draw conclusions about his ārealā views based on the vimes novels
@sc_griffith
The novels may be trying to say something, but how it plays out still needs to make sense in the world of the novel and be coherent with the characters as depicted.
Vimes is basically a stereotypical jaded and cynical old-timer who has ideas about how things could be better, but has seen enough to know that the powerful would never allow it.
Incremental improvements are made but larger changes are difficult except sometimes in places that are even worse than Ankh-Morpork.
@sc_griffith
Itās kind of like all the people who are aware of whatās likely needed to prevent climate change disaster, but are also aware that they donāt have the power to make it happen and that the forces of inertia and corruption are powerful enough to block or roll back anything remotely significant.