![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
15 Mar 2011 05:54 pmIs it just me, or has the amount of spam-comments on LJ increased enormously as of late? I screen anon comments, so it's not as though they're causing an eyesore to anyone but me, but it's getting to the point where I'm so sick of seeing them in my inbox that I'm considering turning off the anon commenting feature -- both here and on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mercurial_wit -- entirely.
Dear spambots, I don't read Russian, cut it the fuck out.
More cheerfully: I have had a brief stint of rereading the more recent Vimes-centric Discworld books, from Jingo onwards (is there anyone for whom Night Watch ISN'T the best Discworld novel of all?*) and trying for the first time ever to think a bit critically about why I keep returning to these ones in particular again and again.
Reading Samuel Vimes fume and sarcasme (I choose to believe that this is the verb form) and stomp his way through the world is a bit like listening to David Mitchell rant earnestly, or reading Ben Goldacre's latest posts. Someone is angry about the right things. It's a kind of anger that I suppose, from my examples, that I think of as being largely British; it's full of swear words, it's got a certain amount of erudition behind it (although in the case of Vimes, it has Pratchett's erudition behind it) and there's a sense of steely open-mindedness and no-bullshittery that makes you sit up and want to be picked to play on that side.
I certainly don't believe that all fiction should be moral fiction, sorry John Gardner, but I do think that one of the main reasons why the Discworld books in general are so satisfying, whether your chosen voice of reason is Sam Vimes or Granny Weatherwax or Susan Sto Helit or Tiffany Aching, is because even though bad things do happen to good people, there is always some kind of steadfast and bloodyminded morality driving the plot. Truth wins. Tolerance wins. The greater social good wins. Shades of grey are all over the place, but never to the extent that your moral compass becomes helplessly confused.
Sam Vimes is angry at stupidity and small-mindedness, and WE ARE TOO.
*Although, it must be said, Jingo features the unbeatable wonder that is Vetinari in a submarine.
mercurial_wit -- entirely.Dear spambots, I don't read Russian, cut it the fuck out.
More cheerfully: I have had a brief stint of rereading the more recent Vimes-centric Discworld books, from Jingo onwards (is there anyone for whom Night Watch ISN'T the best Discworld novel of all?*) and trying for the first time ever to think a bit critically about why I keep returning to these ones in particular again and again.
Reading Samuel Vimes fume and sarcasme (I choose to believe that this is the verb form) and stomp his way through the world is a bit like listening to David Mitchell rant earnestly, or reading Ben Goldacre's latest posts. Someone is angry about the right things. It's a kind of anger that I suppose, from my examples, that I think of as being largely British; it's full of swear words, it's got a certain amount of erudition behind it (although in the case of Vimes, it has Pratchett's erudition behind it) and there's a sense of steely open-mindedness and no-bullshittery that makes you sit up and want to be picked to play on that side.
I certainly don't believe that all fiction should be moral fiction, sorry John Gardner, but I do think that one of the main reasons why the Discworld books in general are so satisfying, whether your chosen voice of reason is Sam Vimes or Granny Weatherwax or Susan Sto Helit or Tiffany Aching, is because even though bad things do happen to good people, there is always some kind of steadfast and bloodyminded morality driving the plot. Truth wins. Tolerance wins. The greater social good wins. Shades of grey are all over the place, but never to the extent that your moral compass becomes helplessly confused.
Sam Vimes is angry at stupidity and small-mindedness, and WE ARE TOO.
*Although, it must be said, Jingo features the unbeatable wonder that is Vetinari in a submarine.
