Content warning 79/
> ...that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people.
> It was so much easier to blame it on Them.
Content warning 80/
> It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them.
Content warning 81/
> No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.
It's a far greater commentary on racism and xenophobia than Witches Abroad could ever be.
Content warning 82/The Turtle Grows
I've gone 3000 words without saying it: I will fucking suplex you if you think this thread smacks of anything that suggests we need to """""CANCEL""""" #Discworld.
Content warning 83/
No writer comes out of the womb aged 55, poised with the worldwise knowhow to write bestseller after bestseller. They grow. They change.
Content warning 84/
New Discworld readers are told not to start with Colour of Magic and Light Fantastic for a good reason: parody ages fast, and spoils faster. They've never been Pratchett at his best.
Content warning 85/
But satire? Once you understand the world's stories, and sympathise with the people those stories are about, a great satire never tarnishes. Johnathan Swift's "Modest Proposal" is as morbidly funny and cathartic today as it was nearly three centuries ago.
Content warning 86/
Few, if any of us, no matter how pious, get it right the first time. So we grow; so we change.
Content warning 87/
Pratchett missed a lot in Witches Abroad that is to the story's detriment. Left to the author's trust in the reader to pick up what they're putting down, the nuance missing in that story will always be problematic.
Content warning 88/
And, at the same time, there's evidence in the books that followed to argue that Pratchett, himself, knew of these problems, and strived to explore them with more nuance. He grew; he changed.
Content warning 89/
> "If I'd written 25 versions of The Light Fantastic by now, I'd be ready to slit my wrists."
