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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.
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Few, if any of us, no matter how pious, get it right the first time. So we grow; so we change.
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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.
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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.
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> "If I'd written 25 versions of The Light Fantastic by now, I'd be ready to slit my wrists."
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"ππΆπ΅ π©π°πΈ πΈπ°πΆππ₯ π©π¦ π³π¦π’π€π΅ πͺπ§ π΅π©π°π΄π¦ π£π°π°π¬π΄ πΈπ¦π³π¦ π±πΆπ£ππͺπ΄π©π¦π₯ π΅π°π₯π’πΊ--"
Millennium hand and shrimp with a side of rat onna stick, cease your vulgar non-sequitur*. He would be no different (OK, ten years wiser, at least).
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He was on #Usenet over thirty years ago, π£π¦π§π°π³π¦ the Internet kicked off:
https://www.lspace.org/fandom/afp/timelines/afp-timeline.html
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> My 33mhz 486 is no longer a goshwow machine, Dell having done their usual trick of waiting until I bought it before dropping the price hugely.
You don't even get 33 MHz in Fischer-Price toys, these days.
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And anyways, this video by Shaun puts it best. Long story short: Terry may be very dead, but the books show where his views on social issues lay:
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To say so is not putting words in the mouth of the dead. It's reading the words from his heart. And words in the heart cannot be taken.
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Pratchett's ability to discuss complex social issues through a fantasy satire series is something I hope to achieve in my own work:
https://brologue.net/2024/12/05/the-talisman-of-aubaum/
I may not get it right every time, but I hope to get it wrong better than most, change, and grow.
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(And, as it happens, a strawman, which yes, I'm quite fond of.)
