Anyway Sound Off. At What Stage Do Ppl Think Han Figured Out The Force Was Real. The Boring Answer Is

I love this, I want this to be true

I like to imagine that Sam Vimes, instead of dying properly, instead got minor godhood. All watchmen at some point thank him for his actions, his actions a ripple across the Disc. There's precedent in the Duchess of Borogravia, and in his arc. He keeps getting promotions, and hates each one. What higher status could he be unwillingly raised to than divinity, eternally watching the watchman?

Anyways, that's just a headcanon i've got

Damn, this is such cool analysis, I don’t know what to say… I’m jealous. I want to study this. I wanna be able to do this. I wanna be able to use this on myself. I want to design character costumes like this. I don’t need more skill envy in my life, help

idle Jaskier-related notion:

Joey Batey is really approximately the same size and shape as Henry Cavill, and there are a number of clever techniques in pretty much all Jaskier's costumes to hide this fact and make him look about three or four inches narrower than he actually is. The costumers work really really hard to make him look that twinky, often with cleverly cut shoulder decorations that pretend he's trying to look bigger than he is and have the actual effect of making him look a lot lighter.

On a Doylistic level this makes sense, because it's hard to make Geralt look Huge and Imposing next to your non-combatant harmless sidekick if said sidekick is a jacked six foot burly man.

On a Watsonian level, however, the notion of Jaskier as this big meaty dude aggressively arguing with all his tailors to ensure that he looks as non threatening and foppish and entertaining as possible while also looking as sexy as he can (for a Jaskier definition of sexy, at least) is generating considerable entertainment for me this fine morning.

A quick reminder for men that Aramis canonically paid a lot of attention to his looks and had an elaborate skin care routine. Which did not in any way stop him from stabbing anyone who doubted his masculinity. Of course I’m not saying you should stab people, it’s not the 17th century anymore, it’s unethical & illegal & possibly toxically masculine… but maybe if they’re forcing unnecessary stereotypes on you in a really aggressive manner…

Discworld is an interesting beast in the age of ACAB. Like, the city watch books are a story about police and the way in which a good police force can help and protect people. Which would make it copoganda. And I'm not going to say that the City Watch books are completely free of copoganda, but they also do something interesting that fairly few stories about heroic police officers do, and I think it has a lot to do with Samuel Vimes. A lot of copoganda stories like, say, Brooklyn 99, are perfectly capable of portraying cops as cruel, bigoted, and greedy, but our central cast of characters are portrayed as good people who want to help their communities. The result is that the bad cops are portrayed as an aberration, while most cops can be assumed to be good people doing a tough job because they want to help protect people from the nebulous evil forces of "Crime". The police are considered to be naturally heroic. Pratchett does something very interesting, which is provide us with Vimes' perspective, and present us with an Unnaturally heroic police force. In Ahnk-Morpork, the natural state of the watch is a gang with extra paperwork. It's the place for people who, at best, just want a steady paycheck and at worst want an excuse to hit people with a truncheon. Rather than be an army defending people from the forces of Crime, the Watch is described as a sort of sleight-of-hand, big burly watchmen in shiny uniforms don't stand around in-case a Crime happens in their vicinity, they stand around to remind people that The Law exists and has teeth. The Watchmen are people, when danger rears it's head, their instinct is to hide and get out of the way. When faced with authority, their instinct is to bow to it out of fear of what it might do to them if they don't. Carrot is a genuine Hero, but his natural heroism is presented as an aberration. Normal Cops don't act like Carrot does. The fact that the Watch ends up acting like a Heroic Police Force is largely due to the leadership of Sam Vimes, but Vimes himself is a microcosm of the Watch. The base state of Sam Vimes would be an alchoholic bully of an officer, one who beats people until they confess to anything because that makes his job easier. Vimes The Hero is a homunculous, an artificial being created by Sam Vimes fighting back all those instincts and FORCING himself to behave as his conscience dictates. Vimes doesn't take bribes or let his officers do the same because, damnit, that sort of thing shouldn't happen, even if doing so would make things a lot easier. Vimes doesn't run towards sounds of screaming because he WANTS to, he forces himself to do so because somebody needs to. It's best summed up in Thud “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Your Grace.” “I know that one,” said Vimes. “Who watches the watchmen? Me, Mr. Pessimal.” “Ah, but who watches you, Your Grace?” said the inspector with a brief little smile. “I do that, too. All the time,” said Vimes. “Believe me.”

In the hands of another writer, or another series, this exchange would be weirdly dismissive. To whom should the police be accountable to? Themselves, shut up and trust us. But from Vimes, it's a different story. Vimes DOES constantly watch himself, and he doesn't trust that bastard, he's known him his entire life. The Heroic Police are not a natural state, they're an ideal, and ahnk-morpork only gets anywhere close. Vimes is constantly struggling against his own instincts to take shortcuts, to let things slide, but he forces himself to live up to that ideal and the Watch follows his example. Discworld doesn't propose any solutions to the problems with policing in the real world. We don't have a Sam Vimes to run the NYPD and force them to behave. We don't have a Carrot Ironfounderson. But it's at least a story about detectives and police that I can read without feeling like I'm being sold propaganda about the Thin Blue Line.

My favourite thing about Éowyn and Faramir is that when Éowyn tells Faramir she’s in love with Aragorn, his response is basically “well duh, who isn’t.” He truly gets Éowyn, not only because he has similar experiences with despair and grief, but also because the two of them feel the exact same way about Aragorn.

Strictly, canonically speaking, Faramir isn’t in love with Aragorn, but his old-school Medieval fealty has the level of passion and intensity that a modern reader tends to associate with romantic love. (Though of course he isn’t an outlier in a series about passionate friendship and fealty.) The first time Faramir ever saw Aragorn, in the Houses of Healing, “a light of knowledge and love was kindled in his eyes” and he immediately volunteered to do anything his king asked of him, even though he had just woken up from life-threatening illness and probably didn’t have the strength to get out of bed under his own power. And what he offers to Éowyn, among other things, is this: you can continue to love Aragorn as your king and captain, we can both love him that way, and love each other with a quieter peacetime love.

Discworld Politics

Everyone is fighting a tough battle so reblog to give previous a sword 🗡️

oh, the irresistible feminine urge to read six totally different books at the same time

you know how people say soup is round and so it's messed up to put it in a square tupperware? that's how I feel every time I see a square watch