In the nineteenth part of\u00c2\u00a0Jingo<\/i>, THERE ARE STILL MANY SURPRISES THIS LATE INTO THE BOOK. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Discworld<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Trigger Warning: For talk of racism\/xenophobia.<\/b><\/p>\n
OH MY GOD WHAT IS THIS BOOK DOING.<\/p>\n
Lord Vetinari<\/b><\/p>\n
I know that by design, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not supposed to be able to guess the Patrician\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s plans. (At least not easily, that is.) But at this point, there are so many loose threads dangling about that I cannot figure out how they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all going to be tied together. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s\u00c2\u00a0got<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0to be an answer in the fact that Leshp will sink again, and rather soon, but\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 what is it? What is it that Leonard made for \u00c2\u00a0Vetinari? Why on earth did Vetinari need to know where the Klatchian army was?<\/p>\n
I have a lot of questions. LOTS OF THEM. (Which should be no surprise, since this\u00c2\u00a0is<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0a\u00c2\u00a0Discworld<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0book.) I need them answered, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m sure it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s coming soon, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m certain you are each laughing at me because I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t figure this out. WHAT IS LORD VETINARI PLANNING? Does Vimes factor into said plans or is he now a free agent of chaos? I DON\u00e2\u20ac\u2122T KNOW.<\/p>\n
The Real 71-Hour Ahmed<\/b><\/p>\n
I am absolutely floored that Pratchett took 71-Hour Ahmed and made him one of the most fascinating characters in this whole book. Perhaps more so than any other one-off character (assuming he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t come back), he has changed a\u00c2\u00a0lot<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0over the course of\u00c2\u00a0Jingo.<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0I was not entirely surprised that he was not what he seemed at first; indeed, it felt deliberate on his part that he played up on stereotypes. Yet this massive section changes\u00c2\u00a0everything,<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it?<\/p>\n
The most important thing I took away from this is the fact that Vimes never knew how similar he was to Ahmed. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a brilliant writing choice for Pratchett to make because it complicates the whole book. (That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a good thing.) Look, the text even\u00c2\u00a0said<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0that plenty of people from Klatch had gone to school in Ankh-Morpork, and I never once thought of that as a\u00c2\u00a0clue<\/i>, you know? It explains how Ahmed knows so very much about Ankh-Morpork society, how he knew to target Vimes, how he knew the best way to do exactly that, and how to exploit Ankh-Morpork\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s failings to the best advantage. That includes:<\/p>\n \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Always be a little bit foreign wherever you are, because everyone knows foreigners are a little bit stupid.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a cunning way to turn prejudice against a society, you know? So Ahmed played the part, down to the cloves and the way he talked and the way he behaved, and everyone \u00e2\u20ac\u201c well, most everyone, of course \u00e2\u20ac\u201c believed that he was a stereotype. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s much easier to dismiss a stereotype than a complex person, isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it? Of course, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what makes Vimes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s growth over his books so wonderful: he refused to suspect the Klatchians because he didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want to be a bigot. (Hence Ahmed\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s whole \u00e2\u20ac\u0153good man\u00e2\u20ac\u009d speech.)<\/p>\n But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in the comparison of Vimes and Ahmed as policemen that I am most intrigued by this book. Both these men operate under a sense of duty, one that is of course quite different when you get down to the details. At the heart of it, though, they fight for what they think is right, even if it makes taking an uncomfortable look at your own people. Vimes was willing to see Ankh-Morporkians as villains, even though he risked his job (and lost it, for the time being) and risked his safety and risked his reputation, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an admirable thing!<\/p>\n And it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s still amazing to me that Ahmed saw this goodness and\u00c2\u00a0used it against Vimes<\/i>. Vimes was supposed to see all the clues that someone had faked Ossie\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s involvement, but he was never supposed to make it all the way over to Klatch in response. (I still kind of want to know how much he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s diverged things from the original timeline. TELL ME MORE, DIS-ORGANIZER.) But why? Why go to all these lengths?<\/p>\n Because the truth is that CADRAM IS REALLY THE ONE WHO WANTS TO UNIFY KLATCH OVER A WAR. It was never Ahmed, though he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the one who discovered the truth. IN THE EMBASSY. WHICH HE SET ON FIRE AFTER HE FOUND EVIDENCE OF HIS PRINCE\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S PLOT. Now, Ahmed isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t portrayed in these pages as some majestic hero; Pratchett gives us a beautiful and thrilling sequence in which Vimes \u00e2\u20ac\u201c who still recognizes what Ahmed is doing to save his country \u00e2\u20ac\u201c angrily confronts Ahmed over him nearly killing a woman in the embassy because he was careless. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a great moment because, as I said earlier, what happens here complicates\u00c2\u00a0everything<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0Ahmed is trying to save his country, but at what cost? Is it right of him to risk an innocent life to save others?<\/p>\n At the same time, Ahmed\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s idea of morality, of his duty as a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153policeman\u00e2\u20ac\u009d whose beat is literally millions upon millions of miles bigger, is so drastically different from Vimes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, and I appreciate that Pratchett brings these men together, shows how they might be similar, and then wrenches them apart with differences. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fascinating. Rewarding. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s this myth that all people everywhere are, at the root of things, the same, and while I understand the sentiment, I think there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a lot of value in appreciating and accepting differences, too. Which Vimes does! He accepts that Ahmed realized he was being unknowingly complicit in some huge, awful Wrong, and Ahmed acted to correct that.<\/p>\n What Wrong is Vimes involved in? Well, he already made a decision about that. He knew someone \u00e2\u20ac\u201c the wrong someone, admittedly \u00e2\u20ac\u201c was trying to force two nations into war. This book has no qualms about criticizing war, either, so it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s accepted that war is a bad thing, and warmongers are most definitely a Bad Thing. Actually, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even think that properly conveys how Pratchett feels:<\/p>\n But if you took a man who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d sit down and\u00c2\u00a0decide<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0to start a war, what in the name of seven hells could you balance him with? You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d need a policeman the size of a country.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s such a clever way to criticize men who have done this exact thing, time and time again throughout history. Their crimes are so heinous and so\u00c2\u00a0large<\/i>\u00c2\u00a0that they routinely escape any accountability. How do you arrest someone for a crime that big?<\/p>\n Thus, I believe this is why Vimes unites himself, Ahmed, and Willikins\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s forces in his own\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 army? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually understand the specifics here, but Vimes knows he cannot let Cadram get away with igniting a war on\u00c2\u00a0purpose<\/i>. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d also argue that much of what Pratchett writes into Willikins is also his attempt at anti-war social commentary, and it works incredibly well, given how creepy and unnerving it is to read him calmly reciting brutality as if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s no big deal. (The way he eulogizes the two men killed by Ahmed \u00e2\u20ac\u201c or were they killed by Willikins\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s men?? \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is really, really disturbing.)<\/p>\n But it is his view of Lord Rust that stings the most. This man has no idea what war really is, and yet he charged straight into it, convinced countless other men to come along with him, and then risks their lives for his own sense of glory and duty. To me, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Pratchett at his most vicious. Yes, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s funny in a sense to watch Rust bumble his way through a conversation on strategy, but I couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ever forget that\u00c2\u00a0people were dying<\/i>.<\/p>\n War is a mess, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m glad Pratchett isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forgetting that.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=nwm-6W-xKrs<\/p>\n Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n – I am now on Patreon<\/a>! There are various levels of support, from $1 up to whatever you want! You’ll get to read a private blog, extra reviews, and other such rewards. I POST A LOT OF CUTE PHOTOS, OKAY. Think of it like a private Tumblr blog that only SPECIAL PEOPLE get to read.<\/b> In the nineteenth part of\u00c2\u00a0Jingo, THERE ARE STILL MANY SURPRISES THIS LATE INTO THE BOOK. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read\u00c2\u00a0Discworld.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[521,463,248],"class_list":["post-4022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-jingo","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4022\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n– I have updated my list of conventions and events for the remainder of the year and much of next year.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Check the full list of events on my Tour Dates \/ Appearances page.<\/a>
\n– My Master Schedule<\/a> is updated for the near and distant future for most projects, so please check it often.\u00c2\u00a0My next Double Features for Mark Watches have been announced here.<\/a>
\n<\/b>-\u00c2\u00a0Mark Does Stuff is on Facebook!<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0I’ve got a community page up that I’m running. Guaranteed shenanigans!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"