In the seventeenth part of Night Watch<\/i>, Carcer changes history and Vimes must adapt. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Night Watch<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, are we on a course correction, or has Carcer done something to irreparably change history?<\/p>\n
That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the eternal question of this book, and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one that is usually central to time travel narratives. What are the ramifications of traveling forward or backward in time? In this case, Night Watch<\/i> feels intimately aware of this conversation. Vimes is constantly<\/i> thinking of what his presence at this moment means for the future, and not just his own! Seven people died in the original timeline. Can Vimes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s actions save those people? And should<\/i> he save them, even if that means he might not get returned to his own time?<\/p>\n
More than any of the parts of Night Watch<\/i> prior to this, the text is obsessed with this question. And it has<\/i> to be. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve reached the part of the story where the antagonist that Vimes is working against\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe despicable Carcer\u00e2\u20ac\u201dhas figured out that he<\/i> can manipulate people and events to suit his needs. This whole time, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been Vimes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s advantage. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s managed to protect people; he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s taken out Cable Street and destroyed the torture chamber there; and now, he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s helped to construct the only safe zone in all of Ankh-Morpork. THIS IS GREAT. THIS IS VERY SAM VIMES-ESQUE.<\/p>\n
And then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s motherfuckin\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Carcer. As much as he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the most evil characters in the entire Discworld<\/i> series, he also wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have been able to get what he wanted if there weren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t people who enabled him. Major Mountjoy-Standfast is complicit in Carcer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s reign because he can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t say no. He can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t disobey. To him, the more moral choice is to stay a loyal soldier. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a common refrain, one I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve heard all my life from my father, who was in the Army, and an uncle on my mother\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s side, who was an LAPD officer: I was just following orders. That simple statement is supposed to exonerate and excuse, to provide a justification, an escape<\/i>.<\/p>\n
But it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bullshit. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s that same delusion of people saying, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have a choice\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in situations in which there was<\/i> a clear option available. The captain literally provides the major with one: they could just disobey their orders. They could do the right thing and not<\/i> charge on people who aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t attacking them. They could have not<\/i> started their siege. But in the end, duty and obedience was more important than saving lives. Protecting citizens. Doing the right thing.<\/p>\n
However, even when given such a massive deviation from history, Vimes still<\/i> manages to delay the inevitable. Which\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 is that all he can do at this point? Is this just pushing the end further away, but never completely<\/i> away? Look, I was deeply impressed with how Vimes managed to sneak out from behind the barricade with Colon and then, with Colon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s help, dismantle Big Mary with a couple of tools and some specially-placed ginger. (HELP.) It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a great sequence that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s both hilarious and<\/i> a demonstration of Vimes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talents. But is that enough<\/i>? Is wisdom and humor all Vimes needs to stop Carcer and prevent a violent history from unfolding? Or is that impossible?<\/p>\n
I love that Vimes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cigar case has come to represent this bizarre struggle, and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m comforted knowing that it still exists. He must still meet her, right? EXCEPT THIS COULD BE THE GRANDFATHER PARADOX, TOO.<\/p>\n
Ahhhhhhh HOW IS THIS GOING TO BE RESOLVED.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/youtu.be\/IuU9y2O83Mo<\/p>\n
Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n
– My YA contemporary debut, ANGER IS A GIFT<\/a>, is now available for pre-order!\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the seventeenth part of Night Watch, Carcer changes history and Vimes must adapt. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Night Watch.\u00c2\u00a0<\/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":[463,541,248],"class_list":["post-4491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-night-watch","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4491","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=4491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4491\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}