Damn, This Is Such Cool Analysis, I Don’t Know What To Say… I’m Jealous. I Want To Study This.

i feel like sometimes i dog on the movies a little bit for omitting so much important information or changing things a little too much but honestly there are a couple changes that i do like and appreciate- for example arwen. she only appears for like six pages in all three books and has a couple lines speaking with aragorn. i like that in the movie they changed her to be the person that rescues frodo after weathertop, because tbh having glorfindel pull up for 1 scene and then never be mentioned again would be extremely confusing for someone who doesn't know much about the legendarium. they also changed her personality to be more headstrong plus her mini-plot of arguing with elrond about choosing mortality just provides so much more depth to her and elrond. its just nice to have a third female character other than galadriel and eowyn who actually does something

Thanks to the person who introduced me to the fandom, I’ve only seen the extended versions of LOTR movies and I refuse to watch the shorter versions. Like, voluntarily depriving myself of a part of the cool stuff? That’s crazy.

(yes, the movies are too long to watch in one sitting. It may be just me or it may be a lot of people, I don’t know. But I’d rather pause it and continue on the next day than just… shorten it. I’m doing it for my own pleasure, after all)

Big werwolf girlfriend and small vampire girlfriend 🥰

Sally x Angua cause I miss them

It’s back again, help me😭

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

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.

”and then they woke up and realised none of it was real” is the most pathetic way to end a story ever. If I find a worse one, I’ll inform y’all.

Happy New Year, everyone!

May the Force be with you, always

Live long and prosper

May the odds be ever in your favour

Aim to misbehave

May there be good in this world that’s worth fighting

Don’t. Be. Dead

May you not live in interesting times

Don’t get in legal trouble, but if you do, better call Saul

…and so on and so forth, feel free to add :)

And from me personally: love yourself, love life, love people, and then you’ll be loved too, because I said so

You deserve happiness, don’t be afraid to pursue it, but if you are, try and "do it scared"

May 2025 be your year. Our year.

Your Jane of almost all trades

When Nutt's upset he shrinks and I'm obsessed with that