(no subject)

[kaberett]

The Disc is a world and mirror of worlds, so naturally stories about the Disc are in fact stories about stories. This is, I think, what my mother fails to understand when she complains that Pratchett never wrote a single original thing; he takes stories and puts them together differently, shows you the parallels and the differences and the power to define the world depending on the story that you tell about it. They are stories about stories that reflect us back to ourselves, and tell us there's no such thing as fair or easy; or at least that they're rare and we don't get to expect them but fair, at least, we have to believe in in order to be human. That we will make hard choices and we will choose wrong and we will screw up but, also, we can muddle through; that if there isn't space for us we can tell stories that create it. Mirror and lens both: to bring into focus and to cast light and to show what is hidden, to show us that we are real, to show us an unfamiliar view of the everyday that permits that we see it anew in all its detail and its brightness. And, perhaps most importantly for me - at least right now - that being a monster does not mean you are constrained to re/act within the shape of others' belief of what your kind of monster is.

Comments

[davidgillon]

she complains that Pratchett never wrote a single original thing

Gah?!? By that measure nor has anyone else since someone first scribbled down (gouged out? clay tablets etc) the story of Gilgamesh. Hero's Journey and all that. I just re-read Men at Arms, clear hero's journey, there's a moment I realise now where Carrot (who I also realise for possibly the first time is maybe 17 when all this happens) chooses to become a leader, and he's never the same simple six foot six dwarf lad again. And of course it's also the journey of Sam Vimes, from drunken joke, to vehicle of justice. (And oddly enough Detritus and Cuddy are on hero's journeys of a sort, though Cuddy's is cut short).

They are stories about stories that reflect us back to ourselves

Agreed. Men at Arms is the hero's journey, but it's also a perfectly good murder mystery (unknown/unusual weapon subtype), and definite elements of noir, but it's also something new, a combination of hero's journey and murder mystery and noir, but the whole thing put together as a mirror (and oddly enough mirrors feature significantly in the plot) that looks Ankh-Morpork in the face, and shows us our own issues with equality and ethnicity and the other back at us. Vimes' conviction that no-one gets off with paying for their crimes becomes a vehicle through which Ankh-Morpork gradually becomes a society of equals, with each book elevating more and more sub-layers of society (more and more of the monsters) to equality with the humans. And all the way it's our own world looking out of the page.

[alexseanchai]

...I have really got to read these books.

[kaberett]

My favourites are the Watch and Susan and Tiffany Aching books (lots and lots of suggested reading orders at lspace.org), and I... couldn't bear to read anything after Snuff, because I couldn't handle mourning him while he was still alive. But... yeah. Recommended.

[davidgillon]

(On reflection (and on reading Relationshit) not sure whether you were writing this as literary analysis or brain deconstruction, so disregard anything that doesn't fit - though ultimately I think the Guards series agrees with you and focusses the whole idea of Discworld down onto the idea of there being a space for everyone, and room in that space to be the person they should be to be true to themselves).

[kaberett]

(S'cool! They were two posts trying to happen simultaneously; this one had been trying to happen for a bit longer, and they're less related than they look.)

[silveradept]

Indeed. The Disc is the personification of the idea that Tropes Are Tools, neither good nor bad. In it, all stories are possible, even if only some of them are told.

[ironed_orchid]

And the more you understand stories, the more power you have over which stories are told about you.

[sfred]

Yes.

[syntaxofthings]

Thank you.

[kaberett]

You're welcome.