(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.