It’s interesting how diseases rip through schools at incredible speeds despite being in an arguably modern, clean(ish) environment. I wonder if it has something to do with the whole “you need a doctor’s note to excuse your absence of even one day” combined with the average price of going to a doctor, the lack of education on things like “you’re still contagious even after the fever goes away”, and the overwhelming message of “if you don’t struggle through it, you’re a failure!”
Last year, there was a sickness going around. Not major, but a lot of kids were getting sick, because no one could stay home and they were forced to come and spread it.
I just saw somebody express disappointment that the new Watch show is intended to be “modern and inclusive”
buddy. friend. pal. half the goddamn series is about Vimes unlearning his prejudices and the other half is about Vimes’s extreme dislike of people who abuse their power. if anything I’m willing to bet they’ll tone it down outof cowardice
Samuel Vimes is the embodiment of “always punch up, never down” and if you missed that I’m not even sure we read the same books
I reserve the right to bludgeon anyone who complains about this with hardcover copies of MonstrousRegiment and Snuff.
Anyone who complains about the show being inclusive is going to get a visit from the ghost of Terry Pratchett, who is going to beat the stuffing out of them
With his meteor sword.
Over the course of the books, the Watch has acquired:
a six-foot-tall cultural dwarf
a werewolf
an ex-‘splatter’ troll (like a bouncer, but hits harder)
a openly female dwarf from a culture that severely frowns on that
an ex-slave golem who set up an organisation to slowly buy the freedom of his people
a friendly-but-determined religious missionary from a desert country named Visit-the-Infidel-with-Explanatory-Pamphlets
a zombified revolutionary a-la Enjolras
a forensic accountant poached from the Patrician
a made-from-spare-parts mad scientist coroner
Nobby Nobbs
Over the course of the same books, it has developed from your standard medieval fantasy gang-of-thugs city guards to an extremely modern police force containing:
an alchemy-based forensics department
an aeriel traffic corps
a coroners office
a forensic accountants department
drug outreach programmes run by the ex-bouncer troll
a general community policing model
It has gone from a three man graveyard of a force to a political powerhouse capable of taking on basically any real or political power on the Disc, and it has done so in large part because of the reputation of its commander as a man who will tackle any crime, at any level, against any opponent, up to and including ancient demons and the gods themselves, or even the commander himself, to protect the rights of any Joe Soap on the street to be an idiot without getting shafted for it.
I mean. ‘Modern and inclusive’ don’t even cover it, you know?
