factysatin

I've seen some people suggest that you can read Vetinari as a self-conscious transitional figure, someone who is building up the institutions of the city so that they'll be strong enough to weather a shift to more democratic governance once he leaves power. I think that's too strong a read - the evidence for it is mostly absence of any discussion of succession - but it is true that one of Vetinari's main goals through the series is the implementation of the kind of systems a democracy would need.

I think Pratchett's general position is that improving the world isn't as quick and easy as overthrowing the tyrant in a glorious revolution. Genuine improvement is a long, hard slog, where you'll have to compromise with systems already in place, because they're often too interwoven into the fabric of society to tear out all at once. But also that systems are made up of people, who are messy and complicated and selfish and kind and brave and stupid and insightful and rarely entirely evil or entirely good, and the worst thing you can do is forget that people are people.

I think Pratchett's critique of revolutionary movements is precisely that: that they focus too much on systems and ideology and not enough on the people who live in them. Night Watch is pretty explicit that revolutions often just recreate the same systems of oppression with different people in charge, and that if you dismantle a system without having anything to replace it, that void will end up being filled by a new system of more or less the same shape.

- the outcome of the war,

- lost territories,

- the massive cultural shift that usually happens after war and decimation,

- the fact that his sister Ilona is married to a Vulcan,

- Denia's favourite dresses being out of fashion,

- why her favourite holonovela has an Andorian character

- what is raktajino and why is everyone drinking it

- who is this person on the fifty lek note and why is he described as “hero of the resistance”

- where did you get this volume of Iloja of Prim’s recursive verse, I won’t have this seditious nonsense in the house

- did that woman just make a joke about the Obsidian Order

- why is my favourite holocomedy only ever repeats

- why are you interacting with these people, we didn't use to do that in the good old days

- what's acid punk and why are you listening to it,

- is that a Bajoran coming out of a Bajoran temple?

- who is Oralius and why should we be doing it his way?

- why doesn’t the state anthem play on the big screens in the street at teatime any more?

how do you distinguish grey from other colours beyond black and wite?

Distinguishing features of moral beige:

The protagonist is constantly agonising over Hard Choices; however, circumstances always conspire to prevent them from actually having to make those choices, so in practice they're just angsting over stuff they might have done.

The text exhibits a recurring pattern whereby the protagonist seems to to have made a Hard Choice, but new information is reliably revealed shortly thereafter which retroactively establishes that whatever they did was the morally upright course after all.

The protagonist's moral impulses are straightforwardly heroic, except in one specific context which lacks any clear real-world analogue; for example, being prejudiced against telepaths.

The protagonist's actions are consistently reasonable based on the information available to them – they're merely operating on bad information basically all the time due to a bizarre conspiracy and/or a series of increasingly implausible misunderstandings.

It has some genuinely fascinating stuff to say about gender, and I feel like it's worth looking at/thinking about in the context of Historical Gender Stuff. This 100 year old book has the following to say:

"The truth is that some young gentlemen would rather they had been born young ladies: they cannot admit this openly, because in the male world to confess as much would lead to instant ostracism if not worse; but they cannot conceal it either, and by preferring the company of girls, and soft, feminine clothing, and by flinching during the rough pursuits to which all boys, willing or no, are occasionally heirs, they attract opprobrium."

"Such boys weep too readily for their fellows' tastes - weeping is a great crime among boys unless it is generally admitted that circumstances left little choice - and are hounded for that reason."

"Just as there are girls who had rather been boys - we all know examples of the type - there are boys who, in a kinder world, would have been born into the gender more suited to their dispositions."

"Many young people of this sort are riven with a guilt they do not deserve but have been forced, by the conventions of society, to adopt; they are confused, ashamed and thoroughly unhappy."

"The ideal thing to do would be to treat these cases on their merits, send them to girls' schools, and so on. (The same thing should happen with those girls who would rather be young gentlemen.) Boys of this sort are girls in any case-in all respects save one."

I like All Systems Red because SecUnit is having a bad day at work and Preservation crew is discovering the horrors of corporate slavery