Fräulein Taka

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Vorherige: #1, #2

Tja, so viel zu meiner Coverprogressionsidee... Da war ich wohl mal wieder zu optimistisch. So ein Cover nur mit Bloom drauf sieht doch auch viel cooler aus! ...Dachte sich anscheinend zumindest die Redaktion des deutschen Winx Club Magazins.

I think the easiest books to separate like this would be Moist's subseries since they could happen in pretty much any larger random city (and it's more or less a coincidence where exactly Moist gets caught and "executed"). You'd need the newspaper and the golems but it'd make sense that these ideas would've spread somewhat over the Discworld by the time Going Postal is set, similar to the Clacks system. You'd lose some opportunities for cameos but you could still do some if you wanted, similar to how de Worde, Vimes and Angua still appear in Monstrous Regiment. I'd most like to set them in the largest city in Überwald, that still has some connection to Überwaldian country life but is also kind of a more modern urban hubub similar to AM but different. You could take Lady Margolotta to step in as city puppeteer and manipulator since she's already established as similarly influential and clever as Vetinari. The tone of their confrontations would obviously be a little different but I think it could still work really well and provide an interesting contrast to Vetinari's (and Vimes') thing. And obviously, Moist's revitalization of the Post Office, the banks and everything else would still have a similar influence on AM as well, even from another city, because they'd obviously want to take part in the cool new thing.

And honestly, I don't even mind it that much when it's done well. Like your typical fantasy trope of putting the right king/queen on the throne and everyone living happily ever thereafter - yeah, it's not exactly realistic but given the constraints of a story that doesn't focus entirely on messy revolutions it's the most satisfying and workable option. I've seen enough people who dislike the monarchy obsession in fiction (fair!) suggest to have the new king/queen just implement a democracy and abdicate and everything'll be so much better and it just makes me cringe because it's the exact same simplification problem only even more unrealistic because it just pastes a rough modern understanding of government systems onto a random fantasy world that has probably never even heard of democracy before. There are probably scenarios where it can work but then it needs to be prepared and set up properly.

Discworld as a whole is a case where larger systemic change is tackled frequently and done well for the most part. You have a bunch of different very special characters starting most of it but then you have so many different perspectives on it and wider consequences unfolding over multiple books that it works exceptionally well. But there also comes a point where it becomes so noticeable that any major change starts from one single city and is governed over / planned out by one single individual that it starts leaving a bad taste in the mouth. It becomes too much exceptionalism and feels like the rest of the Discworld can't develop anything new or groundbreaking unless Ankh-Morpork and Vetinari do it first.

And then there are cases where it's not even done well from the start, where it's just like "we punched some bad guys and now everyone stopped being racist, yay!" Or another favourite of mine "the bad guy has a point but their way of "fixing" things is bad so we defeat them but we won't actually address the fundamental problem in any way and just hope you don't notice".