Rhetoric and Logic

a BRILLIANT read, and even more incentive for me to make my own wizards trope-defying and excellent.

God it’s fascinating to look at the timestamp on this one and then realize that Pratchett went on to write his Witches Series and Granny Weatherwax, who’s strong and fierce and brilliant and austere and so achingly, bitterly, intensely good. I think Granny Weatherwax would give Gandalf a hard look and Gandalf would remember he had a very urgent appointment three shires away and stroll off really fast. 

Come to think of it, that’s one of the most significant divisions of power in Discworld: the men all gang up into this big elitist mob and loll around indolently, specifically not doing magic. Their magic is so powerful and dangerous that it’s a better use of their time to all keep each other down, all the wizard books basically revolve around ‘Oh no, someone’s doing magic, we’d better stomp them flat and then go home for second breakfast’. They keep the world from turning inside out but not much more than that, and they’re kind of a bunch of assholes about it too. Meanwhile the witches are just grimly slogging along, delivering babies and rousting out vampires and changing compresses, like, they stake out territories and then take care of everyone in it… while everyone still thinks that wizards are respectable and witches are shady. 

The line about equal rites killed me, though. The insightful commentary (on the internet no less) here helped buffer that.

Discworld Heritage Post

What’s marvellous I think here is that Pratchett’s criticism of Le Guin, on Earthsea, was made in 1985 - and in 1990, she wrote Tehanu, which is a fantastic indictment of the sexism and misogyny of the earlier Earthsea books. Doesn’t meant she saw this, she probably didn’t - her own unease with the earlier Earthsea books was evident in other places - but it’s what Pratchett himself is saying, reality creates fantasy creates reality.

Terry being brilliant, and read the comments.