Tag: the glorious 25th of may

noirandchocolate:

Okay so Dear My Followers Who Aren’t Discworld People,

I bet you get so FUCKING confused when I and dozens of others are putting all this “Glorious 25th of May” stuff on your dash and I’m sorry about that so let me TELL YOU what it’s ALL ABOUT okay but I had a couple shots too fast so bear with my lightweight ass.

It’s a thing from a book called Night Watch by Terry Pratchett. On May 25 in-universe, a thing happened called the “Glorious Revolution” where in this city called Ankh-Morpork the leader (Patrician) died (was sort of assassinated sort of induced into having a heart attack) and a new leader came to power. There was a lot of unrest in the city because the regular people were like Life Sucks We Want Things To Not Suck In These Particular Ways. So the Bad side of the police got dispatched to quell the rebellion and also the damn army got made involved, while there was a group of ragtag Good police who ended up just trying to actually keep the peace and protect the rebels so things would calm down, but a bunch of them got killed and the revolution ended with the new leader sucking almost as bad as the old leader and yeah everything still kinda sucked.

Fast forward a bunch of years to our hero Sam Vimes the commander of the Watch cops chasing a criminal and getting zapped back into the past by magical lightning no that’s not a joke. Vimes was a teenage new police recruit the first time the Glorious 25th happened and now he’s in the past having to pretend to be the guy who trained him the first time. As the same things happen as happened before in this pivotal moment in his life/the city’s history.

And like!! Vimes knows what’s going to happen! He knows people are going to die!! And he knows that if anything about the past changes too much, he won’t be able to go home to his proper present. But the criminal he was chasing got zapped back to the past too and could be fucking things up even worse due to being an asshole! So Vimes has to catch that guy so he can go back to the present and have justice be served.

BUT!!!! Even though he KNOWS he probably can’t save anyone who’s “supposed to die” and even though he KNOWS he’s doomed to lose everything he has in his present if things change too much (his wife! is about to have their child!)!!! HE TRIES TO SAVE PEOPLE. Because they’re good men!! And if the price of going home is NOT TRYING! and selling those good men to the night! He doesn’t want to pay it!!

So he TRIES. So fucking hard. Because if he didn’t, he wouldn’t be Sam Vimes.

And okay anyway let’s not spoil the whole book KidK but anyway! When the good cops are out doing their duty trying to just help things be peaceful in the city, one of them is like “we should have some kind of banner or plume to show we’re in this together” and one of them is like “how about sprigs of lilac I mean they’re all over the place.” So that’s why lilac.

And that’s why Glorious 25th.

And the fandom decided to celebrate it as a remembrance of Terry Pratchett and as a Thing to raise awareness for Alzheimer’s because that’s what PTerry died of.

So that’s what this is all about. A really good book about time travel and found family and comradeship and trying your best against the worst kind of odds. And a really good author who shouldn’t be dead and trying to help others with his same illness.

That’s why lilac, that’s why 25th of May. Okay? Okay.

niceguar:

«Tomorrow the sun will come up again,
and I’m pretty sure that whatever happens
we won’t have found Freedom,
and there won’t be a whole lot of Justice,
and I’m damn sure we won’t have found Truth.
But it’s just possible that I might get a hard-boiled egg».
—

Terry Pratchett, Night Watch.

Source: niceguar

theshepherdscrown:

“John Keel, Billy Wiglet, Horace Nancyball, Dai Dickins, Cecil ‘Snouty’ Clapman, Ned Coates and, technically, Reg Shoe. Probably there were no more than twenty people in the city now who knew all the names, because there were no statues, no monuments, nothing written down anywhere. You had to have been there. He felt privileged to have been there twice.”

Over the last few days I read Night Watch again. I do this every year at this time and every time I am struck by his ability to wrap words around a concept and deliver it to us perfectly. Today I will be wearing the lilac and celebrating him.. I will try to make the world a slightly better place. For those of you that can, here is the link for donations to Alzheimer’s Research UK, the charity Terry supported so others wouldn’t had to deal with The Embuggerance and I would urge everyone to make any donation they can. Today is inevitably a sorrowful day for me but it is also a day where I see the wonderful community that grew around his work so thank you everyone for being so supportive and caring.

GNU Terry Pratchett