City Watch (Discworld Sub-Series)

Fandom
Name:	City Watch or Night Watch
Abbreviation(s):
Creator:	Terry Pratchett
Date(s):
Medium:	books
Country of Origin:	United Kingdom
External Links:
Click here for related articles on Fanlore.

The City Watch is a Discworld sub-series. The series follows Sam Vimes and the other members of the Anhk-Morpork Night Watch. The series is one of the most popular Discworld sub-series.

Because of the way Discworld is written the City Watch has taken on its own fandom separate but also connected to the main discworld fandom. The discworld sub-series act as their own smaller sections in the larger discworld fandom.

Copaganda Discourse

Given that the books follow a police force there has been discussion and discourse surrounding whether the books count as copaganda in recent years.

So I think the thing with cop media that has its defenders even among leftists who are normally very cynical of copaganda,

and the examples I'm thinking of are the City Watch Discworld books, Columbo, and to a lesser extent, Hot Fuzz,

the thing that all of these have in common is that these characters - Columbo, Sam Vimes, Nicholas Angel - apply the law equally to rich people as they do to poor. The fact that it's harder to take down the rich person is not a deterrent, in fact it usually only makes them try harder.

I think where Brooklyn Nine Nine loses out and becomes copaganda is in the underlying assumptions. Note that Madeline Wuntch is evil because she wants to discredit Holt's department by showing that their use of police funds is turning up no results - and she expected that when she gave them additional funding. However, she is not evil for introducing those additional funds just to perpetuate the War on Drugs at the expense of however many nonviolent offenders it takes to make the stats look good. That's not a factor any character on the show considers. The understanding is that the police SHOULD be enforcing the War on Drugs, but that Wuntch has given them a weapon that is ineffective but makes for good PR.

Whereas Frank Butterman et al. are evil because they insist upon Sanford being a paradise exclusively for old, white retirees and absolutely nobody else, and are willing to murder street performers and teenage hoodlums just to satisfy their deranged idea of a peaceful village. The underlying assumption is that a peaceful, law-abiding village is a bad thing because "law and order" is enforced by a visit to the catacombs. It's noticeable how Nicholas Angel's crusade to arrest the whole village results in exactly 0 deaths, at least until the head of the Neighbourhood Watch Alliance decides to get a little too clever in the vicinity of a sea mine. Killing wrongdoers provides order, but not law, and the philosophical disagreement between Angel and Butterman is that there is a difference between those two concepts.

Meanwhile, in Feet of Clay (the best Sam Vimes Discworld book), Vimes says "The common people? They’re nothing special. They’re no different from the rich and powerful except they’ve got no money or power. But the law should be there to balance things up a bit. So I suppose I’ve got to be on their side." Which stands as his entire philosophy of policing on its own, to say nothing of the fact that he's just spent a whole book making life very difficult for every single aristocrat.

The escapist fantasy of a police officer ends up being one who applies the law equally.

duran-duran-less-official on tumblr

Characters

• Sam Vimes
• Carrot Ironfounderson
• Cheri Littlebottom
• Havelock Vetinari
• Angua von Uberwald

Ships

• Sam Vimes/Lord Vetinari

Example Fanworks

Fanart

• hi its afternoon and im sane now by beeccoe
• Some drawings from today! by jellymish-art
• very small inktober sketches as i just reread Guards! Guards! by megmahoneyart