Long post ahead. I know all motives to, say, kill people, are weak. And I know that real crimes are ofen spurred by far less than someone offering you large sums of money for ending someone’s life. But if you look at the villains of Discworld, those culprits in the Whodunnit-novels as well as the supernatural beings… Well, I find most of them so far greatly written (Dragon, for example. Both of them, actually, the Dragon as well as Dragon King of Arms), but a few of them remain somehow… vague when it comes to their motivation. If I take a closer look at those of the books which had some sort of antagonist, I found among the most interesting storylines those where not one prime antagonist was to be overcome, but a group of people or at least someone acting for a privity was pulling the strings – the political plotters in “The Truth”, or, though carried out by single players in the end, “Feet of Clay”, for eaxample, but also the greedy capitalist villain in “Going Postal”. (I do remember many of the books had both a group of conspirers and a villain or two acting on their behalf.) The auditors worked, in a way… although you probably shouldn’t apply too much logic to their thinking. I'd say they were one of those species acting upon their nature, like the elves, and I think they work fine too. But there is a number of villains, lately especially, that left me slightly unsatisfied regarding their motivations, and thus their credibility as characters within the story. I don’t want their childhood traumata exlained to me in deatil, but a character shouldn’t be too random, and the maniac-label shouldn’t work as a wildcard. And you can use a crazy killer pretty random – he’s crazy after all, he could do anything. I find villains like Carcer or Teatime a tad bit dissaponting. They work wonderfully throughout the story, and the writing of Teatime for example made it work for the book, which is more important I guess. He creeped you out, if you let yourself in to the story. Still, their ultimate motivations to kill, to keep fighting until the end, or to give up, remain… vague. The Firm was much more believable in that way. Just a tiny, tiny flashback into the past of Mr. Tulip rounded up the picture so well - whereas Teatime was just born crazy, and mad. Then there are the supernatural forces in Thud!, A Hat Full of Sky, and, to a lesser degree, The Amazing Maurice… I am aware they stand in for certain elements and are not quite comparable to, say, the Who in Whodunnit in an Aghata Christie novel. And maybe, to an unfair degree, I expect something more tangible and conclusive from entertaining fiction like the DW books than I would from the sort of artsy prose where it can be written as impressionistic as it wants, as long as it brings across the famous deeper meaning. Or bits where I can apply it too as I see it, anyway. But especially fantasy literature works so much better when there is a certain, twisted logic from within the story, maybe because if you don’t apply an inner logic to a fantasy setting it quickly falls apart and becomes random, because theoretically, in this setting, everything would be possible. If everything is treated as possible, though, the stories fray out at the corners, if they don’t fall apart at all. So, the entities in Thud!, and A Hat Full Of Sky, which, when confronted at the end, just seem to go “Poof!” so you ask yourself – was all the fuss worth it? – left me kind of… “…hm. Aha…” Does a strong story need a strong conclusion? I am not even thinking of the famous last stand at the end of every book. I don’t even mind open endings. But if there is an antagonist, be it human, entity or otherwise, it seems to give the rest of the story more credit if, in some way, you can see the force that was strong enough to make them kill a few minor characters before the final confrontation, instead being left with a vague feeling that it just happened to happen rather randomly…
Jonathan Teatime was a good character, but he was also a flat character. He did not have depth, he did not change, he was constantly the same manic bastard who killed people just because it was fun, or seemed like the right idea at the time. In short, he was not the kind of character that left you all that satisfied when you reached the end of the book, as you knew as little of him in the end as you did at the beginning. Same with Carcer, though Carcer at least had a little more on him via Sam Vimes' mind. About him seeing police authority, and the rules of society, as something that doesn't have to apply to him, and that he can do as he pleases... That at least explained his insane state in a good way. Thud! was an anti-climax, in a way. I mean, sure, the whole dwarf-troll thing was interesting, as were the other mini-plots tied into that... But the great big spirit that goes woogie-woogie and turns people into blood-thirsty bastards was a bit silly really. It was the same in A Hat Full of Sky. I could forgive it in A Hat Full of Sky, as I can easily forgive the lack of depth as the book was intended for a younger audience, and for a children's book it had a *lot* more depth than one would expect, but in Thud? I think this was one of the main reason the book felt a bit dull. A strong story does need a strong conclusion. Otherwise the reader is left dangling and wondering what the hell went wrong.
I think from the point of view of the discworld series as a whole, sometimes it is good just to have a villian like Teatime or Carcer who are just skewed, I think that there are a few people out there who treat people as things, to be turned on or off for their own benefit. It also helps when contrasting between those such as Felmet in Wyrd Sisters, who is goaded into murder by his power hungry wife then turns mad with guilt, or the architect of the Scone's demise in The Fifth Elephant. The overall message is that bad people come in many forms, some more obvious than others.
I wonder if the fact the Discworld is an ongoing series, with no real conclusions expected, has an effect on the endings to each book - making them quite as dramatic as they might be if they were a "one and only"?
I think Mr Teatime is a sociopath--a person who is just born crazy--they don't have a concious as we know it and do things "Because they are fun" with out thought to consequences or how it might affect anyone else. Carcer is a careeer criinal who has I believe been driven to his insanity It would be interesting to know what has caused this insanitybut then again we may not really WANT to know. The Hivvers motivation is his(it's) need for a mind to drive--its an insane collector of minds or personallities--but as was said before as this is a childrens book its a bit more satisfying than the Following Dark which while an ingenious idea was a bit lame as a plot device.
