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Not to be all confrontational but if you can read the Watch series without recognizing that Carrot (who starts out as a sixteen year old) learns as much or more from Vimes than Vimes ever does from him, your close reading needs some work. 

Vimes is the reason that Carrot is not the most disturbing and terrifying force that the City has ever seen, and the best part is that he literally has zero power over Carrot that is not 100% based in moral suasion. And without that - without the things that Vimes has taught him and the ethics that Vimes brings to the table - Carrot would very, very quickly have turned into a horror-show, and the worst kind of horror-show, because his charisma and Destiny would mean that people would want to obey him. 

And this was going to be a quick ranty-post but shit, here, have a huge essay instead. 

Keep reading

Hyup. This. Vimes spends the whole series learning - or at least, having his idea of who should be included among the People whom he serves and protects challenged on a regular basis - but not from Carrot.

I’m not sure I totally agree. Carrot is fundamentally a good person. Vimes is a positive influence and a mentor, but Carrot doesn’t follow him blindly. Carrot chooses to follow Vimes because Vimes is a good role model for many things. But without Vimes Carrot wouldn’t turn into a mad king. Carrot is genuinely good and part of that is that he chooses to follow and learn from good influences. Vimes absolutely has an impact on Carrot, but let’s not downplay Carrot’s role.

There is a reason we have the saying “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.” 

Being “a fundamentally good person” is not actually something that exists. You can have a fundamentally well-intentioned person, but the actual “being a good person” is based on what you do. It is based not only on your intentions in your actions, but also their results, your awareness of the results, your decisions and what motivates them. 

Carrot spends a huge chunk of Men At Arms being an absolute racist twit about the undead while speaking directly to Angua, a werewolf. He does it because he doesn’t know better, but absolutely no part of his “fundamentally good person”ness stops him, at any point, from literally telling a werewolf that he wishes the undead “would just go back to where they came from”, or that the undead aren’t “our kind of people”, or that he just doesn’t like them. 

When he first discovers Angua is a werewolf he literally draws his weapon on her. 

Carrot’s initial comments on discovering that Cheery Littlebottom is in fact Cheri  Littlebottom and has decided to assert her gender is to act like she’s just shat on the carpet, and includes being horrified and offended, saying “I’ve got nothing against females, I’m pretty sure my stepmother is one” and “[other female dwarves] have the decency not to show it.” 

And as noted, in Jingo he comes very close to literally going off to use his charisma to wade into the middle of wars he knows nothing about to Fix Everything, and let me tell you, if you don’t know why the White Saviour complex is a bad thing - ! 

And even by the point of Thud! Carrot thinks the way to solve the whole “the dwarf and troll officers are quitting” thing is to make it so dwarf and troll officers don’t have to patrol together! …..to impose racial segregation in policing. Aka “the technique best guaranteed to result in police abuse of vulnerable citizens.” Without Vimes nixing it, this would have been the view of Captain Carrot. 

That would have gone GREAT, right? 

Carrot is a fundamentally honest, honourable, generous and well-intentioned person. 

Absolutely no part of that is going to stop him from committing or causing major evil in the world, because of his reality-warping Destiny and Charisma. Because ethics are actually more fucking complicated than that, and intentions are only necessary, not sufficient. 

He would never intend to be an evil king. But that means fuck all: the combination of ignorance, self-righteousness (and Carrot DEFINITELY has that problem sometimes) and power would result in evil being the outcome. 

What makes Carrot as much of an actual good person as he is? 

Is that when he’s wrong about the undead, he stops acting like that. And when Angua smacks him upside the head about being an ass about Cheri, he eventually shuts up about it. 

And he chose very good role models to actually imitate, including - significantly - Vimes, so when Vimes says “don’t be a fucking idiot” about going off to Save Klatch, Carrot doesn’t do it. 

Carrot is absolutely an active part of that process: Carrot chose who to take as his model, Carrot chose who got to put words in his head based on what he saw as the good that Vimes did. It didn’t happen by fiat, and it didn’t happen because Vimes actively intervened: it happened because Carrot the sixteen year old looked at Vimes and SAW someone who was good and decided “I want to be like that.” 

But Carrot’s choices to learn, choices to have the humility to realize when he fucked up, choices to keep trying, and his choices in deciding who he wants to be like? That’s what makes him good. And we are given in-text, specific examples of times when his “fundamental goodness” is vastly insufficient to keep him from holding horrible opinions/beliefs and working his way up to do extreme harm. 

All this, plus I also can’t help but think of Gaspode’s reasoning in Fifth Element, specifically wondering if Carrot really is as straightforward and ignorant of his effect on others as they tend to think he is. With specific reference to Gavin saving Carrot from Wolfgang and getting killed in the process.

I believe that Carrot came into Ankh Morpork thinking he was or wanting to be a Good Person. Fortunately, for him this means paying attention to what that means. Unfortunately, it’s hard to see if what you’re doing is good or bad when everyone’s response to you is to just go with your flow. Enter Sam Vimes.

Not only is Vimes the way he is without direct prompting from Carrot, he was that way before Carrot came along and he’s that way when not in Carrots presence.* Further, Sam Vimes seems perhaps a bit too stubborn to be affected by Carrots Charisma very much.** More than anything this is what makes Carrot pay attention to who Vimes is as it gives him reason to think he’s doing something wrong. Now, there are other people who appear to avoid the worst of the effects of Carrots aura, but they dont appear to have the moral compass that Vimes does. Maybe Carrot decided to listen to Vimes because he felt Vimes’ compass pointed north, as it were, or maybe not. I think it’s a combination of a little bit of that and mostly the imprinting OP mentioned.

*Carrots charisma has been noted to wear off after a while (it still has lasting effects of course)

**I think pretty much the only time we see Vimes actually fall away to a direct command from Carrot is the aforementioned gonne situation and that was pretty clearly because Carrot played on Vimes’ identity as a watchman, rather than just plain charisma.

This was ringing bells to me, and I was trying to remember what I recently read that had that same kind of theme. 

It starts off looking like “angry old person has lost their idealism and is trying to shit on a bright shiny youth and take away their hope”,
but as time goes on it turns out that it’s actually
“angry old person has actually seen enough to completely warrant being angry
but
despite having entirely lost their idealism has not lost their ideals
but
has thoroughly internalized the fact that the world is complicated and that what seems like a great solution when looked at from a simple idealistic perspective may in fact be the kind of thing that leads to exactly the things that caused them to lose their idealism
and therefore
is continuously telling the bright shiny youth that they need to stop charging ahead and if they can’t stop and think for a second before they do something then they should bloody well stop doing anything at all“

… it was Witches Abroad.  This same dynamic plays out with Granny Weatherwax and Magrat. 

There are lots of parallels between Vimes and Esme.

However, Vimes does something Esme doesn’t, which is actually bothers to teach what he knows.

This is something Esme actually gets rightfully called out on by Agnes (and to some extent Pastor Oats) in particular and which she’s aware enough by the time she’s invested in Tiffany that she very explicitly and deliberately finds Tiffany other teachers because the best that she can do is let someone hang around her and attempt to learn from example (which is itself actually quite difficult, because she deliberately lies and obfuscates about what she’s doing and why).

When Carrot starts to wax about how good things could be when there were kings, in Men At Arms, Vimes not only says HELL NO, he then spends the next several pages explaining at length and in detail WHY kings are a bad idea. It’s not necessarily the most coherent explanation, but he’s trying.

When Magrat makes noises about wishing the world good, Esme insults her and tells her she’s a stupid useless child and Magic Is Bad - and then goes on to use magic, because (as Gytha observes in that very book) Esme excludes herself from her own proclamations.

We figure out WHY that is, through Lords and Ladies, and through Maskerade and especially and above all through Carpe Jugulum: it’s because she’s always been bad at people, at liking and interacting with people, and she’s lonely, and afraid of her own power, and afraid not only that people dislike her and hold her in contempt but (and this is the worst part) that they’re RIGHT to do so, and she’s never allowed herself to rely on or connect with anybody and she doesn’t TRUST anybody to have her back.

She thinks it’s much more likely - even after all those years, even after Wyrd Sisters and how hard the other two have stuck with her, and after Lords and Ladies and the fact that Magrat ever forgave her for her (bluntly) high handed BS, even after ALL of it - that Magrat explicitly did not invite her to the naming of her daughter, than it is that maybe something just happened to the invite.

And the thing is:

I empathize with Esmerelda Weatherwax so effing hard, man. I know exactly what it feels like when you’re in that moment. When you can’t actually bring yourself just to go down there (or even to storm down there and demand where your invitation got to, what is with this? or even ASK?), despite everything, despite years, because you’re pushy and bossy and loud and abrupt and unpleasant and despite everything maybe they have all just been waiting for you to figure it out and go away, and were too scared to tell you.

As Oats observes, Esme needs someone to beat, or else she beats herself.

But the result is that Esme, whatever her sterling qualities as a witch and as a defender of the world against the shit witches defend against, and all that, is a fuck-awful teacher. And Wyrd Sisters is honestly the perfect example of that.

And the contrast of Esme’s refusal to even discuss with Magrat why the things she says are so, vs Vimes LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING BOY - ! is a good contrast to look at. And moreover I think it’s one that Esme herself would look at: I think there’s a REASON that her response to discovering Tiffany was to send Tiffany around to OTHER witches, ones who WERE better at actually, you know, engaging with people, and being an example rather than a teacher. And I think that was a good call.

Which is the other thing I love about Esme: she DOES figure that out. And it might be too late for her to radically change, but she can at least be AWARE of that and adjust around it.

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I’ll wax a bit on this, because I sort of got a much wider idea as I read and thought about it, and feel a short mini-essay coming on, namely about prejudice, preference, and tropes. We often think of prejudice in a very narrow sense, but the reality is the word is far broader than folks often use it, and prejudices can influence more than overt or the obvious, and into concepts too. Some folks are more inclined towards believing or seeing certain constructs in a story, be it fictional or non-fiction, and this can lead to misunderstandings. This is very common, for example, in Naruto in the case of the Uchiha clan and several of its members.

The idea of the oppressed/oppressor dynamic is hardly new, and it appeals to many it is simple and clear cut moral dichotomy. It is a particularly popular trope in modern times with certain segments of the population, even more than it is in general as a narrative device. And it is a trope, in the truest sense of the word before that damned website more or less did a hackjob on the concept of tropes. But I digress. I will point out certain narrative concepts like this have existed for centuries and beyond. Minor history lesson time!

In Roman records and literature, we see an often reoccuring theme of the evil and manipulative stepmother who engineers the downfall of folks to secure power for herself or her son. This was a sort of cultural concept, or trope, that was simply natural to many in Roman culture. In modern culture, or some segments in particular, the oppressed/oppressor dynamic is very natural, and very easy to fall into. It provides the clear-cut moral resolution that appeals to us in its simplicity.

The problem is, it isn’t true. It’s not true in fiction, how much more true is it even in real life? Not very much. The situation is far more complex than that. To return to Naruto, the entire situation of the Uchiha clan is a perfect example. It’s easy to say “Uchiha were oppressed, so they were plotting how to get out of that, and were killed for it by the village!” But that’s not really true. The truth is far more complex, with so many moving parts. Even in a fictional universe, which are simplistic by their nature compared to reality, this entire chain of interactions is maddeningly complex.

Critically, the motivations each group or person had can be compared both to the cause and the resulting action. For Tobirama, the cause of his distrust was very real fears about the Uchiha, legitimate ones. Yet his actions represent someone who is doing more than simply trying to oppress or exterminate. Some folks act like its Tobirama’s fault Madara didn’t become hokage, or even that Madara went ‘bad,’ when in reality, Madara was always unstable and had issues, and it wasn’t Tobirama OR Hashirama’s decision, it was the people, who did not want or choose Madara.

Likewise, when Tobirama became hokage, despite Madara’s fears that the Uchiha would be wiped out… they weren’t. They were given a place of authority. Obito attempted to twist that into intentional marginalization, but the fact of the matter is that makes no sense. You don’t give power over the law to someone you’re trying to exterminate. Particularly because if Tobirama REALLY wanted to exterminate the Uchiha, who would have stopped him, really? Tobirama, and the rest of the village, had trust issues when it came to the Uchiha. Those would have likely faded in time, as that is the course of things.

Except Madara made it worse, in two ways. Not only did he attack the village and thus cast doubts on his clan as a result, he also utilized the Nine-Tailed Demon Fox, which would later come back to haunt.

However, I won’t go too deeper as I’m working on an essay on this.

The point is that Tobirama wasn’t wrong about Madara, or the Uchiha, but was willing to give them chances. Trust, but verify. He had come and gone, though, by the time the real ‘marginalization’ really actually hit, following… the Nine-Tails Attack, which was caused by an Uchiha. The resulting fears led to them planning a coup, which would have had very broad geopolitical fallout.

Which, of course, comes to Itachi and Danzo. Danzo is manipulative, that much is true; he’s one of the best actual NINJA in the show. His words were, in fact, a false choice that was presented to Itachi, yet Itachi still made the ultimate choice. Itachi’s actions to Sasuke, as well, were utterly unnecessary, and only hurt the person he ‘loved,’ because in reality, Itachi was an incredibly selfish person, in many ways. His actions towards his brother, who yes, he no doubt loves, were driven in a way that centered around Itachi, and his interactions with Sasuke, rather than letting Sasuke move past that. 

Itachi is WHY Sasuke could not let go of hate for so long.

Regardless, the entire dynamic of oppressed/oppressor doesn’t work in the sort of world Naruto takes place. Even in our own world it lacks nuance and true grasp of concepts. Yet its NICE. It’s CLEAN and, most of all, in some cases, it supports other things we want to see. It’s very appealing to, for example, SNS shippers or the rather out there ItaSasu fans, or just in general folks who want easy slacktivist ‘wins.’

Bout to fall asleep, so imma cut this short, for now. 
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Thank you for your comments, and I’m glad you enjoyed the story so much~

The same thing bothers me as well, which is entirely the reason why I had her sacrifice her powers. 

Bleach suffers from what I like to call “Toriyama syndrome” (the mangaka for Dragonball, and the most widely cited person to inspire other mangaka) where the story is only driven by the concept of “stronger stronger stronger” with really no end in sight, so you get these ridiculous battles of “hold on let me power up/show you my secret technique.”

This is a big Shonen anime trope and one that while One Piece does employ, it’s not so much on a grand scale or the entire driving force of the story. Having characters with so many different types of Devil Fruits and other powers makes each arc interesting and unique in their own way, sometimes even forcing the characters to get creative to defeat their opponents… Whereas in Bleach it’s literally “I just need to be stronger than you” for the entire manga. (And none of the villains have much of a unique quality… except for the Fullbringers power-wise, but nobody liked them anyway.)

Thus any crossover with Bleach or others like it, needs to have those characters nerfed, otherwise the story would be just one blast away from “I win at everything.”

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Thank you for your comments, and I’m glad you enjoyed the story so much~

The same thing bothers me as well, which is entirely the reason why I had her sacrifice her powers. 

Bleach suffers from what I like to call “Toriyama syndrome” (the mangaka for Dragonball, and the most widely cited person to inspire other mangaka) where the story is only driven by the concept of “stronger stronger stronger” with really no end in sight, so you get these ridiculous battles of “hold on let me power up/show you my secret technique.”

This is a big Shonen anime trope and one that while One Piece does employ, it’s not so much on a grand scale or the entire driving force of the story. Having characters with so many different types of Devil Fruits and other powers makes each arc interesting and unique in their own way, sometimes even forcing the characters to get creative to defeat their opponents… Whereas in Bleach it’s literally “I just need to be stronger than you” for the entire manga. (And none of the villains have much of a unique quality… except for the Fullbringers power-wise, but nobody liked them anyway.)

Thus any crossover with Bleach or others like it, needs to have those characters nerfed, otherwise the story would be just one blast away from “I win at everything.”