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Jingo: Difference between revisions
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''Jingo'' is the 21st ''[[Discworld]]'' novel and the fourth in the City Watch theme. It's written as a criticism of war, with particular reference to the Falklands Conflict and the first Gulf War of 1990-1. And a few [[Shout
Politics is a funny thing, and all the more so on the Discworld. When the sunken island of [[Atlantis|Leshp]] rises again, the bustling metropolis of Ankh-Morpork and the Arabic [[Expy]] Klatch both stake claims to it - diplomacy leading to riots, assassinations, and eventually war. Commander Vimes is determined to keep the peace as much as he can - unless it involves the bastard who he suspects of murder getting away with it.
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* [[Alien Geometries]]: For all the fighting being done over Leshp, nobody who actually visits the place wants to stay for long...
* [[All the Myriad Ways]]: At a moment of crisis decision - whether to pursue Ahmed's ship or stay in Ankh-Morpork where he might be needed - the timeline splits, and Vimes accidentally picks up the other timeline's Vimes' Dis-organiser, which reads off the other Vimes' appointments. {{spoiler|Thus, he is able to find out, at the end, [[Kill'Em All|just what would have happened]] [[For Want of a Nail|if he had stayed behind]]...}}
* [[Aluminum Christmas Trees]]: Surely the idea of a brutal war being fought over an island that's just risen from the ocean is a fantasty narrative device used by Terry Pratchett to poke fun at the idiotic nationalism of a bygone age? The Other Wiki [
* [[Amazingly Embarrassing Parents]]: Ankh-Morpork native Les and Klatch native Akhan bond over this while their fathers are threatening each other:
{{quote| "Les caught Akhan's eye. They exchanged a very brief glance which was nevertheless modulated with a considerable amount of information, beginning with the sheer galactic-sized embarrassment of having parents and working up from there."}}
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* [[Brought Home the Wrong Kid]]: An Ankh-Morpork fisherman and a Klatchian fisherman stumble on the newly-risen island of Leshp at the same time. When the two men realize that they can't lay claim to it for their respective nations unless they get home first, each grabs for his boy's arm and rushes back to his boat ... and then returns, lambasting the other man as a kidnapper, to swap for his own boy.
* [[Call Back]]: Carrot organizes two huge armies of hundreds of men each into playing ''[[The Beautiful Game|football]]''. When asked by Vimes where and how he got a football, Carrot replies that he has taken to carrying one in his pack, since it's a very effective pacifying tool. This is a reference to much, much earlier in the book, where he also pacifies two small (but armed and violent) gangs of street urchins by organizing them into football teams. In that case, they were too embarrassed to actually play, but they each picked up their weapons and went their separate ways without fighting.
** Of course, the whole scene is a shoutout to the [
* [[Canis Latinicus]]: An Ozymandias-like statue in the ruined Ankh-Morporkian outpost bears the inscription ''Ab Hoc Possum Videre Domum Tuum'', which means [[I Can See My House From Here|"I can see your house from up here!"]]
** Also Prince Khufurah's diploma, which is a "Doctorum Adamus cum Flabello Dulci," or {{spoiler|"Doctorate of Sweet Fanny Adams," i.e. nothing}}
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* [[Cool Boat]]: Going-Under-the-Water-Safely Device.<ref>Leonard [[Giver of Lame Names|sucks at naming things]].</ref>
* [[Cowboy Cop]]: {{spoiler|71-Hour Ahmed.}}
* [[Cunning Linguist]]: Carrot, who eventually acts as a [[Shout
** Carrot's linguistic expertise is, however, instantly subverted if he's ever asked to ''[[Wanton Cruelty to The Common Comma|write down]]'' anything.
* [[Dawn Attack]]: Jabbar claims that "Charging is what dawn is for."
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* [[End of an Age]]: the fate of the Gnolls, who in ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Equal Rites|Equal Rites]]'' were the Apache-like race who ''"practiced hospitality to travellers of the red-hot knife variety"'' and terrorised the remoter parts of the overland trade routes. Debased remnants of the race have surrendered to civilization, and have entered the city, like Reservation Indians, to occupy the lowest rung of the social ladder, as street-cleaners and rubbish pickers (in all fairness, they seem to [[Unishment|enjoy this new occupation]] [[Too Kinky to Torture|a little too much]]). By ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Going Postal|Going Postal]]'', the wild hills will have been ethnically cleansed of the last residual gnoll problem. Echoing the fate of American Indians?
* [[Either World Domination or Something About Bananas]]: Lord Rust brings his Lieutenant Hornett as a translator to the pre-battle meeting between the Klatchian and the Ankh-Morpork army officers. Sadly for Lord Rust, Lt. Hornett only knows how to '''read''' Klatchian, resulting in {{spoiler|Lt. Hornett being unable to translate ''"Do any of you gentlemen speak Klatchian?"''}} and then {{spoiler|partially translating ''"this clown’s in charge of an army?"'' as ''"Er... something about... to own, to control... er... "''}}.
* [[False
* [[Fauxreigner]]: Ahmed is a real Klatchian who has been educated in Ankh-Morpork, but he feigns bizarre "foreign ways" as a form of [[Obfuscating Stupidity]].
* [[Foil]]: Ahmed is shown as similar to Vimes in being an honest cop, but unlike Vimes is decidedly ''not'' a [[Technical Pacifist]].
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* [[Foreign Money Is Proof of Guilt]]: Played about with the "clumsily set up to look like it's Klatchian-funded" assassination attempt. {{spoiler|Actually, in a double bluff, it actually ''is'' Klatchian-funded.}}
* [[For Want of a Nail]]: The Dis-Organizer's very creepy alternate timeline.
* [[Full
* [[Giant Robot Hands Save Lives]]: When the Klatchian embassy is on fire, Vimes saves a Klatchian woman by throwing her out of the window and letting Detritus catch her. Detritus is a ''troll''. He is ''made of rock''.
* [[Giver of Lame Names]]: Naming things is the one area where Leonard of Quirm's inventing genius fails, for some reason.
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** More probably it was just intended to evoke the {{spoiler|bazooka-like tube-shaped rocket weapon}} Leonard threatened Colon and Nobby with earlier on; the {{spoiler|nuclear weapons}} reference was more of a throwaway gag.
* [[Retcon]]: The second edition fixed a continuity error by changing 'Snowy can't read and write' to 'Snowy can ''barely'' read and write' - in the original, immediately after this is said they discover that Snowy Slopes wrote out a confession.
* [[Revealing Coverup]]: See [[False
* [[Sacred Hospitality]]: Not only the D'reg's 72-hour rule, but they are duty bound to [[Bedouin Rescue Service|save anyone lost in the desert.]] Even if those people choose, like Vimes, to [[Too Dumb to Live|attack them]].
* [[Sanity Slippage]]: The Dis-organiser when it begins reciting its final messages from the [[Alternate Universe]] where Vimes stayed in Ankh-Morpork, mainly manifested through repeating itself:
{{quote| ''{{spoiler|Things to do today today today...'''Die'''...}}''}}
* [[Sergeant Rock]]: Vimes' butler Willikins, with a few [[Drill Sergeant Nasty]] tendencies.
* [[Shout
** A shout out to [[Sweeney Todd]] also occurs. "That business with the barber on Gleam Street--Sweeney Jones, his name was? Of course, he ''was'' killing people, but he hadn't meant to. He was just a very bad barber."
** [[Cthulhu Mythos|There are quite a lot of squid pictures in the sunken city of Leshp...]]
*** That one also counts as a [[Continuity Nod]], as it was hinted in the ''[[Discworld (Literature)/Moving Pictures|Moving Pictures]]'' that Leshp's destruction had something to do with the [[Eldritch Abomination]] Things from the Dungeon Dimensions breaking through the Silver Screen in Holy Wood.
** A parody of the song that brought us the modern meaning of Jingoism. "We have no ships. We have no men. We have no money, too."
** And the whole assasination(-attempt, in this case) that's part of a huge conspiracy, with the apparent shooter being dead before being interrogated, and the conclusion of several people that there must have been 'a second bowman' [[Who Shot JFK?|also sounds familiar]].
** [[Shout
** [[Shout
** Carrot's use of [http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/truce.asp football] to disarm two opposing armies is more than reminiscent of the [
** Indeed, the Klatchian leader dismisses the opposition as "a contemptible little army", echoing Kaiser Wilhelm's dismissal of the tiny British army that stopped the massive German advance dead in autumn 1914. An even tinier and previously more contemptible "army" - the City Watch - succeeds in stopping the entire war...
** The statue of Tacticus with only its feet remaining is a reference to Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" (see [[Look On My Works Ye Mighty and Despair]]).
* [[Stealth Pun]] : Carrot gets important information about the [[Who Shot JFK?|assassination attempt]] from a lowly garbage collector who happens to be a kind of troll called a gnoll, who are more earth-like than stone-like and have plants growing all over them. {{spoiler|He is a "grassy knoll"...}}
** More subtly, the ''actual'' Second Bowman is named {{spoiler|Snowy Slopes. ''Not'' "grassy knoll", but then Ankh-Morpork is in a somewhat cooler climate than Dallas...}}
* [[Talk Like a Pirate]]: Subverted. Vimes tries to use sea-talk but Captain Jenkins tells him off. "All that yo-ho-ho stuff's for landlubbers, or it would be if we actually used words like landlubber. We don't say 'port' and 'starboard.' I've never even drunk starboard!"
* [[Ted Baxter]]: Lord Rust as a military commander.
* [[Title Drop]]: Doubling as a parody of the 19th-century song that led to the term "[
* [[Throw the Dog A Bone]]: After being repeatedly abused and ending up organizing a different universe than the one he was in, the Disorganizer was able to get a nice, easy job scheduling the life of a shark.
* [[Truth in Television]]: The main driver of the plot, an island rising from the bottom of the sea and being the source of diplomatic disputes? ''Really happened''. Ferdinandea, or Graham Island, was a volcanic island that rose from the ocean and was the cause of a four-way dispute regarding it's sovereignty, between England, France, Spain, and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. {{spoiler|And yes, it did sink before the diplomatic issues could be resolved.}}
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