Recently re-read the Watch books by Terry Pratchett

I don't know if any of y'all have read "Thud!" by Terry Pratchett, but it's a masterpiece. Basically, it's about "angry policeman dad vs. the Dwarf KKK".

It's been very, very interesting going back and reading the Discworld Watch books a decade after I first read them, now that I'm older and have more opinions. And am supposedly smarter/more mature. (Don't worry, no spoilers ahead. Nothing that ruins the books.) It's fascinating to place each of the Watch books on the Batman spectrum. As in, "how stupid is it that the villain didn't get killed". I don't know about you guys, but I prefer my villains dead or at least out of the picture, and locking them in jail doesn't count. Especially the well-written, nasty ones who are clearly still a threat if spared. I'm reminded of a quote from Terrible Writing Advice (which is an excellent channel and you all ought to watch it):

“Oh no! You can’t kill Duke Draken Direburn. If you do that, you will be just like him!”

“Oh no!” says the hero in the first bout of self awareness displayed in the whole story.

Instead, the hero decides to the spare the mass murdering villain that almost no one would blame him for slaying on the spot. If he did, he would be just like the villain who murdered thousands of innocents unprovoked, burned down entire cities, laid waste to whole kingdoms, and nearly awakened the dark gods from beyond the void to end the universe.

Sparing the main villain totally keeps my hero in the right by allowing a key threat to the safety and security of the free world to persist. Of course, all of those minions he mowed down earlier in his revenge quest don’t count towards the hero’s karma score. So far Men at Arms is the worst offender and Fifth Elephant and Night Watch are the best in that regard. In Men at Arms, the heroes and the villain play hot potato with the "evil weapon" and the protagonists forego multiple chances to kill or subdue the villain because "killing bad", even though given the villain in question, that's ridiculous. The villain proves it's ridiculous by turning it around on them and showing no such mercy. In The Fifth Elephant, however, Vimes (the main character) straight up kills one of the main villains. He's not an animal about it. He does it like it's something that needs to be done. And he lives with it afterwards without any obnoxious, forced angst. He's a policeman. Some people don't get arrested. They don't stop until they're stopped. Thud! is ... interesting. Because Vimes goes on a total rampage at the end in the villains' lair. They corner him, he has a lethal weapon, and he uses it. Up until he gets to the leaders themselves, who've been calling the shots for the entire book. He stops and spares them, because they're just "harmless old men". Infuriating. Yeah, they get arrested, and bad things will probably happen to them, but that's still garbage in my opinion. They stopped being "harmless old men" when they ordered the killings and terror attacks they order throughout the book leading up to this finale.

TL;DR, Batman needs to kill the joker already. Read Discworld. It's really good. I only whine about the best books I read, I promise.