it's not proper journalism unless someone's trying to kill you for it
There were, as yet, no angry letters.
William had been sick for the last week - he'd caught the tail-end of Maladicta's flu, and apparently living in whatever remained of her vampire immune-system had turned it into something to be reckoned with, or at least that's how it had felt at the time - and upon his arrival back at the office both the box outside and his desk were empty, aside from the papers he himself had left there.
He supposed it was possible people were going to glare at him in person, although it would take an odd sort of mindset to hold on to an angry glare for a week. Still, at least it would mean someone cared.
When it came right down to it, the lack of letters troubled him. Sure, it meant no badly-thought out, ignorance-driven hateful rants, no crackpot theories with no validity or reference to fact ... but it also meant that nobody was engaging with the world enough to want to write down their opinions about it, to let the world know.
The island had no pulse. Goodmountain had explained mine-sign to him, how dwarfs would mark the walls. How it indicated the mood of the mine, and how you ignored it at your peril. Graffiti was a bit similar, but William had always rather thought that the letters page was closer to the spirit of the idea. He'd always been able to tell, walking down the streets of Ankh-Morpork after an edition had gone out, when someone hit the letters page. Watching the scoffs, the rolled eyes, the occasional thoughtful nod ... the city had moods. It was but one way of reading them, of course, but sometimes William wondered if the island - not the island, in the anthropomorphized sense most people used it, but the people of it, as a unit - even had moods, the way a city did.
It was something to ponder. To worry at, perhaps. In the meantime, he sat at his office, making notes about his next editorial, which he thought he might make about guns, and waited for someone to come bother him.
[Dated to earlier in the day, before the NYE party.]
William had been sick for the last week - he'd caught the tail-end of Maladicta's flu, and apparently living in whatever remained of her vampire immune-system had turned it into something to be reckoned with, or at least that's how it had felt at the time - and upon his arrival back at the office both the box outside and his desk were empty, aside from the papers he himself had left there.
He supposed it was possible people were going to glare at him in person, although it would take an odd sort of mindset to hold on to an angry glare for a week. Still, at least it would mean someone cared.
When it came right down to it, the lack of letters troubled him. Sure, it meant no badly-thought out, ignorance-driven hateful rants, no crackpot theories with no validity or reference to fact ... but it also meant that nobody was engaging with the world enough to want to write down their opinions about it, to let the world know.
The island had no pulse. Goodmountain had explained mine-sign to him, how dwarfs would mark the walls. How it indicated the mood of the mine, and how you ignored it at your peril. Graffiti was a bit similar, but William had always rather thought that the letters page was closer to the spirit of the idea. He'd always been able to tell, walking down the streets of Ankh-Morpork after an edition had gone out, when someone hit the letters page. Watching the scoffs, the rolled eyes, the occasional thoughtful nod ... the city had moods. It was but one way of reading them, of course, but sometimes William wondered if the island - not the island, in the anthropomorphized sense most people used it, but the people of it, as a unit - even had moods, the way a city did.
It was something to ponder. To worry at, perhaps. In the meantime, he sat at his office, making notes about his next editorial, which he thought he might make about guns, and waited for someone to come bother him.
[Dated to earlier in the day, before the NYE party.]