I recall hearing that Discworld, especially in the earlier books, is also prone to ethnic and gender stereotyping (which I noticed some of in the book version of Good Omens too), though Pratchett evidently got better about that later on
Oh it very much is. He got a lot better about it but was always a British Dude of a certain age.
There's multiple bits of great trans rep & I love the plotline in Unseen Academicals where one woman has to come to grips with her own internalized sexism and how she's been looking down her nose at a great opportunity for her friend, which her friend loves and to which she is well suited, bc it isn't a "serious enough" opportunity. Like, he tried, and in many cases he succeeded, and the constant attempts to get better are why I still love Discworld.
But I'm really not okay with pretending it's all roses.
To pretend everything about Discworld is perfect and "unproblematic" goes against everything PTerry wanted readers to get out of it.
He addressed real problems where he could and encouraged critical thinking, growth and a healthy sense of humour.
I think The Nights Watch books are some of his best work to see this in (personally my faves are the Witches books).
One of the reasons that I really respect PTerry is that he worked to improve himself, and it showed in his writing. He's one of several authors that I know of (including Tamora Pierce) with a decades-long writing career who rose to the occasion of changing societal pressures instead of their work souring like old milk.
Both Terry Pratchett and Tamora Pierce had their first works come out in 1983 (the color of magic and Alanna: the first adventure, respectively). That's 40 years ago!! And these books were modern for their times! And the books that came after that were steadily popular - they could have stayed on writing stuff that was cutting edge in the 80s/90s and been reasonably successful. But they rose to the occasion! They worked on including more racially diverse characters, more gender-diverse characters, more religious diversity, more scathing social commentary.
These two authors really raised my bar for how an author should react to changing times. It makes some other authors in the fantasy genre look pretty bad by comparison.
I think that it's also worth mentioning that there's a phrase for writing what would be considered moderately enlightened and up to date by 2020's standards in the 1980s.
Career suicide.
Seriously. As someone who was there, I cannot emphasize enough to those of you who weren't that the casual racism/sexism/classism/{string_variable}ism that looks so absolutely blatant (and abhorrent) to you as a child of the oughts was just part of the air we were breathing in the 80s. If they'd written something appropriate to the 2020s then, they'd have never been published again.
As another commentator put it about homophobic humor in 90s television, no it's not ironic; that's just the type of fag-bashing that was considered mainstream appropriate in the 90s. And there's a vital piece of context that is frequently missing. It was an improvement. It meant that television was acknowledging that homosexuality existed. For a very, very long time, by regulation, that wasn't allowed. Literally in the studio standards and practices style guide.
Looking at STAR TREK as a quick and imperfect gauge of the arc of this:
- TOS (1960s): The Premise (look it up, it's not my story to tell). Multi-racial/multi-ethnic crew and guest stars (truly, the sheer number of non-white faces in key roles on that show, particularly in single episode guest roles, was absolutely radical for the mid-60s).
- TNG (1980s): Several episodes dealing with gender and homosexuality in allegory (clunky AF by today's standards, but bleeding edge when they aired). Multi-ethnic crew and use of the infamous skant on male and female crew members.
- DS9 (1990s): Ambiguous morality everywhere. Explicitly bisexual main characters but only from the mirror universe. Alien species that's been ret-conned a bit to trans allegory (again, not my story to interpret). African American commander.
- Voyager (mid 1990s-early 2000s): Female captain (absolutely radical at the time). Only one white guy in the primary cast, and he was a bit of a dick (I am also counting the aliens in heavy prosthetics as non-white).
- Enterprise (2000s): Bit a train wreck generally, but did include a polyamorous main character with multiple wives who still played the field when he had the chance, and who was, of course because this sort of thing has to be coded, an alien. It was mostly played for humor, but again it acknowledged that m/f monogamy was not the only possible thing in the universe.
- Discovery (2010s): Explicitly gay, lesbian, and bi characters with actual relationships in the core cast with a non-binary character added in the second season.
- Strange New Worlds (2020s): Good lord & butter. How much rep do you want in one show?
Another potentially useful marker about this, in case it's been lost to the mists of time. My late husband enlisted in the US Air Force straight out of high school in the late 70s. In the early 80s, he was discharged for being a homosexual. Before Don't Ask, Don't Tell, the rule was Don't.
Speaking of DADT, back in the 90s, part of Bill Clinton's radical proposals in his communist remake of America (/sarcasm) was allowing gays to serve openly in the military. Every member of Congress went ballistic. There were months and months of non-stop bipartisan gay-bashing hearings about how this would destroy the fighting readiness of the entire United States military (who knew gays had so much power?). In 1993, a compromise was reached that Clinton signed into law. This became known as Don't Ask, Don't Tell. In short sum, stay in the closet and you can serve. Come out and you'll be discharged. In theory, the witch hunts for LGBTQ people were supposed to stop. It practice... not so much.
If this sounds an awful lot like the current paroxysms of trans-in-the-military bashing going with Republicans in Congress, that's because it's essentially identical. They're running exactly the same rhetoric with a search-and-replace on "gay" for "trans."
DADT lasted until 2010. The exact same arguments from 1993 were trotted out before it was repealed, and precisely none of the dire predictions came to pass. It's been less than two decades since one could be openly queer in the military. It's been less than a decade since we could be legally married (and brother is that in serious jeopardy right now).
Look at those two timelines again and then look at the date something that reads as problematic today was published. It had a context. And if that doesn't get you over the hump of being able to enjoy it, understandable. But take a moment and reflect where the rest of the entire world was at that moment before you climb on your high horse and imagine that you could have done it differently given the state of the world around it when it was created.
