charlemane:

one of my favorite things about Sam Vimes’s character arc is that it’s literally your classic “gruff cop with ideals gets worn down by reality, descends into cynicism and booze” journey in reverse. 

I mean, it happens the normal way around the first time, but we don’t really see the first time- in Sam’s first introduction, he’s literally lying in a gutter. He’s already been chewed up and spat out, already seen the ugliness of the world and bent beneath it.

And then every book from there on out has him getting back up. It’s not a straightforward road, but he takes it anyways, and sure, he’s still cynical and still worn down, but he’s still got his ideals (though I’m not sure he’d like to call them ideals- maybe standards would do) and he cleans himself up and bit by bit, he works on cleaning up the world around him, too. He gets a family. He learns to accept others more openly than he had before. He still sees the ugliness in the world, but he confronts it instead of accepting it as just the way things are. Because there’s a way things should be, and he cares about it.

Sam Vimes, gruff cop with standards, ascends from cynicism and booze, starts wearing down on reality.