- Me: I want to be Sam Vimes when I grow up
- Me: *gets insufficient sleep and has to deal with bureaucratic bullshit*
- Me: this is not what I meant
Good Omens, 1990, by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.
We are in the deep cack. It couldn’t be worse if it was raining arseholes.
Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett (via llybian)
[There] are people who will follow any dragon, worship any god, ignore any iniquity. All out of a kind of humdrum, everyday badness. Not the really high, creative loathesomeness of the great sinners, but a sort of mass-produced darkness of the soul. Sin, you might say, without a trace of originality. They accept evil not because they say yes, but because they don’t say no.
Lord Vetinari, (Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!)
Beekeepers are careful to tell their bees everything important that concerns the family and household–births, marriages, deaths, a new set of curtains, and suchlike. But that’s not superstition, just the practical observation that if you don’t tell them, they will fly indoors to find out for themselves.
Terry Pratchett and Jacqueline Simpson, “The Folklore of Discworld” (via noirandchocolate)
It’s so important that Sam Vimes cries
(and the other men of Discworld but let’s focus on Vimes)
Your classic grizzled, working-class, ex-alcoholic copper who’s been through a whole load of shit and is tough and nasty as fuck….
and we see him cry. Multiple times.
Because crying is normal and natural no matter who you are and it doesn’t make you less of anything.
Sam vimes is a subversion of every cynical-old-cop trope ever. Alcoholic (sorry, a /drunk/) but manages to stay sober no matter how bad shit gets. He not only gets the girl in the end, he keeps her and is devoted to her and doesn’t ever put his work before his child (not even when chasing down criminals). And Sam Vimes, rough and tumble, scarred and always always running and chasing and being chased, cries. He doesn’t just cry in private where no one can see him, he cries openly, in front of his wife, in front of his officers, in front of his enemies (granted, he was also swinging an axe and yelling about where his cow was at the time and everyone was confused and scared of him, but still). And no matter how old and cynical Sam Vimes gets, he’s still that idealistic 16 year old kid that cried in front of his sergeant in the house of pain and on the barracades somewhere deep down.
I think Vimes grows perhaps more than any of Pratchett’s characters other than possibly Death? and this is why I love him so muchhe’s scared and damaged and he has seen things that a man should not wot of but he grows gdi because he is at the core a good man (and he contrasts so well with Granny in that who is always fighting to not be the not-good one) who does not know when he’s beaten and I think there can be nothing more terrifying to an enemy than that a good man who is open to growth (via @wapwani)
#YES THIS! #ALSO THE THING ABOUT TOXIC MASCULINITY IS IT TENDS TO BE RIGID AND NOT LET OTHER VIEWPOINTS IN #AND THERE ARE TIMES IN THE SERIES WERE VIMES HOLDS PREJUDICED OPINIONS ABOUT OTHER SPECIES ETC #BUT ALTHOUGH HE MIGHT GRUMBLE ABOUT IT ALL INITIALLY #HAVING TO ADD DWARVES AND TROLLS TO THE WATCH AND THE UNDEAD #HE ACTUALLY GETS ON BOARD PRETTY FAST AND HE OPENS HIMSELF UP TO HAVING NEW OFFICERS THAT HE MIGHT NOT HAVE THOUGHT OF IN THE PAST #ALSO HE RECOGNISES HE WAS UNFAIR AND PREJUDICED AND MAKES SURE TO MAKE A POINT OF DEFENDING NOT ONLY HIS OFFICERS #BUT THE SPECIES ETC THEY COME FROM TO THOSE WHO HOLD ENTRENCHED PREJUDICED VIEWS #AND BECAUSE HE ACCEPTS HE WAS WRONG AND THE WATCH DEVELOPS AND MOVES FORWARD AND BECOMES MORE OF A PRESENCE #IN THE CITY AND VIMES CONTINUES TO GROW AS A CHARACTER AND A PERSON THROUGHOUT EACH OF THE NOVELS HE IS IN #WHEN WE SEE HIM IN SNUFF THERE IS LESS OF THE INITIAL DISTRUST OF OTHER SPECIES FOR EXAMPLE #HE IS MUCH MORE WILLING TO DISTRUST THE NOBILITY THAN THE GOBLINS #HE CONTINUALLY GROWS AND CHANGES EVEN IF HE IS STILL THE SMALL GRUMBLY EX-ALCOHOLIC WE ALL KNOW AND LOVE (via @pygmyhippos)
YOU GUYS!! <333
“Keep it away from me!” shouted his lordship.
William shook his head.
“Oh, yes?” said Otto, still advancing. “You think I am an it? Vell, let me act like an it.”
He grabbed Lord de Worde’s jacket and held him up in the air, with one hand, at arms length.
“Ve have people like you back home.” he said. “Zey are the vuns who tell the mob vot to do. I come here to Ankh-Morpork, zey tell me things are different, but really it is alvays the same. Alvays zere are damn people like you!”
- Terry Pratchett, The Truth
*This always happens in any police chase anywhere. A heavily laden lorry will always pull out of a side alley in front of the pursuit. If vehicles aren’t involved, then it’ll be a man with a rack of garments. Or two men with a large sheet of glass. There’s probably some kind of secret society behind all this.
Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett (author’s note)
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