Sam Vimes - Blog Posts

Similarities between Columbo and Vimes:

Always finds the criminal(s)

Absolutely love and worship their wives

Cigar addicts

Always investigating/mingling with the rich, but doesn't fit in with that crowd.

Later has other, younger detectives following them around and introducing new ideas and techniques.

Short little guys.

Not to mention that Pratchett wrote something along the lines of "Being investigated by Vimes was like being nibbled to death by a duck." (I couldn't find the exact quote, but I know it exists somewhere.)

Which is a play on Peter Falk's quote about Columbo:

"Being chased by Columbo is like being nibbled to death by a duck."

This was fun. Thanks for bringing it up!

Vimes and Columbo have so much in common it's crazy. (They're both coppers and are completely devoted & worship their wives)

You know who I always thought could've made a great Captain Vimes in live action? Hugh Laurie.

What with Blackadder and Fry & Laurie he's got plenty of experience with silly comedy, but he can also manage the gruff, stone-faced seriousness that the character needs.

I dunno, maybe people think he's a bit too old now, but honestly?

I still think he could pull it off.

Honestly, same.

reading terry prattchet is so crazy, cause you'll be reading about a character called something like plinko plonko and their zany exploits, and then he'll just drop a paragraph that goes so insanely hard like -

and then I just have to stare at the wall for a bit.

smoke break at an event at the patricians palace, with the golem inspector, the duke of ankh, the arch chancellor of unseen university, and the king of the golden river

Discworld Politics

Discworld is an interesting beast in the age of ACAB. Like, the city watch books are a story about police and the way in which a good police force can help and protect people. Which would make it copoganda. And I'm not going to say that the City Watch books are completely free of copoganda, but they also do something interesting that fairly few stories about heroic police officers do, and I think it has a lot to do with Samuel Vimes. A lot of copoganda stories like, say, Brooklyn 99, are perfectly capable of portraying cops as cruel, bigoted, and greedy, but our central cast of characters are portrayed as good people who want to help their communities. The result is that the bad cops are portrayed as an aberration, while most cops can be assumed to be good people doing a tough job because they want to help protect people from the nebulous evil forces of "Crime". The police are considered to be naturally heroic. Pratchett does something very interesting, which is provide us with Vimes' perspective, and present us with an Unnaturally heroic police force. In Ahnk-Morpork, the natural state of the watch is a gang with extra paperwork. It's the place for people who, at best, just want a steady paycheck and at worst want an excuse to hit people with a truncheon. Rather than be an army defending people from the forces of Crime, the Watch is described as a sort of sleight-of-hand, big burly watchmen in shiny uniforms don't stand around in-case a Crime happens in their vicinity, they stand around to remind people that The Law exists and has teeth. The Watchmen are people, when danger rears it's head, their instinct is to hide and get out of the way. When faced with authority, their instinct is to bow to it out of fear of what it might do to them if they don't. Carrot is a genuine Hero, but his natural heroism is presented as an aberration. Normal Cops don't act like Carrot does. The fact that the Watch ends up acting like a Heroic Police Force is largely due to the leadership of Sam Vimes, but Vimes himself is a microcosm of the Watch. The base state of Sam Vimes would be an alchoholic bully of an officer, one who beats people until they confess to anything because that makes his job easier. Vimes The Hero is a homunculous, an artificial being created by Sam Vimes fighting back all those instincts and FORCING himself to behave as his conscience dictates. Vimes doesn't take bribes or let his officers do the same because, damnit, that sort of thing shouldn't happen, even if doing so would make things a lot easier. Vimes doesn't run towards sounds of screaming because he WANTS to, he forces himself to do so because somebody needs to. It's best summed up in Thud “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Your Grace.” “I know that one,” said Vimes. “Who watches the watchmen? Me, Mr. Pessimal.” “Ah, but who watches you, Your Grace?” said the inspector with a brief little smile. “I do that, too. All the time,” said Vimes. “Believe me.”

In the hands of another writer, or another series, this exchange would be weirdly dismissive. To whom should the police be accountable to? Themselves, shut up and trust us. But from Vimes, it's a different story. Vimes DOES constantly watch himself, and he doesn't trust that bastard, he's known him his entire life. The Heroic Police are not a natural state, they're an ideal, and ahnk-morpork only gets anywhere close. Vimes is constantly struggling against his own instincts to take shortcuts, to let things slide, but he forces himself to live up to that ideal and the Watch follows his example. Discworld doesn't propose any solutions to the problems with policing in the real world. We don't have a Sam Vimes to run the NYPD and force them to behave. We don't have a Carrot Ironfounderson. But it's at least a story about detectives and police that I can read without feeling like I'm being sold propaganda about the Thin Blue Line.

I like how in Night Watch Vimes has to face his younger self and has the universal experience of cringing at his younger self but realizes you need to start somewhere. You start out naive and ignorant then life bites you in the ass and you learn, unless you're Vetinari then you've always been cool.

So plain and simple yet so recognisable and adorable

the night watch and friends

apropos of nothing here's every discworld fanart i've done for inktober since i started doing inktober in 2016

I love this, I want this to be true

I like to imagine that Sam Vimes, instead of dying properly, instead got minor godhood. All watchmen at some point thank him for his actions, his actions a ripple across the Disc. There's precedent in the Duchess of Borogravia, and in his arc. He keeps getting promotions, and hates each one. What higher status could he be unwillingly raised to than divinity, eternally watching the watchman?

Anyways, that's just a headcanon i've got

Nothing will ever be as horrifying to me as Sam Vimes organizer rattling down the timeline of the fall of Ankh-Morpork and the death of the guard members, one by one, including the typically unkillable protagonists Vimes and Carrot. I can still remember the deep existential dread of then