The year that Tiffany Aching danced with the Wintersmith, there was a hard frost in Ankh-Morpork the night of May the 19th.
For the most part, it went unnoticed. There was no snow, and, unlike on the surrounding plains, people didn’t grow many things in the city. That was part of the problem, Sam Vimes learned as he sat through meeting after interminable meeting. Anhk-Morpork imported its food, and at the moment the crops that were supposed to be feeding the city in a few months were out freezing in their fields. He listened to Lord Vetinari and the Guild leaders and some panicked representatives from the Sto Plains talk about supply chains and international imports and which crops could still be re-sown until his ears ached.
As he marched home that night, he didn’t notice that every lilac he passed was shedding, green buds that had just been beginning to swell when the frost hit littering the ground at his feet. He didn’t notice until he woke up on the 25th of May and realized with a jolt that he hadn’t smelled a single lilac the previous day. Normally, the city was thick with the scent and he did his best to ignore it until the day when he couldn’t.
Because it’s the Glorious 25th, I am of course thinking of Sam Vimes today.
And the thing about Vimes as a hero is that he’s so extreme in personality, but also so deeply relatable.
Carrot, for example, (and of course it’s not an accident that Carrot is there as comparison) is your typical fantasy hero. And he’s not relatable at all. He’s Good in a way that most people will never be, can never be. There’s something God-touched about his goodness. And his goodness isn’t…super effective. I mean, it is a little. But no, who is it that really creates and continues the sweeping change of Discworld, over and over again? It’s Sam Vimes.
Sam Vimes, who spent most of his life drunk and in a gutter. Who burnt out from his unfair job, unjust world, and unappreciated caring and gave up. For YEARS AND YEARS he gave up.
Until he finally met a situation that was so intense it forced him to care again.
And lord, that is so COMFORTING. That you can fuck up your whole life for a couple decades and then still answer the call when it comes. Save the day and push for changes. Be the sand in the gears of industry, fight impossible odds and win over and over, while complaining about having to do it the whole time.
Vimes as we mostly know him is a character our world desperately needed. Someone who keeps pushing and pushing against overwhelming injustice, even when it seems like the powers that be are stacked so high against you.
But also how much more powerful to say “this character was once a total waste of space.” He was ground down by daily life and constant injustice. But he didn’t stay that way forever.
POV: you’re painting some graffiti on a wall when His Grace, the Duke of Ankh, Sam Vimes comes strolling up behind you and leans on your shoulder. He considers it for a moment while he rummages in a pocket for a cigar.
“Letters need to be bigger,” he tells you while he lights a match. “And make sure to underline ‘ALL’ and ‘BASTARDS.’ Wouldn’t want anyone missing the point.”
I love the dynamic in the Discworld fandom on this site, I think it’s mainly because there are a lot of dormant fans, if you will, who’ve read and loved the books for years but haven’t engaged much recently, who sort of reappear whenever a fun post is doing the rounds. It’s fantastic. We get the cozy small fandom vibe without the screaming matches, but also get the popular posts from time to time, y'know?
YEP. In fact for some people it’s Emotions Day right now.
To everyone tagging and commenting with some variation of “Oh, I almost forgot that it’s tomorrow!”
“Damn! Damn! Damn! Every year he forgot. Well, no. He never forgot. He just put the memories away like old silverware that you didn’t want to tarnish. And every year they came back, sharp and sparkling, and stabbed him in the heart. And today, of all days…”
The year that Tiffany Aching danced with the Wintersmith, there was a hard frost in Ankh-Morpork the night of May the 19th.
For the most part, it went unnoticed. There was no snow, and, unlike on the surrounding plains, people didn’t grow many things in the city. That was part of the problem, Sam Vimes learned as he sat through meeting after interminable meeting. Anhk-Morpork imported its food, and at the moment the crops that were supposed to be feeding the city in a few months were out freezing in their fields. He listened to Lord Vetinari and the Guild leaders and some panicked representatives from the Sto Plains talk about supply chains and international imports and which crops could still be re-sown until his ears ached.
As he marched home that night, he didn’t notice that every lilac he passed was shedding, green buds that had just been beginning to swell when the frost hit littering the ground at his feet. He didn’t notice until he woke up on the 25th of May and realized with a jolt that he hadn’t smelled a single lilac the previous day. Normally, the city was thick with the scent and he did his best to ignore it until the day when he couldn’t.
Every year May 25th comes around and every year I have the need to put into words just why this book stayed with me for so long. But mostly it comes down to this: despite Night Watch’s sudden shift to a darker, heavier tone, it avoids being unnecessarily cruel to its characters just for the sake of plot. And of course, this is true of all the Discworld books, people striving to be better, to do better, but I think it’s significant in context of how dark this book is - especially since going by chronological reading order, this is the bleakest book we encounter up until this point.
This Ankh-Morpork that we’re submerged in is so alien at that point in her timeline, it’s gruesome and cruel and oppressive because it’s under a gruesome, cruel and oppressive tyrant. Yet despite that, there is still kindness in the heart of the book - it values old Vimes’ mercy and young Sam’s innocence, it values the fact that Vimes wants to avoid undue violence, to save as many as he can, and shield people from the tyranny for as long as he can.
It’s such an emotionally charged book and there is a lot of darkness in the story itself- a blood-thirsty serial killer, power-hungry men, ruthless paranoia, and the awful, inhumane underbelly of a regime - but where most other books would have done so, it avoids traumatizing its characters just to establish that. Darker shifts in tone so often entails that the narrative doles out meaningless suffering and trauma just to establish itself. Night Watch ultimately avoids that, because it uses other means to make the text feel heavy and oppressive. Part of it is from the plot itself, in that Vimes knows what happens behind closed doors, he know what Swing is capable of and the knowledge of that threat is high-risk enough to let readers know of the stakes.
The main emotional conflict instead comes from Vimes battling with himself, reconciling with wanting to go home versus, well, Sam Vimes being Sam Vimes, which means doing his best at saving everyone, history, timeline and causality be damned. We know that young Sam will become cynical and bitter and drunk somewhere down the line, we know that half the Night Watchmen will die, we know that the city will remain cruel despite this Hail Mary attempt at revolution. Which is why the narrative is so intent on telling us that Vimes’ kindness matters - in mentoring young Sam, in getting the prisoners off the Hurry-Up Wagon, in preventing undue riots and undue brutality, in keeping the fighting away from Barricade as long as possible. The city’s going to hell in a hand basket, might as well make people’s lives easier.
Vimes can’t save Ankh-Morpork from history taking its due course, but the powerful emotional catharsis is seeing him coming to the decision to try and save everyone anyway – simply because he can’t envision himself notdoing it. So he digs his heels in and makes whatever difference he can in the moment.
BecauseNight Watch in an inevitable tragedy - only one of the two stories can have a happy ending and in order for Sam Vimes to go back to the present, to his wife and his son and his Watch and his city, the revolution has to fail or else that timeline ceases to exist. There is no way for him to save both his men and his future but he’ll be damned if it doesn’t try - he wouldn’t be Sam Vimes otherwise. Every time it I re-read it still feels like he’s that close to succeeding.
It could have so easily been grimdark and ~gritty~ but ultimately it avoids because it centres on a few basic themes that forms the core in the story. The heart of it is about camaraderie of a handful of men too weird and incompetent and ugly, the tentative hope in the uprising, and the sheer bloody determination of Sam Vimes’ refusal to give up on the people around him.
having just re-read this book, I feel like Lu-Tse tells us very plainly what the stakes are. he says that nowhere in all the quantum multiverse is there a universe in which Sam Vimes, as he is now, kills his wife. and that little phrase, ‘as he is now,’ is the crux, and it is emphasized even in the original text.
and then it is repeated later on, this idea that there is no universe where Sam Vimes, as he is now, as in this Sam Vimes, our Sam Vimes, wouldn’t do every damn thing he could to fight for these men and do the job in front of him.
so what would happen, then, if Sam Vimes – or John Keel – didn’t fight? if he said “the hells with it” and walked away? young Sam wouldn’t grow into our Sam at all. none of the future would exist. and maybe there would be universes spawned in which Sam Vimes would kill his wife. would go corrupt. would go like Carcer, for that matter, because Carcer, as he tells us, is just a man whose Beast doesn’t have a leash. Sam’s Beast does. Sam can call his when he needs it, and send it back into the dark.
but what if it didn’t? what if Sam Vimes didn’t have those controls? can you imagine what he’d be capable of? so yes. that is what is at stake. Keel!Vimes has to fight, even knowing the outcome, because in a very literal way, he wouldn’t be Sam Vimes if he didn’t. because he wouldn’t grow up to beSam Vimes as he is now. he’d grow up to be another Carcer.
ALT
