Vimes pulled a scrap of paper toward him. He looked at the notes he’d made yesterday,
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Vimes looks over the notes that he made regarding the dragon. While Errol feasts on anything he can get his claws on.
In my mind, this is one of the first signs of Vimes’s transition from town drunk to, well, Vimes.
I like how the composition of this turned out, but at the same time, I think this would be on the top of my list of pictures to do over… I really screwed up Vimes’s crossed legs.
“Don’t you mean pork, sir?” said Carrot warily, eying the glistening tubes.
“Manner of speaking, manner of speaking,” said Throat quickly. “Certainly your actual pig products. Genuine pig.”
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The watch arrives at the city square, where some kid with a sword is challenging the dragon. As always in Ankh Morpork, capitalism trumps public safety. In the process, Carrot and Lady Ramkin witness Cut Me Own Throat’s pork… products for the first time.
I tried to make the scene frame the crowd as much as possible. Perhaps I should have zoomed back just a little bit more.
Ridcully: I don’t want to fuck my clone because it would be gay sex and I’m not gay.
Angua:I’m not gay but I would totally fuck my clone.
Cheery Littlebottom: I’m gay but I still don’t want to fuck my clone, that’s gross and weird.
Rincewind: I don’t want to fuck my clone because my self-loathing is THAT strong.
Moist: I’d fuck my clone because who would know better how to fuck ME than ME?
Glenda: I’d totally do all sorts of weird things to my clone I’d be embarrassed to ask somebody else to do.
Sally: To be honest, fucking my clone has always been my fantasy.
Fred Colon: It’s basically the same as masturbating, right? So no big deal.
Carrot: It’s not the same as masturbating; it’d be like having sex with your twin. Wrong and bad!
Sam Vimes: I would not have sex with my clone because what if my clone is evil.
Nanny Ogg: Not only would I have sex with my clone, I’d probably make a bunch of clones and just get it on with all of them at once because that’s how pro-clone fucking I am.
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.
And god if that’s not inspirational as fuck.
I mean, you could, in some ways, say the same of Moist Von Lipwig.
Or William de Worde. Or Brutha, for that matter. Or Windle Poons. Or–
This is an archetype that Terry loved. Bless him, because we can always use the reminder: be ye never so small, so petty, so insignificant, there still exists a set of circumstances in which you may find yourself presented with an opportunity to do a hard thing. To reach out beyond your comfortable, ground down, stunted mediocrity and build something new. You may find an opportunity to arrest a dragon, or write a letter with a broader audience, or to escort a tortoise, or to sort out why a public servant isn’t doing their job. You may find yourself, unexpectedly, presented with a problem that no one else seems to be doing much about.
And if you choose to try, if you choose to earnestly use your voice and your talents–be they never so humble and small to you–to serve a greater purpose, the ripples of each choice you make can resonate so widely through the world that they shiver through the souls of generations and generations to come. If you try to sort out a hole in the world, as best you can, that is like a butterfly gently wafting its wings in the direction of a greater world.
No matter how small you are at the first step you make. No matter how tired and ground down you are or how many gentle calls you’ve missed to be bigger. You can always listen to the next chance.
And you can always, in doing so, start to tug the world into alignment.
It was because he wanted there to be conspirators. It was much better to imagine men in some smoky room somewhere, made mad and cynical by privilege and power, plotting over the brandy. You had to cling to this sort of image, because if you didn’t then you might have to face the fact that bad things happened because ordinary people, the kind who brushed the dog and told their children bedtime stories, were capable of then going out and doing horrible things to other ordinary people. It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was Us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.
“Now, this is a soldier’s song, see? You don’t look like soldiers but by the gods I’ll see you sounds like ‘em! You’ll pick it up as we goes along! Right turn! March! 'All the little angels rise up, rise up, all the little angels rise up high!’ Sing it, you sons of mothers!”
The marchers picked up the response from those who knew it.
“How do they rise up, rise up, rise up, how do they rise up, rise up high? They rise headsup,headsup,heads up–” sang out Dickens as they turned the corner.
Vimes listened as the refrain died away.
“That’s a nice song,” said young Sam, and Vimes realized that he was hearing it for the first time.
“It’s an old soldier’s song,” he said.
“Really, Sarge? But it’s about angels.”
Yes, thought Vimes, and it’s amazing what bits those angels cause to rise up as the song progresses. It’s a realsoldiers’ song: sentimental, with dirty bits.
“As I recall, they used to sing it after battles,” he said. “I’ve seen old men cry when they sing it,” he added.
“Why? It sounds cheerful.”
They were remembering who they were not singing it with, thought Vimes. You’ll learn. I knowyou will.
“I’ll tell you,” said Vimes. “A monarch’s an absolute ruler, right? The head honcho–”
“Unless he’s a queen,” said Carrot.
Vimes glared at him, and then nodded.
“OK, or the head honchette–”
“No, that’d only apply if she was a young woman. Queens tend to be older. She’d have to be a…a honcharina? No, that’s for the very young princesses. No. Um. A honchess, I think.”
Vimes paused. There’s something in the air in this city, he thought. If the Creator had said, “Let there be light” in Ankh-Morpork, he’d have got no further because of all the people saying, “What color?”
Besides, Lord Vetinari represented stability. It was a cold and clinical kind of stability, but part of his genius was the discovery that stability was what people wanted more than anything else.
He’d said it to Vimes once, in this very room, standing at this very window: “They think they want good government and justice for all, Vimes, yet what is it they really crave, deep in their hearts? Only that things go on as normal and tomorrow is pretty much like today.”
