mickmercury:

an incomplete list of iconique Sam Vimes Moments™:

• arresting a dragon
• running through the streets of ankh-morpork naked
• running through the woods of uberwald naked and fighting off werewolves with his bare fucking hands
• telling the ancient personification of darkness and vengeance to fuck off

• “Well, Reg, tomorrow the sun will come up again, and I’m pretty sure that whatever happens we won’t have found Freedom, and there won’t be a whole lot of Justice, and I’m damn sure we won’t have found Truth. But it’s just possible that I might get a hard-boiled egg.”

• arresting an entire war
• the ginger beer trick
• reluctantly acquiring yet more titles, being embarassed
• responds to being told the watch can’t interfere with the aforementioned war by handing in his badge and raising a militia
• just no fucking clue how boats work
• That! Is!! Not!!! My!!!! Cow!!!!!
• giving up all hope of returning to a future with his wife and child to stay in the past and fight in a revolution he knows he can’t win because failing to try to help people is utterly antithetical to the fundamental state of being Sam Vimes
• “when the shouting started she knew Sam was alive and well, because only Sam made people that angry”
• if anyone’s setting fire to this city it’s going to be me (ankh-morpork has burned down at least twice already at this point)
• arresting fucking Havelock Vetinari

• “I’ll teach him to walk! I’m good at teaching people to walk!”

• getting annoyed at the idea that the assassins are no longer willing to accept any amount of money to kill him
• defusing a riot with a cigar and a mug of cocoa
• throwing fucking Havelock Vetinari over his shoulder
• all of the international incidents because he’s fundamentally incapable of not being salty to The Man
• despite being The Man
• telling Vetinari to shut up
• Vetinari shutting up when Vimes told him to
• stopping all of ankh-morpork’s traffic because reading to his son before bed is infinitely more important
• getting obscenely rich, hating all of it except the bubble baths
• “Who are you, pray?” “The law, you sons of bitches!”

• “How dare you? How dare you! At this time! In this place! They did the job they didn’t have to do, and they died doing it, and you can’t give them anything. Do you understand?”

• arresting himself
• every single fucking noir and western and cop movie one-liner
• having so many near-death experiences that Death calls them “near-Vimes experiences” and brings a book along
• fistfight on a ship being hit by a river tidal wave in the middle of a storm
• “a watchman is a civilian you inbred streak of piss”
• gleefully pointing out to the assassins that he does in fact technically own the place
• ordering rebels to take down their barricades and rebuild them properly

mickmercury:

• cheery accidentally called him ‘dad’ once and he replied without thinking about it and then both of them silently came to the understanding that this incident would never be mentioned again
• he has at least one stupid tattoo he got as a stupid teenager. you know that one bit in Thud! about his hatred of Clues where he gives the example of a drunk 17-year-old getting a tattoo that makes people think he’s a sailor even though he can get seasick on pavement? there’s nothing hypothetical about that example
• sergeant colon is the only member of the watch who knows about it because the guy practically raised him starting in his late teens
• sybil thinks it’s cute
• he is short. childhood malnutrition will do that to a guy. but like, REALLY short.
• omnian vimes
• this isn’t even a headcanon but my favorite canon detail about him is that he lines his razor up with the Hub because he believes in folk superstition that doing that keeps it sharp? I love that so much. I love him so much
• he’s one of those people who pretty much never knows what the date is so he’s garbage at holidays and anniversaries. Sybil had to ask Sgt. Colon when his birthday was.
• total tangent but do you ever just wonder how the FUCK Nobby ended up as the quartermaster for the army of Pseudopolis????? I can’t stop thinking about this
• sometimes he goes to parties with Sybil and she manages to coax him out of whatever shadow he’s found to lurk in and dance with her. they’re both terrible at it and they have a great time, especially when people give them rude looks.
• he takes advantage of the ability to see/Know Things in the dark to creep up on people and deliver one-liners at them. what’s the point of being a boogeyman to half the world if you don’t get to be Dramatique about it
• also to sneak downstairs at night without a light and make himself the kind of sandwich that Sybil disapproves of
• but also, Young Sam is NEVER going to be able to get away with sneaking around at night? or actually anything? can you imagine having an incredibly suspicious dad who can literally always know what you’ve done in a dark room
• theres a 100% chance that Sam Vimes Arresting Anything is a meme on the Disc
• so is his list of titles