#and sam is bonkers like that

[nevertheless-moving]

unable to stop dwelling on the discworld trouser leg of time where, in the penultimate fight scene in Nightwatch, Carcer manages to kill teenage Sam Vimes.

Which means that the future that Duke Vimes came from can no longer exist, which means he can’t go home. Meanwhile you’ve got a bunch of history monks with stored up temporal energy, a prepared space outside of time, and the need to do some desperate damage control before the Auditors get involved. Death shows up, reality is unweaving, Sam is reading Carcer his discworld miranda rights because what else is he supposed to do.

and finally, with little other option, the monks de-age Sam so he fits the time period and send him back out into the fray.

(they didn't call it deageing of course. His memory is hazy, splintered during that terrible in between moment, They....took the time out of him? Sanded away the edges of his self for a terrible, workable fit? It...wasn't a good feeling.)

Just—damn. Sam Vimes having to live his whole crapsack life over again, but this time as his disillusioned-reillusioned, unwillingly-character-developed, noir-epic, Duke of Ankh, Commander Sir Samuel Vimes self. 

Younger (Older? He's never felt so Old, His steps so Childlike, reality twisting in his gut like one of Dibbler's pies) Sam Vimes walking around in a haze after the revolution. Desperate to go home, knowing he can’t. Wanting to drink. Knowing he can’t.

The whole precinct feels pity, he really took Keel’s death hard, hardly speaks except to do his job. Eventually he has to grit his teeth and start being present, because what else is there to do?

Resists the urge to drink until Colon takes the whole watch out to celebrate because -he’s going to be a father!

Come on Sammy, one drink won’t kill you— and after the first drink he’s cracking jokes and after the second hes smiling and after the third hes honestly the life of the party and sometime after that he’s crying about how he was going to be a father and my wife would be ashamed if she saw me drinking like this and— 

Oh shit, Did anyone else know he had a wife?? A PREGNANT wife??? What—aren’t you like 12—no you're 17 now aren't you but when did—

You guys n’ver met ’er—oh gods none if you ev’n know ‘er, is jus’ me...

What—when did you lose—

I lost her the same damn day I los’ ev’rythin else, whadya think...bleeding Carcer...the fuckin revolution...

So! That! Sam only vaguely remembers the night, but rumors travel faster than light on the disc, so by the next day the whole damn city knows about poor Sam brung low by the loss of his poor, tragic, pregnant wife, so young to be a widower, and the Seamstresses nod because they already knew, don’t ask them how, somethings you just have to know in that trade.

And his mother—I don’t know, sue me, I’m a time travel fiend but there’s something deeply intriguing about a man meeting his dead parent, who is somewhat younger than him, and stepping into the old relationship like a badly fitting thing that's supposed to fit well. She would know, right? How would she deal with her son’s impossible grief? Maybe she wouldn’t know—he spent most of the time out of the house, running with different street gangs, maybe he avoids her until she dies and lives with the guilt twice over. God, we don’t even know her name. There’s just so much narrative and emotional potential that I don’t even know where to start.

When he’s on duty, which is most time - it’s agonizing because at first he remembers cases, saves lives that would have been lost. But the more time passes, the hazier his memory because in the original timeline he was becoming an alcoholic. Fuck! A kid dies and he could have saved her if he hadn’t been such a drunk, if he had just remembered where the asshole lived, but it’s all a haze, and he wants to drown out his guilt, but that’s what caused this in the first place.

Good young Sammy, who spends his rare off-time in dusty libraries (and yes, the irony that he’s apparently Carrot now is not lost on him) reading gods-only-know.

It’s not like he can ask the wizards for help, cutthroat and vicious as they are now in the not-so-distant-past.

Good young Sam, who...talks to the Broken Drum’s pet Bouncer like he’s a real person and not a dumb rock? That’s a bit weird, but he’s a bit of a funny guy.

Good old Sam, who believed the testimony of the dwarf who said the humans were trying to rob him and let the dwarf go??

the PROBLEMS this man would cause, good grief. Can you imagine a moderately progressive middle aged man with some degree of begrudging diversity and equity training that he did, for all his sins, pay attention to, suddenly going back to like, 1990, going back just 30 years, and going...oh damn this is kind of fucked up, no man you can’t say that, holy shit.

Except Sam’s lived through even more rapidly shifting social moroes! There’s no seamstress guild, there’s no women allowed inside the university, there’s no black ribboner’s society. People hunted trolls for their teeth! But Sam can’t just unlearn everything, and he can’t shut up, and he has no real luck and anyway he would absolutely get himself (temporarily) fired.

FUCK. Sam has no idea what to do with that. None. Zero clue. Wanders around in a haze until that dwarf he saved from police brutality finds him and insists on repaying the debt. No, he insists, do you have any idea what debt means to a dwarf?

“Sort-of?” he replies hesitantly, and that honest admission of incomplete knowledge shows a hell of a lot more respect and understanding than any self proclaimed dwarf-expert ever did.

Gets a job as a surface man, hauling rocks into the city. It’s backbreaking work, but, in true Discworld fashion, it’s also one hell of a workout (again the irony of being Carrot is not lost him. he freezes for a minute while hauling a rock cart, when he remembers he's technically Lost Nobility too, in a strict sense, but someone curses at him in the street and he's comfortingly grounded)

And here is where this au slides into a SPECTACULAR romantic comedy, BEAR WITH ME. Because in his time on the Watch he’s already done noir, action adventure, war story, detective who dunnit, psychological horror, but guards guards only allowed him to be a romance protagonist in an extremely limited context.

Give me righteous, twenty-something-looking, can’t-say-he-doesn’t-have-style, young Sam Vimes, not an alcoholic,  being fed three square meals a day by his dwarven forced found family, hauling rocks. He is startled to find him bumping his head on a low hanging bar that he doesn’t think used to be there, eventually realizing that he’s an inch or two taller than he remembers. Huh. Guess all that bearhuggers really did stunt his growth.

Still doesn’t get what some of the looks from women he’s getting are about, sure, he’s dirty but so is everyone else. Fine, he took his shirt off, but it’s hot out, there’s far wrinklier than him hauling heavy loads, get a life. 

Happens to glance in the Ankh one day when it’s particularly slow and shiny and is startled to realize that he might be turning heads for a different reason. Oh. Right, not that he was ever a heartbreaker, but he did alright for himself... when he was a younger and his face hadn’t been broken so many times. Which...it isn't now.

Is mildly disturbed by the revelation.

Especially once things blow over at the precinct and what with high mortality rates, he ends up with getting hired again. The boys are delighted to have him back, nevermind that he’s an odd one, noone is ever quite in your corner like Vimsey, absence makes the heart fonder, no one else works that hard, and he’s not even competition for promotion. All around great guy, we should set him up with somebody and just, no.

It just keeps getting worse! He’s literate! He’s a feminist! He believes abuse victims! He’s got a tragic backstory! He’s unreasonably good in a fistfight! He’s kind to animals! Word gets around that there’s a good man on the watch and he’s just waiting for a good woman to come snap him up. The widower excuse doesn’t hold people off completely, and for some it’s its own sort-of appeal. 

Things REALLY become stressful after he rescues that carriage full of noblewoman.

What’s he supposed to do? Let them get robbed? Or worse? Chasing down and beating up 10 goons is as easy as beating up one, when they’re that stupid, getting separated like that, drunk and distracted, and he knows these streets better than anyone, really it’s nothing. And oh lord he’s Modest too.

I mean, they were genuinely greatful, as genuine as people like that are capable of being, the skill having grown rusty. And then there is something...magnetic about the man. An air of command.

So, soon enough you get Lady Marigold of Marigrave calling on Treckle Road for that gallant young officer who rescued them, she really needs to thank him. And Viscountess Elanor Thitzferal specifically requesting that he guard her at her next soiree. And Baroness Julieta van Shoeholten insisting that he come to her home while her husband’s away, for... manly protection.

Aaaah just zero sympathy from the guys. None. 'It’s become a competition, they’re just trying to see who can get me into bed first, it’s like I’m a piece of meat, you can’t send me sir, the Marquess greeted me in a nightee last time you made me go to—' and 'small gods Vimes are you even listening to yourself, shut the hell up'.

Simultaneous to this, (again this is several years into the timeline) swamp dragon accessories come into style. Which means abandoned swamp dragons scrounging on the street. Vimes takes one back to his apartment, blows his paycheck on dragon medicine, and eventually, heart in his chest, brings it to the Ramkin estate. The sunshine orphanage doesn’t even exist yet and he’s just standing outside the gates like an idiot, what is he thinking. Turns around, but her carriage is pulling up and—

well. they meet. it's cute. he's never felt so young. he's never felt so old, too old for her, too poor—

and certainly her thoughts linger too long on the awkward, kindly, handsome young commoner, but is it any wonder she doesn't quite connect it to the stern, dangerous, sexy young guard the ladies seem to be in some quiet, cuthroat competition over?

i have this gorgeous, absurd scene in my head in which Vimes is strong armed into standing guard at some high society soiree and one of the pushiest ladies insists he dance with here, or, if he prefers, if he's not confident about his skills, he can dance with her in-private at her home and he’s like [grinding teeth, looking for a way out, seeinf one] “I would be honored to dance with you.”

Steps right into some ultra-complex dance with multiple partner swaps (she never thought he'd pick this one, devilishly intimidating to one not strictly trained, and you barely spend anytime with your first partner).

But he does alright. Better than alright, for a common man, sometimes misstepping but his hands and feet always end up where they need to be. Raises several eyebrows part way into the song because he's throuwing in some slightly scandalous, no innovative, extra lifts and twirls that wouldn't become fashionable for another decade or two. Who even is that guy? Some out of towner? No, no he's in a guards uniform...how very strange.

Gets to Sybll and she's used to embarrassment during these dances, she tries to get out of them when she can... but can't always. Men awkwardly skipping the lifts, or worse, trying and failing. But him — oh it's him, the one who helped little Erold, and looked at her like—like—well like she was someone beautiful. And he's doing it again, and he's strong and there's a quiet moment where she's in the air, they lock eyes, and the rest of the room melts away.

And then the partners change again, the moment ended.

Just...living throught it all again. To the left, a dance he almost knows the steps to, throwing others off balance with erratic moves , honest mistakes, and delibrate stepping on toes. Improvising. Ruining. Improving. Getting far, far too much attention.

Hes almost excited when the first assassains start coming after him. It's like a hobby.

Everyone tells him he should get a hobby.

Interactions with young vetinari...I don't have the energy to write it all down, the slow circling in on each other, both burning with the need to fix the city, save it, their city.

needless to say he ends up fired again, life under real threat after offending some high lord.

Conveniently enough he has an employment opportunity- bodyguard to fucking Vetinari on his 'grand sneer.' The bastard knows vimes isn't what he seems, though sam is pretty sure that he doesnt know the exacts.

Vetinari hypothesis:(the ghost of keel? Keels son, with some hereditary curse? Or a larger spirit of justice possessing a string of unrelated souls? He knows things he shouldn't- mind reader? Fortune teller? Havelock once arranged for a wizard to bump into him on the street, the magical fool gave an odd double look and then muttered something about destiny looping in on itself giving him a headache. Destiny? Lost noble? And hes far too familiar with sybyl, one of the few bearable noblewomen in this city. And his thoughts on guilds, when havelock can trip him into speaking... Most of all, if hes reading him at all correctly (for all the mystery hes not that hard to read, unless thats a very clever cover) then it seems that behind those dark haunted eyes is Respect. Loyalty. For vetinari. What an interesting man. A puzzling asset. An intriguing threat. )

Did I mention the timeline is changing, healing slowly around the place where it was torn? Healing enough around scars to perhaps get some flexibility back, with some painful stretches and...massaging of said scar tissue?

And hes heading to unresting uberwald, a place where a werewolf pack still hunts humans and, truely unrelated but perhaps equally exhausting, an eldritch spirit of vengeance just might be looking to stretch its legs in a hapless vessel?

Opening drabble Vimes Vetinari Meta (Unwell) Scene from the Uberwald Grand Sneer

[anonymous-tals]

I think this show is the most applicable and accurate I've ever seen this meme format.

[bardicious]

Putting this in it's own post, but SO sick of the narrative bringing up Sam not looking for Dean in purgatory. Like, seriously, this show needs to shut the fuck up with this bs. I have very much two ways of looking at this:

Sam didn't know Dean was in Purgatory, man BLEW up, and presumably died. Sam was left ALL alone after Dean disappeared. Sam who only a few months before was on the verge of insanity, who barely recovered from his cage trauma. So Sam has a mental break down, my personal headcanon is that he made Amelia and the dog up to cope. But even if he didn't do that than he was still using Amelia and the dog to cope with his brother's death. He literally left the hunter life completely, presumably because he couldn't handle it. And I honestly think he would have died if he kept going.

Removing these scenarios, if people are so obsessed with Sam just hitting a dog and shacking up with it's vet, ignoring ALL Sam's mental issues, let's say Sam just did all of that, abandoned Dean because he so obviously didn't care about Dean, didn't even try to find him, all because they promised they wouldn't, do y'all realize how fucking out of character that is? Y'all realize how bad that writing is? It's actually insane. It's not something Sam would do in his right mind.

It's why I completely ignore fics that focus on Sam actually looking for Dean, personally I love the cage trauma inserting itself so bad that Sam has to find a way to not just shoot himself in the head. Find that kind of story fun. So we're either dealing with Sam was severely mentally ill and couldn't look for Dean, OR it's bad fucking writing. Bad writing that the showrunners could not get over. And god, it's SO aggravating.

[angelsdean]

a key facet of siblinghood is sitting around diagnosing your parents and studying them like bugs under a microscope. salmondean should've done this

[cryptidcalling]

Arguments for why characters are """Minor coded""" are getting TRULY. RIDICULOUS. Just saw a TikTok comment arguing that Maru feels too young to romance in Stardew Valley because she 1: Wears overalls 2: Doesn't have a college degree 3: Lives with her parents 4: Her dad makes protective comments about her

These can all be very easily explained as normal ass adult shit for various reasons, but OVERALLS? We're claiming that a character wearing overalls makes them seem like a minor???

[atlanticsea]

still cant believe sam was a victim of a literal hate crime and the show was like well! live laugh love! it's genuinely INSANE. the dubai air arc wasn't Perfect but at least you saw like. public actions and support from the team and press and ACTUAL STUFF GOING ON, but when sam's restaurant gets LITERALLY DESTROYED by racists you don't see the other players support sam??? make a statement by retaking ownership of the shut up and dribble slogan??? SUPPORT HIM PUBLICALLY??? i'm endlessly disappointed by the way the show carelessly treats its characters of colour and refuses to confront the depths of the racism they face sam i'm so so so sorry.

[cdroloisms]

forgive me my demons but i see this take so much and it drives me a little crazy . c!Sam is stupid, obviously. He has no self-awareness, he somehow completely misses on the fact that his actions have social ramifications, he has a sense of entitlement a mile high and thinks that everyone automatically should fall in line and agree with his authority just because he decides that he has it. he navigates conversations with the grace of a wrecking ball because he assumes that everyone will agree with him being In The Right and therefore doesn't actually go for much more convincing half the time than "do what i say or you'll end up locked up in an inescapable prison." his moral compass is a roulette wheel and his justifications incomprehensible.

but at the same time, c!Sam is far from unintelligent. like, not just anyone was going to CREATE and then RUN pandora's fucking vault. he made a world eater ?? if there's like anyone on the server that could reasonably create shit to cause mass destruction across the server other than like the literal fucking nukes, then yeah it'd be him, see the world eater again. sure, he makes the craziest fucking assumptions off the fact that he's Right And Justified And The Ultimate Authority And Everyone Should Agree With That, but he's also able to lie and manipulate and gaslight and coerce and threaten pretty much without breaking a sweat if he ever deems doing so necessary for his own goals, and it's not like the methods by which he does so are like, all that clumsy either. like people absolutely bought his whole deal early on in the prison arc, believing him to be a well-meaning, burdened Warden doing Whatever It Takes for the good of the server, which did in large part have to do with how his character talked about the prison to others and such, etc. just because c!sam is crazy bonkers and expects his ex to forgive him chopping their arm off doesn't mean that he's completely incapable of being pretty damn convincing at some points.

and like, even more importantly, his being dumb really didn't make him ANY less intimidating. i'd argue that it made him A LOT WORSE, honestly! just because his moral bullshit is twisted up in knots doesn't mean that he's any less dangerous for it. c!sam is, honestly, from the top of my head, one of the most casual about being violent on the server, purely because he believes he has a Right to it. he believes that people owe him obedience by virtue of who he is. he threw several people into pandora's vault WITHOUT LIKE, ANYONE KNOWING just because he decided that they deserved to be put in prison. he kidnaps a toddler??? c!Sam really doesn't bend himself in half trying to justify things according to someone else's moral system; as he literally does in that one scene with c!Bad during the stream where they investigated Sam Bucket, he literally just. is the epitome of the guy that lets himself do shit because he has a self-written permit that says i do what i want. the only thing getting in the way of c!sam's bullshit is c!sam, and i think that people honestly chronically overestimate how much he holds himself back from horrific violence. he stabbed a teenager to Make A Point about his authority? he repeatedly threatens hannah, one of his own employees, because of things she did while being mind controlled--and then like, uses this to excuse himself of? workplace harassment? in the stream after techno escapes with dream, he literally MAKES UP A REASON to be really fucking angry at dream and then threatens TO TORTURE HIM over it. when new people joined the server he would threaten them with a sword for asking questions about the prison in a way that seemed too 'dream sympathetic.' and he regularly tells people that he would commit all the atrocities again, including ponk, because he's entirely 100% convinced that everything he does is justified?

and a lot of the stuff people hold against him, like. sure, his plan to contain technoblade didnt work, but it SURE DID WORK BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE THAT TRIED, DIDNT IT? like techno would've been decently screwed if he didn't have a statis chamber set up. and well, the situation with dream speaks for itself--he was stuck in there for ten months. a lot of what people attribute to c!Sam's stupidity really does very little if anything to make him less scary--less effective, maybe, but for every time his moral bullshit gets in the way of him getting something that he wants there's probably a few other times you can find where his ability to justify himself out of anything makes him do something fucking ridiculous . anyway i dont even have a point to all of this except c!sam is scary as fuck bro

[shostakobitchh]

me, crying with writing James’ chapter with a sinus infection

[jils-things]

EUDHGDB

[barisiscourtroom]

wow. way to disrespect my wishes, anon.

normally i would have answered an ask like that, it was anti Rollins but not violently hateful, but since you clearly sent it as a response to me asking people NOT to send me Rollins hate, i will not.

and going forward, i will not answer to anything anti Rollins.

i still don't ship Rollisi, i still think she's not perfect and that she has fucked up, but i also know that that's the point, no one is perfect, as these shows constantly shove down our throats.

so while i previously could entertain some wanky salt sessions where i went a bit anti Rollins, going forward it'll only make me think of hateful assholes like you. the kind that makes fandom a less fun place to be. the kind that never respects other people's wishes because you have an opinion and it's more important than anything else that you get to say it, regardless of the consequences. to take another fandom as an example: the kind of people that has made me hate Destiel to the point where i get annoyed 98% of the time i see anything Destiel, because some of the hellers are so fucking disgusting (and loud) in their hate towards anything they deem icky (ie: anything that isn't their ship. ie: Wincest and Sam, two of my favorite things).

and i'm not doing that. this blog probably wouldn't have been a great place for Rollisi shippers and Rollins fans, not the worst but not great, but after you, anon? they'll be fine here. because i refuse to indulge in your disgusting hate campaign.

[crowvainn]

going insane going insane (ducktales s3 ep 5, incoming [messy and all over the place] yap session hehe)

[asgardian--angels]

right so clip #2 has confirmed for me that we will indeed not survive this episode

[jackienautism]

what if.... what if i make a before i fall AU w/ abi as sam and emma as lindsay.... what if

[pondslime]

shoutout to that one masters of horror movie I watched on ye olden youtube at the tender age of 16. which was like. a retelling of frankenstein’s monster? maybe? kinda? about this nervous lookin little guy who wants to learn how to bring the dead back to life. 

the whole movie eventually culminates in some sexy married lady he meets getting GANGBANGED in a CEMETARY by a bunch of rotting decaying zombies

what a film. that was

[weidli]

oh so 1x22 really is exactly calculated to make me specifically go fucking feral huh

[babyfacedrage]

What used to be mine- dean stops trying after castiel is gone and Sam and garth are trying everything to get him to live.

It’s so beautifully written but it’s very sad with a happy ending ending. This fic makes me go feral.

I love post confession fics where dean is still in denial or refuses to address The Event for whatever reason and it’s just cas’ personal saw chamber of having to deal with that. Delicious 10/10