Talk:Book:Thud!

Dribble Dragon

I'm not sure if this is a relevant fact, or purely coincidence. Sam Jr has a pet dragon called Dribble. At Wonderland Park in Telford (which has been around for many years) has a castle called Dribble Dragon Castle which includes a softplay area for young children to play in. Is it possible that Pterry is alluding to this place, or is it a bit of coincidental alliteration?

I've done a bit of searching, and I've found this photo here of the castle: http://www.virtual-shropshire.co.uk/gallery/wonderland_telford/v15_8_DSC_0013 StephenBuxton 00:40, 22 December 2006 (CET)

Someone with an original please fill in the number of pages...--Old Dickens (talk) 21:04, 23 September 2013 (GMT)

The Chicken

I've never understood the point of Rascal living in fear of The Chicken. I'm not even 100% sure I understand the relationship between Rascal and The Chicken, even having read Thud dozens of times.

Rascal lives in mortal fear of The Cicken, to the extent that he writes notes in code and takes steps to prevent The Chicken discovering his movements. Ridiculous, right? But Rascal dies choked by feathers. The implication seems that The Chicken was somehow real, that Rascal was right to fear it. Perhaps The Chicken was simply part of Rascal's mind, in a Pointer and Pickles way.

But why? It sure seems to me that The Chicken is an unfired Chekhov's Gun. Which means that I absolutely must be missing something.

The only payoff I can see for The Chicken is that "Awk" is the magic word for causing the cube to speak. Is that it? Is the whole Rascal/Chicken element of the story just humorous backstory explaining why Rascal, and no other human, got the cube to speak? And setting up Vimes for figuring out the magic word at the end in the Cave of Kings?

Normally I'd expect that there's some roundworld reference here. Is there some real artist who had a mental illness relating to barnyard animals? A real artist who had, say, a sexual affinity for chickens (or was accused of such)? An artist killed by chickens? I did a wee bit of research, but couldn't find anything relevant. (I did find a 1979 set of Dr. Who episodes in which a professor is assumed to be breeding chickens, but really he's plotting to steal the Mona Lisa to finance his time experiments. Interesting, but not useful here.).

If not a roundworld reference, is there some other payoff in the story that I've missed? Any thoughts? Moishe Rosenbaum (talk) 22:28, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

Dozens of times! Moishe, mein boy, sit, take a glezl veyn; you'll get fercockt! Anyway...these things are sent to try us. The Author never worried about making it easy or even comprehensible; he once said that all the references were jokes, we just often missed parts of the set-up. Stinky, the Goblin with no real name or back-story has bothered me. I want to connect him to the story-book Goblin of Vimes' childhood and he feels imaginary, but of course other people can see him. The best remedy for these situations is fan fiction, whether published or just behind your eyes. I didn't believe Lady Roberta was actually Vetinari's aunt but I wrote a fan-fic supposing that she was. I still don't know. AgProv has dozens of them, of course.

As for Chekov's gun, the chicken is an essential guide to the Cube. Lose the chicken and you have to write another means of discovering its password.--Old Dickens (talk) 01:14, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

Link to the game

Note that www.thudgame.com now points to a FourEcks law firm's website. Perhaps the link at the bottom should point elsewhere?