One common myth was that women's uteruses would fly out of their bodies at speed and that one's face would melt at 50 miles per hour (something which Pratchett has the reporter Hardwick suggest to Dick). Faced with a bridge that is clearly too weak to carry the train, and insufficient time or workers to strengthen it, Moist commandeers the City's ancient golems, which are kept strictly for use only in times of national emergency.

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Feeling that the dwarfs are ready for a more progressive future, the King reveals that she is actually a Queen, and changes her name from Rhys to Blodwen, in honor of a dwarf who had been killed by the fundamentalists at her wedding. Our first major content update is coming in May 2023, and we’ll be reevaluating how much longer we’ll need to meet our complete vision after that. An ephebe originally was Greek for a young man entering military training but now has come to mean a young man between 18 and 20 entering manhood. The idea of the steam train is described as another Wild Idea, as in Moving Pictures (and its means of taking root is described in Sourcery), but this one actually succeeds in the long run.Groin Attack: Moist does this a couple times (once hoping that the dwarf he's kicking is male) and it's the traditional attack method of goblins. This campaign culminates in a palace coup in Überwald, whilst the King is at an international summit in Quirm, over twelve hundred miles away. Brain Bleach: Moist requires some after accidentally considering the possibility that goblin women have breast milk. Not quite big news, as those who read previous books will know this already, and Moist himself already knows. Page 100 - Lord Underdale is likely a combination of 'Lord Coverdale' from the TV series, Blackadder and 'Kirby Underdale' which is a town in Yorkshire.

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Rebuild your castle and convert humans into your loyal servants in a quest to raise your vampire empire. Interestingly enough, in one episode of the TV show Chuck, Big Mike mentions that he was a member of that band and was known as "Rain. Pratchett has also injected the mannerisms and life of Fred Dibnah (1938-2004) from Bolton, Lancashire, who was a steeplejack and mechanic and the epitome of the old-time Northern engineer into Dick's character as well. He makes up for it by being incredibly charming, and making an effort to remember each of his employee's names and the names of their families, and this in itself causes everyone to work twice as hard. Moist also takes a moment to tell her that her creativity would serve her much better writing penny dreadfuls, and smooths things over with her father.

King Incognito: In the build up to the book's climax, there is mention of a "legendary" stoker named Blake, who can win a fight against any of the others (which they do in their spare time).

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Since the Blackboard Monitor is well known and respected among Dwarfs, Albrecht's actions are clearly a large hint to the rest of the dwarfs. The fact that the grags and their followers live in caves, the grags influence impressionable young men to do their dirty work while themselves staying far from harms way and view every innovation and new idea as an abomination before their god Tak resonates most strongly with the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Patrician of Ankh-Morpork, Lord Vetinari, wishing to ensure that the City has appropriate influence over the new enterprise, appoints the reformed fraudster turned civil servant Moist von Lipwig to represent the government in the management of the railway. So perhaps Pratchett deliberately chose to utilize a writing style reminiscent of that era in Roundworld. They have a time-honoured and arcane key ceremony at two in the morning which is like the Changing of the Guards in other cities of the Multiverse, only louder and more obtrusive, involving the Patting of the Pockets, the I'll Swear They Were Here This Morning, and the Stone Me, They Were Here All Along, and ending with the signing-over of keys between the incoming and outgoing porters.

This is a Brick Joke: first dropped on the very first page, but as it is dropped from the outer limits of the Discworld atmosphere, it only impacts near the end, where the insubstantial "nothing" of a rogue idea finds form as Iron Goddess. is from Carole King and Gerry Goffin's song, Locomotion which was a hit for their babysitter Little Eva in 1962. On a more somber note, this is the last book published during Terry Pratchett's lifetime, and the last but one (posthumously published) Discworld book, as his daughter has stated she will not be continuing the series (rather, she will act as guardian of her father's legacy). Page 50 and following - The scene where the interspecies wedding is disrupted and the bride is killed resonates with so many inter-racial scenes throughout the years and into the present day in the Roundworld, from the Balkans, to Rwanda, to South Africa, to the deep south in the USA the list is endless.

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As the series progressed, a strange thing occurred – the Discworld, created as a setting for humorous stories, began to take on a certain solidity, as if it were striving to become a real place.Adolf Hitler didn't have to exert himself - German state railways already ran to an incredible peak of efficiency without Nazi help. Page 38 - The goblin, Of the Twilight the Darkness, refers to Moist von Lipwig as "Mister Slightly Damp" which is of course the definition of moist.