Thud and Blunder

""... We can let our hero have all kinds of adventures, buckle all kinds of swashes. I merely submit that he ought to do so in a world which ... makes sense. The more it does, the more the reader will enjoy -- and the more he will come back for more.""

- Poul Anderson, On Thud And Blunder, 1978.

""[It is] designed to be consumed, enjoyed, and forgotten all at once.""

- Nathan Rabin, in his review of The Scorpion King for The Onion's A.V. Club

"Thud And Blunder" is a subgenre of Heroic Fantasy that focuses heavily on personal combat. It often relies on deus ex machinas and other asspulls popping up for the hero whenever things are getting sticky -- an ally discovered among the other galley slaves, a powerful artifact is activated at just the right moment, a plucky slave girl throws herself in front of the big bad's mighty sword stroke that would ordinarily cleave the hero in twain; stuff like that.

The name comes from an essay called "On Thud And Blunder" written in 1978 by Science Fiction/fantasy author Poul Anderson, a play on "Blood and Thunder," one of the nicknames of the Sword and Sorcery genre. He did not use it in a complimentary way, but it has since then come to be adopted as vaguely affectionate term when used by people who acknowledge the shortfalls of the type but still enjoy it, while remaining a completely derogatory term to those who dislike the type.

Hallmarks of the Thud-and-Blunder story include sacrificing characterization and dialogue in favor of a roller-coaster plot and extremely Purple Prose; Anachronism Stew by the gallon; and lots and lots of Did Not Do the Research, lots and lots of Artistic License and Rule of Cool. It is the cotton candy of the fantasy genre -- it looks substantial but is mostly fluff; it can be fun, but it is not satisfying for very long; and it tends to be a Love It or Hate It thing.

The hero of a Thud-and-Blunder story is not an intellectual. He may be quite intelligent, but he prefers to take the simple way through any problem: his solution to most situations is:
 * 1) Hit it with his mighty sword or other huge implement of destruction.
 * 2) Ride it down under the trampling hooves of his great steel-shod warhorse
 * 3) Kill it some other way.

He will almost always be a Barbarian Hero and everything he does is rated "M", (for "manly"); he is always Made of Iron, while his opponents tend to all be Made of Plasticine; all his battles are incredibly one-sided, unless his capture is necessary to advance the plot. His clothing is virtually always a Loin Cloth.

The villain is most often an Evil Overlord or Evil Sorcerer, or the two combined into one, the Sorcerous Overlord. The priests of a Religion of Evil are also a popular choice. For a change of scene, the villain may be a villainess: a Dragon Lady, a Vain Sorceress or or an an evil Queen or Empress.

In terms of secondary and minor characters, expect to find at least one Distressed Damsel, plucky slave girl, or Hot Amazon wandering about. If the hero has a companion, he will most likely be a Loveable Rogue, a deposed prince, or an ex-gladiator or Galley Slave. You can also pretty much bet that an Artifact of Doom of some sort will make an appearance. There will certainly be lots of Evil Minions running around for the hero to kill; the most common types are Elite Mooks or a Henchmen Race; there may also be a Praetorian Guard or giant mooks.

The Robert E Howard Conan stories are Thud and Blunder done decently; The Eye of Argon is an excellent example of Thud and Blunder done horribly badly.


 * Conan the Barbarian in all of its various (books, movies, comics) incarnations. The (many) derivative works draw strongly on the Thud And Blunder elements of the original stories. However, the original pulps Subverted it wherever Howard could sneak a subversion past the radar; Conan wasn't just a Barbarian Hero, but a cunning rogue who, as often as not, survived by knowing when to cut his losses and run like hell.
 * The Eye of Argon
 * Hawk the Slayer
 * John Carter of Mars
 * The Gor series is a subversion; the first book is a loving homage to John Carter, but as early as the second Tarl is punished for his Thud and Blunder approach with enslavement, not for the last time. He becomes more of a Guile Hero, and very few books contain no combat at all, even in the climax. Also, the prose may be purple, but the text is dense with what could only be called "Anthropology Porn", going well beyond Shown Their Work and into Author Appeal.
 * Red Sonja
 * Thundarr the Barbarian
 * Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann shows how Super Robot anime does this trope.
 * The Warlord
 * Yor, The Hunter from the Future
 * The comic Groo the Wanderer parodies the Thud And Blunder genre unmercifully. Groo himself is not only not an intellectual, he's flat-out stupid.
 * As does the Swedish gaming-mag comic strip Birger Barbaren, but in the opposite way. The eponymous main character -- you cannot call him a hero -- is a selfish, lecherous, beer-loving fat slob of a barbarian warrior, who also happens to be really smart in crude, tricksterish way.
 * The swordsman Yeagar in the webcomic Nodwick is pretty much a typical thud-and-blunder fighter. The only real difference is that he tends to hit things with Nodwick at least as often as he does with his sword.
 * The series itself is somewhat of an aversion of this trope - while Yeagar himself is content to approach any problem with violence, it rarely actually has much of an impact on the plot; actually resolving anything significant pretty much always hinges on (in order of frequency) Nodwick's common sense, Artax's intelligence, or Piffany's general good nature. Yeagar's job is more to keep the others alive long enough to use their various traits.
 * Depending on how you look at it, either subverted, averted, or deconstructed in "Planet Hulk", seeing as every time he just goes and smashes things it actually ends up being kind of pointless, even when he's no worse than where he was--whereas when he acts intelligently, or works to save people without killing, things go really well.
 * A lot of 1970's Thor comics, to boot.
 * The Scorpion King starring Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson has it all: a villainous sorcerer (who turns out to be a sorceress, and who pulls a heel/face turn); an evil Emperor; not one, but two lovable rogue sidekicks; an elite mook; and a final Deus Ex Machina to save the day.
 * The Beastmaster is another Thud and Blunder flick, from the loinclothed hero down to the Evil Sorcerer antagonist. The hero's various animal companions have more charisma and, in the case of his weasel rogue duo, more intelligence than the hero.
 * The Baldurs Gate novelisations by Philip Athans reduce the original story to Thud and Blunder as much as they can, sacrificing plot in favor of action and actual action in favor of Gorn.
 * In Tabletop RPGs such as Dungeons and Dragons, campaigns that focus heavily on Dungeon Crawling tend to have a Thud And Blunder feel, as whatever plot exists is mostly an excuse to kill things and take their stuff.
 * Redwall is arguably Thud and Blunder For Kids.
 * He Man and The Masters of The Universe, at least aesthetically.
 * The Warhammer series The Chronicles Of Malus Darkblade is mostly this.