Status Quo Is God/Literature

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Examples of Status Quo Is God in Literature include:

  • The entire point of the Wheel of Time series is that this trope is almost literal truth. The Creator made the Wheel of Time and, by design, it makes time cyclical and all major events will eventually happen again and again in some fashion, without end. The Big Bad seeks to destroy the Wheel of Time, which would upset the status quo. The good guys seek to prevent this, so maintenance of the status quo is the Good Guy Prime Directive.
    • The fact that the Wheel of Time can only be destroyed by destroying the universe might also have something to do with it.
  • The Red Dwarf novel Backwards, written by Rob Grant (who co-wrote the original six seasons of the television show). In this book, the "best end" Grant could come up with was having everything revert to as it is in the TV series, in spite of two of the cast dying and the other two being reverted in age by 10 years.
  • The novels of PG Wodehouse, which typically begin with a disruption of the status quo—an engagement broken off, a cook threatening to resign, Bertie growing a moustache—and end with its restoration. Jeeves is the archetypal status quo-restorer.
  • Massively averted in the Wild Cards series. The introduction of an alien genetic engineering agent that causes mutations and grants some people superpowers onto Earth in 1946 results in a significant diversion from real world history. Numerous historical figures and events end up going down different paths (for example, Fidel Castro ends up staying in baseball and the Cuban revolution never happens, thus altering the dynamic of the whole Cold War)
  • Sisterhood series by Fern Michaels: The author certainly averts or subverts this trope! The first 7 books have the Vigilantes get Revenge on the people who wronged them as well as changing the status quo to improve their lives. Then they become fugitives, and have to avoid getting caught, as well as fighting injustice. By the book Game Over, they finally get pardons from the president, as well as become employees of Henry "Hank" Jellicoe. Then the last 3 books have the Vigilantes take down Jellicoe, and some CIA people. The president makes the Vigilantes a secret government task force, and a number of the Vigilantes retire to more normal lives. You could say that the point of the series is to turn this trope on its head!
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