Thursday Next: Difference between revisions

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Thursday Next lives in an [[Alternate History]]. In her world, [[Time Travel]], cloning, and genetic engineering are commonplace; resurrected dodos are the household pet of choice. The obscenely powerful [[Mega Corp|Goliath Corporation,]] which nearly singlehandedly reconstructed England after [[World War Two|World War II,]] now runs the country as a virtual police state. And literature, particularly classic literature, is very, very, ''very'' [[Serious Business]]. Writers are revered with nearly spiritual devotion, controversial claims about books and authors can be criminal, and an entire police squad, the LiteraTecs, exist to keep the literary scene in order. Thursday works for just such a unit in Swindon, with her friend and colleague, the exceedingly polite Bowden Cable.

In an effort to rescue her [[Mad Scientist|mad inventor]] uncle Mycroft from international arch-criminal [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Acheron Hades,]] a [[Card Carrying Villain|gleefully-evil]] genius with supernatural powers, Thursday discovers the Great Library, a fully [[Pocket Universe|self-contained]] world that exists within the pages of all works of literature, where all literary characters live. They're self-aware, acting out their roles when a person reads a book but chilling out and living their own lives as soon as they close it. the Great Library is governed by the Council of Genres and kept in line by Jurisfiction, ''another'' police force whose task it is to make sure the plot of every book stays the same every time someone reads it.

In an effort to rescue her [[Mad Scientist|mad inventor]] uncle Mycroft from international arch-criminal [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast|Acheron Hades,]] a [[Card-Carrying Villain|gleefully-evil]] genius with supernatural powers, Thursday discovers the Great Library, a fully [[Pocket Universe|self-contained]] world that exists within the pages of all works of literature, where all literary characters live. They're self-aware, acting out their roles when a person reads a book but chilling out and living their own lives as soon as they close it. the Great Library is governed by the Council of Genres and kept in line by Jurisfiction, ''another'' police force whose task it is to make sure the plot of every book stays the same every time someone reads it.

Such is the universe of [[Jasper Fforde|Jasper Fforde's]] meta-fictional masterpiece, the ''[[Thursday Next]]'' series. The author [[Lampshade Hanging|hangs a lampshade]] on everything and anything relating to classic literature, the tropes of police fiction and spy fiction, and even the relationship between a work of fiction and its audience. Heavy on wordplay and [[Hurricane of Puns|puns,]] the series deals with the tireless heroine's adventures balancing her work as an agent of Jurisfiction in the Great Library and LiteraTec in the outside world, to say nothing of her responsibilities as a wife and mother.

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* [[Androids and Detectives]]: Written!Thursday and [[Clockwork Creature|Sprockett]] in ''Missing''.

* [[Anvil On Head]]: ''The Eyre Affair'' pays homage to the anvil tradition in the subplot involving the Minotaur who has been tagged with a slapstick marker.

* [[Arson Murder and Jaywalking]]: The twenty-second subbasement of the Well of Lost Plots is described as "a haven for cutthroats, bounty hunters, murderers, thieves, cheats, shape-shifters, scene-stealers, brigands, and ''plagiarists.''

* [[Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking]]: The twenty-second subbasement of the Well of Lost Plots is described as "a haven for cutthroats, bounty hunters, murderers, thieves, cheats, shape-shifters, scene-stealers, brigands, and ''plagiarists.''

** although in-universe, given the nature of the Well, plagiarism is at least as bad as theft. And cheating.

** Also, Acheron Hades enjoys slow murder, torture, and flower arranging.

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* [[Fanwork Ban]]: Subverted! In book six Thursday visits the island of fanfiction, and is surprised to find it a lively place that celebrates their source material. While the locations and character are described as flat, this is stated to be a side-effect of being copied, with varying degrees of severity depending on the quality of the writer. Plus it tangentially references [[So Cool Its Awesome|Thursday and the Doctor fighting Daleks]]. Excuse me, I have some writing to do...

** Although Fforde personally does not like fan-fiction, which a few commentators found slightly hypocritical as the entire book series can be considered a classical fiction fanfic.

* [[Fire Forged Friends]]

* [[Fire-Forged Friends]]

* [[Flat Character]] : {{spoiler|In the sixth book, the written Thursday visits Fanfiction, where all the characters are of various degrees of flatness}}

** And of course there are the Generics, sort of apprentice characters who need to undergo [[Character Development]] before they're good enough to be used as main characters.

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* [[Green Aesop]]: The Short Now, caused by convenience in working with natural resources over responsible planning, depleting them, all the while claiming that there is not enough proof that the problem may be man made instead of natural - let's just say it bears some resemblance to political topics of the day. Similarily, the Stupidity Surplus.

* [[Grilling the Newbie]]: Thursday gets grilled by many characters in the unpublished book ''Caversham Heights'' (where she's hiding out from Goliath and Lavosier during her advancing pregnancy) when they find out she's an Outlander. Some of them don't believe she is an Outlander when she admits not knowing things (like "the purpose of alphabet soup"), so she has them leave off their speech descriptors and successfully identifies several speakers in order.

* [[Half Human Hybrid]]: Explicitly averted in [[Book World]], no less.

* [[Half-Human Hybrid]]: Explicitly averted in [[Book World]], no less.

* [[Happily Married]]: Thursday and Landen, [[Earn Your Happy Ending|eventually.]]

* [[Hide Your Children]]: Jenny, for good reason. {{spoiler|She doesn't actually exist, but Aornis made Thursday think she does, and Thursday only remembers this once in a while, for a short time.}}

* [[Hilarity Sues]]: The rules of international croquet are so vague and [[Aint No Rule|full of loopholes]] that as well as a team of players, each teams fields a team of lawyers (complete with substitutes) who constantly try to bend the rules their way.

* [[Houseboat Hero]]: Well, House-Seaplane Hero, in ''The Well Of Lost Plots''.

* [[I Can't Believe ~~Its~~ Not Heroin|I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin]]: Thursday's cheese-smuggling activities.

* [[I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!|I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin]]: Thursday's cheese-smuggling activities.

* [[Innocent Swearing]]: Two-year-old Friday Next in ''Something Rotten'' learns naughty words (notably "bum", "bubbies", "arse" and "pikestaff" [[Foreign Looking Font|rendered in an Old English font]]) from St. Zvlkx. Thursday speaks as if she isn't certain what he said the first time he uses them, but the second time she tells her son, "If those are rude Old English words, St. Zvlkx is in a lot of trouble--and so are you, my little fellow."

* [[In Spite of a Nail]]: When Landen gets removed from the timeline, the only detectable change beyond his absence is the literal wallpaper and curtains.

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** In ''Well of Lost Plots'', a character is responsible for clearing up narrative mistakes or "bloopholes". One example he gives is an author writing, "the daffodils bloomed in Summer", a mistake Fforde makes in ''The Eyre Affair''. He then says that he is working on a method of covering which involves saying, "Hi, I'm a hole, try not to think about it," both invoking the [[MST3K Mantra]], and [[Lampshade Hanging|hanging a Lampshade]] on [[Lampshade Hanging]] ''itself''. It really doesn't get more meta than that.

** Sometimes there's a scene where Thursday, looking for some department in the BookWorld, opens the wrong door and finds two people acting out an old joke (or something like that.) When it happens in ''First Among Sequels'' she says to herself "I keep doing that. They should label these doors better."

* [[Laser Guided Amnesia]]: One of the powers of mnemonomorphs like Aornis Hades, she can also plant memories and set up specific mental blocks so that the victim can't recall certain information, even when they are reminded of it.

* [[Laser-Guided Amnesia]]: One of the powers of mnemonomorphs like Aornis Hades, she can also plant memories and set up specific mental blocks so that the victim can't recall certain information, even when they are reminded of it.

* [[The Law of Conservation of Detail]]: [[Double Subversion|Double Subverted]] in ''Something Rotten'', when a runaway steamroller almost kills Hamlet and Thursday while they're in the OutWorld. Thursday points that, [[This Is Reality|unlike in books]], sometimes things like that have no meaning and certainly will not turn out to be vitally important at the end of the story. Then it turns out - at the end of the story - {{spoiler|it was an assassination attempt by the Minotaur}}.

** Thursday notes that the nice thing about living in BookWorld is that the little annoyances in real life is generally avoided, the car never needs refueling and the toilet paper never runs out. But there is also a profound lack of breakfast, wallpaper and smells.

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* [[They Do]]

* [[This Is Reality]]: Thursday repeatedly mentions this to Booklanders in the real world, though frequently events hint that ''her'' world isn't real either.

* [[Time Travel Tropes]]: Thursday's [[No Name Given|unnamed]] father is a rogue [[Time Police|Chronoguard]] agent, causing parodoxes left right and centre, and changing time in whatever way seems suitable. [[Time Stands Still]] whenever he visits. Time in the ''Next'' series is obviously one big [[Timey Wimey Ball]]. However, in the fifth book, {{spoiler|the plot engineers it so that time travel won't be invented in the future and therefore people in the present won't have time machines sent to them from the future, essentially killing off any possibility of Time Travel in the future books.}}

* [[Time Travel Tropes]]: Thursday's [[No Name Given|unnamed]] father is a rogue [[Time Police|Chronoguard]] agent, causing parodoxes left right and centre, and changing time in whatever way seems suitable. [[Time Stands Still]] whenever he visits. Time in the ''Next'' series is obviously one big [[Timey-Wimey Ball]]. However, in the fifth book, {{spoiler|the plot engineers it so that time travel won't be invented in the future and therefore people in the present won't have time machines sent to them from the future, essentially killing off any possibility of Time Travel in the future books.}}

** [[Lampshaded]] in the fifth book when [[Author Avatar|Landen]] talks about the headaches involved in writing about time travel in science fiction, and gives the advice to future authors planning to: "Don't".

* [[Timey Wimey Ball]]: Both Thursday's father and her grandmother respond to her confusion over time travel paradoxes by saying "Oh, Thursday. Don't be so ''linear''."

* [[Timey-Wimey Ball]]: Both Thursday's father and her grandmother respond to her confusion over time travel paradoxes by saying "Oh, Thursday. Don't be so ''linear''."

** Granny Next {{spoiler|isn't Thursday's grandmother, she's a future version of Thursday from when Thursday is a granny, using what is basically a perception filter to keep Thursday from realizing it. Thursday's grandmothers are both dead, ''and she knows that''.}}

** Thursday has seen {{spoiler|her father's death}}, but continues to interact with him on different points of his timestream.

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* [[Un Installment]]: The 'also in this series' page at the start of ''First Among Sequels'' mentions an unavailable book in between ''Something Rotten'' and itself, ''The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco''. The reason why this is the case is revealed towards the end of the book itself: {{spoiler|Thursday destroys the book from under her [[Evil Counterpart]]}}.

** Also Chapter 13 is missing from each book. (And in the [[Nursery Crime]] series). It's listed in the contents with a chapter title and fake page reference, but the chapter itself isn't there.

* [[The Un Reveal]]: Often justified thanks to [[Painting the Fourth Wall]]. For instance, in ''One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing'', {{spoiler|Written!}}Thursday is able to escape an inescapable death trap simply by later explaining in broad strokes how she escaped. Apparently, it was very clever.

* [[The Un-Reveal]]: Often justified thanks to [[Painting the Fourth Wall]]. For instance, in ''One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing'', {{spoiler|Written!}}Thursday is able to escape an inescapable death trap simply by later explaining in broad strokes how she escaped. Apparently, it was very clever.

* [[A Villain Named Zrg]]: Emperor Zhark is the villain of his own pulpy sci-fi series, but in the [[Meta Fiction|metafictional]] main story, he's one of the good guys.

* [[Weapons That Suck]]: Spike's special vacuum cleaner. Designed to suck up SEBs (Supreme Evil Beings), which Spike deals with on a near-weekly basis.

* [[Welcome to The Real World]]: At the end of ''Lost in a Good Book'', Thursday is offered the chance to hide in an [[Alternate Universe]] which sounds suspiciously similar to ours, but she rejects the option.

** In the sixth book, {{spoiler|The written Thursday leaves her book and enters the real world, where she then has to deal with the correct passage of time, gravity, a heartbeat and genuine tears}}

* [[What Do You Mean ~~Its~~ Not Heinous]]: Hades' little brother tries to follow in his [[Complete Monster]] footsteps. He does things like calling to make appointments to look at people's used cars, and ''never showing up''.

* [[What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?]]: Hades' little brother tries to follow in his [[Complete Monster]] footsteps. He does things like calling to make appointments to look at people's used cars, and ''never showing up''.

** [[Playing With|Played with]] by Hades and his henchman Mr. Delamare, who is required to perform one wicked act a day. One day, this act is driving at 73 miles per hour {{spoiler|through a shopping centre}}.

** When Mr. Delamare was given the opportunity to have the English government give into any demand he makes, he has {{spoiler|a road named after his mother}}.

* [[White Sheep]]: Lethe Hades, according to ''First Among Sequels''.

* [[Who You Gonna Call]]: Spike Stoker!

* [[Who You Gonna Call?]]: Spike Stoker!

* [[Winds of Destiny Change]]: One of the superpowers of Aornis Hades is her ability to cause deadly coincidences.

* [[Would Not Shoot a Civilian]]

* [[Writer On Board]]: Several parts of ''First Among Sequels''. Jasper Fforde is well-known for being opposed to [[Fan Fiction]], so ''FAS'' goes on a half-page detour explaining how ''[[The Lord of the Rings]]'' is being irreparably damaged by fanfiction writers.

** Which is pretty ironic considering the Thursday Next series is about fifty percent crossover fanfiction.

** Even more ironic because the character in question is talking about how more people reading the book damages it (the character's job is to perform maintanance on books as they suffer routine wear and tear from being read). That's right, don't write fan fiction, ''[[What Do You Mean ~~Its~~ Not Heinous|it causes more people to read the original work]]''.

** Even more ironic because the character in question is talking about how more people reading the book damages it (the character's job is to perform maintanance on books as they suffer routine wear and tear from being read). That's right, don't write fan fiction, ''[[What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?|it causes more people to read the original work]]''.

** The extra "wear" isn't from more readers, but the closer trawling for detail to better establish and collate the [[Canon]], which SF and Fantasy fans do more than other genres.

*** But if you wear one out too much, you have to get a new copy, which ''authors'' should love.