History Literature / ThursdayNext

* BadassFamily: The Next family. Thursday, Joffy and the late Anton are all war veterans, their unnamed father is a time criminal who exists despite continual efforts by the Chronoguard to make him RetGone, Mycroft and his wife Polly are genius inventors, Thursday's unseen aunt April Next invented the Gravitube (a method of transporation that ''goes through the center of the earth''), and her mother Wednesday worked in [=SpecOps=]-3 (which later books revealed dealt with ''alternate universes''). The only members of the family that don't qualify are Mycroft's kids Orville and Wilbur Next, who inherited exactly none of their parents' intelligence, and Jenny Next, Thursday's daughter, [[spoiler:because she doesn't exist]].
* BadassNormal: Thursday Next. She's a veteran of the Crimean War and has [=SpecOps=] training, an eye for detail, a high degree of literacy, but she's just a normal human being. Despite she saves both the real and literary worlds several times over during the course of her series.

** ''Literature/OldYeller'''s ending apparently used to be so bleak that it put children into traumatic shock.

* TwentyMinutesIntoThePast: The first quartet of novels was released in the early 2000's, but are set in the mid-late 1980's. ''First Among Sequels'' picks up in 2002, but was published in 2007.

* TheUnReveal: Often justified thanks to PaintingTheFourthWall. 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.

* ResolvedNoodleIncident: During ''One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing'', Book!Thursday briefly exposits on just what happened during the invents of the UnInstallment ''The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco''; it involved Thursday having to fake the Great Fire Of London in 1666 in order to account for a massive amount of lost literature.

* RidiculouslyAverageGuy: The generics, the characters in every story that have no personality whatsoever. Every character starts like this.

* {{Technobabble}}

** Sometimes in [=BookWorld=], characaters get the inclination to go [[{{Pun}} off-book]] and alter the plot, especially if there's a love triangle involved; when this happens, they're sequestered in another narrative, and a new Generic is made in their place, with a number appended to their name for record-keeping purposes.

* BrownNote: Verbisoids react badly to irregular verbs (e.g. verbs that aren't conjugated with '-ed' in English past tense), so the act of singing annihilates them; Havisham says that running doesn't work, because a verbosoid could interpret it as something along the lines of 'gallop'''ed''''' or 'fl'''ed''''

* CulturalTranslation: Most of the obscurely British cultural references are changed or explained in the American version, but Landen's name wasn't caught. "Landen Parke-Laine" was supposed to be a MeaningfulName, but Americans don't get that it's a Monopoly reference, as the U.S. version of the game calls that space Park Place.

* DeathByAdaptation: InUniverse, Landen and most of Thursday's family dies in the written adaptations of her exploits.

** In ''First Among Sequels'', a meeting of Jurisfiction has a character mention that Literature/HarryPotter can't attend due to copyright concerns.

** The Generics, unformed characters who need to undergo CharacterDevelopment to flesh them out into characters, are perfectly bland and interchegable humanish figures to start out with, and gradually develop definite charct. How much development depends on their role; it's easier to train a {{spear carrier}} than TheProtagonist.
** In the sixth book, the written Thursday visits Fanfiction, where all the characters are of various degrees of flatness, from being three-dimensional to cardboard cut-outs, having been written by other authors who don't know the character as deeply. (Not that Fforde exempts himself here: Thursday realises this explains some of the character in her series.)

* GroinAttack: Thursday's parents [[IWantGrandkids both want grandchildren]]: Thursday's (nameless) father has a very direct conversation with Landen as soon as he congratulates the two on their engagement.

* DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: In ''One of Our Thursdays is Missing'.

* DeusExMachina: [[spoiler:The handbook that all Jurisfiction officers have has a literal one. Thursday activates the one she has, whereupon The Great Panjandrum appeared and fixed everything.]]

* DramaPreservingHandicap: There are laws enforcing this throughout Bookworld: otherwise a visit to the right genre could supply one with the necessary technology, sorcery, or rampaging Mongol horde to resolve virtually any problem.
** DNA technology exists in the [=BookWorld=] - of course it does, people have written about it - but it's legally prohibited anywhere outside of the ForensicDrama genre, because it would ruin the mystery in any other genre.

* EvilTwin: Pops up now and then, especially in a world where any real-life person who has a book written about him is either demonized or whitewashed. [[spoiler: This includes Thursday1-4.]]

* FelonyMisdemeanor: Hades's little brother tries to follow in his footsteps. He does things like calling to make appointments to look at people's used cars, and ''never showing up''.

--> '''Acheron:''' Have you done your evil act for the day?
--> '''Delamere:''' Yes sir, Mr. Hades. I drove seventy-three miles an hour.
--> '''Acheron:''' Disappointing.
--> '''Delamere:''' Through the mall, sir.
--> '''Acheron:''' Ah.
** When Mr. Delamare was given the opportunity to have the English government give into any demand he makes, he has [[spoiler: a motorway service station named after his mother]].

** The Generics, unformed characters who need to undergo CharacterDevelopment to flesh them out into characters. How much development depends on their role; it's easier to train a {{spear carrier}} than TheProtagonist.

** Different fonts are treated as if they are different languages; Thursday has trouble understanding a character in teh third book becuase they're speaking in Courier Bold, and St. Zvlkx's old English is rendered in a medieval-style font.

* Different fonts are treated as if they are different languages; Thursday has trouble understanding a character in teh third book becuase they're speaking in Courier Bold, and St. Zvlkx's old English is rendered in a medieval-style font.

** There are various changes in literature as well, some of which pre-date the Crimean War; for instance, ''Literature/JaneEyre'' ends with Jane going off to India with her cousin, rather than returning to Rochester. Literature/SherlockHolmes never faked his death in his stories, [[spoiler:which means when he actually ''is'' killed in ''First Among Sequels'' during the events of "The Final Problem", every story that takes place after it ceased to exist]], and in ''Literature/GreatExpectations'', [[spoiler:Miss Havisham lived in this universe; her death in the novel originates from her dying in Outland during ''Something Rotten''.]]

* DarkerAndEdgier: Thursday1-4, the [=BookWorld=] version of Thursday who portrayed her in the InUniverse versions of ''The Eyre Affair'' through ''Something Rotten'', is an abrasive, fierce, and sexualized version of Thursday who has no Landen and no surviving family, because apparently it made for better narrative.

* TrappedInTVLand: Polly gets left inside a Wordsworth poem when the prose portal is shut down.

** In the sixth book, we actually get to see the Fanfiction area of theBookworld -- and it's as clever as you'd think.