History Literature / ThursdayNext

* GenreBusting: The Thursday Next series can be described as a {{postmodern}} {{metafiction}}al SciFi AlternateHistory series with a MegaCorp antagonist, borrowing several charactesr from ClassicLiterature and incorporating elements of TimeTravel and the PoliceProcedural genre. And then we have the horror elements that crop up OnceAnEpisode...

** 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 [=RealWorld=] during ''Something Rotten''.]]

** In ''Something Rotten'', [[spoiler:Yorrick Kane is turned into a [=RealWorld=] human by none other than [[Literature/{{Pinnochio}} the Blue Fairy]], meaning he is no longer in the jurisdiction of Jurisfiction.]]
** In ''One Of Our Thursdays Is Missing'', Written!Thursday has to go into [=RealWorld=], where she experiences human things such as a heartbeat and breathing.

** In [=RealWorld=], people have taken to renaming themselves after famous authors; there's so many of them that the British Government insists they append a number to their name to distinguish them.
** 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.

* ActionMom: Thursday, in the later books.

* DeusExMachina: 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.

* ResolvedNoodleIncident: At the start of ''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.

** 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:Mrs. Havisham lived in this universe; her death in the novel originates from her dying in [=RealWorld=] during ''Something Rotten''.]]

** The fictional characters, notably [[spoiler: Yorrick Kaine.]]

** The Trans-Genre Taxi in ''First Among Sequels''

* FootnoteFever: The footnoterphone is an invention specific to the Bookworld, in which you speak into one end, and the person at the other replies in footnotes at the bottom of the page.

* GenreBusting: So very, very much.

* HalfHumanHybrid: Explicitly averted in [=BookWorld=], no less.

* LaserGuidedAmnesia: 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.

* PoliticallyCorrectHistory: While this is an alternate universe, Joffy Next is able to get married to his husband Miles in 1988; in real life, British Parliament passed the Local Government Act, Section 28 of which prevented the distribution of educational materials related to LGBTQIA+ topics, and was introduced by none other than [[UsefulNotes/MargaretThatcher Thatcher herself]].

** Cheese in Thursday's England is treated ilke a controlled substance, similar to illicit drugs; in reality, cheese is heavily controlled at border crossings, with some varieites (such as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casu_martzu Casu martzu]], a Sardinian cheese made with maggots) being destroyed due to the fact that it may not be safe for human consumption or the environment.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness:
** ''The Eyre Affair'' sees Thursday enter ''Jane Eyre'', but it's not until the second book that Thursday enters the [=BookWorld=] and things ''really'' kick off.

* LikeRealityUnlessNoted: Averted, indeed almost ''inverted''. Every time geopolitics is mentioned, for instance, it sounds radically different to that of our world (Russia is Tsarist, one of the two biggest superpowers is based in Africa, Wales has left the United Kingdom - no word on Scotland) and things like Britain being invaded and occupied by the Nazis during [=WW2=] are casually mentioned out of hand.

* NiceJobFixingItVillain: Aornis Hades plotted Thurday's death by having Thursday commit suicide or have the world be consumed by a flood of nanobots converting all organic matter into dream pudding. Instead, Thurdsay's father brings it back billions of years in the past, turning it into the primordial ooze from where life evolves.
* NoNameGiven: Thursday's father. Also Granny Next, for good reason: [[spoiler:she ultimately turns out to be a time-travelled Thursday.]]

* SpeakNowOrForeverHoldYourPeace: As Landen is about to wed Daisy Mutlar, Thursday tries to go and stop the wedding. She doesn't go through with it, but she doesn't have to; courtesy of Edward Rochester, Mr. Briggs is sent to interrupt the wedding.

** England is a republic rather than a constitutional monarchy; George Fomby was its first president, elected after Nazis successfully occupied Britain. In the aftermath of the occupation, the Goliath Corporation helped rebuild the country, which is why it has so much power in the first place. There is no "United Kingdom".

** More like [[IncrediblyLamePun Chekhov's long range sniper rifle]]: in the second book, a minor villain is named Yorrick, in the fourth book, Theatre/{{Hamlet}} is pulled from his namesake play and Yorrick is brought back as a main character. [[spoiler: the obvious joke is made.]]

** A portion of ''The Eyre Affair'' sees Thursday being chased by a plane at one point; ''Lost in a Good Book'' would reveal that part of the AlternateHistory of the Nextian Universe meant that planes were never invented, with Gravitubes and "Overmantles" being used instead.

* PropheticName: In ''Lost in a Good Book'', Thursday is "protected" by pairs of government agents with names like Kannon and Phodder, Deadman and Walken, etc... they don't last long.

** There is Thursday's husband, Landen Parke-Laine, his parents Billden Parke-Laine and Houson Parke-Laine (Park Lane is the second most expensive property on UK Monopoly.

* PunnyName: Apart from established fictional characters, it's doubtful there's anyone out there who ''doesn't'' have one, and he's a PublicDomainCharacter. The Squire of the High Potternews, the villainous Jack Schitt (with half-brother Brik Schitt-Hause and [[spoiler: wife Anne Wirthlass-Schitt]]) and [[TabletopGame/{{Monopoly}} Landen Parke-Laine]] (with parents Houson and Billden) seem top offenders.
** Though Jack Schitt is a pseudonym given to him by Thursday, as it turns out in ''One of Our Thursdays Is Missing''.

** The Hades family as a whole; Acheron and [[spoiler:Aornis]] show outright supernatural powers at times, and Acheron is [[spoiler:killed by a Silver Bullet, which is normally a method of execution reserved for vampires or werewolvse.]]

%% ZCE * BadassFamily: The Nexts and they have to be considering that the Hades family also qualifies.
%% ZCE * BadassNormal: Thursday.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: ''The Eyre Affair'' sees Thursday enter ''Jane Eyre'', but it's not until the second book that Thursday enters the [=BookWorld=] and things ''really'' kick off.

* AmbiguouslyHuman: The fictional characters, notably [[spoiler: Yorrick Kaine.]]

* UsefulNotes/FurryFandom: May be indicated by the fact that Commander Bradshaw is married to an intelligent anthropomorphic gorilla. (Although, supposedly, this fact would have escaped everyone who actually read Bradshaw's books.)

* UnusualEuphemism: [[ADateWithRosiePalms "Bashing the Bishop"]]

* ChildProdigy: [[spoiler:Tuesday had found a solution to Fermat's last theorem when she was nine.]]

'''Richard III:''' ''Now'' is the winter of our discontent ''[[AndThereWasMuchRejoicing [audience cheers]]]'' made glorious summer by this son of York ''[audience don sunglasses]''...

* MoralDilemma: A ship on the sea of Oral Tradition is devoted to reenacting the various dilemmas that crop up in philosophy classes one after another to the end of time.

* OneSteveLimit: The Echolocators are responsible for weeding out accidental repetition from texts, they are also on the lookout of identically named characters. Apparently, they once wiped out an entire Hemingway novel because all seven of the books characters share the same name.

* AmnesiaLoop: In ''First Among Sequels'' with Thursday in regards to Jenny. (This [[spoiler:spreads to the rest of the family]] in ''The Woman Who Died a Lot''.

** 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.'' [[note]] Given the nature of the Well, plagiarism is at least as bad as theft in-universe. And cheating.[[/note]]

* BadassFamily: The Nexts and they have to be considering that the Hades family also qualifies.
* BadassNormal: Thursday.

** A more meta-example: Thursday's Uncle Mycroft is clearly named after SherlockHolmes' even more intelligent brother Mycroft... then, later in the series, Uncle Mycroft goes into hiding in the Bookworld in a Sherlock Holmes story and ''becomes'' Mycroft Holmes.

* BluenoseBowdlerizer: A hated terrorist group in the [=BookWorld=], responsible for the destruction of half of the writings of Chaucer. Then again, what they do is basically the equivalent of assault or murder.

* [[ShowWithinAShow Book Within A Book]]: Obviously, but particularly notable in that the book in which Thursday lives in ''The Well Of Lost Plots'', after much tinkering on her part in that story, was eventually published itself as ''[[Literature/NurseryCrime The Big Over Easy]]''.
** In ''First Among Sequels'', it gets even more complex. The first four books exist within the context of the story, but as much DarkerAndEdgier versions of the "real" events (i.e. what happened in the books that exist in our world), while another book in the fictional series, ''The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco'', never existed in the real series. [[spoiler:The events of the book resolve both discrepancies. ''The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco'' is destroyed in the Bookworld, causing it to cease to exist in the (fictional) real world, and presumably in our world as well. Thursday 1-4, the protagonist of the DarkerAndEdgier in-story books, is killed when the book is destroyed, and the remaining books are remade to be closer to "real" events (i.e. the books we read in our world), starring Thursday5, the protagonist of ''The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco''.]] It doesn't get any simpler in ''One of Our Thursdays is Missing''.

* CorruptedData: The Mispeling Vyrus. It's a virus in the [=BookWorld=] that causes things to misspell, turning a parrot into a carrot, the floor into flour and other unpleasant consequences. This sounds more amusing than dangerous until you realize it can turn [[BodyHorror your bones into boons, your nose into a noose or your hands into hats]], depending on the severity of the infection. In short, if your body is infected, you are most likely going to die unless you get help ''really'' quickly. It can only be contained by dictionaries.

* InSpiteOfANail: When Landen gets removed from the timeline, the only detectable change beyond his absence is the literal wallpaper and curtains.
** One of the annotations mentions that this is because whoever did it was really good at his job.

* IShouldWriteABookAboutThis: Played with. By ''First Among Sequels'', Thursday's suffering the consequences of ''having'' written about it - or rather, the consequences of green-lighting somebody else to ghostwrite them.

* LEGOGenetics: In an effort to perfect cloning extinct animals, some genes are spliced in from other animals. This leads to dodos with flamingo-like features.

* MaidCorps: There are ''thousands'' of Mrs. Danverses in the [=BookWorld=], having come from multiplying generics sent into ''Literature/{{Rebecca}}''. The Danverclones are used by the Council of Genres as a freestanding army.

* OneSteveLimit: The Echolocators are responsible for weeding out accidental repetition from texts, they are also on the lookout of identically named characters. Apparently, they once wiped out an entire Hemingway novel because all seven of the books characters share the same name.

* PointlessCivicProject: The incredibly expensive, country-spanning Anti-Smite Shield commissioned by the British government. However, it actually did serve a function: using up surplus government stupidity with one massive, incredibly stupid project. And then a couple of books later, God starts smiting cities, at which point the only pointless aspect of the Shield becomes that it doesn't work.

* SoProudOfYou: Thursday tells Landen's parents they would have been this; she also tells Friday that she is.

* WeCanRuleTogether: [[spoiler:Harris Tweed]] offers Thursday a position at Text Grand Central if she helps him with his plot.

* LiteraryAgentHypothesis: The entire setup of the series seems to suggest this, especially the article in ''Well of Lost Plots'' that casually mentions that characters fool the author into believing that he or she is writing the story, whereas in reality their role is minimal. Chapters often open with quotes from Thursday and others, written long after the fact. Although it's also subverted - in ''First Among Sequels'', Thursday needs to visit her previous books, so she goes to the sixth floor of the great library, where all the "F" authors are stored...

* ItGetsEasier: Most of the literary characters are extremely blasé about dying or undergoing the many indignities that the narratives puts them through. The drowned girl (who has been dying on and off for about 200 years) from the ''Wreck of Hesperus'''s only complaint was that people keep trying to save her, which just makes it harder for her to die.

** 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 a {{protagonist}}.

** Works of classic literature. To the extent that [[Franchise/YuGiOh a world revolving around a children's card game]] makes perfect sense in comparison. Fforde says in interviews that the people in the Literature/ThursdayNext world have the same mass devotion for literature that people in our world have for sport, although sport and religion ''combined'' comes closer. Bear in mind sports fans don't go door to door ''evangelising'' their favourite athletes. (Have you ever wondered ''how'' Shakespeare wrote all those wonderful plays?)

* WriterOnBoard: Several parts of ''First Among Sequels''. Jasper Fforde is well-known for being opposed to {{fanfiction}}, so ''FAS'' goes on a half-page detour explaining how ''TheLordOfTheRings'' is being irreparably damaged by fanfiction writers.

* ClockworkCreature: Delta-5 automata, such as Sprockett, in ''Missing'' -- complete with WindUpKey, though apparently the new model Delta-6's are self-winding. This is apparently the cutting edge of Bookworld robots: [[FanWank perhaps]] RidiculouslyHumanRobots are quite literally confined to the SciFiGhetto.

* SortingAlgorithmOfEvil: Subverted in ''Lost in a Good Book'', where a demon hunter has captured countless beings, all believing themselves to be the ultimate incarnation of Evil on earth. They're kept in jars in the same room and argue about who is the supremest Supreme Evil Being.

** More like [[IncrediblyLamePun Chekhov's long range sniper rifle]]: in the second book, a minor villain is named Yorrick, in the fourth book, {{Hamlet}} is pulled from his namesake play and Yorrick is brought back as a main character. [[spoiler: the obvious joke is made.]]