Characters / Midnighters

A list of tropes describing the characters in Midnighters.

Rex Greene

• Born in the Wrong Century: Jessica believes that he feels this way.
• Control Freak: The other midnighters often grumble about his "seer knows best" attitude.

• Enemy Within: As a Halfling.
• Good Is Not Nice: Rex is very matter-of-fact about the prospect that a lot of people are going to die in the long midnight of Blue Noon. The other midnighters are horrified.
• Half-Human Hybrid: After Touching Darkness.
• Hybrid Discrimination: After the darklings leave him not quite human in Touching Darkness, both they and the ancient mindcasters in Madeleine's head react to him with disgust.
• Jerkass: Sometimes in general, often when struggling with his darkling side.
• Large and in Charge: Rex is rather tall, but doesn't make much use of his size due to being bullied and abused most of his life. This changes in Blue Noon, when his darkling half makes him more aggressive, as well as physically warping his body at the worst of times.
• Meaningful Name: Rex means king, and Rex is the leader of the midnighters. Madeleine intentionally created/recruited the other midnighters to rebuild Bixby's midnighter community for Rex to 'rule.'
• Missing Mom: Mrs. Greene sells cosmetics for Mary Kay and only drops in on his life occasionally. She doesn't make an appearance that we get to see, but her pink convertible does.
• Red Oni,Blue Oni: The Blue to Jonathan's Red.
• See-Thru Specs: Part of the seer power.
• Superpowered Evil Side: Rex's darkling side allows him to push through pain, communicate with darklings, find out and display other's fears, and makes his senses predator-sharp.
• Token Evil Teammate: During Blue Noon.

Dess

• Academic Athlete: Good at math and even better at killing Darklings.
• Action Girl: Mostly in The Secret Hour.
• Badass Bookworm: A math prodigy.
• The Big Guy: Dess makes the most powerful weapons through her mastery of math and reserve of tridecalogisms, making her this for the first book.
• Blood Knight: She's very disappointed that Jessica discovering her power doesn't leave any darklings for her to slay.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Polymath doesn't sound super impressive at first, but when you see how creative Dess can get with her power, it's one of the best ones.
• The Nicknamer: Gives out quite a few of the In-Series Nicknames, often of the Embarrassing Nickname bent.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: As soon as Jessica discovers her power. Although Dess is still very much useful as The Smart Girl.

Melissa

• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Due to the fact that she can't turn off her mind-reading and is subjected to an incredibly painful barrage of other people's thoughts at all times.
• Bad Powers, Good People: She turns out to be this (relatively speaking) in Blue Noon, when it's revealed that mindcasters put all of the midnighters in town under mind control and made them think that they were better than the daylighters and had them oppress them. Even the Darklings didn't like them. While Melissa does use her power to her own gain every now and then she has higher standards than that.

• Byronic Hero: Melissa's powers are so painful and invasive that Jonathan suggests she has a literal death wish. Everyone who touches her (therefore gaining access to her thoughts) pities her, much to her chagrin.

• The Empath: Her powers work this way at their most basic level, but can get more specific depending on the situation and her relationship to the other person.

• Instant Expert: Subverted. It seems like Melissa immediately fixes all of her problems with mindcasting when Madeleine shares her memories at the end of Touching Darkness, but she actually just gets the tools to be functional and continues to develop her powers over the course of the last book.

• Manipulative Bitch: It's implied that most mindcasters are to some extent.

• Pajama-Clad Hero: She first met Rex when she was eight years old, barefoot and in cowgirl pajamas.

Jonathan Martinez

• Super Power Lottery: Not quite as much as Jessica, however every single Midnighter in the series loves flying and talks about how great it is.

Jessica Day

• Badass Normal: In daylight.
• The Big Guy: Her power allows her to use technology in the blue time
• The Chosen One: Flame-Bringer is a rare power that allows her to end the long midnight so that the darklings don't have their twenty-five hours hunt.
• Game-Breaker: Has the power to use fire and electricity in the blue time which is supposed to be impossible.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Pretty much throughout the trilogy.
• Light 'em Up: With her flashlight.
• Magikarp Power: She discovers that she can use fire and technology in the Blue Time. Even later, she is able to release frozen lighting to stop Samhain and save Bixby.
• New Transfer Student: The series begins when she moves to Bixby.
• Power High: Jessica loves the feeling she gets when she uses her flashlight in the blue time as she can feel the power of the daylight world pouring through her body and out of the flashlight. The same goes when she sticks her arm into the time frozen lightning bolt and she can feel the waves of energy rolling into her and jumping out at her enemies.
• Required Secondary Powers: All of the other midnighters are extremely sensitive to bright light, because their eyes are built for the secret hour. Jessica's eyes are reversed in the fact that her eyes don't flash purple like the other midnighters and her eyes feel tired after being in the blue time for awhile and she gets a headache after trying to read a book in the blue time and looking into the dark moon. However, she is the only midnighter who can tolerate bright light and wouldn't benefit from wearing dark sunglasses during daytime. When she first uses her flashlight in the blue time, her eyes feel much better and not as tired as usual while the other midnighters scream in pain and have to cover their eyes. It makes sense, as it would be pointless to have the power to use bright light during the blue time if you can't even look to see where you are aiming it. The same could be said of the lightning in her hand trapping her in midnight. If she crossed over into regular time, where her power doesn't work. The lightning would fry her body.
• Shock and Awe: Gains this power at the end of Blue Noon.

• Swiss-Army Superpower: Jessica can use her power with matches, torches, bonfires, flashlights, flamethrowers, candles, fireworks, sparklers, all of the lights in an entire office building, and even lightning.
• Trapped in Another World: Gets trapped in the secret hour at the end of Blue Noon.

Constanza Grayfoot

• White Sheep: Constanza and her parents are the only members of her family not involved in their Deal with the Devil due to her dad rebelling against his father as a teenager and moving out of the house before being let in on their Dark Secret.

Beth Day

• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Somewhat with Jessica.

Madeline Hayes

• Ancient Conspiracy: Was a part of one with the older midnighters.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: Due to her upbringing she has been tainted by some of the unsavory beliefs of the old mindcasters.
• Chekhov's Gunman: She first appears in a cameo in The Secret Hour, when she chases Jessica off of her lawn.
• Evil Counterpart: She is kind of one to Dess as they are both extremely smart and sassy. Also in a similar way to how Madeline misses the days when the mindcasters controlled everything, Dess cannot wait for the day that she will have a group of polymaths to lead. While Madeline has already learned almost everything about midnight and takes pride in her knowledge,Dess wants to discover as much as she can about midnight and takes pride in her discoveries such as Dessometrics.

• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Anathea reveals that Madeline told her boyfriend about the secrets of midnight, which lead the Greyfoots contacting the darklings and stealing Anathea.

• Telepathy: She has mindcaster powers.
• Walking Spoiler: She's the last midnighter of her generation.

Anathea

• Childhood Friends: With Madeline
• Half-Human Hybrid: The last halfling the darklings created to communicate with their human minions.

Cassie Flinders

• Amnesia Missed a Spot: Melissa fails to account for the paintings Cassie made of the midnighters.
• Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book: She creates one so that she doesn’t forget her adventures with the Darklings.
• Raised by Grandparents: Her grandmother is the only guardian mentioned.

Slithers

• Evil Is Deathly Cold: Slither bites certainly are.

Darklings

• Big Creepy-Crawlies: The Tarantulas
• Eldritch Abomination: The Old Ones
• I Know What You Fear: The Old Ones
• It Can Think: Proven frequently.
• Panthera Awesome: The Psychokitties.

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