Thurdsay's New Friend
Chapter One
Many book characters are growing restless because not only are they not read as much as they wish to be, but there are not enough people writing Fan Fiction about them to keep them with a sense of worth.
The BookWorld used to not keep track of how many fanfic versions of a character existed. An agent from Jurisfiction said it would be ridiculous to do this because even among the same writers of Fan Fiction, there could be four or five different versions of Harry Potter or eight versions of Elizabeth Bennett.
However, to give some not-widely-read characters a sense of worth, in addition to the clock that tracked readrates in the main domain of each person's book, there were a minor clock that kept track of how many fanfic versions of a character existed. Usually either the main character of a book or the person whom the minor clock referred to were the ones who possessed their individual clocks.
This had a negative effect on some characters,, however. Jonah from Margaret Peterson Haddix' The Missing series was complaining about how there were only one or two fanfics about him online, and those were in obscure places, while the only Fan Fiction listing for his book on the main Internet venue in the Outland for Fan Fiction only had a summary.
I myself have met several of the Fan Fiction versions of me when I visited the archipelago linked to Vanity Publishing by a bridge when I needed to ask Landen some questions. He had written a story on the back of a shopping list so that we could communicate. All of the Thursdays there had different levels of flatness, and I taught them a little bit about how to be a better Thursday. Some of them seemed to get a bit thicker after I educated them, so I expect their stories are just a trifle closer to authentic.
There were many, many Harry Potters there. Some were evil within their own fanfics and some didn't have wizarding powers…these were very flat. Then there were others who fought alongside superheroes from a billion dollar movie franchise who might have been almost round were it not for the fact that there was a continuity eror in that the Fan Fiction had Harry enter the war on the superheroes side directly after finishing off Voldemort, when the war in question did not commence for fourteen years after the Second Wizarding War.
One of the most insane Fan Fiction that exists about me is along those lines of the Crossover, in which Thursday fights the Daleks with Dr. Who. The idea of me ever doing such a thing is ludicrous, or even the real Thursday, since I am just the written one. But really…the things people come up with.
Anyhow, the Fan Fiction clocks did little to help the despair of characters from obscure series or books. A character from Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom series asked Kissin' Kate Barlow from Louis Sachar's Holes to shoot it with an eraserhead, before the John Carter movie was released in the Outland. Shame, because there is some Fan Fiction about it now that didn't exist then. And Kissin' Kate Barlow was willing to kill it, although she hired the Princess of Mars from the series to kiss it in her place. No way was she kissing a six-legged triclops.
I recently got a new assignment from Jurisfiction, which was to help characters rehabilitate from the despair of not being written about by fans. And my current assignment was The A-List, a series by Zoey Dean about a group of girls in Hollywood. You'd think that being rich they would be content. But no. They are not written about much, and there is the height of their problem.
Actually, their despair stems from the fact that the sections in the Outland on Fan Fiction websites that are supposed to be about them are filled with stories about celebrities in the real world and original fiction stories that have no business on a Fan Fiction archive.
I arrived at their book and knocked on the cover. It was presently opened by a teenage girl with blond hair. "Hello. Are you the woman coming to help us cope with Fan Fiction writers in the real world ignoring us?"
"I am indeed," I said.
"Well, come on in. Make yourself at home."
It was hardly likely that I'd manage that. The A-List was about people in the world of movies who tended to not think of books having an existence at all. It was rather frustrating to work with such characters since even within my own series there is a BookWorld, though it has no Jurisfiction or Council of Genres because it is best if the Outland does not know that those facilities exist, or that the BookWorld exists, for that matter.
"I'm Anna Percy," said the blond girl. "And my character at least, is well-read," she said.
"Oh, you're the reader amongst all these Hollywood folks?" I said.
"Indeed I am. I have a huge library in my New York home. My character has read many of the books several times. She is looking for experience that she can't get from books when she comes to California."
"Which is ironic, since the only kind of experience we know is inside books, or the BookWorld, at least," I said.
"Yes, I know. Is my character the reason that we aren't being written about in the Outland?"
"On the contrary, I think you are the most written about character from your series," I said.
"How do you figure that out?"
"Your Fan Fiction ReadClock says that there are upwards of thirty-five versions of you in the Outland, and the clocks of the other characters don't come anywhere near that number."
She turned her gaze to the clocks, then said, "Very observant, you are. I like you."
"I like everyone, except Men in Plaid," I joked.
Actually, it wasn't true. There were some people I didn't like, such as Red Herring, who had escaped from being reprimanded at the Racy novels-Daphne Farquitt affair.
"That's a good one," Anna said, laughing heartily. "Those Men in Plaid bothered us until Cammie shouted them down."
"Cammie is the firey redhead from your series, right?"
"Indeed she is," Anna said. "How did you guess?"
"Because she's on the walkway outside right now."
Ann rushed to the door and opened it. Cammie came in and flared up. "Nintey-five percent of the stories about me either involve my and Adam's relationship or me trying to steal Ben from you. Three percent deal with the contentions I have with my father, and only two percent show how much I miss my mother and wish she were back in my life.
What is with those ridiculous Fan Fiction writers in the Outland? What's next, a story where I get a crush on Dee?"
"You'd better not get a crush on her," Anna scolded. "Any other character you want to get a crush on in the book is fine with me, so long it isn't her."
"We're talking about Fan Fiction, Anna. I don't intend to get a crush on anyone from the book."
"And yet," said I, "sometimes what we don't intend is what is the most likely to happen."
"Who are you?"
"She's the lady working for Jurisfiction who has come to help us rehabilitate with the fact that few people want to write about us and the ones who do write things that we don't want them to write about us."
"Sounds like fun," Cammie said, in a tone that indicated that it didn't.
"You don't have to be a part of it if you don't want to," Anna said.
"Like I'm going to let you go through with coping training without me."
I began to feel that Anna and Cammie had a fondness for each other when they weren't playing their actual characters. I happen to know that inside the book, they didn't like each other too well.
"Will Sam be coming?" Cammie asked.
"Actually, I think she wants us to go meet her," Anna said.
"I think this is the best place to hold the session," I said, my eyes fixated on the clocks.
"Oh no," Anna said. "It'd be best to do it away from the clocks. The others will be self-conscious if they see those dismal numbers."
"You're probably right," I sighed. I let them lead the way to Jackson Sharpe's yacht. Book people have to be in a scene immediately in case of readers, and thus it is a very short distance from Anna's vestibule to Sam's yacht…all we had to do was walk out her back door.
We got on the yacht and there was Sam with the boyfriend of her character, Eduardo. They were sitting at a table and he was feeding her an oyster. It seemed that they were boyfriend and girlfriend outside the book, too.
"Sam!" Anna called.
"Oh hey! And I guess you're the lady from Jurisfiction," Sam said, turning to me.
"I am."
"It really is disheartening to think that we are A-List Hollywood people here in our book, but in the Outland few people care aobut us. There are more stories about Selena Gomez than there are about Samantha Sharpe! Can you believe it?"
The girl who played Sam was not self-conscious about her weight, and she seemed a little vain. Odd, because her character in the books was only vain in the sense that she could use her status as the daughter of America's favorite film star to get anywhere or do anything she wanted, short of committing a crime.
"What about Dee, Adam, Ben, and Parker?" I asked. "Are they coming?"
"They're hanging out with Cyn, Stefanie, and Pashima," Anna said, making a face. "They doubt you can help them because there are virtually no stories about them, except for Ben and Adam, who are mainly featured in stories about me or Cammie."
"Dee is in a fair number of Fan Fiction," I said.
"But she doesn't feel that she is loved. And also, she can't get enough of all the male attention," Anna said.
"Okay, let's get down to brass tacks," I said.
"Please, no tacks," Eduardo said. "After that Home Alone/Pete's Dragon crossover that hit the news, I don't want to heart about them."
Eduardo was referring to a story in which Harry and Marv caught Pete and drove a nail through his foot with an iron, like they had threatened to do to Kevin. Naturally in the BookWorld we don't have the knowledge about films in the Outland for the most part, but some news gets out…after all, there are directions in some of our books that say that we watched such and such movies. Film being such an important part in the diet of people in the Outland, sometimes their characters watch it too. Though the worst example of film being mentioned in Fan Fiction as opposed to Fan Fiction being about film is the story, "My Immortal," where the main character—pompously named Ebony Dark'ness Dementia Raven Way—talks to Tom Riddle from Riddle's diary and he knows when The Exorcist came out despite being in that form thirty years before The Exorcist was released.
"We are here today because you guys are not being written about enough. Which is a very sad thing," I said. "But there is a bright side."
"There is?" Eduardo asked.
"Well, I'm supposed to tell you there is."
"Okay, what is it?" Anna asked.
"Well, you don't have to worry about have a million flat versions of yourself walking around in the Fan Fiction Archipelago, like Harry Potter does."
"We would be very happy to have a million versions of ourselves in the Harry Potter Archipelago," Anna said. "Even if some there were evil and sadistic, and others only cared about sex."
I supposed that we got off on the wrong foot. I decided to try again. "Let's talk about ways to vamp up interest in The A-List."
"We could start by adding vampires," Eduardo said. "I'm sure we can offer a home for refugees from Twilight in our series."
"Vampires will ruin your series," I said.
"Actually, I think they'd improve it," Sam said. "Vampires sell. And I wouldn't mind if Edward came here."
"Edward is not coming here," I said. "He's a major character, and his book is read a lot. You'd do better to go for Lestat."
"Great, it's settled. Get Lestat to move in," Sam said.
"It is not 'settled.' Lestat can't be included in your book because if he did spark interest to write Fan Fiction based on characters from The A-List, Anne Rice's ban on Fan Fiction on her work would make it illegal for people to include him."
"Poor Lestat, to not know what it's like to have Fan Fiction copies of himself…" Anna said.
"He'll live," said Cammie. "Though I'm not sure about us."
"Look, you are a sparkly redhead," I said. "You have a fantastic body. There is no reason people shouldn't be writing about you."
"But they aren't."
"Give them a reason to."
"I can't change what goes on in the series. I mean, it's up to Anna whether any changes are to be made or not," Cammie said, looking at Anna. "But I can't just change my lines and stuff to attract Fan Fiction writers."
"This is insane! There has to be a better way to increase Fan Fiction than to change the series," Anna said.
"Maybe we should appeal to the Hollywood Royalty section of The A-List," Eduardo suggested.
That really wasn't a terrible idea. Hollywood Royalty was the second series of The A-List—more like a trilogy, since there were only three books in it. Jojo and Amelie and Myla…they could make Fan Fiction a smash for this series, but since they only had three books and the others had ten, they were shunted sometimes.
"Let me have a meeting with them and see what they come up with," I said.
"Okay," Anna said.
"And next time I want to see more of the characters from the main series. I'm trying to help you but I can't do that when all your in-book boyfriends are off dallying with other girls."
"Hey, I'm here!" Eduardo said.
"Yeah, but I bet you haven't left Sam's side in a long time."
"Not since we graduated from Tabularasa together," Eduardo said. He beamed at Sam and she beamd back.
"Well, I'll schedule another meeting with you, Anna."
She nodded, then led me toward the front of the book, Cammie tagging along in our wakes. It seemed that Cammie couldn't bear to be away from Anna for too long, so it felt that way.
I left the main series' book then went to the adjoining shed that housed the second series. I knowked and a teenage girl with red hair and wearing a pink dress opened the door. She held a wand a lot. "Bubblemon is in the stables, but I am perfectly willing to do anything you need. Fairy Princess at your service."
"Erm, I think I may have come to the wrong place," I said. "I'm looking for The A-List: Hollywood Royalty."
"You won't find that here," the girl said. "This is the home of Fairy Princess."
A Thai girl weariing stilettos pushed the Fairy Princess out of the way. "Please excuse Amelie. She prefers being Fairy Princess to her actual in-book character. This is the right place."
The girl let me in. "I'm Myla, by the way."
"Nice to meet you," I said, shaking her hand. "Thursday Next."
Her mouth dropped open. "What would Thursday Next want with a second book series that is lesser known than its main series counterpart?"
"Oh, I'm not that Thursday Next," I said. "I'm the written version."
"That makes a whole lot more sense," Myla said, breathing a sigh of relief. "So what can we do for you?'
"I'm here to ask you if you have any ideas on how to improve this series for Fan Fiction."
"The whole series or just Hollywood Royalty?"
"The whole series."
Myla grinned mischievously. "Sure, I've got an idea," she said.
"What?"
"Send out signals to the Outland to do a Thusday Next/The A-List crossover."
I laughed at the absurdity of it. "No one would read that."
"I guess you're right," Myla said. "Tea?" She poured a cup.
"At home, my robot butler serves me drinks."
"I'm not a robot, and I'm not a butler," Myla said, pulling the cup back.
"I know. It's just sad that I couldnn't bring him ont his mission."
"Why not?"
"He's not too fond of characters whose lifestyles are Hollywood-centric."
"Prejudiced against us, is he?"
"No, not that. He's more afraid that he'll get starstruck, even if he never heard of you, simply because you live in Los Angeles."
"Ah," Myla said. "Well, if you want to discuss Fan Fiction, it would be best if all the characters are present. First let me make sure no one is reading us right now."
She went over to the clock that indicated this. "Hmm, seems someone is reading the part where Jake hugs a stuffed Pikachu while they're in a comic-book store. We can get the Titanium Superman to fill in for Jake, and Noddy to fill in for Miles."
"You're going to have a character from Enid Blyton take the place of a character from this series?"
"It's not that Noddy, but a dragon from a minor book series that no one reads anymore."
"A dragon…playing a human? Who would have thought?"
"It's done in Fablehaven a lot," Myra said. "Readers keep thinking that Gavin is human and they are surprised to learn that he is actually a dragon later on. No one will find out Miles is being played by a dragon…but it doesn't hurt to have ti happen."
"How do you keep a dragon playing a human from attacking people?"
"Simple. By making them think they're human. There are mental rays for that."
Mental rays were manta rays from many books including Great Expectations, Jumanji, and Journey to the Center of the Earth, which had been relocated by the Council of Genres when a mispeling vyrus hit those books. (As far as we knew, readers in the Outland had no idea that manta rays had ever been present in those books. Sort of like how readers in the Outland never noticed the pink gorilla running around in A Tale of Two Cities.) Then they were taken to the Department of Mysteries in the Harry Potter books, where they were fused with the brains that were sitting in a room for study. The Vogons stole them and tortured them to death by reading them poetry, but their ghosts still remained to be seen and caused any non-human creature who saw them to think they were human. This caused real trouble when mental rays found their way into Animal Farm, where all the pigs except Snowball saw the mental rays constantly and were forever convinced that they were human. That was why they could walk on two legs and talk to humans, because they believe so strongly in their humanity.
But mental rays were illegal to own within a novel…they were supposed to be floating free spirits.
"How did you get a set of mental rays pinioned into this novel?" I asked.
Myla looked over at Amelie. "We traded her original," she admitted.
That would be one way to do it. On the black market, there were characters who stogmified-"caught" sounds so bland in this practice—mental rays and traded them for A-2 to A-5 characters. It was a sick business and Jurisfiction was out to stop them, but they were quick to cover their tracks.
"I'm afraid I'm going to have to report you," I said, starting for the exit.
"No, don't! We had to have it this way. The old Amelie treated us like her slaves. Really. We had to wash her feet in a bucket of sponges and she threatened to cut off a pound of our flesh if we didn't obey her orders, no matter how absurd they were. Like one time, she asked all of us girls to use her toothbrush after she had finished with it and none of us were allowed to wash it before use. She kept saying, 'I'll take a pound of your flesh if you disobey.' Jojo started to complain that she was not, under any circumstances, going to put Amelie's toothbrush in her mouth, especially when Kady and I had already done so. Amelie literally pulled out a knife and reached toward Jojo's chest when Jojo backed away and tried to run, but Amelie tackled her. She almost had what she wanted when Jojo begged to be allowed to keep her flesh and promised she would never disobey again. Amelie said, 'See that you don't.' And then the next time, when Jojo refused to clean Amelie's toilet with her tongue, Amelie really was going to cut a pound of her flesh if Kady had not gone over to Anna's room in the main series to borrow War and Peace, which she slammed down on Amelie's head while I held Amelie steady so that she wouldn't move out of the way before impact."
"That's a pretty farfetched story," I said. "I'll see if it checks out."
I left the book then before Myla could say anything else. I just did not know how to deal with this. I rather liked Myla; she was upbeat and that was a fun meeting, even though we didn't even manage to get to the business I came there for. But could I trust that story? Sure, that could warrant putting a character in the hands of traffickers, as the characters of Pride and Prejudice did with the original Georgiana Darcy who complained about being a relatively minor character in the series and soon started whipping all the characters constantly, forcing some of them to ride saddles and pretend to be horses. When Elizabeth Bennett had a bruished head and Jane had more lashes on her than many soldiers have wounds post-war, the characters sold Georgiana to traffickers and got a replacement.
Jurisfiction had looked the other way then, for that was an extreme case. But I wasn't sure if Amelie's abuse of her fellow characters qualified as extreme. It probably did. If I acted that way with the characters in my series, I might expect them to want to get rid of me, and not like when my father within the series convinced them to vote for evicting me. Of course, I was as unlikely to act that way around my fellow cast as the Big Martin was likely to cease to be dangerous.
I had to mull this over. I would not report anything till I was certain that Mya was wrong. Though right now, I was leaning toward the idea that she was right to do as she did. After all, she didn't hide it from me…seemed to think that I was quite the confidante. But I had to be sure of what to do. And that would take some time and a nice tall glass of Cogitation Juice.