Ok hands up - how many of you were caught by the change of first person Thursday?


*raises hand*

When Thursday started to protest against her arrest, I considered it shortly, only to abandon the thought immediately as too improbable. Ten pages later I was feeling really stupid...

I wondered why a just a few statement's convinced them of her idenity and I thought she had been a bit more violent than usual, but I didn't "get" it till the start of the next chapter. silly me never thinking about clues.

the Jenny subplot bothers me.

(and am I wrong or was thursday able to get into sherlock holmes stories before? to save Mycroft who got stuck...without the prose portal right? surely I must be wrong.)

I quite liked the Jenny subplot - I noticed fairly early that Jenny never seemed to be around and I was wondering what was up with that.

I didn't consider it to be an unresolved plotline so much as it was resolving an earlier plotline - after all, even though TN defeated Aornis in her own head, there was never any resolution in the "real world" - it stood to reason that she would try again. After all, there's a 15 year gap - all sorts of things have happened since then and we weren't around for them.

I thought it actually added to things. After all, some things never get resolved in people's lives - why do they have to be tied up in books?

RookeeAlding Wrote:
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> (and am I wrong or was thursday able to get into
> sherlock holmes stories before? to save Mycroft
> who got stuck...without the prose portal right?
> surely I must be wrong.)

Something Rotten, chapter 26: "He had set up home in the Sherlock Holmes canon to escape Goliath but had remained stuck there until I rescued him about a year ago". It doesn't say that Thursday actually got into an SH story; but still there is an apparent contradiction, or a paradox.

Delauesta, thanks for the location I would have never found it. you would think though the "I rescued him" part kinda suggest that she went in to the book....Oh well.

How many kids did Granny next have at the end of that book again? I could have sworn she did have three....(no where near my copies at the moment.) Was one of them the mysterious non-existant Jenny?

Given the different amount of timelines floating around, I suspect that most anomalies could probably be explained by changes made to the timestream..... after all, we already know that there were several versions of Friday doing the rounds - some of whom were only "potential" Fridays rather than actual Fridays. Thursday says herself that even though she'd seen herself die at a ripe old age surrounded by kids and grandkids, she had seen too many changes to the timestream to rely on it as a constant.

The Sherlock Holmes one is interesting as apparently prior to that, there was no Mycroft Holmes. Then again, Mycroft is an outlander using a different method to access the BookWorld - so possibly that's the explanation?

I've been wondering whether Thursday's ability to survive in the nothing between books might be the answer to jumping into books that had previously been unreachable. Also there's the oral tradition question. If Moral Dilemma lectures can be accessed by Goliath, then presumably so can any spoken story. So technically, you could get into any audio book using Goliath's technology? If that theory works, then any book that can be read into a recording could be accessed and once you get into one version of a book, you should be able to get into all of them. But IIRC it's only in the original manuscript that you can make changes to a book that will affect all other copies of it? Changes made in copies of the book will only affect that specific copy of it?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/10/2007 10:01AM by xmorpheus.

personally I would like to know how the "lending" characters to video games worked. (also wonders if ever there would be a chance that thursday next would have a video game and how that would ever work)

well they did a couple of Discworld PC games that worked quite well - I'm sure there are people out there with warped enough brains to develop a TN game! :)

If I end up programming them, that'll probably be me.

And the Jenny thing confused me.

How can it be in a first person book, if she forgets about it afterwards?

The change in first person narrative was great. I twigged it by the break in paragraphs, it was in keeping with Jasper's style. But obviously you have to wonder why real Thursday didn't point out that Thursday1-4 was wearing a glove and put up more of a fight. For that reason I wasn't sure until she spoke to Bradshaw and Thursday5. Thursday5 asked if she could get her a 'chai' because she seemed worn out - I figured that to an outlander she'd hear it as chair but because Thursday1-4 would only read the text and not hear the pronunciation she took it to be an offer of green tea. Though I may have invented that one myself.

And I think the Jenny thing is great.

The only Thursday Next video game I'd play (and the only kind I think would be appropriate) would be a text-based one.

I am rather proud of myself that I halfway caught the Thursday switch early! When she had finished with the CoG and was looking out the window, some of the things she said made me suspicious, and then when she referred to Thursday5 as a "drip" I got really suspicious. Once it was revealed I had to go back, though, and figure out where the switch took place. In retrospect, almost everything she says or things after the switch is out of character, but it's very subtle at first. Bravo Jasper!

As far as Jenny, I'm still not satisfied even after Jasper's unequivocal confirmation of her nonexistence in the special features. The specific thing that bothers me is that Thursday explicitly says that she named her second daughter after Melanie's middle name. It's also said that Aornis can't read minds; she can only alter memories, so she would have no way of knowing that "Jenny" would be a significant name for Thursday, which strongly suggests that Jenny is real.
On the other hand, I'm willing to accept that this level of trickery is within the power of Aornis's mindworm since there is plenty of previous evidence that the mindworm itself can make creative use of Thursday's memories. So I guess my interpretation is that a mindworm can "read" minds in the sense that it can access memories in order to make use of them in its nefarious work, but there's no way those memories or thoughts can get back to the real Aornis.
Also, the only other possible interpretation of the Jenny situation is that Jenny is real and Aornis planted a mindworm to make Thursday think there's no Jenny. But in that case, why would the mindworm surface at random only for Thursday to forget it again, and what possible purpose could it serve?
So I guess I'm reluctantly accepting the idea that Jenny doesn't exist, but I sure wouldn't mind if Jenny showed up for real in the next Next book!

The way I figure the link between the daughter Jenny and Melanie Bradshaw's middle name is that it's coincidence combined with Thursday doing Aornis's work for her - making logical connections where there should be none. Aornis gave her the curse of thinking she has a third child, Jenny, and then Thursday notices Melanie's middle name is also Jenny - logically, she must have named her a) so as to have a sensible name, instead of a day of a week (as stated in the chapter heading) and b) after Melanie.

Alternatively, Aornis may not have named her at all - merely caused it so Thursday thinks she has a third child. Thursday builds up everything from there, including the name of the daughter - who she chooses to name not after a day of the week, but after a friend's middle name. Actually, now I think about it, I think I prefer that reasoning.

As for how the Jenny thing can be in a first-person book, if she forgets it afterwards - well, the time of 'writing' the book is flexible. It's not as though this is meant to be Thursday's diary or memoirs; yet it's not a Stream of Concsiousness either. I think really it's just narrative license, seeing as it's necessary to show to the reader that Jenny doesn't actually exist.

I agree with your second explanation--that Aornis's mindworm was vague and Thursday filled in the details including Jenny's name and its explanation. After all, Thursday is also filling in details of Jenny's life and growing up, which would make more sense if Thursday's mind is generating them than if Aornis crammed all that into one mindworm seven years ago.

But I'm still upset. I want Jenny to be real!

I liked the Jenny plot device, but now that the secret has been revealed I think it would get annoying in a hurry to have Thursday constantly hallucinating about Jenny when there are other, more exciting, things going on. This should be taken care of in the next book, either by somehow bringing Jenny to reality or by having Thursday defeat Aornis and the mindworm for good. I think I'd prefer the latter.

In a reread of the book I found another clue to Jenny's existence--on page 120 (UK edition) the neighbor, Mrs. Berko-Boyler, says, "Hello Tuesday, where's your sister?" Now I suppose she could be in on the whole thing, and playing along with Tuesday (or this could even be a false memory covering up one of Thursday's missing-daughter panic attacks), but it still seems awfully far-fetched, and an odd choice from a narrative standpoint. I kind of feel like Jasper would have only put that line in as a clue to Jenny's actual existence.

there is another one, they have a picture of a vacation. ( I forget exactly what it says about the picture) but I find it odd that they where able to keep her non-existence a secret in every single vacation they take. especially when she actually "went" on that one. Hiding from the camera just doesn't cut it.

But... while it might seem unlikely that Aornis could make Thursday believe she has a daughter, and only allow her to realise this for brief intervals, it seems to be even more unlikely that Landen et al would falsely believe that Jenny doesn't exist, manage to convince Thursday that this is the case, and then make her forget about the whole incident several times a week. I think we're multiplying entities here.

On the other hand, it did say in a chapter header to an earlier book that Thursday had three kids, and there are other possible explanations for the (non)existance of Jenny.*

Rob

*which will be left as an exercise for the reader

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That statement is either so deep it would take a lifetime to fully comprehend every particle of its meaning, or it is a load of absolute tosh. Which is it, I wonder?
Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

Well, it certainly is a loose end that I'm sure Jasper will clear up in the next three books. *cracks knuckles menacingly*

Of course, it may be two whole books before he comes back to Thursday.

I'm wondering if Mycroft's memory device is coming back into play somehow?