Line #16 Literature/Midnighters


1	->''Strange things happen at midnight in Bixby, Oklahoma...''
2	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/66049c58_cdd0_44b9_a2f1_05ccad0a193e.jpeg]]
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4	''Midnighters'' is a young-adult book series written by Scott Westerfeld. It's set in the small town of Bixby, Oklahoma (which, incidentally, does exist in RealLife). The main premise is that there are 25 hours in a day. The 25th hour is nicknamed "the blue time" because everything has a slightly blue glow, and takes place right [[TimeStandsStill after]] the stroke of midnight.
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6	This is much [[DarthWiki/WorseThanItSounds Worse Than It Sounds]] for the Heroes, because creatures called darklings and [[WhyDidItHaveToBeSnakes slithers]] inhabit the blue time, which are as nasty as they sound. Also, technology and most ordinary people become [[TimeStandsStill frozen in time]], and look like they came straight out of UncannyValley, according to the [[FiveManBand Midnighters]] crew.
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8	They're the heroes, and are the only people who can walk around and be not frozen in the blue time. They are Jessica, Jonathan, [[DefrostingIceQueen Melissa]], [[JerkAss Rex]] and [[EmbarrassingFirstName Desdemona]] (who goes by Dess, for obvious reasons). They all have nonstandard powers (and are very sensitive to light).
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10	Jessica's power is [[spoiler: [[GameBreaker that she can make technology work in the blue time]]]], and Jonathan is an acrobat, which means he has an extreme ability [[LeParkour to jump]]. Melissa is a mindcaster, which means she can read minds (and she can't stop, she's [[BlessedWithSuck constantly bombarded]] except during the blue time. And she goes to high school.) Rex is a Seer, meaning that he can see only things related to the blue time; everything else is blurry without his CoolShades. Desdemona is a polymath, meaning she is really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, ''really'' [[HeartIsAnAwesomePower good at math]].
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12	Not to be confused with the [[ComicBook/TheAuthority Midnighter]].
13	----
14	!!''Midnighters'' tropes:
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16	* AbusiveParents: Rex's father. [[spoiler: That is, until Melissa {{Mind Rape}}s him.]]
17	* AliensInCardiff: Bixby is a real city in Oklahoma, albeit not one that even American readers are likely to know.
18	* AnnoyingYoungerSibling: Beth. But she starts to annoy Jess only after she realizes that Jess was hiding something. And she actually has a personality.
19	* AntiMagicalFaction: [[spoiler:The Grayfoot family took down the 1950s midnighters and is in the employ of the darklings.]]
20	* ArmorPiercingQuestion: Angie asking Rex what happened to his father.
21	* BadassNormal: Jessica and Jonathan during the normal hours, since their powers are useless outside of Midnight. Though Johnathan can still work out angles and jumps for LeParkour, he just can't leap five stories in the air anymore.
22	* BattleCouple: [[OfficialCouple Jessica and Jonathan]] and by the end of the second book [[spoiler: Rex and Melissa]].
23	* BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind: [[spoiler:Madeleine's attempt to help Rex with his darkling side becomes one of these: she loses control of the ancient mindcasters in her memory, who decide to destroy the half-darkling "abomination.".]]
24	* BelievingTheirOwnLies: Melissa suggests this happened on a massive scale [[spoiler:with the ancient midnighters. Someone, somewhere down the line, decided that they were justified in treating daylighters however they wanted. The idea spread through mindcasting so that future generations literally ''could not believe anything else''. The only thing that finally ends the transmission of the tainted memories is the genocide that wiped out the midnighters in the 1950s.]]
25	* BetaCouple: [[spoiler: Rex and Melissa]].
26	* BittersweetEnding: The last book. [[spoiler:The blue hour has been sealed back up and humankind at large is safe from the Darklings' threat again. However, Jess is now stuck permanently in the blue hour and the blue hour's area of effect is spreading, meaning that the Darklings can spread out some more... As can the Midnighters, since more people can access the blue hour more easily.]]
27	* BlackAndGrayMorality: [[spoiler:The darkling's human allies don't like their morally dubious duties (such as kidnapping Rex) but believe it's a better option than allowing midnighters to rule Bixby again.]] It might not hurt that [[EvilPaysBetter it's made them very rich]].
28	* BlessedWithSuck: Melissa's power, until she learns how to control it. Reading minds sounds cool, until you realize that you're reading everyone's mind at once and you can't turn it off. Now imagine being stuck with that in ''high school''.
29	* ChekhovsClassroom: Inverted. All of the Midnighters' powers correlate to a school subject, which they excel at because of the powers (except Melissa). Dess: math (trigonometry this year), and probably engineering as well; Jonathan: physics; Rex: history; Jess: [[spoiler:chemistry]].
30	* ChosenOne: The Flame-bringer.
31	* CursedWithAwesome: Being able to enter the Blue Time seems really cool at first. Then you bump into the [[EldritchAbomination nasty things]] that live there. You still get some really snazzy superpower out of it, though, some of which (polymath, mindcaster, [[NoodleImplements metallurge]]) are possibly even more useful outside Midnight.
32	* DarkIsNotEvil: Most of the midnighters dress in all black and do the "vampire thing" according to Jessica. That being said, evil generally ''is'' dark, and light tends to be good because of that.
33	* DealWithTheDevil: [[spoiler:The Greyfoots made their money by working for the darklings, who tell them where to drill for oil.]]
34	* DecoyProtagonist: The real protagonist of the trilogy is either [[spoiler: Jessica, Rex, or Dess.]]
35	** WordOfGod says it's [[spoiler: Jess]], which means that [[spoiler:Rex and Dess]] are {{Supporting Protagonist}}s.
36	* DidYouJustHaveSex: Dess and Jonathan debate this about Rex and Melissa in ''Touching Darkness.''
37	* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: Touching a mindcaster is often figured as sexual throughout the second book (to the point that Dess even calls it "doing the psychic nasty"). [[spoiler:By extension, Melissa reading Dess' mind without her permission is likened to ''rape'', although Jessica stops just short of actually using the word.]]
38	* EldritchAbomination: All the Slithers and Darklings probably count, but the [[spoiler: elder Darklings especially]].
39	* EmotionEater: [[spoiler:The elder darklings do this.]]
40	* EnemyWithin: [[spoiler: Rex in ''Blue Noon'', as a result of a sort of twisted SplitPersonalityMerge.]]
41	* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: [[spoiler:Papa Greyfoot evacuates his family before the long midnight.]]
42	* EvilCounterpart:[[spoiler: Anathea to Rex in book 2 before he becomes a halfling himself, although its subverted because she is just as much a victim as she is an enemy. In a similar vain, Madeline could be an Evil Counterpart to Melissa, though in a more morally corrupted sense than just full on evil.]]
43	* EvilIsDeathlyCold: The darklings and slither bites.
44	* {{Fictionary}}: The Lore seems to be its own entirely different language, although we don't get to see it beyond the symbols for the talents of the FiveManBand. Seers seem to be born with the ability to read and understand the language of the Lore, but it is possible for others (including non-Midnighters) to learn it.
45	* FriendlyEnemy: [[spoiler: Angie, eventually.]]
46	* GoodWithNumbers: Polymaths. Dess can do lengthy, difficult, and intricate calculations easily in her head, and she can come up with thirteen-letter names in an instant.
47	* HatesBeingTouched: Melissa. [[spoiler:She gets better, though.]]
48	* HalfHumanHybrid: [[spoiler: Anathea, a Seer from 50 years ago that got turned into a "Halfling," a human-Darkling hybrid. She gets progressively weaker, so the Darklings try to make a new one out of Rex. It works for a while, but he gets better. Though he still carries some of the traits, like an aversion to math, metal, and the number 13, and has the occasional predatory instinct slip.]]
49	* TheHiddenHour: Only people born at exactly midnight can access it, and all sorts of nasty monsters like to roam around in it.
50	* HowDoIShotWeb: Melissa in particular struggles to use her powers, and blames her failure to find Dess for several years [[spoiler:and nearly leaving Rex's father a vegetable]] on her youth and inexperience.
51	* HypocriticalHumor: Dess calling the other midnighters "goth" or "emo." Melissa calls her on it.
52	-->'''Dess:''' This dress is ''charcoal''.
53	* IdiotBall: Rex calling Angie from his home phone, which it never occurred to him might be tapped. She's disgusted.
54	* IKnowWhatYouFear: Type 1 seems to be associated with the nastier sorts of darkling. [[spoiler:Rex can do it too, and at one point intimidates another character by doing...''something'' to make himself resemble a snake.]]
55	* ImprovisedWeapon: Since any piece of a metal alloy given a 13-letter name is a deadly weapon against the Darklings, most of the weapons and defenses tend to be fairly mundane (and sometimes bizarre or random) objects, like screws, bolts, paper clips, hubcaps, silverware, trash can lids, letter openers, a fence or two, and one particularly badass microphone stand.
56	* INeverSaidItWasPoison: Jess mentioning that she knows Cassie lives in Jenks.
57	* InSeriesNickname: Lots and lots.
58	** Jess and [[OnlyKnownByTheirNickname Dess]] usually go by abbreviations of their name for day-to-day use.
59	** Rex calls Melissa 'Cowgirl' after the cowgirl pajamas she was wearing when they met, [[spoiler:and she starts calling him 'Loverboy' as their friendship grows into a relationship,]] both examples of an AffectionateNickname.
60	** Jonathan gets 'Flyboy' and Jessica is jokingly called 'the all-powerful flashlight bringer' due to their powers.
61	** People call Melissa and Madeleine 'the queen bitch.' The latter also gets 'bitch goddess' and 'the Vile One.'
62	** [[TheNicknamer Dess]] does this to tease people, using 'Maddy' and 'Rexy' sometimes. Madeleine calls her 'Dessy' once or twice as revenge.
63	* JumpPhysics: Acrobats. During the blue time, gravity's pull on Jonathan and whoever or whatever he's touching is sharply decreased. He puts the jumps in most {{Platform Game}}s to shame.
64	* KeepingSecretsSucks: Jess hates lying to her family about midnight, and ends up in trouble with them because she can't come clean about what's going on. [[spoiler:At the end of the series, Beth feels this way about not being able to tell their parents what happened to Jessica.]]
65	* LampshadeHanging: The third book pokes a bit of fun at the drama (and cliché) of everything going down at midnight on Halloween.
66	* LaserGuidedAmnesia: One of the more morally-ambiguous ways Melissa uses her powers over the course of the books.
67	* TheLoad: Jessica [[spoiler:(for most of the first book)]], who attracts Slithers and Darklings like roadkill attracts flies. Then she learns what [[GameBreaker her power]] is.
68	* LovableAlphaBitch: Constanza Grayfoot is the fashion-obsessed queen of the school who struts about with her girl posse and dreams of being an actress in L.A. She's part Native American, not blonde, and is more harmlessly superficial than actually evil (even being friendly with some of the Midnighters), so she's not a straight AlphaBitch.
69	* MagikarpPower: [[spoiler:Jessica]].
70	* {{Magocracy}}: [[spoiler:It turns out that Bixby was one for thousands of years, with daylighters living in terror of midnighters who believed it was their right to rule Bixby however they saw fit.]]
71	* ManipulativeBastard: [[spoiler: Madeline, an old mindcaster. Among many other things, she used her power to convince Melissa's and Dess's mothers to push either just a little earlier or later, so they'd be born exactly at midnight.]]
72	** [[spoiler: Melissa too...actually, this is pretty much par for the course for mindcasters, apparently. Both of them affectionately (or not) get the title "Queen Bitch" at some point. And dear lord do they ever prove that they deserve it.]]
73	* MayflyDecemberRomance: [[spoiler: Jessica and Jonathan, after Jessica becomes confined to the Blue Time in exchange for fixing the rift between the normal hours and Midnight. Jonathan will continue to age as normal, but Jessica only exists for 1 hour each day and therefore will age by 1 day roughly every 3 weeks.]]
74	* MeaningfulName: Some of the weapons comment on the situations in which they're used, such as Foolhardiness. Dess also gives Rex a knife named [[spoiler:Animalization]] in 'Blue Noon'', which he doesn't appreciate.
75	* MindRape: Mindcasters are good at this. [[spoiler: Melissa accidentally mind raped Rex and Johnathan on a small scale when they touched her and her mind raping was responsible for Rex's father turning into a vegetable.]]
76	** [[spoiler: Poor Dess gets mind raped pretty badly twice in the second book. First by Madeline, although that wasn't entirely mind rape as she planted useful information and then gave Dess a trick to freely block and unblock it. Second by Melissa, trying by brute mental force to tear down said barrier and get said information out of Dess.]] She certainly isn't happy about it, but she survives with her sanity intact.
77	* NamedWeapons: Giving a piece of metal a thirteen-letter name makes it more power, leading to a ton of these. The ''really'' epic ones get three-word names for a total of thirty-nine letters.
78	* NeverMessWithGranny: Madeline. Yeesh.
79	* NewTransferStudent: Being a new student at tiny Bixby High School gives Jessica an almost celebrity status when she arrives.
80	* NumerologicalMotif: 12 (for the Darklings) and 13 (for the Midnighters). Factors of both numbers exert equal power as well.
81	* TheOphelia: Melissa.
82	* OminousMusicBoxTune: Dess filed down some of the pegs on her music box to make it sound more like this.
83	* OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent: From 12:01 AM to 11:59 PM. (Although Rex's, Melissa's, and Dess's powers do work in the daylight hours.)
84	* PairTheSpares: Actually sort of averted, since Rex and Melissa had the couple vibe before they formally hooked up, and Dess is still single at the end of the series. Actually, since Dess never expresses romantic affection for anyone or anything (except maybe math and numbers), it's possible she's aromantic.
85	* PoorCommunicationKills: The midnighters' plans often get fouled up by poor communication, whether as fantastic as weak [[{{Telepathy}} telepathic connection]] or as mundane as Beth not passing on all the details of a phone call.
86	* PoweredByAForsakenChild: The halflings, [[spoiler:who are midnighters made half-darkling so that they can communicate with human agents through the lore.]]
87	* PurpleIsTheNewBlack: Purple is associated with midnight, [[DownplayedTrope but so are black and blue]].
88	* SanityBall: Inverted. Throughout the books, there is always one person in the main group of Midnighters who is struggle with their mental stability. Who this is changes throughout the trilogy. [[spoiler: It was Melissa in book one, due to her inability to control her power. Once she starts having control in book two, Madeline puts a mental block on Dess so that one part of Dess mind is keeping Madeline’s secrets and the other part is unaware of the secrets which while, it’s helpful in the beginning, definitely begins to take a tole on Dess’s mind and begins to split her personality. Once Melissa removes this and cures Dess, Rex becomes a Halfling and once he is rescued he still retains some Darkling personality traits at the end of the book, enough to become a TokenEvilTeammate. In the third book, he manages to overcome this just before Jessica becomes trapped in the secret hour and her boyfriend, Jonathan, falls into depression.]]
89	* SeeThruSpecs: The Seer power. Rex is mostly blind without his glasses, but things touched by Midnight (including Midnighters) appear in sharp focus. When he wears his glasses, "normal" things are clear, but stuff involving Midnight gets blurry (or outright invisible in the case of runes and lore).
90	* SeriousBusiness: The source of the tension between Rex and Jonathan. Rex wants to learn all there is to know about Midnight and thinks there's some deep higher purpose to the existence of Midnighters and their powers, while Jonathan (who has the fun power) thinks Rex is being way too StopHavingFunGuys about it.
91	* ShownTheirWork: While he may have gotten the time frames wrong (see FridgeLogic and the [[Headscratchers/HomePage Headscratchers]] page), Westerfeld still had to do a decent amount of research, primarily on numbering systems, making this series overall a welcome subversion of WritersCannotDoMath.
92	* SingleTear: Both Jessica and Melissa get a moment in ''Blue Noon''.
93	* SupportingProtagonist: One of the characters in the running for overall series main character is [[spoiler: Dess, TheSmartGuy.]]
94	* {{Telepathy}}: The Mindcaster power. But unless you know how to control it properly, [[BlessedWithSuck it's far more of a hassle than a perk]].
95	* ThirteenIsUnlucky: For Slithers and Darklings, that is. If you're a human, it's your best weapon.
96	* TimeStandsStill: Of the "moving incredibly fast" variety. Actually, [[spoiler:[[AWizardDidIt a Darkling did it]]]].
97	* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: Dess (Tomboy) and Jessica (Girly Girl), Jessica (Tomboy) and Constanza (Girly Girl), and Melissa is the Girly Girl to Dess and the Tomboy to Jessica.
98	* TownWithADarkSecret: Or [[ArcNumber 13]].
99	* TrappedInAnotherWorld: Happens at least three times with Midnight.[[spoiler: Anathea was trapped in Midnight for about 50 years. This trope happens to any Halfling. Cassie Flinders is lured into Midnight and trapped there for at least 24 hours. Jessica uses her power on lightning which has the side effect of trapping the Flame-Bringer in Midnight indefinitely. This trope also seems to have been the Darkling’s goal for the daylighters on Halloween in book 3.]]
100	* UnspokenPlanGuarantee: Sometimes played straight (such as the lightning) or subverted (such as Rex's emeting with Angie, which starts to go wrong before the reader knows the details).
101	* WeCanRuleTogether: [[spoiler:The elder darklings offer to let Rex join their hunt in the third book.]]
102	* WhenTheClockStrikesTwelve: TimeStandsStill unless you're a Midnighter, and everything takes on a blue tinge. And Darklings and Slithers roam about.
103	* WrittenByTheWinners: [[spoiler:With psychic assistance!]]
104	* YearInsideHourOutside: Only a few milliseconds pass between the start of the blue hour and its end for mundanes.
105	* YouAreGrounded: Jess spends the first and second books sneaking around due to being grounded.

Context Literature / Midnighters