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The Literals
In General
Literals are a magical race of entities separate from Mundies and Fables, seeing as how they created the universe, being the personification of literary notions and aspects of storytelling.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: While Fables are meant to be characters found in stories, Literals are the embodiment of story-telling conventions and ideas, including literary devices (the Pathetic Fallacy, Deus Ex Machina, censorship, etc.) and genres.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: A by-product of their Literal nature. They know full well they are part of an ongoing narrative. In fact, they draw power from this.
- Our Gods Are Different: While Fables like Djinn and the Great Powers are absurdly powerful and god-like, the Literals are gods compared to the likes of them, having collectively created the Fables universe to begin with.
The Pathetic Fallacy/ Gary
"It's just who I am. The Pathetic Fallacy. Of course, I always hoped that people would call me— oh, you don't care."
"But I don't know what I know, or how I seem to know it right now. I don't normally know anything, except how to talk to my special friends that no one else can talk to. I'm not used to real people— even fictional real people. Does that make any sense?" - Gary
Father of Kevin Thorn and the original Literal. The Pathetic Fallacy is the embodiment of Anthropomorphic Personification and most powerful Literal of them all. He is however somewhat dull witted and would much rather be called Gary.
- Animate Inanimate Object: His powers most frequently work by the objects around him taking life after he politely asks them to do something.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Wicked John does everything he can to ruin Gary's stage production of Hamlet. This is revealed to be part of John's plan to cause sufficient chaos to allow him to escape the Golden Boughs Retirement Village unnoticed. Poor, even-tempered doormat Gary, driven to the point of apoplexy by John's antics (and everything else going wrong with the production), flies into a rage and brings damn near every inanimate object in the vicinity to life, including trees and boulders, threatening to level all of Idaho.
- Big, Stupid Doodoo-Head: Calls Wicked John this almost verbatim during their climactic "duel".
- Later calls his son, the feared Mr. Revise, a "butthead".
- Groin Attack: During their "duel" (a scene from Hamlet), Gary kicks Wicked John right in the sack."My nuts! I need those!"
- Interspecies Romance: Starts a "relationship" with a mannequin he names Nicole. They broke up after they started growing apart. Gary does do Noelle the good turn of making her a living person afterwards, however.
- Older Than They Look: Despite being the very first Literal and thus originator of all fiction, Gary looks like a middle aged man while his grandson Revise would not look out of place in a retirement home.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Gary becomes quite distressed when he has to order an object to come to life and obey him rather than asking it to help.
- Shaped Like Itself: As the being responsible for attributing human characteristics to inhuman things, Gary is literally the literal anthropomorphic personification of anthropomorphic personification.
- Sidekick: To Jack, God help him. Later switches temporarily to Bigby's during the Great Fables Crossover.
- Troll: When he, Jack, Hillary Page and the rest of the treasure hunters are set upon by giant guardian statues, Gary talks to them, making them relent. But he claims the statues want hugs in return, to Jack's extreme annoyance. After this is done, Hillary pulls Gary aside, asking if the statues really said that, to which he replies "no": he did it just to screw with Jack.
- Unfortunate Names: His actual name is "Pathetic". That's why he prefers to be called Gary.
Kevin Thorn
"Now the ideas for my new work are starting to come to me, fast and unfettered. Now I can put my practice notebook aside, take up the formal journal and write an end to this sad and silly story with a single, cogent, declarative line. Right now."
"I have an author's responsibility to make the story as good as possible. Haven't you heard that 'all writing is rewriting'? Ever hear of the storyteller's rule, 'kill your darlings'?" - Kevin Thorn
Introduced in Fables as a reporter with the strange ability to see the fable community and its residents for who they really are. He is eventually revealed to be the amnesiac personification of storytelling itself, as well as the creator of all fables. As his memories and powers return, the once mild-mannered reporter begins showing a much more sinister side...
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Of the Author, having literally written the universe into existence.
- Artifact of Doom: His pen, which allows him to rewrite reality. Touching it causes anyone other than him to die horribly as their minds are subjected to the entirety of human history at once.
- Big Bad: In spite of having created most of the comic's villains, he doesn't become one in his own right until ''The Great Fables Crossover'.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Seems very timid and mild- just another defanged victim of Mr. Revise's Memory Hole. Right up to the point he sicks vicious jackals on Priscilla Page.
- Creator Backlash: In-Universe. Disgusted by how his stories have spun out of control without his direct influence. He cites Bigby winding up the Sheriff of Fabletown and Geppetto becoming a Big Bad as examples.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: Gus, Thorn's "faithful" Labrador Retriever, turns out to be a spy for the Golden Bough's Retirement Village, keeping tabs on Thorn for years, and finally turning him in when Thorn starts to get his memory back.
- Faux Affably Evil: Kevin Thorn is a meek, polite and friendly individual. When his memories return, however, he simply keeps it up as a facade. Upon regaining his powers, he drops the act altogether.
- God Is Evil: He views Fables and Mundanes as nothing more than characters in a story to do with as he wishes and barely has more respect for his fellow Literals. When he first gets his powers he turned a park into a nightmare to test them out and casually writes horrible fates for several people who annoyed him. He is not hesitant in the least to destroying everything because he doesn't like how it turned out.
- Jerkass: His true persona. Cruelly toys with the fates of Fables and Mundanes alike, subjecting Bigby to a series of humiliating transformations and giving a woman who sent him an ugly look cancer.
- Human Popsicle: Jack Frost freezes him in order to prevent his world-destroying sentence from being finished.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Has been stripped of his memories by Mr. Revise on several occasions because his stories were wreaking havoc upon the Mundane world.
- Manipulative Bastard: Plays on Priscilla Page's insecurities in order to escape Mr. Revise and regain his pen.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Wants to uncreate reality in order to start with a fresh slate.
- Physical God: The most powerful of the Literals by a long shot.
- Reality Warper: Virtually omnipotent unless prevented from writing in some fashion.
- Ret-Gone: Uncreates Old Sam as punishment for attempting to steal his pen. It is also his ultimate fate- he is exiled to a different reality so that his stories will no longer trouble our world.
- Unfazed Everyman: How he is introduced. Eventually subverted once Jack of Fables comes around.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Depriving him of his pen renders him harmless, as it takes him centuries to "break in" a new one on his own. This is no easy task, however.
Writer's Block
- Almighty Idiot: He is the one being in the universe who is able to keep Kevin from remaking the universe, and yet he is a catatonic vegetable.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Of Writer's Block.
- Perception Filter: It takes Kevin a while before he even realizes that Writer's Block was right next to him the whole time.
Mister Revise
"No one has ever escaped me. Resign yourself to the fact that you're here for life. Now get out of my office."
"I am Revise! I am the Warlock's Bane, the Cutting Man, the Unmaker, Slayer of Stories! It was I who rid this world of its witches and werewolves! It was I who trimmed all that was dangerous and unwholesome from the plague of Fabledom!" - Mr. Revise
Son of Kevin Thorn, and the Anthropomorphic Personification of editing and censorship. Has dedicated his life to creating a stable world for Mundanes to live in. To this end, his organization abducts Fables so that he can strip them of their inherent magic by gradually erasing the Mundane world's memories of their stories. He is also the father of one third of the Page Sisters.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: Appears as a stern, elderly man. Cross him, however, and he will remind you that he is not a human.
- Amplifier Artifact: The Memory Hole, which allows his to use his Laser-Guided Amnesia on a global scale.
- Bad Boss: Only to the Page Sisters, his seconds-in-command. To the rest of his staff he turns out to be a...
- Benevolent Boss: Provides the Mundanes working for him with money and new identities after his organization is destroyed.
- Big Bad: Of Jack of Fables issues #1 to #16.
- Big Good: Not so much to the Fables, but very much so to the Mundanes. Revise made it so the world is safe for normal people to live and thrive in rather than being at the often murderous whims of his father. He made it so the laws of science remain constant and history wasn't changed at the simple scratch of a pen. He also provided for the mundanes who work for him generously.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Interrupts Jack's tale of how he met the Snow Queen in issue #6. Why? To remind the readers that the tale of the Snow Queen is nothing but "the feverish imagination of a sickly and troubled Dane", and to question the sanity of comic writers who allow such tomfoolery in their stories.
- Brought Down to Normal: What he does to Fables in his custody.
- Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: He resembles David Niven, which even Jack notices.
- Deadpan Snarker
- Dude, Where's My Respect?: Gets absolutely no credit for the centuries of work he has put into making the world a safer place for mundanes, and is extremely irate about it. Then again, given that the comic mostly sides with the Fables, this is understandable.
- Humiliation Conga: After Jack enters his life, a mass jailbreak occurs, his daughters turn on him, his brother razes his compound, he is forced to give back every bit of magic he took from the Fables in order to give them a fighting chance, and what remains of his life's work is blown to smithereens by a volcanic eruption. Needless to say, he is left an embittered, cynical shell.
- The Extremist Was Right: As he points out, his harsh actions were absolutely necessary to bring order to the lives of Fables and Mundanes and allow the advancement of science. He was making the world (and universe) safer and better for both Mundanes and Fables by protecting them from his father who would change the laws of physics, history, or anything on a whim. This is all later proven true as the moment Kevin Thorn gets his pin back he immediately starts screwing around with reality and plotting the end of the universe.
- Gilded Cage: Revise's prison is actually more like a cozy little village where everything is free, and Fables are free to do as they please as long as the don't attempt an escape.
- Grumpy Old Man: "Curmudgeon" doesn't even begin to cover it. But considering the nature of his calling, and the type of characters he has to deal with (especially the likes of Jack Horner), his constant exasperation is understandable.
- I Have Many Names: Old Sam rounds off just a few of the names Revise has been known by- "The Cutting Man", "Warlock's Bane", "The Unmaker", "The Master Librarian", and suggests there are many more.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Chief of his powers. He does it to Mundanes in order to erase their memories of the Fables, and to Kevin Thorn, in order to prevent him from creating more.
- Love Triangle: Had one with his brother over Prose Page. He eventually won her, but not before Bookburner had unknowingly fathered two of the Page Sisters.
- Science Versus Magic: Claims that his culling of magic made science at all possible, by allowing natural laws to remain constant.
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Though cynical in nature, his mission to protect the Mundane world from magic is arguably very idealistic in nature. After his life's work is completely destroyed he nosedives into the cynical end.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Imposes this policy upon Priscilla Page and his other enforcers at the Golden Boughs when dealing with captures, because of the theory that any Fable who dies will likely be resurrected elsewhere in the world, outside of his reach.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Has exhibited the ability to extend his limbs unnatural distances, and has morphed into an inhuman creature.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He kidnaps and imprisons Fables and rewrites their stories to make them more family-friendly. He has scrabbled the mind of his own grandfather and several times wiped the memory of his own father. Yet all was necessary to impose a measure of order upon the laws of magic and stabilized the laws of science allowing advancement to take place especially from his extremely fickle father.
The Bookburner
"Isn't it grand?"
"I gave big brother Revise his chance. He blew it. And now he's going to pay for his mistakes." - The Bookburner
The second son of Kevin Thorn and brother of Mr. Revise, Bookburner embodies the more violent kind of censorship. Bookburner shares his brother's vision of a peaceful, magic-free world, but he prefers erasing fables completely from existence, rather than stripping them of their magic and allowing them to live out their lives peacefully. When he learns of Revise's failing project, he resolves to take out all of Fablekind in one fell swoop by storming his brother's facility. He carries a deep grudge toward Revise due to a Love Triangle between them and Prose Page.
- Affably Evil: Outgoing, polite, and in general a much friendlier person than his brother. He seems averse to hurting or killing fellow literals, and his love for Prose Page was seemingly genuine. He does, however, carry a murderous grudge towards Fablekind.
- Big Bad: Of Jack Of Fables issues #17-32.
- Blood Knight: It's pretty clear that he takes sadistic pleasure in hurting and killing Fables, as opposed to Mundanes and Literals.
- The Dreaded: All Fables and more than a few Literals fear the Bookburner, for good reason. Word of his arrival in the Mundane world causes everyone to panic. Even the insane serial killer Lady Luck admits she trembles at the sound of his name.
- Face Framed in Shadow: His hat shadows the upper half of his face whenever he indulges in sinister resolve.
- Kill It with Fire: He can destroy any Fable by burning the book they originated in. This is his standard operating procedure.
- Love Triangle: He, his brother Revise, and Prose.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: He is the father of Robin and Priscilla Page. Having lost their mother to Revise shortly after conceiving them, he is unaware of this fact.
- Made of Iron: Jack unloads a fully loaded revolver into him during negotiations, but it fails to do more than knock him of his feet. He admits that it hurts, though.
- Night of the Living Mooks: He has a vast collection of eidolons made from forgotten Fables at his disposal, not to mention a fair share of actual zombies.
- Put on a Bus: According to the Pathetic Fallacy, his eventual "death" can best be described as this. He will return when he "comes into fashion" again.
- Ret-Gone: His modus operandi. If he possesses the original printing of a fairy tale, he can erase the fable it concerns from existence by burning the book.
- Shame If Something Happened: Has coerced living Fables to work for him by threatening to burn their books.
- Sibling Yin-Yang: Along with the Love Triangle, their conflicting philosophies are what keeps the resentment between him and Revise going.
- Southern Gentleman: Acts and dresses like one, albeit with a brown suit rather than a white one.
- Smug Super: How he views the Fables. It is part of his grudge against them.to Revise, after getting shot by Jack multiple times during wartime negotiations: "Do you see it, Revise? Do you see what a pestilence these creatures are? Underneath all their magic and pretty stories is the belief that they're above everyone else. That they are better ".
Deus Ex Machina ("Dex")
"Impossible? I believe that's my cue."
"At long last, I'm here to fix everything and save the day." - Deus Ex Machina
The Literal whose job it is to save the day and wrap things up just when all seems lost, or there is no logical form of story progression that would resolve things otherwise.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Of the Deus ex Machina.
- Hate Sink: His tendency to use his incredible powers to only solve certain problems at the very last minute gives him a very punchable face to the various people he meets. Kevin in particular hates him because the trope he embodies is a mark of bad storytelling.
- The Omnipresent: Is not only able to appear immediately wherever he needs to be at any given instance, he can also appear in more than one locale at the same time, as when he is in upstate New York explaining to Fables and Literals that he is also in the Fabletown Business office in Manhattan, retrieving a magic egg.
- Teleportation: Pops in and out at will, seemingly from nowhere.
The Walls
"I'd like to tell you a story." - Eliza Wall
The Walls are a group of sibling Literals, the three unnamed brothers and the youngest sister Eliza.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: The Walls are the personifications of the metaphorical walls inside which the performance is undertaken. The first three walls refer to background, stage left and stage right. The fourth wall being the one that separate the audience from the performers.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: While all literals are aware of the fictional nature of their universe, Eliza would routinely talk directly to the reader, she herself being the personification of the fourth wall.
Prose Page
"But until the day of her death, the young woman told no one of the half-breed child that she had abandoned so many years before."
Mother of the Prose Sisters, as well as Jack of the Tales.- Alliterative Name: Prose Page.
- Cute Bookworm: Became this upon her travelling to Alexandria, where she cultivated her love of reading.
- Death by Childbirth: Died giving birth to Hillary Page.
- Parental Abandonment: Knowing that having a relationship with a Fable is strictly taboo for Literals, she is forced to leave her baby by Prince Charming with a kindly old farm couple. That baby grows up to become Jack Horner.
The Page Sisters
General
"We're the Page Sisters. We're the biggest, baddest, hottest librarians the world has ever seen."
"Even if we don't stand a chance, it's better to go down fighting. We aren't fragile little Mundys, or even Fables. We're Literals! Better than that, we're the Page Sisters!" - Priscilla Page
Senior Librarians at the Golden Boughs Retirement Village. They report directly to Mister Revise and serve as his main lieutenants and enforcers. After the dissolution of the Village, they develop their own agenda; rebuilding the Great Library by recovering the tomes containing the original Fable stories.Tropes applying to all of them:
- Action Girl: Supremely skilled with firearms, and have the desire to utilize them. They are hell on wheels when they get going.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: The only explanation for their inexplicable attraction to Jack. Eliza Wall even Lampshades this.
- Amazon Brigade: They become this after the Golden Boughs is no more and they go on their own.
- Badass Bookworm: All three are quite well read and brainy, and also know their way around weaponry.
- Big "NO!": All three let out one when Jack the Dragon incinerates the True Books.
- Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Hillary is the blonde, Robin is the brunette, and Priscilla is the redhead.
- Brought Down to Badass: Because they refused to enter the new universe inside the egg, they lost their Literal qualities, becoming regular Mundy women who just happen to be smart, drop dead gorgeous, and able to drop a man at 1000 feet.
- Cute Bruiser: They are very comely and very good in martial arts.
- Form-Fitting Wardrobe: They start wearing black catsuits when they embark on their quest to recover the books containing the original stories of Fables.
- Gun Nut: Man, do these girls love packing (and using) heat.
- Hot Librarian: Exactly What It Says on the Tin. Hillary even sports the t-shirt.
Hillary Page
"We're about to bring Literals back to this blighted place, and this time do it with grace, elan and style."
"It's not the end of the world. It's the beginning of a whole new chapter in our lives. Once again, the Page Sisters are about to kick ass and take names!" - Hillary Page
Senior Librarian in charge of Research at the Golden Boughs Retirement Village.
- The Flapper: She takes on this guise while the treasure seeking group is lying low in the "gangland" section of Americana.
- Groin Attack: kicks Jack right in the junk after he brags to her about sleeping with her sisters, and his intention to "up the ante" by having all three of them at once.
- Hypocrite: While shopping for supplies at a "Super Mart" (an obvious Expy of Walmart), Hilary admits that such stores are awfully convenient, though she's opposed to them on principle.
- Killed Off for Real: The Tin Woodsman blasts a hole through her during the final battle in the dragon's cave.
- Luke, You Are My Father: Undertakes a huge quest to Americana to locate the Bookburner, thinking he is her father. He is not: it's actually Mr. Revise. Bookburner rather cruelly disabuses her of this notion.
- Place of Power: Any library, where she can discern anything she needs to know from the books and periodicals inside.
- Vapor Wear: Her usual mode of dress includes a very tight, not all there t-shirt, emblazoned with some spiffy phrase.
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: Hillary secures the last piece of Humpty Dumpty's shell (printed with a crucial section of a treasure map) in her bra.
Priscilla Page
"It's a bigger, badder, stranger world than you might suspect."
"I'm not so vain as most, but I happen to know for a fact that I'm hotter than any six other women combined. I'm so hot I should be continued on the next girl." - Priscilla Page
Senior Librarian who heads up Retrievals at the Golden Boughs Retirement Village.
- Alliterative Name: Priscilla Page.
- Beautiful All Along: From childhood to young adulthood, she was rather gangly, awkward and rather unpopular, if not outright unnoticeable. But an extensive makeover from her sister Robin brings out her inner beauty and instills her with aggressive self-assuredness.
- Bling-Bling-BANG!: Brings along a revolver plated with gold from a melted down magical horseshoe, which is vital in the successful capture and retrieval of Lady Luck.
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: Does this in Jack Of Fables #6, to deliver necessary story detail. She even states that she's going to temporarily "break character". As a Literal, she and her other siblings can do this sort of thing.
- I Just Want to Be Loved: Drives her to succeed in her career and seek the affections of men outside of it.
- Killed Off for Real: Incinerated by Humpty Dumpty during the melee inside Jack the Dragon's cave.
- Most Common Superpower: The bustiest of the sisters.
- Ms. Exposition: Priscilla takes on this role in the middle of a "Jack Of Fables" storyarc to explain the deal with the Snow Queen and her three sisters.
- Place of Power: The open road, where she can find any short cut to anywhere.
- She Is All Grown Up: Depicted as very geeky and skinny as a child; needless to say, she has blossomed considerably in pulchritude and voluptuousness since then.
Robin Page
"Let's go nab us some fairy tales, sis."
"When the Page Sisters were little girls, Robin was always the one in charge. As she blossomed into a young woman, Robin was often the center of attention- and she liked it that way. And as far as her relationships with men went, well- let's just say she liked to be in charge there as well. Yes, Robin enjoyed being in charge- which made her choice of vocation as Mister Revise's head skull-cracker a no-brainer." - Eliza Wall
Senior Librarian at the Golden Boughs Retirement Village in charge of Security.
- Action Mom: Having a rugrat doesn't slow her down at all. She even carries the baby into a full-on gun battle.
- All Women Are Lustful: Has a couple of secret sexual encounters with Jack, to satisfy her fiery passions.
- The Beastmaster: Used vicious tigers to contain prisoners in her capacity as Security Chief of the Golden Boughs. Even after its destruction, she retained her affinity with big cats.
- Irony: She used savage tigers to enforce security at the Golden Boughs Village, and it is another savage big cat, the Lion from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz that ultimately kills her.
- Killed Off for Real: The Fiercely Lion of Oz mauls her to death during the final battle in Jack the Dragon's cave.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Asks herself this when it's revealed that Jack Horner is her half brother, and that she has nevertheless fallen in love with him.
- Oh, Crap!: Absolutely loses it when she hears that The Bookburner is on the march towards the Golden Boughs.
- One-Night-Stand Pregnancy: She and Old Sam had just the one time fling, but it was enough to produce a baby boy.
- Really Gets Around: Depicted as having a very healthy libido, with no shortage of willing partners.
- Reckless Gun Usage: Subverted. At one point, during a mission, Robin gives her baby a .357 revolver to play with. But of course, it's unloaded. It's not like she's a monster.
The Genres
General
Not pictured: "Horror", "Literature" and "Romance".
"Family" members to Kevin Thorn, The Pathetic Fallacy and the other main Literals, they each embody some major style of media entertainment and/or storytelling. Thorn brings them in to help spark his imagination, and later to hold off the attacking Fables and enemy Literals.- Creepy Child: "Horror", in spades.
- The Gumshoe: The role of "Noir".
- Mirth to Power: "Comedy" fills this role as one of Kevin Thorn's "advisors", though he never offers any really useful advice or guidance.
- Mook Horror Show: Their fate at the hands of a transformed (but no less lethal) Bigby Wolf. He lops off heads, rips out hearts, and pretty much makes bloody mincemeat of all the Genres, who can do nothing to stop it. They soon recover, however.
- More Dakka: "Blockbuster"'s perennial go-to strategy.
- Most Common Superpower: "Romance" fills out her tight, slinky dress most impressively.
- My Significance Sense Is Tingling: Action has the ability to sense when cool explosions happen and where.
- Not Quite Dead: Bigby Wolf (in the form of a cute little girl, no less), disembowels, eviscerates and utterly shreds the lot of them in an ambush. But their very nature as ideas makes them effectively immortal, and they're back and alive before the crossover ends.
- Sociopathic Soldier: "War" has elements of this, as does "Blockbuster" to a degree.
