History Literature / TheNorthernCaves

* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Arranging things "correctly" in accordance with Mundum might be far less pleasant than how they currently are, but nothing matters except that the correct arrangement is attained.

* BenevolentMageRuler: ImpliedTrope. The protagonists are "heirs of the Manor" -- according to the podcasters, "aristocrats with a magical lineage". Marsh at one point mentions the series contains people "finding out their parents were ancient gods". There seems to be some combination of social power and magical power going on, from which the characters' crushing sense of duty springs.

* DeadpanSnarker: Paul describes Charles as "a master of delicious, grotesque invective", delivering some of the books' occasional moments of humor. Deadpan Snarkers are wont to be fan favorites and Charles is [=JimWind=]'s favorite, the only time any character is mentioned to be a favorite.

* [[invoked]]FranchiseOriginalSin: Paul describes the latter books as still having the same bones as the first book, just taken to their LogicalExtreme. It could also be considered 9 books worth of SerialEscalation. At some point "the matrix is beginning to strain under its own weight".

-->'''Podcaster:''' [T]here's an almost obsessive focus on ''games'' [=--=] the whole thing is based around an overwrought chess metaphor, most obviously, but also there's a very intricate, but still very rule-bound, "magic system" in play, where actions have predictable consequences, like moving a game piece.
* {{Manchild}}: One reoccurring criticism of the books is that, while they get more complicated, they never ''conceptually mature''. Charles Adair's review says "its sensibility never progresses beyond that of a precocious adolescent." The podcasters call the series "psychologically very unambitious, even infantile." Chesscourt is ''complicated'', yes, but it's still a world where everything has predictable consequences and morality is clear-cut. Chesscourt lacks ambiguity. The podcasters characterize this as "a yearning for the clarity of pre-adolescent childhood". A big part of growing up is coming to terms with the fact that ''the world is messy''. Things don't always make sense; duty is not always clear.
* ManOfWealthAndTaste: Paul describes Charles in the first book as "an ominous figure of sinister aristocratic grace".

* {{Worldbuilding}}: Salby's worldbuilding -- like his characters -- were created only to serve his [[invoked]]{{anvilicious}} focus. He didn't care about his world in its own right. He called it "reams of lore invented only to make moral action difficult and thus in keeping with reality". From how readers describe it, it sounds like Salby's world was rigorously logical and this made it feel flat, because the real world is sometimes messy, illogical, and contradictory.

-->'''[=JimWind=]:''' I think Salby was not well when he wrote that stuff, and I'd just rather not look at it.
-->'''jenni_fur:''' i just re-read that first "tale" where tom and sally are married and . . . wow. i'm not sure i liked it, i'm not sure i'd say it was well-written. but there is SOMETHING there, i think? if i'd read that without the chesscourt names, i'd have thought, "gee, that was a weird, chilling, intriguing story." [...] but LS could definitely WRITE, even when he wrote this stuff. not write like he used to. maybe not write as WELL as he used to. but there is something there.

* [[invoked]]ProtectionFromEditors: The last 2 books of the series (''The Sea of Glass'' and ''Chesscourt Regained'') were self-published without an editor. Paul describes being very impressed by Salby's unwillingness to {{sell out}}, but also qualifies this with a reminder that he was a college student at the time, implying that he's become more critical of it with time. In Paul's signature he call himself "the only person in existence whose favorite CC book is Sea of Glass," implying that these unedited books have a questionable reputation, even within a fandom that loves the series.
-->Salby refused to change its basic structure, the editor refused to publish it unless the structure was changed, and at last ''The Sea of Glass'' was self-published, 775 pages of unedited glory headed by the logo of a shady-looking imprint I'd never heard of. As a college student, I was riveted. This was a man sticking to his guns; this was a principle taken to its logical conclusion; this was ''art.'' (I was, let me remind you again, a college student.)

* ChessMotifs: Apparently there are "chessboards all over the walls and ceilings of Chesscourt Manor".
-->'''Paul's narration:''' The Chessboard, already present in A Thornbush Tale, which mirrors inside the Manor events taking place outside.

* [[invoked]]CultClassic: The Chesscourt fandom really cherishes the series, but the mainstream opinion seems to be that while the first book, ''A Thornbush Tale'', was a great children's book, the later series was no good. The most discussed aspect of Chesscourt is its complexity -- praised by fans, disparaged by critics. However, both seem to agree that the books have little to offer beyond that. Critics say there's a fundamental immaturity that pervades the series. Even fans admit the characters and worldbuilding leave something to be desired, and rebel against the ponderously serious and largely humorless tone.

* LaterInstallmentWeirdness: The Chesscourt books begin as fairly standard ChildrensLiterature, that got weirder as it went. Eventually the editor started complaining and [[invoked]][[ExecutiveMeddling requesting Salby tone it down]]. Salby refused to {{sell out}}. Book #7 got published only grudgingly, #8 and #9 were self-published. The series is a philosophical treaties masquerading as literature. It appears that during the earlier books, Salby understood that in order to masquerade as literature, he had to actually make the books ''moderately like children's literature'' -- something he increasingly disregarded as time went on.

* [[invoked]]ProtectionFromEditors: The last 2 books of the series (''The Sea of Glass'' and ''Chesscourt Regained'') were self-published and unedited. Paul describes initially being very impressed by Salby's unwillingness to sell out, but also qualifies this with a reminder that he was a college student at the time, implying that he's become more critical of it with time. Paul calls himself "the only person in existence whose favorite CC book is Sea of Glass," implying that even with the fandom those books were less well-regarded.

* ProtectionFromEditors: The last 2 books of the series (''The Sea of Glass'' and ''Chesscourt Regained'') were self-published and unedited. Paul describes being very impressed by Salby's unwillingness to sell out, but also qualifies this with a reminder that he was a college student at the time he first read them, implying that he's become more critical of it with time. Paul calls himself "the only person in existence who's favorite CC book is Sea of Glass," implying that even with the fandom those books were less popular.

* DeadpanSnarker: Paul describes Charles as "a master of delicious, grotesque invective", bringing in some of the books occasional moments of humor. Deadpan Snarkers are wont to be fan favorites and Charles is [=JimWind=]'s favorite, the only time any character is mentioned to be a favorite.

-->'''jenni_fur:''' LS could definitely WRITE, even when he wrote this stuff. not write like he used to. maybe not write as WELL as he used to. but there is something there.

** As a fictional series, comparisons to real-life books are repeatedly used to give a sense of what Chesscourt is supposed to be like. Paul and Salby himself both compare the broadest strokes of genre to Creator/JRRTolkien and Creator/CSLewis. As for level of popularity, the podcasters liken him to Creator/TerryBrooks or Creator/PiersAnthony. While giving credit where it's due and saying that Salby's at least original, they bring up Creator/RogerZelazny or Creator/PhilipPullman. When Jenny's talking about TNC as experimental literature she mentions ''{{Literature/Ulysses}}'' and ''{{Literature/Hopscotch}}''. The podcasters call it "bargain-bin ''Literature/FinnegansWake''."

* AmbiguouslyGay: There is some implication that Leonard Salby and William Chen may have had a LoverAndBeloved thing going on. They lived together for a time. Ken says of their relationship, "Len… had a friend, later on. Or… whatever he was." Paul reports rumors that "Salby killed his lover in a fit of passion." On the flipside, Salby seemed to see romance as antithetical to obeying Mundum, so maybe not.
* ArchetypalCharacter: Lugnut is a {{troll}} who uses an outrageous combination of FunetikAksent and a parody of TotallyRadical speak, and constantly sounds like he's trying to bait you into a political FlameWar. The style of his writing is all designed to make people skip over it, to not even read it much less engage in conversation with him. Yet he's got some interesting things to say underneath all that. Archetypically, Lugnut is a Shakespearean fool speaking truth under the guise of nonsense. Diegetically it's not clear ''why'' he does this -- it isn't a MirthToPower situation and it seems like communicating clearly might serve him better. Non-diegetically, though, this allows him to bring up important points [[CassandraTruth without the other characters paying heed to what he's saying]].

* MostFanficWritersAreGirls: There's a gendered aspect to how the characters engage with fandom, broadly adhering to the pattern "men are more interested in things; women are more interested in people." The fan theories side of the Cafe is led by Aaron, while the fanfic side is led by Jenny. Her fic, ''Life Among The Lorrums'', is specifically stated to have a focus on character and sociology, injecting humanity back into the Chesscourt verse which is canonically lacking in that department. These tendencies are certainly not hard and fast rules--Jenny engages in the boys' theory talk, the boys read Jenny's fic, Paul's signature contains a link to a fic of his own--but there is a general pattern to it.

* PsychologicalProjection: Salby's journals make it very clear that the ''only'' thing he meant by his books was ''obey Mundum''. Everything else--the characters, the worldbuilding--are merely tools to facilitate that. Nonetheless, people look for other things in his books, and sometimes find it there.
** Aaron, a fan theorist, sees in TNC a grand puzzle to decode if he's methodical and clever enough.
** Jenny, who's very interested in character, sees in TNC a statement on the flexibility of personality, a subversion or inversion of StaticCharacter.

** The podcasters, who see themselves as woke, see in Chesscourt troubling themes of elitism and WhiteMansBurden.

* [[invoked]]UncertainAudience: Chesscourt could be charitably framed as GrowingWithTheAudience, except it's done so weirdly that the latter books aren't well suited to ''any'' age range. It's too complicated for a child to be able to follow, yet not conceptually mature enough to appeal to most adults (the podcaster calls it "psychologically very unambitious, even infantile").

* {{Worldbuilding}}: Salby's worldbuilding -- like his characters -- were created only to serve his [[invoked]]{{anvilicious}} focus. He didn't care about his world in its own right. He called it "reams of lore invented only to make moral action difficult and thus in keeping with reality". Paul says "Salby's worldbuilding is entirely consistent on the level of logic, but has an uneasy relationship with plausibility." The podcaster says, "none of the game pieces really came alive as plausible things that might exist, you know? I mean cultures, or institutions, that sort of thing." It sounds like Salby's world was rigorously logical and this made it feel flat, because the real world is sometimes messy, illogical, and contradictory.

* [[invoked]]{{Anvilicious}}: Chesscourt is not subtle. Anyone can look at it and say, "This is the product of a man obsessed with fiendishly detail-oriented, duty-driven plots, and largely disinterested in his characters and worldbuilding." It's easy to see where his interests laid, or what the themes were. But Salby's ''anvil'' -- obeying Mundum -- is off the wall enough that it can be hard to identify that it ''is'' an anvil without exterior knowledge of his philosophy. Once you know, though, it becomes very apparent why the series is the way it is. Salby himself said he specifically wrote the books to ''drive away'' anyone reading them for a story.
-->'''Salby:''' I sought then to strain out those in my audience who did not understand. I made my heroes rise to duties which no one ignorant of Mundum would find palatable. I veered and darted in ways I thought would shake off those in search of a good story.

The plot kicks off when one forum regular decides to attempt to understand Salby's unpublished final work ''The Northern Caves'', three thousand pages of incomprehensible MindScrew. The attempt spawns numerous theories and interpretations, and increasingly acrimonious debate as the fans struggle to fit ''The Northern Caves'' into the orderly Chesscourt series they know.

** As a fictional series, comparisons to real-life books are repeatedly used to give a sense of what Chesscourt is supposed to be like. Paul and Salby himself both compare the broadest strokes of genre to Creator/JRRTolkien and Creator/CSLewis. As for level of popularity, the podcasters liken him to Creator/TerryBrooks or Creator/PiersAnthony. While giving credit where it's due and saying that Salby's at least original, they bring up Creator/RogerZelazny or Creator/PhilipPullman. When Jenny's talking about TNC as experimental literature she mentions ''{{Literature/Ulysses}}'' and ''{{Literature/Hopscotch}}''.

:: Salby actually ''did'' have a TargetAudience[=:=] people who shared -- or were at least amenable to -- the philosophy of Mundum. He wrote the books with that demographic in mind, intentionally trying to drive away anyone else. However, that demographic is ''unimaginably'' minuscule -- perhaps just William Chen and no one else -- so the books were inevitably mostly read by others.

** Jenny, who's very interested in character, sees in TNC a statement on the flexibility of people.

* DeadpanSnarker: Paul describes Charles as "a master of delicious, grotesque invective", bringing in some of the books occasional moments of humor. Charles is also [=JimWind=]'s favorite, as Deadpan Snarkers are wont to be.

-->In some ways, it is just the logic of ''A Thornbush Tale'' scaled up [=--=] but the quantitative can reach the qualitative if dialed up far enough.

-->Salby starts from the comfort zone of a prepubescent fantasy reader and builds from there. In that he's akin to [[Creator/JRRTolkien Tolkien]] or [[Creator/CSLewis Lewis]] or any one of their progeny. But what Salby builds into is not ''maturity'', per se. He does not "grow up" with the reader. […] The characters do not mature, except in the sense of casting off some of the cloying vocabulary that marred ''A Thornbush Tale'' (their "golly"s and "gosh"es and "darn"s). Aging is implied to occur, but [[NoHuggingNoKissing sex and romance are absent]]. Nor do the characters [[RiteOfPassage "come of age,"]] either in the sense of being initiated into the adult culture of some surrounding society or in the sense of striking out boldly on some self-determined path. Instead, the trajectory is one of increasing moral weight.

-->It isn't just that no romance occurs, which would not be too unusual in a series of this kind. It's that it feels like it never could have occurred. The characters, by virtue of being the heirs of the Manor, are afflicted with a kind of terrible ''noblesse oblige'' whose full weight emerges steadily across the course of nine whole books. There is no time to stop and enjoy what are, for the rest of us, the ordinary pleasures of life [=--=] everywhere, Weightier Things beckon, and they only beckon louder and louder with time.

!!! ''The Northern Caves''

* MindScrew: Most infamously there's 3 pages of just the letter A.

!!''The Northern Caves'' provides examples of:

--->I involved myself in the possibility of Sally cut off from the world of Chesscourt, living out an un-Salbian life. I imagined Charles and Sally recognizing the deep kinship which was all too obvious in their every interaction, but which the iron law of the vigil proscribed.

--->'''Paul:''' How long has it been since I last looked at that page? I couldn't help but cringe seeing my own post there [...] It's funny seeing Marsh's post there, too. I had actually forgotten that he was so skeptical so early, indeed right here at the very beginning. [...] I should probably just force myself re-read all these threads before I do anything else. I'm clearly mis-remembering things.

--->'''Jenny:''' well, i'm someone who was there and isn't paul, and i can pretty much countersign most of what he wrote. of course it's from his own perspective. there's no getting around perspectives. but it's more or less what happened. there's nothing in there that i would say was misrepresented, at least not to the point that i'd want to argue about it in the super-suspicious atmosphere of this thread.

-->'''Paul:''' I think it's really important to Aaron that we keep reading, at least for now. He's having a hard time, and this is important to him. And we're his friends. So I think we can do that?

* ComplexityAddiction: Salby suffered from this in his writing. Over the course of the Chesscourt series, the plots became more and more convoluted, to the point where he ended up self-publishing the last two books after his editor demanded he tone it down. [[spoiler:It turns out this was a feature and not a bug, since his purpose in writing the books was to spread his philosophy of Mundum.]]

* DeadpanSnarker: Paul describes Charles as "a master of delicious, grotesque invective", bringing in some of the books occasional moments of humor. Charles is also [=JimWind=]'s favorite, as Deadpan Snarker are wont to be.

%% * FreudWasRight: One passage in ''The Northern Caves'' contains phrases that lead Aaron to wonder if it's describing a sexual seduction. %% I don't think FreudWasRight is the right trope here.
%% --> ''Sally went for Ws full exoteric crystal matrix as hard as graphene megavolts into his LIGHTNING FAST SPHEX transmission lost oh very good 100% on the full heavy''
* GrowingWithTheAudience: Zigzagging. The Chesscourt books do ''change'' as they go along, in such a way that they leave behind the original audience of children, but the don't really "grow up".

* NoHuggingNoKissing: The Chesscourt books are staunchly devoid of any romance. This is part of the tremendous ''weightiness'' of the series. Fandom [[invoked]]{{shipping}}, then, it's a sort of defiance against the themes of canon.

* NoPunctuationPeriod: Even the semi-intelligible parts of ''The Northern Caves'' largely lack punctuation, which makes them harder to parse.

* [[invoked]]UncertainAudience: Chesscourt could be charitably framed as GrowingWithTheAudience, except it's done so weirdly that the latter books aren't well suited to ''any'' age range. It's too complicated for a child to be able to follow, yet not conceptually mature enough to appeal to most adults (the podcaster calls it "psychologically very unambitious, even infantile"). JustifiedTrope because it's a philosophical treaties masquerading as literature, written by a man who flat-out says, "I don't spend much time thinking about my audience."

:: The demographics who end up liking the books are

** The podcasters mention that in their experience, Chesscourt is mostly read by nerdy middle-schoolers.

* [[invoked]]UncertainAudience: Chesscourt could be charitably framed as GrowingWithTheAudience, except it's done so weirdly that the latter books aren't well suited to ''any'' age range. It's too complicated for a child to be able to follow, yet not conceptually mature enough to appeal to most adults (the podcaster calls it "psychologically very unambitious, even infantile"). JustifiedTrope because it's a philosophical treaties masquerading as literature, written by a man who flat-out says, "I don't spend much time thinking about my audience." The demographic of fans the story focuses on are now-adults who started reading them as kids or teens, giving them both a NostalgiaFilter and an adult's capacity for remembering detail. There's a smaller demographic of fans like Paul who came to like the books in adulthood, seemingly because they're already a little like Salby themselves. The podcasters mention that in their experience, Chesscourt is mostly read by nerdy middle-schoolers.

* {{Worldbuilding}}: Salby's worldbuilding -- like his characters -- were created only to serve his [[invoked]]{{anvilicious}} focus. He didn't care about his world in its own right. He called it "reams of lore invented only to make moral action difficult and thus in keeping with reality". Paul says "Salby's worldbuilding is entirely consistent on the level of logic, but has an uneasy relationship with plausibility." The podcaster says, "none of the game pieces really came alive as plausible things that might exist, you know? I mean cultures, or institutions, that sort of thing."

* {{Worldbuilding}}: Salby's worldbuilding -- like his characters -- were created only to serve his [[invoked]]{{anvilicious}} focus. He didn't care about his world in its own right. He called it "reams of lore invented only to make moral action difficult and thus in keeping with reality".

* BenevolentMageRuler: ImpliedTrope. The protagonists are "heirs of the Manor", which according to the podcasters means they're "aristocrats with a magical lineage". Aaron at one point mentions the series contains people "finding out their parents were ancient gods". There seems to be some combination of social power and magical power going on, from which the characters' crushing sense of duty springs.

* DeadpanSnarker: Paul describes Charles as "a master of delicious, grotesque invective", bringing in some of the books occasional moments of humor. Charles is also the only character who's mentioned as a favorite (being [=JimWind=]'s favorite) suggesting perhaps that he's an [[invoked]]EnsembleDarkHorse.

!!''The Northern Caves'' provides examples of:

* AlienGeometries: Experiencing "the separation" causes you to perceive your normal surroundings as this.
* AmbiguouslyAbsentParent: Marsh's mother is never seen or mentioned. Paul wonders about this, but opts not to ask about what could be a sensitive topic.
* AmbiguouslyGay: There is some implication that Leonard Salby and William Chen may have had a LoverAndBeloved thing going on. They lived together for a time. Ken says of their relationship, "Len… had a friend, later on. Or… whatever he was." Paul reports rumors that "Salby killed his lover in a fit of passion." On the flipside, Salby seemed to see romance as antithetical to obeying Mundum, so maybe not.

* ArchetypalCharacter: Lugnut is a {{troll}} who uses an outrageous combination of FunetikAksent and a parody of TotallyRadical speak, and constantly sounds like he's trying to bait you into a political FlameWar. The style of his writing is all designed to make people skip over it, to not even read it much less engage in conversation with him. Yet he's got some interesting things to say underneath all that. Archetypically, Lugnut is a Shakespearean fool speaking truth under the guise of nonsense. Diegetically it's not clear ''why'' he does this -- it isn't a MirthToPower situation and it seems like communicating clearly might serve him better. Non-diegetically, though, this allows him to bring up important points [[CassandraTruth without the other characters paying heed to what he's saying]].
* ArcWords: "Don't go into the caves."
* BlueAndOrangeMorality: Arranging things "correctly" in accordance with Mundum might be far less pleasant than how they currently are, but nothing matters except that the correct arrangement is attained.
* {{Bookends}}: Both the first and last chapters feature an excerpt where an outsider disparages Chesscourt and its fans. They're also a DistantPrologue (an interview from 1988 + a book review from 1983) and DistantFinale (a podcast from 2015) in contrast with the main story set in 2003 and 2004.
* BrokenPedestal: Learning that Leonard Salby [[spoiler:was credibly accused of murder]] is this for Aaron.
--> '''Aaron''': [[spoiler:Leonard Salby killed someone, for real, Paul. My Leonard Salby. I wore out those old Chesscourt paperbacks in my room, alone. Hiding from the folks. Reading the words of a murderer. Isn't that just how it goes?]]

* ChemicallyInducedInsanity: Paul starts experiencing the separation after taking two Adderalls, [[spoiler:and slips the other Spelunkers Adderall in the hopes that the same will happen to them.]]

* ConvertedFanboy: Paul got into Chesscourt after his college girlfriend recommended it to him. He notes that this sets him apart from most of the other characters, who grew up with the series.
* CosmicHorrorReveal: The revelation that [[spoiler:the diner employees to whom Aaron "spoke in the voice of the sky" committed suicide, proving that the effects of ''The Northern Caves'' aren't just in the Spelunkers' heads]]… [[MaybeMagicMaybeMundane unless]] you buy the explanation that [[spoiler:it was just a coincidence.]]

* DumbassHasAPoint: Ombudsman is pretentious, tedious, and into PurpleProse. But…
** in chapter 19 he's very right to point out that Paul seems not-ok and that someone should do something about that.
** in chapter 26 he's right to point out that it's fucked up everyone's more focused on Paul than the people who died.
* EpilepticTrees: In-universe, Aaron is known for this on the Cafe.
* FixFic: Not in the usual plot-based "fix the story" way, but in a more thematic sense. Paul describes Chesscourt fanfic as overwhelmingly -- even defiantly -- ''anti-Salbian'' in tone.
** Jenny is said to be much better at characters and worldbuilding than Salby. Her fic ''Life Among The Lorrums'' injects the setting with a lot of much-needed humanity. Her work is highly regarded in the fandom.
** Paul has a fic, ''exquisite stasis'', which is effectively about Sally escaping the Salbian trajectory of canon.
--->I involved myself in the possibility of Sally cut off from the world of Chesscourt, living out an un-Salbian life. I imagined Charles and Sally recognizing the deep kinship which was all too obvious in their every interaction, but which the iron law of the vigil proscribed.

* {{Foreshadowing}}:
** Paul's forum signature mentions he's one of the only people whose favorite Chesscourt book is ''Sea of Glass'', a [[invoked]] {{later installment|Weirdness}} that took Salby's ComplexityAddiction so far he was forced to self-publish it. [[spoiler:Paul ends up being the only Spelunker to adopt Salby's philosophy of life.]]
** Lugnut's whole role, basically, is to bring up relevant things so the audience knows them, while being so annoying that no one in-universe engages with what he's saying.
*** He brings up details from Salby's life as possibly relevant to the "Seeking Continuity in TNC" thread, and complains that biographical criticism isn't welcome on the Cafe. [[spoiler:Salby's personal papers, and what they reveal about his life and worldview, turn out to be the key to understanding TNC.]]
*** Apparently there was once a thread titled "Salby And CIA" which Aaron closed in the name of BanOnPolitics. Salby was reportedly at Harvard for a curiously brief visiting lectureship in 1961, which somehow tied in with Project [=MKUltra=] -- Project [=MKUltra=] as in drug induced brainwashing.

* FourTemperamentEnsemble:
** Sanguine: Marsh aka [=metamarsh=], an easygoing stoner telling people [[MellowFellow "it's not that deep dude"]].
** Choleric: Aaron aka [=Errant KnightsMove=], a passionate, somewhat obsessive, emotionally fragile fan theorist.
** Phlegmatic: Jenny aka [=jenni_fur=], a calm, friendly fanfic writer.
** Melancholic: Paul aka [=GlassWave=], a quiet brooding guy who goes off the deep end.
* FreudWasRight: One passage in ''The Northern Caves'' by Leonard Salby contains phrases that lead Aaron to wonder if it's describing a sexual seduction.
--> ''Sally went for Ws full exoteric crystal matrix as hard as graphene megavolts into his LIGHTNING FAST SPHEX transmission lost oh very good 100% on the full heavy''
* FunnyBackgroundEvent: One Cafe user, Avery Lodestone, has a signature which reads "Maintainer of the Anti-Pokémon Haiku Archive (contributions welcome)".
* GrowingWithTheAudience: Zigzagging. The Chesscourt do ''change'' as they go along, in such a way that they leave behind the original audience of children, but the don't really "grow up".

* InfallibleNarrator: Played with. Some chapters are labeled "Materials" (mostly forum threads) while others are "Notes" (Paul's narration).
** The forum threads are an exact, verbatim copy of precisely what was said at the time. As Paul is re-reading these old conversations, in his narration he sometimes remarks how they aren't quite how he remembers them.
--->'''Paul:''' How long has it been since I last looked at that page? I couldn't help but cringe seeing my own post there [...] It's funny seeing Marsh's post there, too. I had actually forgotten that he was so skeptical so early, indeed right here at the very beginning. [...] I should probably just force myself re-read all these threads before I do anything else. I'm clearly mis-remembering things.
** Then there's his narration. Paul is ''heavily'' biased, [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness questionably sane at times]], but he ''is'' trying to be truthful as far as he can be. When someone on the forum asks if he's an UnreliableNarrator, Jenny says he's not.
--->'''Jenny:''' well, i'm someone who was there and isn't paul, and i can pretty much countersign most of what he wrote. of course it's from his own perspective. there's no getting around perspectives. but it's more or less what happened. there's nothing in there that i would say was misrepresented, at least not to the point that i'd want to argue about it in the super-suspicious atmosphere of this thread.
* ItsAllAboutMe: Within the "mundane" interpretation of MaybeMagicMaybeMundane, their belief that the suicides of strangers are really all about them comes off as very self-involved.
* KissingCousins: Paul ships cousins Sally and Charles.
* LaterInstallmentWeirdness: The Chesscourt books begin as fairly standard ChildrensLiterature, that got weirder as it went. Eventually the publisher started complaining and requesting Salby tone it down. Salby refused to {{sell out}}. Book #7 got published only grudgingly, #8 and #9 were self-published. The series is a philosophical treaties masquerading as literature. It appears that during the earlier books, Salby understood that in order to masquerade as literature, he had to actually make the books ''moderately like children's literature'' -- something he increasingly disregarded as time went on.
* MadArtist: Leonard Salby was a crazy old kook. He was aware enough of it he even went to psychiatrists, but they didn't diagnose him with anything specific and that was about as far as it went.
-->'''Salby:''' As a matter of fact, I have, of my own volition, sought the advice of so-called psychiatric experts […] I have been given a bill of good health. I appear to have no delusional or neurotic illness. I have what, and I quote, has been called "an obsessive fixation on moral concerns" (what an age in which this is worthy of note!) which nonetheless "does not seem to obstruct Mr Salby in the course of independent living, or hinder his ability to perform as children's author of note." Observations were however made upon my "inconsistencies of performance" on certain "tests of cognitive function," but as these (whatever they may be) do not obstruct my performance as a children's author of note &c they were deemed of no clinical import.
* MostFanficWritersAreGirls: There's a gendered aspect to how the characters engage with fandom, broadly adhering to the pattern "men are more interested in things; women are more interested in people." The fan theories side of the Cafe is led by Aaron, while the fanfic side is led by Jenny. Her fic, ''Life Among The Lorrums'', is specifically stated to have a focus on character and sociology, injecting humanity back into the Chesscourt verse which is canonically lacking in that department. These tendencies are certainly not hard and fast rules--Jenny engages in the boys' theory talk, the boys read Jenny's fic, Paul's signature contains a link to a fic of his own--but there is a general pattern to it.
* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Aaron's reaction after learning that [[spoiler:the restaurant staff to whom he "spoke in the voice of the sky" were DrivenToSuicide]].

* PurpleProse: One of the peripheral forum users, Ombudsman, writes this way. It's exhausting and other users mostly try not to engage.

* OnlySaneMan:
-->'''Marsh:''' Look, I know you guys think I'm kinda dumb. Because I don't come up with "Hypotheses," or write fics, or anything. I'm just some stoner dickwad who thought he was good enough for your fancy little coterie. And yeah, maybe I know words like "coterie," but I'm still some stoner dickwad in the end, right? But you know what? There are things I can see that you guys can't. I can see that this ''[waves TNC in his hand]'' is crap. You have your theories, and your Hypotheses, and all of this bullshit, and I've been ''so fucking patient'' with it, but deep down I think you know that this is just ''not a good book.''
* SawStarWarsTwentySevenTimes: Unsurprisingly, many of the Cafe users allude to having reread the Chesscourt books many times.
* ScatterbrainedSenior: Zigzagging. ''The Northern Caves'' is Salby's final unpublished manuscript that [[invoked]][[DiedDuringProduction he was working on at the time of his death]] at the age of about 76. Just ''how'' clear-headed he was at this point is a matter of debate amongst the fans. Sentiments include:
-->'''[=JimWind=]:''' I think Salby was not well when he wrote that stuff, and I'd just rather not look at it.
-->'''jenni_fur:''' LS could definitely WRITE, even when he wrote this stuff. not write like he used to. maybe not write as WELL as he used to. but there is something there.
* SesquipedalianLoquaciousness: Paul has a tendency to slip into this (along with PurpleProse) in his notes, usually when he's nervous or uncomfortable about what he's writing. He lampshades this tendency a few times.
* ShoutOut:
** As a fictional series, comparisons to real-life books are repeatedly used to give a sense of what Chesscourt is supposed to be like. Paul and Salby himself both compare the broadest strokes of genre to Creator/JRRTolkien and Creator/CSLewis. As for level of popularity, the podcasters liken him to Creator/TerryBrooks or Creator/PiersAnthony. While giving credit where it's due and saying that Salby's at least original, they bring up Creator/RogerZelazny or Creator/PhilipPullman. When Jenny's talking about TNC as experimental literature she mentions ''{{Literature/Ulysses}}'' and ''{{Literature/Hopscotch}}''.
** Aaron paraphrases Dostoevsky's ''Literature/NotesFromUnderground'':
--->'''Aaron''': Don't even try because two times two makes four, gentlemen, is not life but the beginning of death.
** On two occasions, Paul makes reference to the [[Literature/NineteenEightyFour "place where there is no darkness"]]: first in the brightly-lit bathroom where Aaron's emotional state first starts to crumble, and second when stepping outside on the sunny morning when [[spoiler:he first begins to embrace Salby's philosophy]].
** The Cafe admin torgo shares a name with a character from ''Film/ManosTheHandsOfFate''. His forum signature is a quote from the [[Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000 MST3K]] of the movie:
---> "You are the driver. What would you do if this happened to ''you''?"
* SleepDeprivation: The Spelunkers stay up for 60 hours reading MindScrew text, and while not exactly fasting, they don't eat much. For the mundane interpretation of MaybeMagicMaybeMundane, that is ''plenty'' enough to put someone into a distorted mental state.
* TalkingDownTheSuicidal: In chapter 15, Aaron -- who is a bit emotionally unstable, and really clings to TNC as an anchor, and who's really shaken by the story of William Chen -- goes upstairs into the bathroom and is holding onto a bottle of pills like he might take the whole thing. Paul goes up to talk to him, and tells him the only thing that will comfort him right then: that they're going to "defeat" TNC together. Aaron proceeds to really latch onto this idea. As so, as a testament of love for their fragile friend, they do it.
-->'''Paul:''' I think it's really important to Aaron that we keep reading, at least for now. He's having a hard time, and this is important to him. And we're his friends. So I think we can do that?
* TurnOfTheMillennium: The story begins in November of 2003 and ends in August of 2004. It's been praised for its accurate depiction of early-00s fandom and forum culture.

* [[invoked]]CultClassic: The Chesscourt fandom really cherishes the series, but the mainstream opinion seems to be that while the first book, ''A Thornbush Tale'', was a great children's book, the later series was no good. The most discussed aspect of Chesscourt is its complexity -- praised by fans, disparaged by critics. However, both seem to agree that the books have little to offer beyond that. Critics say there's a fundamental immaturity that pervades even the latter installments. Even fans admit the characters and worldbuilding leave something to be desired, and rebel against the ponderously serious and largely humorless tone.