Dresden Files II: Dealing Drugs To Tiny Faeries

[Lamech]

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For the difference between Ascher and Harry, can you imagine Ascher walking into Michael's House, or the home of someone else she trusts, and telling them (from the book, and earlier in this thread):

“I think I need help,” I heard myself whisper, voice little more than a rasp. “I think I’m lost.”

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I don't think she could go to someone she trusted and say something like that. Dresden killed everyone she trusted.

[Mikeavelli]

There seems to be some confusion regarding the Laws of magic

>Thou Shalt Not Kill by Use of Magic

It doesn't matter if someone is innocent or not, the only important part is if you used magic to do it. And this means directly by magic - the swords are okay to behead people with, even though they're magical. Setting fire to a building with magic which then kills someone in the (now non-magical) flames is borderline; In one of the earlier books, Harry internally monologues about how it would be technically okay, but Morgan would behead him for it all the same because he's on a very short leash.

Magical beings, things from the nevernever, vampires, etc. Are all fair game.

The reason for these seemingly arbitrary distinctions is because the White Council has figured out that these things is corruptive. They literally taint your soul, making it more likely for you break the laws in the future.

In mechanical terms described by the pen & paper RPG, every time you break a law, you lose one point of Refresh (of which an average player has 6-10). These represent your 'free will' and are also spent on other, more useful magical powers. Spend or lose all of them, and you're now an NPC.

In other words, breaking the laws will literally cost you your free will, and turn you into what is effectively a magical being or monster, rather than a human.

That's why the recidivism rate is so high, that's why the Wardens are so beheading-happy, that's why a lot of people don't get off even when they really should by our mortal standards.

[Mauve Shirt]

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Harry would do anything for family, especially his offspring, in case he hasn't made that clear over and over and over again. And now he's suffering from brain pregnancy.
Previously when Harry beat himself up over kids, gave people second then third then fourth chances, he didn't have a child at risk. Now Maggie's wellbeing is motivating all of his actions. Which isn't to say those actions are well thought out or will necessarily ensure anyone's wellbeing, but that's his motivation. When it comes to monsters, as of Changes he's had enough of second chances. The Rampires may have only become Rampires when their life was in danger and they had no choice but to kill. Ascher and Lasciel were a monster who intended to harm Harry, Harry's offspring and the rest of his family.
I don't think there's anything but embitterment and a change in motivation. Harry's gone through more hell than he had at Small Favor, and Winter Mantle or not it's showing.

[Anderlith]

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Ascher had no problem staying free from the Wardens. Harry was willing to let her walk. He doesn't have a better choice. He can't be running around with another apprentice (look how much he ****ed up his last one) he can't have that when he is fighting for his soul, trying to protect his daughter, & cleaning up his mess. The White Council only barely know what's going on with Dresden & that's only if the Gatekeeper filled them in. He might be just as wanted as Ascher right now. He didn't offer to help her because he can't help her any more than just letting her walk away. Yeah she killed in self defense, but then she refuses to feel remorse or any kind of moral accountability. Dresden knows killing Justin with magic makes him vulnerable to turn dark, he accepts this & takes actions against it. Ascher had the same fate but instead of understanding the consequences she says "**** it I'm doing what I want, because I was once a victim" She is just as ****ed up in the head as Batman.

[Mauve Shirt]

Aw maaaaaaaaaan I can't wait for the Council's reaction to Molly's inhuman behavior/mantle of power coupled with her still-doomed-warlock-by-technicality. Have I mentioned how much I hope Peace Talks is about wizards?

[datalaughing]

I've been trying to figure out what parties could be involved in Peace Talks. The Fomor are basically the people involved in the big ongoing fighting right now. So in some ways they seem like the only choice, but we know from the short story Bombshells that the only reason the Fomor would show up to peace talks would be to find a more convenient place to stick the knife. I doubt anyone is falling for that at this point. We know Mab and Lara wouldn't for a start. I'm kind of hoping it will be several groups showing up to make peace and form an alliance against the Fomor. If that was the case we could easily see white court folks, white council people, winter and summer court people, maybe even Mavra or Ferrovax or Drakul. Marcone or Mab could easily end up hosting something like that. Marcone seems to be establishing himself as a major neutral power in the supernatural world. Speaking of major neutral powers, is it just me, or is it time for young adult Ivy to show up?

[Foeofthelance]

I was going to make a comment about an 18 year old in possession of every bit of erotic knowledge be it arcane, mundane, or inane and then had a more puzzling thought.

What if Ivy wrote fanfiction, or any other sort of fiction? Does she get some sort of mental update about what she is writing as she is writing it? The only rough example I can think of where she acknowledges something newly written is when she thanks Harry for the note he scribbled in Small Favor, but I don't know if that means she was actively looking for it, the Archive flagged it to her attention because it concerned her, or if its just a constant barrage of updates pinging at the back of her mind?

[The Glyphstone]

I was going to make a comment about an 18 year old in possession of every bit of erotic knowledge be it arcane, mundane, or inane and then had a more puzzling thought.

What if Ivy wrote fanfiction, or any other sort of fiction? Does she get some sort of mental update about what she is writing as she is writing it? The only rough example I can think of where she acknowledges something newly written is when she thanks Harry for the note he scribbled in Small Favor, but I don't know if that means she was actively looking for it, the Archive flagged it to her attention because it concerned her, or if its just a constant barrage of updates pinging at the back of her mind?

I know there's a very entertaining fanfiction story I found on TVtropes, where Ivy discovers slash fiction - specifically, Dresden Files slash fiction. Kincaid is mildly traumatized by the discussion that follows.

[razorfloss]

I know there's a very entertaining fanfiction story I found on TVtropes, where Ivy discovers slash fiction - specifically, Dresden Files slash fiction. Kincaid is mildly traumatized by the discussion that follows.

link pls that seems like it would be a fun read

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I'm just wondering if the title "Peace Talks" is really going to be as straightforward as it seems. Is a Dresden Files title ever that straightforward?

Like Skin Game, which was a double meaning meta counter-bluff.

Wild Left-Field Theory: we meet Peace. It talks.

[The Glyphstone]

link pls that seems like it would be a fun read

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...heDresdenFiles

Not going to provide a direct link, since the content makes it NSFW, but here's the Dresden Fanfic index:
Under 'General Fics', look for 'Slash Archive' by Totenkinder Madchen.

[Eldan]

What is the double meaning in Skin Games, by the way? I've been thinking about it since I first heard the title, and I don't see it.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

What is the double meaning in Skin Games, by the way? I've been thinking about it since I first heard the title, and I don't see it.

It's an older American term for a rigged gambling game or a swindle. So that's the one, less-obvious meaning.

[Eldan]

Ah, that makes sense then. To be fair, when I first heard the title, my mind immediately jumped to "skin walker", so I thought that was it.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

...hah. Given that meaning, Butcher was hinting all along how the story would resolve. Swindle indeed.

[Kuulvheysoon]

Finally got my hands on a copy of Skin Game. Now I can finally read all of these spoilers.

[Saph]

Ah, that makes sense then. To be fair, when I first heard the title, my mind immediately jumped to "skin walker", so I thought that was it.

Same here. Had no idea about the 'swindle' meaning.

[Lamech]

I'm just wondering if the title "Peace Talks" is really going to be as straightforward as it seems. Is a Dresden Files title ever that straightforward?

Like Skin Game, which was a double meaning meta counter-bluff.

Wild Left-Field Theory: we meet Peace. It talks.

I'm guessing Peace Talks will be Summer and Winter joining forces. They are at war and they really shouldn't be. Plus Fae are in the cycle.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Totally unrelated: is there anywhere I can see a timeline of character ages relative to the books? It's something I really lose track of, as in "oh hey, books generally get spaced apart about a year or so...wait, so Harry's 40something now?" And realizing that even Murphy is getting up there in years.

Dang. That's one of the longest "Will they or won't they" ever.

[Mauve Shirt]

Harry was "less than two score years" old in White Night, he's probably halfway through his forties now. Gotta love that wizard lifespan; despite what he says about not looking pretty I'm fairly certain he's more spry than he'd be without it.

[White Blade]

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Except the Warden's don't arrest you, they jump right past the Judge and Jury so they can skip right to the Execution. The only way we've been provided for a warlock to not end up suffering the most lethal ten-pound diet in history is if they both surrender themselves to the Council andhave a member of the Council willing to take on the burden of the Sword of Damocles. In Harry's case, his grandfather was the Council hitman (and even that didn't stop them from assigning him the most hair-triggered probation officer around) while in Molly's case Harry scares the pants off most of the council older than fifty while simultaneously enjoying the support of anyone younger. So even if Ascher had surrendered herself, either when she was younger or later in the vault, there is no guarantee she wouldn't have lost her head. The only one with any real experience with her was Harry, and he never offered. So from her POV her options in the vault were: Kill Harry, die then and there, die some time later, or spend eternity being tortured by Hades. With Lasciel pushing her for revenge against Harry and Harry failing to provide a third option, she was effectively picking the choice that most looked like self defense. The problem is, as we can pretty much all agree, any time Ascher chooses to defend herself bad things happen. The decisions she had made to protect herself in the past had brought her to the vault, which left her facing a fight she couldn't win.

Which is not to say that I blame Harry for killing her. He was acting in self defense as well. He knew Ascher couldn't win, and even told her as much, and still waited to give her the first shot. And, again, I agree with Saph that he couldn't have settled for a less final solution. His enemy at that point was time, as he needed to get back to fight against Nicky and the Genoskwa who were the much stronger opponents. Trying to knock her out, fetch the thorn manacles, and then haul her around unconscious through the ice gate was not an option, and she would have been a liability in a fire fight as he would be forced to protect her as well.

What bothers me is that the scene was written so that Harry was providing the absolute worst case for avoiding a fight. His semi-flippant response to her rant about him killing all her friends and family, as well as his repeated insistence that the Laws are more important than her right to defend herself, are the sort of thing a person would say if they wanted to start a fight. Considering everything that Harry has been through and all the choices that he has made... Harry and Ascher are foils because Harry has had an entire cast of characters willing to haul his chestnuts out of the fire and slap some sense into him when he needs it, and that is what makes it so galling that he wouldn't try to offer to be that sort of person for her. The comparison doesn't work if Ascher doesn't refuse the aid of another person, because only then does her selfishness confirm itself. Instead we just get told that she was evil all along and so everything is fine and the plot can proceed once she is out of the way.

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Harry Dresden is a lot of different things. Good with words? Not so much. His words were a bit... well, bad. Like badly phrased. I wouldn't say any of them are overly out of character or even necessarily malefic, but I would say that they're just piss poor phrasing. There are a couple times that he says something like, "Damn it, just walk! Just walk! We'll call it, you can face some other warden. Hunting warlocks ain't my ****." But I think that Harry would have said, plainly if asked, that what he did when he killed DuMorne was wrong even in the first book. He believed that, admittedly, because McCoy taught him so. But he acknowledged it - Acknowledged what he had done had transgressed the baseline law of a power drawn from life itself. Ascher was screaming that she didn't have to feel bad about it - Harry, and Butcher for that matter, don't agree with that. Harry's tortured people because he believed it was necessary - But he believed it was wrong. Terribly, horribly wrong.

Harry's older and more ruthless than he was in his youth - He's also still incredibly bad at talking. It was a bit bewildering to hear him say the things he said (mostly because it was so mind-blowingly incompetent), but he really wanted her to walk and was trying to get her to walk. He was trying to respond to hate in a way that curbed it, which if you've ever been in argument doesn't work, but I can see what he was doing. He was trying to make himself understood - But he didn't succeed.

[Avian Overlord]

I'm guessing Peace Talks will be Summer and Winter joining forces. They are at war and they really shouldn't be. Plus Fae are in the cycle.

Summer's entire job is to oppose Winter and for the Fae their jobs and their entire reasons for being are one and the same. Tatiania's job, to quote someone from Cold Days "is to protect all of you from Mab". A team up is very much not in the cards.

On another note, I'm doing a Let's Watch of the Dresden Files TV series in this fine thread here:. It's going a bit slowly (I still need to learn how to cut down on my word count), but you get to satisfy your morbid curiosity while I do all the work.

[Anderlith]

Id rather see us return to the White Council

[Foeofthelance]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...heDresdenFiles

Not going to provide a direct link, since the content makes it NSFW, but here's the Dresden Fanfic index:
Under 'General Fics', look for 'Slash Archive' by Totenkinder Madchen.

As someone who has made the mistake of working in the fanfiction business... That was was surprisingly entertaining, and not nearly as horrifying as I was afraid it might have been.

[Socratov]

Id rather see us return to the White Council

Indeed, Rashid should be about finished with reversing his death certificate and such. And I'd like to see him return to the council to straighten things out, about him being the winter knight and such...

[The Glyphstone]

As someone who has made the mistake of working in the fanfiction business... That was was surprisingly entertaining, and not nearly as horrifying as I was afraid it might have been.

I wouldn't have passed it on if it was terrible.

[Requizen]

Finally finished Skin Game last night. Maybe I'm biased on this one since Nick is probably my favorite villain in the series, and maybe it's the rush from just finishing it, but I think this one ranks up in my top Dresden books.

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I really like how Butcher showed another side of Nicodemus, but did it without trying to make him a "misunderstood hero", for lack of a better term. No, he's still a bastard, and evil, and twisted, but the scene at the altar between him and Harry was, well, tragic and almost painful.

There's a loooot set up for next book, I think. Harry hasn't dealt with the ramifications of being the Winter Knight and being on the White Council. Molly might now be entirely Fae, and not only does Harry have to deal with that, he has to explain to her father that she might have lost her immortal soul because she got wrapped up with Dresden. Harry now has a new spirit of intellect that came from his own freaking head. BUTTERS IS A JEDI.

Also, that chapter with Hades. I love any time Harry meets someone that just makes him shut the hell up, it's always entertaining. Like in Ghost Story when he calls Uriel "Uri", and then the look the archangel gives him just stops the sass immediately. Perfect.

[tomandtish]

There seems to be some confusion regarding the Laws of magic

>Thou Shalt Not Kill by Use of Magic

It doesn't matter if someone is innocent justified or not, the only important part is if you used magic to do it. And this means directly by magic - the swords are okay to behead people with, even though they're magical. Setting fire to a building with magic which then kills someone in the (now non-magical) flames is borderline; In one of the earlier books, Harry internally monologues about how it would be technically okay, but Morgan would behead him for it all the same because he's on a very short leash.

Magical beings, things from the nevernever, vampires, etc. Are all fair game.

The reason for these seemingly arbitrary distinctions is because the White Council has figured out that these things is corruptive. They literally taint your soul, making it more likely for you break the laws in the future.

In mechanical terms described by the pen & paper RPG, every time you break a law, you lose one point of Refresh (of which an average player has 6-10). These represent your 'free will' and are also spent on other, more useful magical powers. Spend or lose all of them, and you're now an NPC.

In other words, breaking the laws will literally cost you your free will, and turn you into what is effectively a magical being or monster, rather than a human.

That's why the recidivism rate is so high, that's why the Wardens are so beheading-happy, that's why a lot of people don't get off even when they really should by our mortal standards.

Made a slight change for you there (as far as the books go). Remember, for the council innocence or guilt is solely based on whether or not you used the magic to do the killing in the first place. Harry was guilty of using magic to kill Justin because he did use magic to do it. If he hadn't used magic then he would have been innocent (whether they would have found him innocent is another matter, but...). What the council doesn't care about (normally) is justification. If you break one of the laws, you broke one of the laws. Rarely (as in Harry and Molly's case) you may get super secret double probation if they feel there was cause AND someone is willing to step up for you (McCoy in Harry's case, Harry in Molly's case), but you are still guilty.

So the course of events goes:

Did you break the law? Yes = guilty, no = innocent. Justification is not a factor here.

If guilty, then we move to sentencing.

Did you have justification? If no (and they seem to tend towards no), then death. If yes, then maybe still death or maybe probation.

Admittedly, we've never seen a trial where there's been any apparent doubt about the guilt or innocence of the warlock. If Morgan had brought Harry in back in Storm Front, we might have.

Aw maaaaaaaaaan I can't wait for the Council's reaction to Molly's inhuman behavior/mantle of power coupled with her still-doomed-warlock-by-technicality. Have I mentioned how much I hope Peace Talks is about wizards?

They won't like it, but unless they are willing to start a war with Winter, she's now a Queen. I think that takes her out of their jurisdiction.

[razorfloss]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...heDresdenFiles

Not going to provide a direct link, since the content makes it NSFW, but here's the Dresden Fanfic index:
Under 'General Fics', look for 'Slash Archive' by Totenkinder Madchen.

i loved the fanfac kincaid had me smirking the entire time

[Foeofthelance]

I wouldn't have passed it on if it was terrible.

Didn't say terrible, I said horrifying. I swear there must be a small cabal of dedicated writers out there - fine writers mind you, ones who have mastered the arts of grammar and spelling, and have developed their voices quite superbly - who spend all their time coming up with the most convoluted, anatomically impossible, psychically deranged, and frankly disgusting content they can simply so that when they read one another's works they can sneer at their screens, "You think that's depraved? Let's see you top this..."

And somehow I got talked into moderating for them.

And damnit, now I've got this ridiculous Harry Dresden/Harry Potter crossover stuck in my head...