Harry returns home after bullying an innocent man for no reason. He finds An unmarked car sat in my driveway with two nondescript men inside. waiting for him, but sadly, they are not the karma police, just the regular police.
Detective Rudolph. Rudy’s clean-cut good looks hadn’t faded in the year since he’d started with Special Investigations
We get a comment on how nice a guy looks! It’s just very low key and doesn’t keep going on and on.
Also, Rudolph, showing himself a fine judge of character as befits a detective, thinks Harry is an asshole.
Maybe it had something to do with the bust several months back. Rudy had cut and run, rather than stick it out next to me.
Well, Harry, unlike you, “Rudy” doesn’t have a bulletproof shield he can pull out of his ass, and neither can he set things on fire with his mind. Maybe he doesn’t like you because you’re lording that over him as if completely oblivious to the fact you can easily do things that would get any normal person killed.
“Heya, Detective,” I said. “What’s up?”
“Get in the car,” Rudolph said.
I planted my feet and shoved my hands in my pockets with a certain nonchalance.
“Am I under arrest?”
Now, they’re here for his help, and yes, this isn’t how you should go about it. If Harry wasn’t generally an asshole, it’d be easy to cheer for him pushing back like this. But Harry is the sort of person where telling him to get in the car without wanting to have an actual conversation on the matter seems like it could be a matter of wholly justified dislike for having to deal with – and pay at a high hourly rate, even! – such scum.
Luckily, we’re spared an extended tantrum of Harry’s because the other guy is more willing to put up with him. A detective Sergeant John Stallings politely says hi and says that Murphy asked is he could come help them out.
“Hope you got the time. We tried at your office, but you haven’t been in, so she sent us down here to wait for you.”
I shifted Mort Lindquist’s books in my arms. “I’m busy today. Can it wait?”
And we see why Rudolph figures politeness means nothing, because Harry’s response to people asking for help is always “fuckoff I’m busy”.
Poor Stallings evidently knows that, while true about the fuckoff-I’m-busy, the only way you have any chance is to keep patiently asking.
Stallings gave Rudolph a look, and then rolled his eyes for my benefit.
Oh, I bet it’s for your benefit.
He repeats Murphy asked, and she said it was personal, and then he identifies the person in need as Micky Malone, which is a male name (and an M one, which harry seems to be into) so Harry begins to grudgingly consider helping.
Harry now starts internally listing his justification for not having time, something that really should’ve happened as soon as he decided to blow off the police given that it’s really, really bad to blow off the police when you’re claiming you’re the hero who can do things no one else can.
I didn’t have time for detours. It would take me hours to grind through Mort’s notes, and sundown, when the spirits would be able to cross over from the Nevernever, would come swiftly.
Okay, so some suggestion it’s about transitions here, though it could easily be shorthand for night and mean darkness in general is a time things come across, which would be a reasonable rule for “spirits” in the dead people sense.
Also the frankly ludicrous suggestion Harry was planning to actually work hard at this, or that he could possibly solve the entire thing just by looking at the notes of a guy who just said all he knew was it was happening, not why let alone what to do about it.
But Murphy did plenty for me. I owed her. She’d saved my life a couple of times, and vice versa.
And this is required for Harry to go do his damn job.
Harry goes on to recap about Murphy, since surprisingly she hasn’t come up. He explains Special Investigations, and the high turnover, and how she kept the post…in the most assholish manner possible.
a post that had traditionally resulted in a couple of months of bumbling and then a speedy exit from the police force. Murphy hadn’t bumbled-instead, she’d hired the services of Chicago’s only professional wizard as a consultant
The only thing she gets credit for is knowing to defer to his superiority. Not even that she was smart enough to recognize that magic is what they were dealing with to start with, just that she picked Harry so he could do her job for her.
He goes on to say that under his fine leadership of never explaining jack shit, she’s now pretty good at handling most supernatural cases but when things got hairy she still called me in so it’s not that he’s the only one who can deal with any supernatural thing but actually he’s now only contacted over the especially bad cases, and yet still he demands more reason to actually show up to help than that.
Technically, I show up on the paperwork as an investigative consultant. I guess the computer records system doesn’t have numerical codes for demon banishment, divination spells, or exorcisms.
Yes. No shit. I don’t know why anyone thought this was clever.
He explains that Malone was hamstrung in the werewolf fight, and also that there were a mere six casualties total which, no, there were definitely way more. Surgery got him back on his feet long enough to participate in that demonsummoning case, and ugh I’m really getting sick of hearing about that.
See, throwing out references to things happening between books is great, really gives the sense of a living world. Throwing out the same one reference a million times just makes me think you just had a writing class pointing out the device and are so damn pleased with yourself and want to be really sure the reader notices it.
Anyway, he retires after that, presumably because something happened where his limp got in the way and he realized he wasn’t in shape for this any longer.
I felt guilty for that-maybe irrational, true, but if I’d been a little smarter or a little faster, maybe I could have saved those people’s lives. And maybe I could have saved Micky’s health. No one else saw it that way, but I did.
Harry, everybody sees it that way, in part because it’s objectively true that you dragged your heels all the way to the police station and then stood around gawping as the werewolf tore through people. They just know not to say it to your face.
But between the fact he feels he owes Murphy for the many, many things she’s done for him, and he feels very mild guilt for this guy that just marks him as such a nice person given it really wasn’t his fault, Harry grudgingly decides he’ll help out at whatever cataclysmic event has happened.
Rudolph’s radio squawked and then fell abruptly silent. I could smell burnt rubber or something, and knew that it was likely my fault.
I opened one eye and saw Rudolph scowling back at me in the mirror. I half-smiled, and closed my eyes again. Jerk.
Haha, Harry’s wrecked their ability to know something’s wrong! Now if they’re desperately needed somewhere, or about to go into a dangerous situation, they won’t know! Serves them right for only one of them bowing and scraping before Harry’s majesty.
Shadows fell in sharp slants from all the tall trees and tall houses, turning the streets and sidewalks into candy canes of light and darkness.
That’s a pretty image but not the best description given a major component of the average candy cane is the bendy cane part. “Candy-cane stripes” works better when you’re trying to emphasize the pattern.
They arrive and Harry senses something weird. Also, we find out Murphy rides a motorcycle, which also means Harry had better never get near her when she’s about to travel. “Minor” malfunctions like he’s so smug about in cars get fatal fast on one.
Rudolph thinks Harry’s just doing his whole con thing, Stallings says We’ve both seen what he can do.” to which Rudolph snaps that “I haven’t seen shit that can’t be explained because we’re going to keep pretending that Harry just doesn’t tell people about magic because it’s impossible to convince them.
Anyway, Harry finds a pile of dead animals and does manage to be slightly sympathetic by being all upset by the sight of a dead cat.
It’s worst with people, but with the animals that are close to mankind, it seems to be a little nastier than it might be elsewhere in the wild kingdom.
It is! They rely on us and trust us and we have a responsibility to them.
Having determined that something bad was going on here, but not knowing what it means, it’s finally time to go inside the house and see why Murphy called him.
Harry just find out there’s a oncoming ghost invasion and he has to deal with it or risk being mauled by a spook ,and now more people are asking for his help. Even for a Wizard ,this is an scary situation. And he has as right to be grumpy. He stops being grumpy once be finds out Malone needs his help.
keep in mind that when he faced the werewolf,he had never saw something that dangerous in a long time. A god damn unholy machine of death That is bound to have anyone parlyzed by fear,wizard or not. And I should note after beating the abject horror he felt.need decided to fight the monster. So,really don’t see why anything that happened could be his fault.
Yeah, except he just explained that Murphy deals with minor supernatural stuff herself and only calls him for emergencies. That she went to trouble of not just calling him but stationing two officers to wait for him instead of having them do something productive with their time should mean that either things are really bad or time-sensitive.
In other words, Harry’s “can it wait?” here translates into “can we let a horrible monster rampage until tomorrow/can I look at a new mass demon summoning site tomorrow/can those people be haunted by a violent ghost until tomorrow/etc.”
Moreover, he does indeed know that the barrier is weakening and ghosts become more and more active, so his first assumption here must be that Murphy’s case is related to it. Dealing with it could give him more data points to resolve the issue if nothing else, and in any case isn’t something that can be left to rot.
I’d understand him being grumpy in a sense of mttering “if not one thing then another” and such and being curt with the policeman, but his question paints him in a rather unflattering light.
He cuts he complainaning when he finds out the seriousness of the problem
The point is that the seriousness of the problem was evident from the start.
He really doesn’t. Instead, he lists off why he owes the people involved enough to make a special exception of helping them.
Also,
Except, of course, the mundane cops who did fight the werewolf even though they could do nothing against it while Harry stood and watched them die. Plus, the narrative didn’t actually notice that Harry was supposedly paralyzed with fear, it just described dying cops while Harry apparently did nothing.
So, yeah, the objection doesn’t stand.
Except he wasn’t. There isn’t a mention of any kind of paralysis, just a narration of cops dying (on multiple separate occasions, I would note, in-between which Harry did move around and did stuff) while Harry apparently just watched it.
As I said before, what actually happened is the limit of first person narration: Butcher wanted to show werewolf’s rampage, but we see everything through Harry’s perspective, and if Harry were to actually do stuff and actively move around, we wouldn’t be able to follow the werewolf consistently. So, Butcher froze Harry in place. Not with fear but with the absense of narration describing his actions, similar to how a game may freeze to show you a cutscene or how people freeze in turn-based battle systems.
The result is a scene where Harry stood and watched people dying, then moved around and did some stuff, then stood again to watch more people dying before finally blasting the werewolf.
He didn’t know what he was facing,he was completely outmatched and outclassed,he did his best,but he wasn’t fast enough because he was terrified. It was like me or you trying to take down a rampaging bull who’s wearing a bulletproof vest,it ain’t that easy
Yeah, except no. He did nothing in those scene and there was no comment about him freezing in fear or not moving fast enough.
Again, the scene goes like that:
– Harry describes how cops are dying, no mention of his own actions or inaction;
– Harry acts;
– Harry describes how more cops are dying, no mention of his own actions or inaction.
You’re rationalizing the flawed narrative, adding what was never there. The truth is that Butcher failed to properly describe an action scene, which is a common flaw but flaw nonetheless. The end result is that it makes Harry look horrible even though it wasn’t Butcher’s intention, much like the banter in the middle of the fight with the ghost, Harry utterly failing to notice Lydia looking like death and other such mistakes.
The morale here is that editing your stuff is really useful and Butcher doesn’t do it enough.
fine,a bit of bad writing. I still think in story Harry all that he could taking his fear and lack of experience in consideration
How can he possibly have less experience than everyone else in the scene?
I just meant he still what he could
1) All the other police did fine, so no, it apparently didn’t paralyze everyone with fear. And they knew less than Harry about what they were facing, had less experience, and were completely outmatched while he could kick it across town.
2) Harry has never said this. He instead repeatedly describes it as irrational guilt and how nobody thinks he could have done any better and it’s just that he’s so nice and so sa dthat he wishes he could’ve done even more for them, somehow. If Harry did freeze up, then it may be understandable, but it’s an actual screwup he made and he’s right to feel guilty he failed everyone.
3) Harry had multiple chances to stop it before it even got that far and didn’t take them, so he’s actually completely to blame for the massacre that happened.
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Wasn’t he slowed down by his disguise spell? I know it stopped him gettiny other people’a attention until it wore off
He really had any way of stopping the wolf’s rampage,it was ilvunerable,and he hadn’t found a way to paralyze it without a focus
Hadn’t any way of stopping the thing,sorry*
1) Help Kim originally. Werewolf contained.
2) Explain himself to Murphy, so that he was with the police when they grabbed the werewolf. Werewolf contained.
3) Help Tera instead of playing chicken with her, forcing her and the werewolf himself to sit around explaining themselves while the clock is ticking, leading to the werewolf getting taken to the police station while Harry is elsewhere and can’t draw a circle. Werewolf contained.
4) Not drag his feet getting to the police station just because he’s worried the werewolf has already transformed and would rather everyone else dies, leading to him getting there too late. Werewolf contained.
Even if we pretend that he did nothing wrong inside the station, every last death is still on his head.
Having trouble getting people’s attention has nothing to do with standing doing nothing.
The disguise spell just meant he was partly protected from everything going on, making it all the worse he stood around doing nothing.
What he could he have done that he didn’t.? The wolf was immune to his attack magicKS. He could ground it in place,not hurt it. He was trying to find a way to do such grounding
If it was so immune, why did he solve the problem by blasting it across town?
Because he did, in fact, blast the werewolf across town, ending the massacre. He just took his sweet time doing so.
1)Magic is not an exact science,it’s actually science antithesis. Meaning he didn’t actually know he could blast it somewhere else. Magick is unpredictable by nature.
2) even if he could predict the possibility of sending the monster away,he still had to find a away to immobilize it,otherwise it would still hurt others.
So because he wasn’t 100% sure it would work perfectly, it’s okay he stood there letting ordinary humans with no protection shoot it with completely useless bullets while other ordinary humans tried to drag the injured away.
He didn’t know what do,he was trying to figure out a way to solve this mess,it feels like you wanted him to have a well thought strategy in a short time. He’s not an trained combatant
That’s not at all what she’s trying to say. It’s not what we’ve been trying to say. We’re saying we wanted him to do something, even if it was just to try and fail. The fact that he literally only attacked once Murphy was being personally threatened means he’s not a hero. He just protects people he personally knows (and is attracted to, as he keeps reminding us).
There’s a difference between being good at fighting or tactics and being heroic. The cops that tried to protect people and fight, despite being essentially powerless? Heroic. Murphy, the one with the silver bullets who lets her people know that, if she dies, her gun can hurt the monster? Heroic.
The fact that Harry doesn’t do anything until the monster has angered him enough just makes him look really bad.
He did try,I’m sorry it wasn’t enough
And yet, this supposed lack of experience in fighting supernatural threats (for a man whose willingly chosen profession IS fighting supernatural threats and who is already both powerful and skilled even as the series starts) didn’t show up when he fought Bianca, the demon or Victor Sells in the first book.
Surgery got him back on his feet long enough to participate in that demonsummoning case,
Did I miss something? What “demon summoning” case? I thought this book was right after “Fool Moon”.
It will be showcased halfway through grave peril as a plot point
Ah, I see.
The whole point of the chatter post is to quarantine spoilers. I understand you really want to talk about this stuff, but keep it there.
He explains that Malone was hamstrung in the werewolf fight, and also that there were a mere six casualties total which, no, there were definitely way more.
Uh, is Dresden totally forgetting that there were prisoners in the jail that Mr. Jail “Hero” Monitor was watching. No, wait, don’t answer, he totally did. Harry explicitly heard screams from multiple people.
Here’s three casualties I know about just on the police side, from the top of my head: Jail Monitor, Carmichael, Headless Cop Being Dragged Away. I know for dead sure there was at least one more, since I’m pretty sure the thing ripped out someone’s spine. So that’s at minimum four cops and an uncounted number of prisoners. They all died so that Harry could look extra special when he blew the werewolf out of the building and a slender young black inmate could whisper “damn” reverentially.
Harry is really good at forgetting the people-he-doesn’t-think-are-people exist.
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he just mentioned he feels awful about it.
No, he feels bad about this one guy and the “six” deaths. Getting the number of dead wrong while claiming you care deeply looks bad.
Yes, he feels awful. He makes damn sure to tell us not just how awful he feels, but how “irrational” he knows it is to feel awful. In a better book, this would literally be a joke. That entire massacre is the direct result of 1.) Not helping Kim with her circle and 2.) Not letting Murphy arrest him with MacFinn so he could create his own circle in time.
The entire book series so far has been other people dying or being hurt as a result of Harry’s mistakes. Him thinking it’s irrational to feel guilty at this point is laughable.
Tell you guys what,I feel like the next 3 chapters will be a bit different from what you may be expecting
I hope so! Now, here’s some advice for you if you want to understand us a little better: read the posts that Farla has made on the first two books. She did readthroughs just like these. Hell, read the comments, too. They’re a riot. It’ll at least help you understand how we got here and why we currently have zero sympathy for Harry.
Otherwise we’re going to keep having this same argument where you say “Harry’s a hero who makes mistakes but does his best” and we say “Harry is a jerk who happens to be the only wizard strong enough to help, and his laziness/malice constantly hurts the people around him”.
Huh,I was advised againss doing that by act. But I’ll consider it ,thanks
Actually, I was the one who told you not to. But after the debating I’ve decided it’s better for you to understand where we’re coming from, so that it’ll be easier for us to understand each other when you have an objection or argument with our interpretation.