Micky Malone owned a nice house. His wife taught elementary school. They wouldn’t have been able to afford the place on his salary alone, but together they managed.
…
Okay, look. I realize you’re a ninety year old man and everything, and were too busy fighting in WW2 to notice that time when back home women were all through the workforce, but both people working has been normal for the past thirty years at the time the book is published. You’ve had decades to work out that it’s no longer some rare anomaly that needs special attention.
The hardwood floors gleamed with polish. I saw an original painting, a seascape, hanging on one of the
walls of the living room, adjacent to the entryway. There were a lot of plants, a lot of greenery that,
along with the wood grain of the floors, gave the place a rich, organic glow. It was one of those
places that wasn’t just a house. It was a home.
So it looks like we are starting to get a bit of info about business vs home…and apparently “home” is a place that looks like something out of a magazine page rather than lived in. Huh. The more you know.
I sighed. “Look. Homes, places that people live in and love and have built a life in have a kind of power of their own. If a bunch of strangers had been trouping in and out all day, I wouldn’t have any trouble with the threshold, but you’re not. You guys are friends.”
So…if you’re a hospitable person with a super homey home who everyone loves, your threshold is shit, but if you’re a shut-in who never has anyone over, you’re untouchable.
I could actually see that if we could just divorce the moral aspect of this – it keeps being that people Harry likes have the right kind of homes and anybody he doesn’t like have the wrong ones so he coincidentally doesn’t need the invite and can stomp all over however he pleases.
He goes on to explain it isn’t about just the words asking him in, it has to be by one of the people connected to the threshold.
Besides, it’s polite,” I said. “I don’t like to go places where I’m not welcome.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Rudolph opened his mouth to spit venom on me again
That’s because that was the biggest load of bullshit he’s ever seen you drop out of your mouth.
but Stallings cut him off.
I maintain that this is not Stallings actually supporting Harry so much as it’s being resigned to the fact you have to just grit your teeth, indulge the diva, and hope you don’t need him again anytime soon.
Stallings also apparently knows all the details of the whole Victor, blessed be his name and work ethic, debacle and gently inquires wtf at this inconsistency. Harry reexamplains, “He’d screwed up his threshold. He was running his business out of it, using the place for dark ceremonies. It wasn’t a home anymore.” but when Harry makes all sorts of magical items, or does all sorts of magical research, or summons fucking demons, at his house, that doesn’t fuck up the threshold.
“So you can’t mess with anything on its own turf?”
What a good and reasonable system that would be. Harry quickly stomps on the idea.
“Can’t mess with mortals, no. Monsters don’t get a threshold.”
“Why not?”
Because even leaving most of his power at the door, Harry can still charbroil a mortal, plus he carries a big stick to crack heads with and a gun to straight up shoot them. Monsters sometimes get in the general vicinity of Harry’s powerlevel, so he needs every advantage available to him to be certain it’ll never be a fair fight.
“How the hell should I know,” I said. “They just don’t.
Hey, remember that time Harry claimed to be a magic geek? That was another magical moment of bullshit.
We then recap how it doesn’t completely stop Harry, just takes a lot, and how vampires can’t come in because If you give them that much of a handicap, they have trouble just staying alive and hm, this feels like a missed opportunity.
So, wizards can go across thresholds if they really need to, because a wizard minus all magic is a muggle, which do fine in our world naturally. (Although…given they’re apparently near-immortal and stuff, I wonder if there might be greater consequences.) A vampire, as magical creature, needs magic just to maintain its existence – BUT, while Dresden vampires appear to be angry bat people, traditional vampires need an actual human corpse. And having a corporeal form, even if it’s one that requires a bunch of magic cheating to make it “alive”, could be way less energy intensive than something like fairies, where their entire being is magic.
You could then tie this to how vampires are so much more active in our consciousness than fairies – they’re literally around more. They can punch through thresholds that would murder fairies. I would bet that being powered by blood also helps under this framework. It makes sense that fairies shouldn’t be able to regenerate magic within an antagonistic threshold area, because they’re cut off, but blood is carried around by things completely immune to this problem, so a vampire that’s able to keep upright after pushing through a doorway can get back their strength if they nom someone inside.
Stallings then says there have been a lot of mysterious disappearances recently, mostly homeless people. Although Harry doesn’t seem to make the connection, I’ll assume Stallings is free-associating from “thresholds protect people from monsters” to “houses protect people from monsters” to “homeless people are easy prey” and doesn’t spell it out because he figures it’s obvious to someone like Harry.
Harry thinks about the whole vampire party thing and if he should mention it, and goes with no, because as established, asshole.
I had no proof of that-for all I knew, the disappearances, if they were disappearances, could be related to the turbulence in the Nevernever. If so, the cops couldn’t do anything about it. And if it was something else, I could be starting a very nasty exchange with Bianca.
His reasoning is that trying to save those people could get him in trouble, so he won’t.
Also we see his general disinterest in everything. He thinks of Bianca’s party, then he thinks that there’s turbulence in the same place vampires generally pop in and out of… I mean, we know from last book’s werewolf clusterfuck that the author could just have decided to include a pile of unrelated undead in this book, but Harry doesn’t.
Worse, he does know the disappearances are unrelated to the only other thing he knows that’s connected to the turbulence, the ghosts, because thus far, there’s been no sign ghosts can do anything about bodies and several points of evidence against: Agatha can’t even touch the babies directly, Harry explains that being able to cause any physical harm requires a very strong ghost, and we just saw some dead animals that Harry compared to the physical damage at the church.
From this, even if we start at the assumption that a vampire party doesn’t in any way mean vampires are attacking people, we have the fact that max turbulence goes with ghost attacks and ghost attacks result in bodies rather than missing people. Unless there’s a third party that’s very good at disappearing people and also would be more active with a turbulent border (for example, sexy godmom, but the fact Harry escaped by jumping across strongly suggests fae aren’t able to get out easily), OR if vampires actually aren’t very good at disappearing people, it’s vampires.
At this point, the bare minimum you’re obligated to do is contact Bianca. She seems to be running a pretty tight ship normally, so maybe these disappearances are guest vampires and she’s able to do something about it. Or, given they seem able to feed without killing, making it clear that the disappearances are noticed could make it more likely the party ends with a bunch of mysteriously anemic homeless people dumped in hospitals rather than a bunch of bodies in the river.
Besides that, in the circles of the supernatural community, an Old World code of conduct still ruled. When you have a problem, you settle it face to face, within the circle.
You don’t bring in the cops and the other mortals as weapons. They’re the nuclear missiles of the supernatural world. If you show people a supernatural brawl going on, it’s going to scare the snot out of them and the next thing you know, they’re burning everything and everyone in sight.
While this doesn’t seem in line with anything we’ve seen, let’s say it’s true.
That’s all the more reason to contact Bianca. Now you can even spin it as a goodwill gesture – the cops are looking for missing people and they’re suspicious it’s supernatural. I, despite the fact they’d pay for my services, didn’t confirm this yet, so if you’re involved, you have time to fix this before they officially ask me to figure out who’s behind it…and if you are involved but don’t fix it, well, they hire me to point them at the problem, you know?
If the police are nuclear missiles, then that means they’re a bargaining chip in diplomatic talks, not that you never mention they exist until the situation goes south and then you suddenly throw them at the other side.
It had been that way since the dawn of the Age of Reason and the rising power of mortal kind. And more power to the people, I say. I hated all these bullies, vampires, demons, and bloodthirsty old deities rampaging around like they ruled the world. Never mind that, until a few centuries ago, they really had.
Again, we see the setting makes no sense. The Age of Reason seems to mean humans lose all the protections they had against the boogeymen, and also somehow those boogeymen let it happen, and now that humans don’t even know the threats exist, they’re most powerful.
Harry also makes no sense, because he’s absolutely a bully rampaging around like he rules the world, but maybe he’s offended because obviously that’s for wizards only.
In any case, I decided to keep my mouth shut about Bianca’s gathering until I knew enough to be certain, either way.
I’m going to make a wild guess and assume that by this he means he’ll ignore it.
Time for a woman to get description.
Sonia Malone appeared at the door. She was a woman of medium height, comfortably overweight and solid-looking. Her face would have been gorgeous when she was a young woman, and it still carried that beauty, refined by years of self-confidence and steady reliability. Her eyes were reddened, and she wore no makeup, but her features seemed composed. She wore a simple dress in a floral print, her only jewelry the wedding band on her finger.
So she’s hot, but not tenderized like Harry prefers. She’s “comfortably overweight” so he can’t neg her down that way, she’s full of self-confidence, and despite what’s happened her eyes are just red and she’s otherwise keeping it together.
“Mr. Dresden,” she said, politely. “Micky told me that you saved his life, last year.”
I coughed and looked down. Though I guess that was true, technically, I still didn’t see it that way.
This whole humblebrag thing is not objectively the worst thing Harry’s done but it really feels like the slimiest.
A quick recap of the plot of last book:
Refuses to help Kim, resulting in a werewolf getting out and the police getting involved in the first place. Also lies repeatedly to Murphy, which is the only reason he can’t just warn them against the werewolf when the other events happen.
Fights tooth and nail against doing anything Terra says, plays chicken against her desperation to find her husband before he goes on a killing spree.
After finally being forced to go to where her husband is, again plays chicken demanding answers, and finally manages to waste so much time the police show up leading to the werewolf going to the police station.
Rather than focus on keeping the werewolf away from the police station, with the knowledge he mostly avoids people on his own but would be deadly in a populated area, Harry focuses on saving his own hide.
When the werewolf is captured and set to gib the entire police station, Harry doesn’t just turn himself in for the chance to do a protective circle.
He then delays going to that station because he’s concerned he won’t be able to do everything before moonrise.
When dragging his heels results in that very thing happening, he feels that the number of death already directly attributable to his actions aren’t enough and watches a werewolf massacre more people before finally acting.
And now this book he repeatedly says that he was basically Jesus come again but is so noble he still feels mildly bad he couldn’t do more, although this is totally irrational and he totally did everything he could.
She says she heard he needs the invite, he again says that bullshit about “I don’t want to go where I’m not welcome, ma’am,”, watches with probably a boner as For a moment, her composure faltered and her lips began to tremble but sadly she pulls herself together and just invites him in without falling to the ground sobbing and begging like Lyria did – you know, the one where right after she did that, he was all “damn that was obviously a setup, who told her my kinks”.
But yeah, Harry may not get to see another woman break down but he does get the invite.
I stepped forward, through the door, and felt the silent tension of the threshold parting around me like a beaded curtain rimed with frost.
I think it’s interesting that even with the invite, he describes himself as getting a chilly reception. Suggests that the woman really doesn’t want him here.
I also wish we’d get these kinds of things regularly. Okay, so maybe houses are the only solid barrier thresholds, but he’s still crossing thresholds a lot and he just said twice that he cares about being welcome or not, so there should be all sorts of areas he can get into but have varying levels of friendliness.
We get what happened recapped – husband was up late, then he was asleep when she woke up but she figured he was just tired. She leads Harry to the room but won’t go in.
“I’m sorry. I c-can’t …” She took another deep breath. “I need to see about lunch. Are you hungry?”
“Oh. Yes, sure.”
That sure was an exchange.
Inside is Murphy, and it’s time to get her description this book!
Karrin Murphy opened it. She wasn’t anyone’s idea of a leader of a group of cops charged with solving every bizarre crime that fell between the lines of the law enforcement system. She didn’t look like someone who would stand, with her feet planted, putting tiny silver bullets into an oncoming freight train of a loup-garou, either-but she was.
Karrin looked up at me from her five-foot-nothing in height. Her blue eyes, normally clear and bright, looked sunken. She’d shoved her golden hair under a baseball cap, and wore jeans and a white T-shirt. Her shoulder harness wrinkled the cotton around the shoulder where her side arm hung. Lines stood out like cracks in a sunbaked field, around her mouth, her eyes. “Hi, Harry,” she said. Her voice too was quiet, gruff.
…that sounds exactly like what I’d picture the leader of a group of cops dealing with bizarre crime to look like. She’s dressed plainly, armed, and looks exhausted.
Why doesn’t she seem like “anyone’s idea” of a leader? Why doesn’t she “look like” she could stand up to a werewolf?
What exactly is so self-evident and yet never directly stated?
Well, time for the description of the other person in the room:
I remembered Micky Malone as an energetic man of medium height, balding, with a broad smile and a nose that peeled in the sun if he walked outside to get his morning paper.
The cane and limp were additions too recent for me to have firmly stuck in my memory.
Micky wore old, quality suits, and was careful never to get the jackets messy or his wife would never let him hear the end of it.
Oh for christ’s sake.
Women exist to do other things than nag men for not being careful. She’s a schoolteacher, for that matter! Not only is she no doubt numb to messes by now, but when does she find the time to wash quality suits? Those are for dry cleaners to worry about!
I didn’t remember Micky with a fixed, tooth-baring grin and eyes spread out in that Helter-Skelter gleam of madness. I didn’t remember him covered in small scratches, or his fingernails crusted with his own blood, or his wrists and ankles cuffed to the iron-framed bed. He panted, grinning around the neatly decorated little room. I could smell sweat and urine.
So that’s why they called him. We find out he attempted to murder his wife.
“She’d locked herself into her closet and had a cellular.
Amazing! We have slowly tiptoed toward the current technological landscape.
At the time this book was written, less than half of America had one of those and even fewer would’ve had the phone on them at all times. It seems more likely she’d be able to grab a cordless phone, I’d think – it feels like this is here because he was casting about for a way for her to do it, without thinking about how plausible it’d be. He could also have picked a different profession for her – a doctor or even a nurse if the idea of a wife out-earning her husband hurts too much.
“What happened to him, Harry?”
…
“You better give me a minute to find out,” I said.
“Could he be … you know. Possessed? Like in the movies?”
“I don’t know yet, Murph.”
“Could it be some kind of spell?”
“Murphy, I don’t know.”
This is spectacularly unhelpful. If we’re charitable, this is just Harry freaking out, but it really wouldn’t be hard to respond to her with “could be” rather than “don’t know”. She’s throwing out options because she wants to know it’s at least possible this is something Harry can deal with.
Having established he won’t say anything to her, she leaves to let him work, at which point Harry does his usual poor-me description of how he’s all alone with the guy.
Holy shit, you broke the blog with your laughter.
Incidentally, that’s more or less how it works in Nasuverse: magi favor places “removed from the normalicy of the common world” since it easier to work delicate magic in isolation and they can establish stronger boundary fields when they don’t need to care about allowing people to cross them.
The ideal of a boundary field is complete separation of the inside from the world outside, a sort of pocket dimension where rules are bent or outright broken, though few magi actually go that far since they do need to occasionally interact with the rest of society. Still, it’s much easier to do when a place is already isolated.
It also ties nicely with the theme of magic being a mystery as opposed to truth-seeking science, which would have worked in DF with the whole techbane.
(Of course, boundary fields are actual magic that needs to be worked into the structure, nobody gets thresholds for free.)
Also, I do agree that in the current DF system the division between home and business place is silly. It really should be about wholeness, about personality. A small bar with a friendly bartender catering to a few regular clients would have a strong threshold. There just would be an implicit invitation for everyone, rendering the threshold a moot point for the most part. But when vampires come, the regulars could barricade inside and be basically untouchable, with every shot of whisky strengthening the protections.
A small bar with a friendly bartender catering to a few regular clients would have a strong threshold.
“Time to mix drinks and change lives.”
“And shoot vampires out of the window. …I do get a bonus for it, right?”
“Flawless service: $500”
“Huh, I didn’t know we had a receipt for Molotov’s”
“It’s a classic drink.”
“Rad Shiba, keep a look out. Bark once for customers, twice for vampires.”
“SIR, YES SIR!”
Seriously though, for some reason I find the idea of Valhalla bunkering down and defending against an assault of vampires absolutely hilarious. Like, you know they’re going to take it in stride and have amusing banter in-between shots.
Also, this is probably the one setting where I wouldn’t mind seeing “black guy dies first” trope played out. Because, you know, Dawson.
What would be great is Jill getting antsy because she can’t take a break outside to smoke, and everyone arming up to go outside and escort her, and she’s like “No guys, seriously, it’s not a big deal, I can go without.”
Also Dana has to snap a vampire in half at some point.
Nah, dana should suplex a vampire. Because she can.
The idea of an armed smoke break is hilarious, though I think, under the circumstances, she’d be allowed to just smoke in the bathroom. It’s seen worse.
Compromise: Dana suplexes a vampire because she can, and it breaks in half.
Also, Dana thinks of her employees, then pounds the ground with her robotic fist.
Actually, I bet there are really advanced smoke sensors in all parts of the bar. This is a cyberpunk dystopia, after all. You can damn well bet that “No Smoking Indoors” is exactly the kind of law the government will 100% enforce, to my and Jill’s great pain.
Ah, and naturally it’s one system that isn’t going to break under the assault. Dystopia indeed.
Also, somehow, the whole situation is all Gil’s fault.
It all being Gil’s fault somehow would be pretty funny. Even better: Dana sends Gil out on a mundane errand like nothing is happening, Gil follows the order without question, and Jill completely freaks out over it.
Hell, it could be connected to Jill’s smoke break:
Jill (lying): Fuck, on top of everything else, I’m out of smokes. Guess I can’t have that break after all.
Dana: She’s right. No point in arming up at this rate.
Jill: Yep. I’ll just sit with a drink for my break. (Thank God)
Dana: Gil, run and get her some smokes. You know her brand, right? She can’t go outside right now; it’s too dangerous.
Gil: Got it.
Jill: NO!
Why doesn’t she “look like” she could stand up to a werewolf?
It’s just that she’s short. Very few people associate someone who stands 149 centimeters with a kick ass fighter ,the idea of a small person being good fighter and being understimated it’s an old trope
We did a fairly non-sexualized description of Murphy for once. I think that someone who didn’t pay attention all the times Harry leered at her and called her a cheerleader could think it was just about her height. See, in the other books, he was constantly calling her cute, and that she looked like a cheerleader, or someone’s favorite young aunt. He was constantly talking down to her in his narration.
Even here, he can’t say something good about her without saying something bad.
cute,and looking a cheerleader. is that really demeaning? an old buddy of mine used to call me a pipsqueak,loved the guy.
harry’s just commenting she doesn’t look dangerous but is anyway.
Context is what matters here. Note that the very first interaction between Murphy and Harry that we see is Harry racing her to a door to open it for her despite knowing she hates it due to, according to him, facing sexism in her work every day.
That’s not an action of someone who respects her and that makes it impossible to be charitable about his other actions towards her.
And, of course, it’s worth noting once again that Murphy is not a real person and her appearance is something Butcher choose for her. She could have been a grizzled square-jawed cop with constantly greasy hair because she doesn’t have time and energy to maintain her appearance when there is justice to be done and zero budget to do it. Instead, she looks like a cheerleader because Butcher really wanted it.
Again, by itself it wouldn’t be much, but when every woman ever is pretty, it’s obvious we’re dealing with author’s appeal here rather than character traits.
i think it’s just meant to show that she doesnt look dangerous but is anyway. but yeah,too many descriptions of women per chapter. You’re right about that
That’s not an action of someone who respects her and that makes it impossible to be charitable about his other actions towards her.
You forgot that, right after opening the door for her (Farla was actually okay with the antics up to this point), Harry introduced us to his Chivalry. That’s really what sours it – that toxic belief that he knows better than Murphy does about how she should be treated.
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Well, I did note that the issue here is Harry doing something Murphy hates. “Chivalry” is just his reason (or, rather, excuse) for doing it.
But yeah, Harry definitely places how he thinks the world should work over other people’s wants and needs.
yeah,he liks teasing people for the sake of it,insecure people become like thay sometimes . i used to be like that when i was 15 but then i grew up,harry still has a great deal of growing up to do
Yes, using descriptions that connotate someone as being childlike and frivolous is demeaning? Like???
what? he looks up to her quite a bit,he doesnt think she’s childlike at all. he calls her cute (on his mind) because of her looks that’s it.
I take it you often refer to adult men as “cute”?
i think a professor of mine it’s cute,but i don’t speak it out loud because i’m kinda quiet in the classroom a old buddy mine calls me pipsqueak. But really,i never saw the word Cute being used as insult
That’s cute. You must be new to condescending then.
Seriously, though, such terms absolutely can be used as insults, and in the context of Harry going out of his way to be “chivalrous” to Murphy against her wishes and him “protecting” her by keeping her in the dark about dangers, his insistence of infantilize her in his descriptions does come across as patronizing at best.
Like, even at best of times, like in this chapter, there is this sense of astonishment in his narration about how something that cute and small could be anything badass, and that really should have gone away by the second book at the latest.
but he’s talking her down he’s describing her appeareance,she LOOKS cute,he just stating how she looks. he’s not astonished she’s a dangerous fighter despite her looks,he’s just commenting her skills are not something you can perceive just by looking at her.
Fuck, what if the book read something like this:
“That’s Karrin Murphy,she’s five feet tall and is a blonde blue eyed woman with a smallish nose. she looks tired,and she’s also accomplished combatant”
i’d call that a boring ass description,it doesn’t say shit about who murphy is or what harry thinks of her
Then there’s the fact that every time Murphy snorts, Harry is amazed at how such an unladylike sound could come from such a cute button nose. Same thing any time she does something unladylike. Her cuteness leads directly to him forcing expectations on her regardless of her wishes.
it’s the contrast,she looks a super ultra traditionally feminined person,and she doesnt act like it,it is a bit surprising. Assuming things about others is a normal thing human beings as entire species do. You guys can criticize him being chilvarous to annoy her,but it’s not right to criticize someone for the mental notes he makes about other people.
We absolutely can. He treats her differently because of those mental notes he’s making about her. If she was a guy, he wouldn’t treat her “like a lady.” He’s sexist and it shows in his thoughts and actions and we absolutely can criticize him for it.
Again, remember: he’s fictional. His thoughts and actions are open and clear to us. Butcher chose to write him this way, and write a world in which his behavior is justified. We can criticize it all we want.
it’s the contrast,she looks a super ultra traditionally feminined person,and she doesnt act like it,it is a bit surprising.
This assumption itself is sexist. Assuming things about people based on their looks is something people should avoid doing, not something they should be excused for.
he’s trying,but it’s hard to unlearn problematic behaviors you may have carrid with you for more than twenty years. i’m not saying he never does anything bad relating to her,he can be rude,but he’s still respects and trusts murphy more than anyone else
I’m a bit curious now,how exactly should butcher write Harry describing Murphy in a non sexist way?
he’s trying,but it’s hard to unlearn problematic behaviors
Yes. It is hard. But there is no indication in the text that he is trying. We haven’t seen it. This is a problem with Harry in general: his flaws aren’t being treated as flaws, and he’s not improving.
The first step to improving, though, is not excusing that bad behavior. Not justifying it. We haven’t seen Harry do that. You’re the one telling us that he’s trying and improving, not the book, and at least you understand he’s doing something wrong. The book doesn’t.
Except he doesn’t try. Look at his thoughts about Lydia: still objectificating, still condenscending despite her being a starved sleep-deprived child. Seems like he didn’t upgrade his impression of her even after talking with the priest, and I don’t remember him thinking again about how she looked like she routinely traded sexual favors for stuff, now with more context for her behavior.
That is a good question! Well, the short answer is that you should just look at a description of a male character in an appropriate role (like one of the cops) and swap the pronounces.
But let’s take it a step farther and rewrite the description we did get this chapter.
Karrin Murphy opened it. She was a leader of a group of cops charged with solving every bizarre crime that fell between the lines of the law enforcement system. Once, she stood, with her feet planted, putting tiny silver bullets into an oncoming freight train of a loup-garou.
Karrin looked at me. Her blue eyes, normally clear and bright, looked sunken. She’d shoved her golden hair under a baseball cap, and wore jeans and a white T-shirt. Her shoulder harness wrinkled the cotton around the shoulder where her side arm hung. Lines stood out like cracks in a sunbaked field, around her mouth, her eyes. “Hi, Harry,” she said. Her voice too was quiet, gruff.
Note how it basically conveys the same information, but the focus is shifted from how short and delicate she is onto how badass she normally is and how tired and worn out she looks now.
And,No. Contacting bianca would be suicide she wants harry dead ,getting her to open up his throat wouldn’t help anyone.
It’s not like Harry needs to come personally. Bianca runs a business, and Harry can most likely find a phone number of it. Either because it’s public info or because he has contacts in the police.
But what if Bianca is behind everything? If she even suspects is onto her she will go after him withat prejudice. He really can’t risk it. Especially when dealing with someone who hates him so much.
Harry just explained how he basically sits on a nuke with finger pressed to the red button. You don’t go after people sitting on nukes with everything you’ve got as it would be mutually-assured destruction at best.
But the risk of everything going south and he dying is still here.
Survival,it’s bout survival
No, it’s about saving people. If it were about survival, Harry would have joined Morty in scamming people.
It would be one thing if Harry were consistently presented to us as someone who’s in it for himself and only cares about his skin and getting enough money to last another month, but the narrative wants us to believe he’s a heroic person who does everything in his power to help and then feels guilty for not managing to do more.
That comes with expectations. Expectations of actually doing everything in your power and expectations to put other people’s lives above personal risk.
Harry doesn’t do it, which is why he comes across as a hypocrite more often than not.
if that’s how you seem,that’s okay. i see him as someone whos trying to help and want to pick his fights so things doesnt end up worse
The problem is that he’s pretty shitty at it. Each time he decides to pick his battles and do nothing, things do get worse, and other people pay for it. Victor’s wife, that sex worker, Kim, the cops and prisoners, now Lydia… Everything that happened to them was totally preventable by Harry if he actually decided to act for once.
As a result, he comes across less as a guy caught in a bad situation where every wrong move is fatal but he still tries to make the best of it and more as someone who just doesn’t care as long as he gets his paycheck by the end of the day.
What narrative tells us about Harry and what it actually shows are at odds, which is a big problem.
he still stopped victor,and the evil werewolves. he can learn with the mistakes
Yeah, except he doesn’t. The same situation repeats verbatim for three books straight now. He succeeds in the end, sure, but in the process people pay the unnecessary price, and Harry doesn’t change how he approaches new problems.
still,i feel like contacting bianca would not help,if she threaten to try and have the police prosecute her,she may try to kill the cops and harry with he help of her goons she could do that by secret if she was worried bout a masquerade,if he try to just ask her if she knows something she’s still liable to try and murder him just out of spite. and at this point,he doesnt have much proof she might be behind the dissapearings,he might provoke a powerful enemy who hates him something fierce on a maybe. he needs to find out more
you ignoring some thing abotu Kim. Her death it’s on her just a much as it’s on harry, he told her “don’t try this,you’ll prbably die,i don’t want to help you because i’d die,dying is the main thing here Kim.” and she still does it.
And what’s more,if someone screws up and a large number of cops and maybe civillians find out vampires are real,a huge freaking riot would happens,tons of deaths
Okay, you’ve brought up something very important, which is what we’ve been complaining about the entire time:
Her death it’s on her just a much as it’s on harry, he told her “don’t try this,you’ll prbably die,i don’t want to help you because i’d die,dying is the main thing here Kim.” and she still does it.
Yes. She still does it. Knowing that something bad is happening/is going to happen, knowing that she might fail and die, Kim still did the best she could to prevent it. This is what Harry does not do, and that’s what truly admirable people do. She died for it, but she acted more heroically than Harry ever has.
Also can I just say, out of all the Harry apologism we’ve had, “the woman who came to him for help totally had it coming for not listening when he says to do nothing” is probably the worst.
Villains may try to kill you if you oppose them, yes. That’s a risk one must take if one wants to be a hero, which narrative insists Harry is.
If Bianca is involved, stopping her is a must. If she isn’t, it’s in her interests to fix the problem rather than chase after Harry since cops are going to investigate either way and killing them would just attract more cops, now pointed straight at her. That’s kinda why mortals are portrayed as a nuclear option to begin with: killing individual cops is more or less meaningless since more would come and they won’t be happy about a cop-killer.
Kim would have succeeded in her plan if not for Harry sabotaging her efforts. She could have been more open with the info maybe and asked Harry for help directly, but, given Harry’s general attitude and unwillingness to do anything but bare minimum of work, I can’t blame her.
As for people freaking out that vampires exist, which would lead to a lot of deaths… People are already dying. I’ve discussed in the posts about the RPG how in DF, everything below USA border is a hellhole all but openly ruled by vampires rampaing around and feeding on innocent people. Lives are already lost, and new lives are lost each day, so I’m not at all convinced that breaking the masquerade would make the situation worse.
i’m just tired of people talking like he killed her herself,like she wasn’t an adult with full agency of her actions and her action’s consequences who made a mistake.
Sure, she was all that. It’s just that her mistake was trusting Harry.
it still feels like she,and you guys, asked too much of him. to just barge into a dangerous situation once more,it’s not realistic for someone to want to do it
it still feels like she,and you guys, asked too much of him. to just barge into a dangerous situation once more,it’s not realistic for someone to want to do it
Kim didn’t ask him to come directly! She didn’t ask him to barge in! She asked him for knowledge. She didn’t want him to risk his life. She just wanted to know how the circle works so she could do it herself, and that – that bare minimum – is what Harry refuses her. Harry explicitly says he could create the circle out of dirt and sticks if he had to.
That’s the reason we despise Harry: he refuses to do the bare minimum until the situation is already a disaster. That’s what we’re asking him for here, too: the bare minimum. One phone call, if not to Bianca, then to the White Council.
“Uh, hey, Morgan? There’s been a lot of homeless people disappearing in my area recently. Also Bianca the vampire is throwing a vampire party. They invited me to attend as the White Council representative. Can you help?”
fine,i’ll leave the damned thing about the circle alone. i’ll say this about the council,they are not a humaninst organization,they’re a bunch of wizards getting together to make the decisions involving themselves. they don’t even pretend to want to help people unless there’s a gigantic war happening or a wizard is disobeying their rules. and they all,with one exception,hate harry dresden. so nope,none of them would helpp
Nah, we’re asking for the narrative to actually treat him the way he’s portrayed.
If Harry thought to himself, “My actions got Kim killed, but I’d rather that happened again than risk my own life,” there would have been no problems. Noir protagonists are not supposed to be heroes to begin with, so him having an attitude of everyone for themselves and not getting involved unless he directly benefits from it would be fine… as long as that’s what the narrative is going for.
As it is, Butcher wants us to believe that Harry is a heroic person. There are all those thoughts about how he wished he could have done more even though it’s irrational (no mention of Kim at all, you may note) and other such things intended to make us believe Harry is a hero.
If he’s just a guy trying to survive in a deadly world of occult and making shitty choices that get people killed so he could live, that’s perfectly fine, but that’s not what the books want us to believe.
That you came out of the books with that impression speaks more about your imagination than Butcher’s writing.
well,i dont think harry’s a hero,i think he’s a deep flawed guy,and who almost never really knows what he’s doing. he is a lot of awful things,has done a lot of awful things. i think the good in him outweights the bad. i think he would been a better person if had helped Kim,but he was scared that she needeed a a circle like that to hold something too dangerouss and he didn’t want to take a risk. but i don’t think he’s the only one to blame for her death
That’s nice but not in the text.
As for his assumption that Kim wanted to summon something dangerous, even if it were true (and it’s a big if that he decided to believe over other possibilities), witholding the information wouldn’t have prevented her from summoning anything, it only sabotaged her safety, so it’s still unreasonable.
Plus, he’s the guy who summons demons to get publically available info, it’s really not his place to judge other people’s magical workings.
he didn’t truste her,he assumed he knew better. that was his big mistake,i don’t disagree with you there just with other stuff you mentioned before
Yes, and he keeps making the same mistake over and over again. With Murphy, with Victor’s wife, with Kim, now with Lydia, and it’s always other people who pay the price.
He always assumes that they don’t know what they’re talking about or deserve what’s coming to them because they did something wrong to begin with.
And – that’s the important part – there is absolutely zero reflection in the narrative about it. The moment he started thinking how maybe Lydia is hunted by a demon she pissed off and how he shouldn’t get involved, he should have thought about Kim and how that turned out.
Maybe he’d come up with some justifications even then, fine, flaws are flaws even if this one is particularly irritating, but the total absense of pattern recognition, the total absense of acknowledging what came before and how Harry fucked up pretty much the same situation – that’s a huge problem.
We’re constantly talking about Kim because the book doesn’t.
he’ll have to take a stand,sooner or later. when he does,he starts upping his game and fixing some of that
And in the meantime people are dying and Harry forgets about them since I don’t remember Kim being mentioned even once after the book she was introduced in.
If you wonder why Kim is basically forgotten, apparently its because her entire thing was revenge against an ex-girlfriend of Butcher’s. Seriously.
Wait, really? I’d like a citation because I have trouble believing that even Butcher can be that petty. I mean, I don’t doubt your words, per se, but that is something I really want to see with my own eyes.
http://dresdenfiles.wikia.com/wiki/Kim_Delaney
He said it himself.
Yep, he did.
Now the whole deal with Kim’s corpse is, like, ten times more creepy.
Yeah. At least when Linda Randall and Monica’s sister were sexy corpses, we could pretend there was nothing personal about it.
That is awful. It really surprise me too,the Jim Butcher I knew is a sweet guy,what was he thinking?
Nothing, most likely. From what I’ve seen of his online activity, Butcher comes across as someone who doesn’t think much about how his writing affect people around him. I remember when the issue of whitewashing Chicago was brought up to him and he threw a hissy fit over the tone of the blog post in question, dismissing the content completely in the process.
He seems pleasant enough if you just engage in a light banter with him, but the moment he’s pushed out of his comfort zone, well…
In this case, he probably just felt hurt over the break-up or whatever, wrote his ex into the book to be killed as a last fuck-you to her and didn’t think how it comes across afterwards.
He seems a lot like John Green’s online persona, except less of a faux activist/feminist: chill and nice until the moment you criticize him, then he shows his true colors.
working has been normal for the past thirty years at the time the book is published. You’ve had decades to work out that it’s no longer some rare anomaly that needs special attention.it’s not both people working that is noteworthy to him. Is that harry admires and envy couples,people who are in love and manage to build a life together. Harry has been a loner for a long time,so he notes that those two worked together to pay the house because he wants that. Lonely people will do that
The emphasis is put on the man as the provider here – he doesn’t say that neither of them could’ve afforded it on their own, which would’ve been a much better way of emphasizing the whole love and togetherness thing. It’s anomalous and worthy of comment that the man can’t afford it alone, while it goes without saying that his wife can’t. (Which also relates to the issue of her being a doctor better explaining her having a phone on her – if she was a doctor, then she’d likely be able to afford the house, but the idea of a wife earning more than a husband is unacceptable. He has to be the main earner, she has to be just chipping in that last bit to make things work.)
“but both people working has been normal for the past thirty years at the time the book is published.”
Actually, that’s been the case for the majority of couples all through history. Even during the heyday of that
dreamideaideal in the 50’s, couples with a stay-at-home wife were very much the minority.Wasn’t that housewife ideal itself a backlash against all those women working during WWII?
Also, somwhat relevant but mostly because I can:
The doctor one and the last one absolutely slay me.
Hark, a Vagrant is the comic from which the picture was taken. Go read it if you didn’t already.
And once more because I can. Somewhat relevant:
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I haven’t binged through their archive, but I’ve seen the most popular ones (i.e. every single one you just posted and a few others).
Archive is totally worth it, been through like 4 times.
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This is one of my favorites and I’ve showed it to Mr. Act like 10 times but he never gets it :(
Hark, a Vagrant is just so great. Shame about Mr. Act, feels to me like humor is pretty clear: it simply highlights how limited the archetype is by placing a stereotypical femme fatale in mundane situation outside of noir context.
Also, completely unrelated to DF, yet still I can:
The Wuthering Heights Saga is a favorite of mine.
Also her tit window rant.
OK, that was hilarious and I would have missed it because I’m not into twitter. So, thanks.
It would be interesting to tie this to the fact that every monster’s “home” is technically in the Nevernever. Like, if you think about it, you wouldn’t really be able to “smell” a vampire or other monster, because if their matter stops being connected to them, it should turn to ectoplasm and fade away. It’s like the world itself is getting rid of it, similar to how projected weapons and Servants in the Nasuverse work. They can’t leave the metaphysical dent in the world that you’d need to make a threshold, because the world itself doesn’t recognize them and is constantly trying to spit them back out.
Ooh, that might also be a way to make them deadly but survivable. Reality naturally wants to correct away any changes they make, so if you drive off a vampire fast enough, gaping wounds partly close. Situations that are fixable but on a timer are tenser than people just getting ripped in half with nothing you can do about it. And vampires are enormously powerful, so good luck actually fighting one off.
(A vampire could even use this as a varient of hostage taking – appear, maul somebody, and say they’ll leave if you agree to do what they want.)
That’d be a totally amazing mechanic, and a clever manipulation of it by the vampire in question.
It would also make it slightly more understandable why people in the modern era don’t believe in vampires, etc. Once the vampire is done draining you of blood, the wounds and bruises automatically fade, but the vampire keeps the blood. Zero physical evidence at all but the most strenuous levels of scrutiny.
That would also nicely explain the masquerade, since reality correcting the existence of vampires may very well involve memory erasure. Same for other monsters. Also, blurry photos, no reflections, no shadows and other telltales all could be tied to it.
Hm, maybe tie wizards to that as well: they stand on the boundary of two worlds, which allows them to call upon magic powers but also makes them more vulnerable to monsters and makes their thresholds shit unless they actively reinforce them with wards or live with family/cabal.
In this case, instead of being a walking techbane, Harry would instead have a very hard time making technology obey him as reality doesn’t particularly like him and modern society specifically doesn’t have a place for him.
In this case, instead of being a walking techbane, Harry would instead have a very hard time making technology obey him as reality doesn’t particularly like him and modern society specifically doesn’t have a place for him.
This kind of thing would be 100% more interesting than Harry blowing up Murphy’s computer or Marcone’s car every other book. Like, Harry would step on an elevator, hit 10 floors up, and it’d forget he was on it and stop at 3. He’d spend five minutes bashing the door opening button before finally having to force it open manually.
He’d never be able to pay his bills electronically, and his mail would constantly be getting lost, because any non-human infrastructure can’t support him. He lives in the cracks of society. He’s constantly being taken off the Yellow Pages and he can’t ever have a telephone. He uses Murphy as a proxy. Even his birth certificate and SSN get lost – as far as the government is concerned, he’s a non-entity.
The cops treat him like a criminal because every single one of them personally tried to run a background check, only to find out that Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden literally doesn’t exist.
Hm. What if, for indirect effects, reality keeps checking and so sooner or later it’ll refuse? So if Harry crowbars a door open, that’s one big thing. Maybe he has a push a little harder, open it a little wider, but it’s not a noticeable difference. But if he pushes on the gas pedal to release gas into an engine that turns gears that turn gears that turn wheels, reality has a chance of refusing to acknowledge any step in that process.
Complex technology has so many checks it’s almost guaranteed to fail at some point but there’s no issue with lighting paraffin candles. And there are some really old, simple cameras that have almost no parts, which would allow people to take somewhat reliable pictures of magical things, but the rise of digital photos would be a big concern as companies stop producing film entirely. (Oh, and vampires and such could actually be helping fund research like that.)
That works as well, the important thing here is that Harry doesn’t fuck technology just by proximity, it’s actions performed by him or on him that have a greater chance to glitch.
Of course, in this model it would affect monsters as well. For the most part, it’s not a problem as it pushes them away from civilization and into the cracks, dwelling where nobody’s looking, but vampires specifically work better when they have a formidable presence in the world.
Maybe occupying human corpses with blood of the living coursing through their veins gives them more of a metaphysical stability unless they go full bat-monster.
Though I guess it could be that they mostly work through proxies while remaining non-entities in the world of mortals themselves.
Also, all of it can be tied to the magic returning and monsters attacking more often. It used to be that reality checked very often, resulting in Harry getting stuck in elevators every time and his car stopping every ten miles, but the longer he lives, the less it happens, while various monsters gain more of a foothold in the mortal world, more presence.
I actually think it’s a huge waste to tie this effect solely to actions. To me, the idea that Harry can’t stay on official records in the modern civilization, while most people are leaving paper and digital trails everywhere they go, is really compelling, far more than everyday appliances just failing.
Then Harry can’t have his own threshold, either. He has to use circles and wards to protect himself while he sleeps.
Incidentally, wouldn’t he be able to use technology inside someone else’s threshold, since he loses most or all of his magic?
Hm, actions probably a wrong word. Just processes related to wizards, including maintaining paper and digital trails. His birth certificate and the like could actually be mostly fine, except his name (and the name of his mother) is smudged to the point of unreadability.
As for thresholds, depends on how it works metaphysically in the new version. Could be that he’s generally lessened and the effect is actually stronger, so even simple stuff like opening an unlocked door becomes difficult to him.
Also, the erosion of thresholds neatly explains Victor and Morty. It’s not that the two times Harry wanted to fight/bully magic users they just happened to have shitty thresholds, it’s that all magic users have shit thresholds and have to rely on traps.
Victor has legit reasons for not having traps on account of being self-taught and inexperienced (though, really, a trap or two before the final fight wouldn’t be out of place) and Morty is terrified of his power, so even if he can, say, bind a ghost to attack the intruders, it’s not something he would want to do.
Still a contrivance, but a lesser one.
I guess, but I do like the idea of there being basically nothing.
This does actually give Victor Sells a lot of potential for a sympathetic backstory. Right now it’s a flat “disgruntled businessman becomes abusive etc. etc. Butcher sucks”. Imagine, though, if you had a wife and two young children, and all of the sudden your powers manifest out on vacation.
When you get back to work, everything is just slightly wrong. You’re working as hard as ever, but someone else is typically getting the majority of the credit. You buy a showy house to brag about and everyone is just like… “meh”. Meanwhile your wife is getting calls from her family: “What is your deadbeat husband, err whatshisname, even doing?” You get fired. You get desperate for any kind of validation. Your wife starts packing to leave, but she’s not even mad at you, she just… forgets you exist sometimes. In a moment of desperation you grab her, look into her eyes, and soulgaze.
You don’t even know what just happened, but your wife is no longer forgetting you. She’s more or less understands what’s going on now, and is working with you to try and fix it (she does tell you to stay away from the kids until you’re both sure it’s safe, and you agree).
You try to form tangible connections, anchor yourself to other things, and you finally manage to make it work without eye contact – by turning on the Sight. It’s like everything clicks into place. You know where you belong in the world now, and what it really looks like. You know that, if you share this feeling with everyone, you’ll be normal again. You’re desperate for that – a return to normalcy. You can’t play by those rules anymore, but if everyone just plays by yours, it’ll be fine, right?
Somewhere along the line, it goes wrong again. You figure out the ingredients, test it out, and everyone who looks at you runs away in fear. “The Shadowman!” they cry. And you know what? Fine. Whatever. It’s better than nothing. You keep at it. You’re not letting anything get in your way. You start thinking that maybe it’s time to show the kids who you really are… and your wife, who’s been by your side this entire time, almost immediately takes them away. Well, whatever. You know where they live. The important part is to find out how to mass-produce this stuff…
It’s a nice story, but what about dried scorpions? They’re important.
Anyway, it also neatly makes the White Council more sympathetic. It’s not that they’re a bunch of dicks who value their power and secrecy more than lives lost, it’s that they gave up on living in the modern world because it requires constant daily struggle, like living in the world sick with Alzheimer: even if it’s the right thing to do, it’s not easy, and eventually the Council decided to leave regular humans alone and build their own little society on outskirts of civilization and in the Nevernever.
(Consequently, they don’t kill people for learning about them because it’s pointless. The memories will fade. They always fade. They know it from participating in every major conflict throughout human history, on one side or another, sometimes making things better, other times worse. They’re never remembered.)
That also makes Harry more heroic since he stuck with his life and his job for ninety years straight, never turning away (though, of course, still needs better work ethic to really be sympathetic) and even explains his addiction to soulgaze if it’s the only way to make people truly remember him. It’s not a tool of domination, just desire for recognition.
Also explains the Church. It’s not that they like secrecy preventing people from seeking sanctuary and generally fucking them over, it’s that they tried many times to warn people about supernatural dangers, but it always amounted to a whole lot of nothing and some unrelated women being hanged on suspicion of practicing witchcraft, so they stopped doing it.
Oh, and people avoid eye contact with Harry not because he’s just that much of an ALPHA MALE but as a part of the general effect: people instinctively refuse to make connection with him, which is nicely reflected by them averting their eyes.
So, instead of an ALPHA MALE routine, Harry’s act becomes that of desperation: he wants to show people his soul, he wants them to know that he’s here, he’s real, even if he knows it’s not the right thing to do. And more often than not, he fails.
That is also why he’s hesitant to act against Marcone in a meaningful way. marcone is a scum who ruins people’s lives, but he’s one of a very few people who see Harry eye-to-eye, literally. Confused attraction is nigh-inevitable in the circumstances.
The scorpions could have originally been like bodyguards for himself, his wife, and drug dealers, activated by the intention from rival gangs to harm the subject they’re charmed for. They wouldn’t have been little magical assassins and couldn’t be used offensively until Victor learned how to activate them from a distance using storm magic.
Monica then wouldn’t have even had to steal one to show it to Harry; the scorpions would become a kind of symbol for how Victor’s magic became warped from something creepy but ultimately protective to just creepy and evil.
Yeah, Marcone gets a little more interesting here, too. Like, as a criminal, he’s used to making things disappear, used to things being off the books and unrecognized by the world at large. Normally he has to throw tons of money into that system to make it work, but here’s this scruffy guy who is literally a non-entity. It would be easier to bill them as kindred spirits in that way and give Marcone another reason for Marcone to be kind and genial with Harry despite getting rebuffed.