“Poisoned?” I said, witlessly.
Look, Harry got something right!
Really, this whole party is shaping up like it’s an eat your cake and have it too situation. Harry being an arrogant dumbfuck because heyhey hospitality laws noooooooo touchy lol? That’d work. Harry being scared out of his mind because jesus christ vampires what even are their hospitality laws??? Also acceptable. Either of them would be completely reasonable for Harry.
After all, somehow or other he’s been successfully putting off a fae bargain up until now while still summoning other fairies without any risk and he generally seems really familiar with fae laws, so him assuming this is fairy-level hospitality and he knows that backwards and forwards, he’s completely got this, everything is awesome, well, that’d be fine. Maybe throw in some jab about idiot muggles being afraid of fairy food and how that only applies if you gatecrash a fairy party. The only reason this is such a problem is because Harry won’t shut up about how he has no idea what’s going on, is scared of them doing so much as getting near him, and generally seems to be expecting them to just tear out his liver and eat it right now, laws be damned. If the plot hinges on him being stupidly overconfident, just let him be overconfident!
That said, there is one way to connect these two behaviors. As discussed previously and in the comments, there’s always Harry being fucked in the head emotionally. This does bear a very slight resemblance to the behavior patterns neglected and abused kids can develop, where they provoke negative reactions because at least it’s something. Crucially, the kids may regret their behavior when the reaction happens, because it’s scary and/or painful, but then they’ll just do the same thing again, because being ignored is also horrible. That’s the only thing I can think of that fits with Harry’s whiplashing between intense and apparently genuine distress at the reaction he’s getting and immediately provoking everyone again the instant he gets a breather. His choices are nothing and misery, so he keeps hopping back and forth to get away from whatever the current one is.
Also, for your consideration – we know Harry lives off a diet of steak while being perpetually broke and I don’t recall when he last mentioned eating, and stress makes you hungry (as does getting the shit beaten out of you). Harry, like so many idiots in fairy tales, could have just popped something into his mouth because he wasn’t thinking.
Michael speaks up to say that didn’t Harry explicitly say no one was like straight up going to poison them? This appears to be a plot hole, so quick, explain.
“They can’t,” I said. “If I pitch over dead, the Council would know what happened. I sent word in today that I was coming here tonight.”
Which makes it sound like if he didn’t send word there’d be no repercussions, which is really, really not how hospitality laws or truces are supposed to work.
Interestingly, neither of them consider for an instant that maybe Thomas is pranking them. Or, you know, “pranking”, in the way someone who just said, “I am surrounded by a faction I hate and would delight in their misfortune :D” might possibly be motivated to tell the walking nuke with poor impulse control he’s been betrayed and will die regardless, so hey, what’s he got to lose trying to take some of them down with him?
Instead, they ask for clarification and Thomas claims he’s got no idea!
“But look at these people.” He nodded to those black-clad folk who were already stretched out blissfully upon the ground. “They all have wineglasses.”
First off, that’s something Harry should’ve noticed. He doesn’t have to notice it before drinking. All that has to happen is he moves the description of the sexy goths who are probably less than legal given how into it Harry seems to right after he chugs poison wine. He looks around, he stares way too hard at underage boobies, he grudgingly moves his eyes to non-boobies areas, he realizes they’re all drinking the wine. It would also help if we took out that grouchy old man rant about the fact they’re swallowing mystery pills because they could just be using the wine to wash down all those horse tranquilizers or whatever kids today are into.
Now, remember how Harry got licked before? The vampires spat in the wine.
I didn’t have much time. I stalked past the refreshments table to a potted fern and bent over it.
Now, he really, really doesn’t have much time given how fast it’s absorbed just through skin. With that in mind, why is he daintily finding a corner to vomit in? It’s possible he’s worried throwing up on the floor will advertise to everyone that he drank it, but remember, he just loudly shouted to everyone to attract the attention of the one vampire who wasn’t already staring at him due to Michael’s flashbang assault of Kelly, and then he held up the glass to show them and drank. Every single person at the party knows who he is, that he had a wine glass in particular, and that he swallowed it. If anything, puking it right up on the floor is more of a power move than showing you’d rather die trying to save face in front of them.
“It’s for everyone. They’re drugging everyone’s wine. Vamp venom. That way they can say they weren’t just targeting me.” I wobbled, and then stood up. “Recreational poisoning. Put everyone in the party mood.”
I don’t know why Harry’s assuming that the vampire’s main way of making their prey compliant is only getting pulled out to use on their prey because Harry happens to be attending.
Thomas mused. “Rather ham-handed, I suppose, but effective.”
But we’re apparently to take it as fact. I guess because it’d make Harry look too dumb even for him if we admitted this is standard for all vampire parties and five seconds of research or one second of thinking it out would’ve saved his ass here.
Also, remember how Thomas is actually pretty awful himself?
His fingers stroked Justine’s flank absently, and she shivered, pressing closer to him. “I suppose I’m prejudiced. I prefer my prey a little more lively.”
Harry doesn’t because he’s similarly completely into women as slabs of meat. Thomas can have the flank so long as Harry gets the drumsticks.
Anyway, he then informs us that The venom had to have an enormously quick absorption rate. Even if I’d brought the wine back up, I must have gotten a fairly good dose. WE ALREADY KNEW THIS BECAUSE IT’S NORMALLY APPLIED BY LICKING AND WORKS INSTANTLY. YOU STUPID FUCKER.
Harry then proves I’m right by insisting that If they want me incapacitated, it means they’ve got something to hide. Michael suggests possibly the plan is just, you know, murder. Because they hate him and they like murder, so, it’s kind of a good bet. And if not, Michael also reasonably points out that it could be to get Harry to agree to let them nom on him further, because that is kind of the point of addictive spit.
“No,” I disagreed. “If they wanted to seduce me, they’d have tried something else.
Harry does not go on to give any reasoning whatsoever for why this would be true. I mean, yeah, they should just send someone in with a big sword, but the vampires don’t know that. Bianca tried playing to Harry’s presumed alpha male gentleman thing, so vampires don’t just automatically know your kinks. For that matter, we have no real evidence vampires normally even try to play to people’s kinks when they have mindfuck spit to do the work for them. Even if Harry was right, which he is not because the spit totally works on him, if this is their usual method of dealing with problems then they’re going to use it.
Which is another problem in these books. There’s really no sense of what the usual method is. A ton of fantasy treats every problem that comes up is a unique one. It can’t possibly be that this is the way vampires normally try to trick their meals. It can’t possibly be that this is something that’s proven to work in previous wizard/vampire interactions, of which there must have been many over the thousands of years they’ve been coexisting. And it also can’t be that because vampires are so used to relying on their spit to get what they want that they don’t really know how to deal with a forewarned target or one with magical protections that probably exist but Harry just failed to research as usual.
And this is a shame, especially because it’s so much more reasonable to have a protagonist think up a clever solution to something that’s being done by rote. If Harry has to pull a win out of his ass, at least let it be because he’s got a wizard ass and they’re complacent from dealing with muggle asses.
In conclusion: Harry is successfully seduced and making excuses not to leave, which is why he will now argue to the death that him leaving this party before the drugs take even stronger hold of him is precisely what the vampires want!!! This fits with him being emotionally messed up, especially considering the emotion he’s been running on mostly has been fear. Vampire venom kills that while replacing it with positive. Harry’s finally feeling something without feeling miserable, of course he’s going to take that as a sign everything is great and he should stick around.
Continuing the issue of these parties only existing since five minutes ago when the author started making it up, Thomas the vampire is baffled by the idea a vampire might invite someone she didn’t want to show up, only for Harry to wizardsplain vampire culture to him about how actually she’s obligated to invite the Council to witness. That means me, in this town. Which just highlights how this doesn’t make any sense – if Harry wasn’t in this town and nobody else was, does she have to go farther afield for her invite? It’s phrased as meaning she has to extend an invite to the council, and if the goal is for the wizard to not show up, surely sending it to the one farthest away would be a better move than notoriously unpredictable Harry. Is she required to send it to the nearest? What if the nearest is out on business so they can’t come? What if they’re out at the moment of the invitation sending, so technically the one closest to the site of the party at the moment is someone else? Now you’ve got vampires luring wizards they don’t want out of range by all sorts of shenanigans. Or do wizards have defined territories and Harry’s just never mentioned his actual territory or who owns the ajoining territories or any of those major relevant parts of his wizard life? And if the council is so obsessed with getting to witness any vampire parties that go down, then Harry’s refusal should be a big deal to them – you don’t force such an enormous concession from your enemies if you have no interest in using it.
Michael is convinced by Harry’s argument that nobody expected him to actually arrive. Bear in mind, Harry’s previous interaction with Bianca was to show up on her doorstep out of the blue over a dead lady and this time he has actual reason to believe she’s involved given the exact same people who delivered the invite used a girl who went to him for help to bait a trap for him. Either they knew he’d be showing up after that fiasco or the entire point of it was to get him to show up now. Like Harry’s kinks, they have no idea that he didn’t give a shit and completely forgot about it afterward. As far as everyone else knows, Harry’s a sucker for sad chicks and endangered children, and here they found someone who’s both to dangle in front of his nose. Obviously he’s going to show up to try to rescue her!
Anyway, on the basis of fuck it Harry wants to hang out and “accidentally” “forget” not to drink any more wine, he declares that this basically proves that the nightmare’s patron is here so he should keep looking. Thomas asks the who now? Harry tells him to fuck off. Thomas is totally fine with this, suggesting that he totally is getting off on Harry’s impotence.
I watched Justine’s legs go, leaning on my cane a bit to help me balance. “Nice guy,” I commented.
…this, though. I am not sure how to unpack this particular bit. Possibly I’m wrong about Harry being into dominant women and just crippled by his misogyny. Maybe Harry’s preferred interaction is to have sex with women while being bossed around by guys. (I have no idea what that’d be called, but hey, if both netorare and polyamorous cuckolding are somehow things, that probably is too.) That could explain why he seems so attentive to whether women are in relationships or not. Maybe the reason he’s so weird to women is he’s jealous that in modern society they hog all that sweet, sweet sexual policing.
Continuing with my other theory that Harry’s mindwammied into making excuses to stay, he suggests checking out people based on costume – they know the themed costume people are the local vampires and their buffet dishes, so the random costumes must be outsiders. Note that Harry has no reason to believe an outsider did this and three reasons (nightmare is connected to a local event, other stuff that’s happened has been going on for a while and is connected to local events, locals hate his guts) to think a local did it. Therefore, he’ll check out the people in the random costumes, presumably while looking for more wine glasses to accidentally grab and accidentally carry and accidentally gulp down in one go.
I was surrounded by things that looked at people like we look at cows
Yes, it is terrifying to think you’re surrounded by your own kind.
He goes on to add that he’s going to get himself killed, and then launches into this whole noble explanation that Of course, if I didn’t stay, other people could get killed. If I didn’t stay, the people who had already been hurt remained in danger: Charity. Michael’s infant son. Murphy. If I didn’t stay, the Nightmare would have time to recuperate, and then it and its corporate sponsor, who I thought was here at this party, would feel free to keep taking pot shots at me.
The thought of remaining in that place scared me. The thought of what could happen if I gave up now scared me a lot more.
Like pretty much everything by this point, this makes no sense. If Harry dies, the ghosty goes back to harassing the rest of its list. While Harry can often claim to be all that stands between innocents and monsters, for once it’s actually true in that literally so long as he lives it can’t target others. Let’s consider our possibilities here.
1) Harry dies. Ghosty returns to killing everyone.
2) Harry identifies sponsor, then dies. Ghosty returns to killing everyone.
3) Harry identifies sponsor, kills them, then dies. Ghosty returns to killing everyone.
4) Harry identifies sponsor, kills them, gets out alive, then dies to the ghost. Ghosty returns to killing everyone.
5) Harry identifies sponsor, kills them, gets out alive, kills the ghost. Ghosty doesn’t kill anyone else.
The sponsor’s only contribution was to buff Ghosty when the superghost met supersue. There is no sign it needs that sponsor to finish off a pack of muggles. It’d be one thing if Harry had any evidence, or, given these books, an unsupported assertion that the super half of the superghost was entirely sponsor-provided and it’d fall back into the nevernever to rage harmlessly without that.
Honestly, this is so backward it makes me think the ghost binding was added later for some reason. Harry’s reasoning works fine if the nightmare is still active. He can’t take it out while the sponsor is alive, so the only hope he has of stopping it from killing is to kill the sponsor first. In that case, if he fails now, the sponsor escapes and the superghost resumes picking them off.
Michael nodded, looking around, his grey eyes dark, hard. “This is an abomination before the Lord, Harry. These people. They’re barely more than children … what they’re doing. Consorting with these things.”
Mingling, Michael. Mingling with these things. Which I mostly say to repeat the meme, but if you think about it, nobody here has actually consorted yet. I guess you could argue that possibly, the cattle here were selected from those who’ve been mingling with vampires for a long time previously, enough to bump them up to consorting levels, but we’ve seen no evidence of that, what we’re seen of vampires this book suggests they don’t have such self-control, and it’s been repeatedly stated that the black-clad bunch has been dancing/sharing drugs/making out with other people in black. In fact, the only human we’ve seen who’s consorting is Thomas’ carry-on beverage, who managed a whopping two interactions compared to everyone else’s zero.
Also, as a reminder, barely more than children is still a hell of a lot better than Harry introducing us to a starving kid as a “woman” then getting mad at her for manipulating him with how sexy her starved underdeveloped body is, so really, Michael, ever considered trying out a smite evil on the guy?
“Michael. Chill out. We’re here to get information, not bring the house down on a bunch of nasties.”
“Samson did,” Michael said.
“Yeah, and look how well things turned out for him.
Wow that sure was a butchering. Now, Harry remembering nothing but that Samson died too is forgivable – Harry is an idiot who knows nothing about anything. But Michael, really? You’re not exactly chained to a pillar by your enemy neighbors after violating the arbitrary code your powers depend on. AFTER you fall for doing nothing while hanging out with this sleezeball and get swarmed by vampires you’re now defenseless against, THEN you’ll be like Samson, okay?
I looked around and oriented on the man dressed as a Roman centurion, then headed toward him. A man of indefinite years, he stood alone and slightly detached from the rest of the crowd. His eyes were an odd color of green, deep and intense. He held a cigarette between his lips. His gear, right down to the Roman short sword and sandals, looked awfully authentic. I slowed a little as I approached him, staring.
“Michael,” I murmured, over my shoulder. “Look at his costume. It looks like the real thing.”
“It is the real thing,” said the man in a bored tone of voice, not looking at me.
Uh…Roman centurion gear is kinda heavy on the perishable leathers. This is one of those parts of immortality that sucks. You better know how to make everything you love, because nothing you have will last.
“So,” I said, and cleared my throat. “I’m Harry Dresden.”
WHAT THE FUCK HARRY WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK
The man pursed his lips and said, thoughtfully and precisely, “Harry. Dresden.”
When someone, anyone, says your name, it touches you. You almost feel it, that sound that stands out from a crowd of others and demands your attention. When a wizard says your Name, when he says it and means it, it has the same effect, amplified a thousandfold. The man in the centurion gear said my part of my Name and said it exactly right. It felt like someone had just rung a tuning fork and pressed it against my teeth.
I staggered, and Michael caught my shoulder, keeping me upright. Dear God. He had just used one part of my full name, my true Name, to reach out to me and casually backhand me off my feet.
“Hell’s bells,” I whispered.
HOW ARE YOU SURPRISED WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU WHAT DID YOU FUCKING EXPECT WOULD HAPPEN
Apparently NOTHING because Harry decides to interrogate the guy about how could this mystery immortal dude at a vampire party be able to do the thing Harry knows anyone with a smidgen of magical knowhow can do? How could anyone have possibly thought that could happen???????????
Maybe this is just Harry going for the nearest strong cranky man as the drugs kick in. This guy may only have a short sword, but Michael has no sword now and is boner-killingly patient anyway, and the vampires seem to keep making their pitches based around how they totally aren’t going to hurt him, which he’s even less into.
He rolled his eyes, took the cigarette in his fingers and blew more smoke. “You wouldn’t understand.”
Yes. That appears to be accurate based on the events of the past five seconds.
Harry then informs us/the guy that the guy is not a member of the white council. Harry doesn’t explain how he knows (has he met all of them? is it wizard protocol that only one WC member gets an invite to vampire parties? is it WC etiquette that you don’t truename-backhand other WC members no matter how unspeakably fucking stupid they just were? Oh jesus christ and it’s a party meaning everyone around just heard him say that. Harry, if you want to die that badly, just fireball yourself.) nor does he explain why this particularly matters. Did he think the guy was WC until a second ago? Why would he think that? Or is he surprised that the guy at the vampire party making pointed references to his outfit being authentic can do magic? Vampires can do magic. Fae can do magic. Non-WC wizards can do magic. You know, I’m pretty sure we haven’t even been told there’s any group that can’t do magic. And Harry’s entire justification for going for the costume-wearers was he somehow thought one of them was the superghost’s patron! That’s supposedly why he’s chatting them up! What the fuck was he expecting here?
Michael, who I remind you is not supposed to be the detective here, then points out to Harry that the smoke is only coming out of the guy’s mouth, because the cigarette isn’t lit. Interesting powerplay on the part of a dragon, isn’t it? Like, if he wanted to flaunt it, he wouldn’t have a cigarette at all, and if he wanted to actually hide he’d just light the cigarette, but instead he does this halfway option where you feel like a dumbass when you realize. Harry stammers until Michael specifies that’s a dragon, then stammers more because apparently he either doesn’t know what dragons look like or didn’t know they were real at all while Michael effortlessly identifies the specific dragon by name.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Dragons … dragons are supposed to be big. Scales, claws, wings. This guy isn’t big.”
I mean, I’m glad Harry’s got something other than misogyny as a character trait, but somehow speaking despite lacking a brain is only slightly a step up.
Maybe this is the whammy? Shutting down your ability to remember things and your ability to keep your mouth shut. Harry’s coasting along on the couple things he knows most about (dragons are big lizards!!!) to the point he isn’t even able to connect the fact dragons usually breathe fire to the situation. Given most people don’t believe vampires exist, Harry won’t shut up about how muggles always get magic wrong, and even if you do know vampires exist they spend all their time being subtle and hidden, if you make it so only people’s most common memories are still in play, almost all of them will forget there’s anything wrong and fail to notice any further hints. Considering just about all humans have going for us is our brains, shutting down our ability to notice new information is actually a great idea for something preying on us.
Anyway, furthering my theory that this is Harry’s feeble brain on drugs, his narration refers to the dragon by the original introduction and not Michael’s correction of the dragon’s actual name, then when the dragon calls him by a slightly different name so as to not trigger another backhand, he corrects the guy.
He waved a hand. “Don’t tempt me to show you what I can do by speaking your name and making an effort, mortal. Suffice to say that you could not comprehend the kind of power I have at my command. hat my true form here would shatter this pathetic gathering of monkey houses and crack the earth upon which I stand. If you gazed upon me with your wizard’s sight, you would see something that would awe you, humble you, and quite probably destroy your reason. I am the eldest of my kind, and the strongest. Your life is a flickering candle to me, and your civilizations rise and fall like grass in the summer.”
Which is honestly pretty polite for a dragon. Harry responds by insulting the guy, then calling him a bully, then insisting he’s not impressed.
“Well,” Ferro said. “Let’s see if we can’t make an impression.”
I clutched my cane and gathered up my will, but I was way, way too slow.
In other words, he only reacts when the dragon explicitly says, “I will attack you now.” Harry doesn’t get ready in advance because apparently he had no idea telling the guy is an unimpressive loser who can go fuck himself might result in a reaction.
YET AGAIN, it’s Michael to the rescue. As the dragon is effortlessly force-choking Harry’s entire body and threatening to bring this series to a blessed end, Michael casually mentions hey cool trick bro shame that other dragon I murdered couldn’t pull it off. The dragon eases up, but dragony eases up, which is to say keeps throttling but stops blocking Harry’s magic at the same time so he can break himself free. Neither of them acknowledges this is happening because no one cares.
Also, this suggests dragons murdering people for insolence is classed as the same type of not-my-fault effect as a holy blast autotriggering from proximity, which I think is fair.
“So,” Ferro said. “You are the one.” He looked Michael up and down. “I thought you’d be taller.”
Michael shrugged. “It wasn’t anything personal. I’m not proud of what I did.”
Ferro tapped a finger against the hilt of his sword. Then said, quietly, “Sir Knight. I would advise you to be more humble in the face of your betters.” He cast a disdainful glance at me. “And you might consider a gag for this one, until he can learn better manners.”
I tried for a comeback, but I still couldn’t breathe.
It’s taken way too long and it’s not happening for any greater point, but I’m still happy we’re at the part of the book where the detective gets beat up. Also, given the drugs, we can pretend I tried for a comeback, but I still couldn’t breathe (as a direct result of my last comeback) is the result of a vampire spit addled Harry and not a reflection of his usual self.
Michael and the dragon have a polite staredown, then the dragon poofs away.
“Harry,” Michael chided. “You’re not the biggest kid on the block. You’ve got to learn to be a little more polite.”
Harry’s been calling all the shots and he was the one who got the cute note that he’d already met the priest because of non-Michael adventures he gets up too, but ever since we approached the vampire party section, Michael suddenly has decades more experience than he does, total knowledge of their surroundings, and is acting as his guardian.
This continues with Michael pointing out that the party snacks are starting to disappear.
Other vamps were drawing more young people along with them. There were fewer scarlet costumes around, and more people blissed out on the ground.
“I don’t like the direction this is going,” I said.
Why? We’re explicitly told the vampires are taking people individually. It was established earlier hat there’s more food than vamps and this is repeated now by saying that there’s still plenty of black-wrapped bloodbags lying around even as the vampires head off to the wings.
Now, Michael also objects, but that’s his paladiny hail mary for not losing grace, where he hopes that, “Lord willing, we can put a stop to this.” while Harry doesn’t give a fuck. And don’t tell me Harry supposedly gives any fucks, because his next line is to tell Michael yeah sure later whatever.
Harry then informs us there’s a mere two people left! They are “Hamlet guy” and Bianca. This is one tiny party.
“Not one of the other vampires?” Michael asked.
“No way. They’re all subordinate to Bianca. If they were that strong, they’d have knocked her off by now, unless they were in her inner circle. That’s Kyle and Kelly. She doesn’t have the presence of mind for it, and he’s already out.
Now, it is good we’re finally getting some insight into the rules of this, but it’d have been a lot better earlier. This isn’t letting the reader into the puzzle, it’s just grudgingly explaining away a plot hole so we can proceed. Also, Harry doesn’t know this because Harry doesn’t know how vampires work. He doesn’t know what subordinate vampires are like or even that subordinate vampire means anything more than it does when talking about normal organizations. Bianca previously appeared to be running a human empire and we have no idea how far afield the rest of these vampires came from (or, for that matter, even their numbers – there could be a hundred or there could be less than a dozen here). He definitely has no grasp of where Kyle and Kelly stand in all this – he knows he’s run into them twice, once handing out invitations which doesn’t seem like a very inner-circle job (even if we say that it was unusually dangerous due to Harry being a murderous asshole with poor self-control, well, all the more reason to send a mook and hope he does mangle them enough to allow you to legally retaliate) and once sitting around a van with bait, which, well, we still aren’t too clear on what the point of that so it’s hard to know what skills they needed.
Further – does Harry look at Shadowpant’s (blessed be his industrious spirit) off-kilter magic lair and say that clearly, there’s no way this guy could’ve been accomplishing anything so complex? No, the idea is supercharged black magic rapidly degrades your own sanity until you explosively self-destruct. Now we have a mysteriously unbalanced vampire (whose minder seems bad at it, as if he isn’t used to this behavior) at the same time as a lot of mysteriously powerful spellwork going on…naturally, it’s just that bitches be crazy and no more time needs to be spent pondering this.
With that in mind, we return to actual events, where, after telling us there’s only one person in costume left, there’s another person in costume.
I grabbed the red cloaked-figure and whirled it around to face me.
The hood fell back from Susan’s face, revealing her startled dark eyes. She’d pulled her hair into a pony-tail. She wore a low-cut white blouse and a little pleated skirt, complete with white knee socks and buckle-down shoes. White gloves covered her hands. A wicker basket dangled in the crook of her elbow, and round, mirror-toned spectacles perched upon the bridge of her slender nose.
Now, the fact he mistook her from the corner of his eye for another vampire? Quite reasonable, all he saw was a bit of red. The fact he somehow didn’t notice this whole time? That’s a lot more of a stretch considering how small the guest list appears to be and that Harry is specifically looking over the crowd for people who are wearing regular costumes. At this whole party, there’s white court vampire and his supper dressed in their own skin, a dragon dressed as a Roman, Hamlet guy dressed in I guess ruffles, and Susan wearing a red cloak over an all-white outfit and carrying a basket. It shouldn’t have been that hard to tell her apart from the people dressed entirely in red fetishwear while slinking around like a hungry yet sexy wolves who are also kitties who are also dogs.
This wouldn’t be a problem if not for the fact this is somehow a sedate adult type party with lots of room and not a fun clubbing party where everyone’s smooshed together. Like, why even have a naked costume if you aren’t sexually harassing everyone every time you move a foot? Then instead of Harry needing to have a full conversation with all of the four people he thinks might’ve done it, his plan is just to roll around in the crowd until he bumps the person whose aura matches, but now and then he gets pulled into conversation with the more important ones, like Weirdly Into The Romans dragon. And of course vampires as pathogen would love a packed crowd. It’s in these cramped, low-visibility conditions Harry suddenly bumps into Susan.
But yes…Susan. Harry’s invitation was for himself and a plus one. Now he’s got plus two.
This is way better than Kim. It’s totally understandable Harry wouldn’t see this coming. He knew she wanted to be here but the idea she’d come here without him is an actual surprise, but at the same time it fits perfectly with her character and her general archetype that she would come even aware of the danger. (…for that matter, being a bit uncertain about the specifics may have worked to her advantage, as she appears to have avoided drinking anything, likely on the basis that ends badly in stories so why risk it.)
“How did you get in here?”
She looked at me coolly and flicked open her basket. She reached inside and came out with a neat white invitation, like my own. “I got myself an invitation.”
“You what?”
“Well. I had it made, in any case. I didn’t think you’d mind me borrowing yours for a few minutes.”
…until we get to this part.
This sort of screwup belongs in a different situation, one where she didn’t realize that a party was full of superpowered predators. Harry turning down an invitation from an apparently benevolent ally group, for example, like the white council themselves, would result in a setup where it makes sense that Susan isn’t concerned about any fallout from faking the invitation – at worse, they’ll just throw her out, right? And then it turns out the council believes unattended muggles are fair game for zombification or something. Harry even spent all that time in the first book insisting that horrible things would happen to any outsider who even knew about the “white” council.
But vampires. Not even fae, where they’re merely risky to be around and liable to do horrible things to people who break the rules, but things that explicitly eat humans all the time as their normal daily behavior. It should be pretty obvious what happens to someone who crashes their party with a fake invitation. The only way this would possibly work is if Harry said he’d go but just told her she shouldn’t tag along, in which case she’d expect to covered by his real invitation once actually inside, and even still, she should know that there’s a decent chance they’d say that the false invitation is against rules and she’s supper anyway.
I think what’d work best is removing the idea a physical invitation matters. Have the vampires just verbally say he and the person of his choosing are invited, then have Susan get in by saying she’s Harry’s plus one and them checking the list to find that yup, he’s on there, so sure. After all, it’s not like they’re concerned about keeping people out, so the people at the doorway aren’t going to care if she’s lying or not. It could even be that sending a proxy and not showing up at all is reasonably common to foreshadow this, with Harry identifying other proxies in the crowd earlier and/or just telling Michael that there’ll be plenty of flunkies here, although that might get in the way of the idea that the nightmare’s patron is definitely in attendance.
“Hell’s bells, Susan, you don’t know what you’ve done. You’ve got to get out of here.”
She snorted. “Like hell.”
“I mean it,” I said. “You’re in danger.”
“Relax, Harry. I’m not letting anyone lick me, and I’m not looking anyone in the eyes. It’s kind of like visiting New York.” She tapped her specs with a gloved finger.
Much like the idea she faked an invitation, the idea she’s taking all these precautions (hey, Harry, why didn’t YOU put on glasses and gloves if you were going to stop off and get a costume either way?) and yet isn’t able to pick up on the fact Harry’s invite said one other person and oh look, he’s standing next to Michael… There’s really no reason for her to stand around while Harry keeps insisting that she doesn’t get it. She should be able to put things together herself.
A mysterious dulcet voice forces that bit of farce to an end by purring that party crashers aren’t covered by hospitality law, so it’s not even like the plot requires her to stay unaware. In fact, the flow would run more smoothly if it went, “Harry is scared, Susan realizes what’s wrong and becomes scared too, then third party confirms they’re screwed”. It’s just this instead because the author wants to hammer on a bit about how stupid Susan won’t listen to Harry. We then end without finding out who dulcet voice is, but if Harry correctly read the crowd, it’s either Hamlet guy being surprisingly sexualized or it’s Bianca as they’re the only people remaining. Unless, I guess, someone we’ve already encountered has returned instead, like Kelly circling back to see if Harry’s passed out yet. She should really do that. I feel like she’s earned a meal here.
You know, on Harry being fucked up as well as on topic of drugs, it could be interesting to say he isn’t fucked permanently, that he actually can get back to normal. He just need to go cold turkey on magic for a couple of months and probably some therapy.
The issue here is that doing so results in his base, adrenaline-based emotions (fear, anger) returning and amplifying first because those are the ones that never quite went away from him. So what happens is that he occasionally attempts to do just that, gets hit by terror and decides that he needs more weapons to protect himself from the horrors of the night. So he makes his second stave, his set of kinetic fisticuffs, invests in highly perishable potions, and finally feels comfortably numb, except it gives him comfort for only so long since feeling nothing is not much better than feeling mortal terror, so he goes around provoking powerful beings, which then feeds his terror when he tries to go clean, etc.
This way, it’s a pretty nasty self-perpetuating cycle, but it’s a potentially escapable one.
This pleases me.
To be fair, Michael fell for a pretty but untrustworthy face who then “accidentally” destroyed the source of his powers by breaking an arbitrary rule, which is actually close to Samson (it’s just a shame that the fae didn’t take the both of them then and there. If nothing else, that could have given us a pretty straightforward, workable plot about escape. Like this).
The issue is that he has a second set of powers that don’t depend on his sword, so he’s cheating here. Without them, the comparison actually would have been halfway on point.
So he makes his second stave, his set of kinetic fisticuffs, invests in highly perishable potions, and finally feels comfortably numb, except it gives him comfort for only so long since feeling nothing is not much better than feeling mortal terror, so he goes around provoking powerful beings, which then feeds his terror when he tries to go clean, etc.
This way, it’s a pretty nasty self-perpetuating cycle, but it’s a potentially escapable one.
Hm. But not much of an escapable one, at least if the monsters you keep angering have long memories. Maybe this feeds into the nastiness wizards have for guys like Mort – cooler heads don’t have anyone out for blood, so if they try to disengage, they can look rationally at the situation and say they don’t need piles of magic protection running 24/7. On the other hand, once you’ve made enemies with every magical group we know of…you’re got a wolf by the ears. You can tell you’re fucking yourself over, but you know you’re fucked if you quit.
To be fair, Michael fell for a pretty but untrustworthy face who then “accidentally” destroyed the source of his powers by breaking an arbitrary rule
Eh, Samson’s was gone and could only be regifted by God. Michael’s merely misplaced his +1 sword that had good synergy with his class powers – no really, the only description of its might was that it amplified his existing abilities. The only reason it’s even a mild problem is the party lacks a thief – Michael must’ve bought into the reasoning that wizards get nine billion spells that can replace any class and forgot to factor in that Harry wouldn’t bother using any.
Yeah. Even less self-destructive wizards than Harry probably run a risk of starting the spiral of emotional degradation because sooner or later they run into some scary shit or a problem they want to fix, and then they actually do need all the magical protection they can get.
That actually tie nicely into the trope of wizards as hermits living away from civilization, which is what DF seems to be going for with the White Council members: it’s not that they’re truly indiffirent to the world or have some ethical stance on the matter, it’s just that they took a long hard look at what they’re doing with their lives and decided to quit before they’re six feet under or become one of the monsters.
Why…why are we even here? I’ve lost track of whether there’s any in-story reason for Harry to be so certain that whoever called up the Superghost is at this party, and even if there is, this still feels like filler. And would appear to bring the tension of the story to a screeching halt, especially when we have time to randomly introduce dragons (who, it would seem, also have nothing to do with the plot).
I mean, this sort of flailing around might work with a protagonist who didn’t know much about the supernatural, but Harry is supposed to both know about the supernatural and be a detective. Did he mistake hard boiled detective stories for a how to manual or something? “How to detect: annoy all powerful people around until the right one beats you up.”
I can’t decide whether I’m vaguely annoyed because this whole book seems like a badly written first draft, or because we’re supposed to care about the plot when the protagonist doesn’t.
The plots of these books have gotten progressively more incoherent. The first book I could mostly follow, the second was convoluted but I got the gist, and this one just feels like random scenes featuring some, all, or none of the characters.
Harry’s reasoning actually makes sense: the most likely place for a powerful foe is at this party because that’s where everyone who’s anyone will be. It feels like it makes no sense now because the rest of the book has made no sense by ignoring it completely and worse, the fact Harry the thousand pound gorilla was planning to skip it until five minutes ago ought to mean there could be any number of other people who just don’t bother to show.
It’s a turkducken of failure.
1) All right, new theory: Harry’s magic doesn’t eat his emotion specifically, but his cerebral functions altogether. That’s why he gets more sociopathic AND more dumb as the books progress.
2) I absolutely abhor the trope where the protagonist meets an immensely powerful, awe-inspiring creature (usually, yes, a dragon) and, instead of having any kind of normal human reaction, is only concerned with being “snarky”.
Harry is a self-proclaimed magic geek; Ferro outrights says how shocking it would be for a human to see his true nature. Logically, this should – and would in literally any other book – lead to one of the two outcomes: 1) Harry is strongly tempted to look at the dragon with his third eye but resists the temptation due to possible danger to his mind; he then spends a significal amount of time regretting this act of cowardice in the face of a great mystery (which possibly leads to him making dumb decisions in the future). 2) Harry uses his wizard sight (it’s a dragon! who wouldn’t give in to curiosity?) and pays a price for it. Here, though? Harry doesn’t even think about it, his only concern is being a dick, and it drives me nuts.
I’m on the exact opposite end of your opinion. I Love Harry telling Ferro of. The logic behind it is my favorite thing about his chaarcher,he sees a being of great power and snarks to its face. But the important reason is why. And the why is that Harry dresden does not like bullies,as he states the dragon requires sacrifice,and besides that he gives speech about how awesome he is. But that doesn’t matter to Harry,because what he sees is a bully abusing others. That’s the core of Dresden he snarks at powerful beings because they abuse their power,they hurt people. They are n.o better than a schoolyard bully picking at another kid because they’re smaller.
“Doesn’t like bullies other than himself”, you mean. Even if we examine this interaction in a vacuum (which we really shouldn’t be doing), Harry’s the one who’s being an incompetent snide little shit, while Ferro is pretty polite. Even his speach is less self-aggrandizement and more a simple statement of fact.
If you notice, the main point of my complaint is about Harry’s complete disinterest in the surrounding world and not about his manners. He doesn’t even consider that, by looking at Ferro with his third eye, he could learn something undoubtedly interesting and potentially useful about dragons. You can’t even chalk it up to pride or principles, because this wouldn’t be an act of submission. In fact, Harry almost never uses this skill, because he’s a coward (which would be fine, if the books so much as aknowledged it).
Moreover, the magical skill Harry does use at the slightest provocation? Soulgaze. Not because, I must emphasise, it gives him any useful information, just because he likes soulfucking people into submission. All in all, Harry Dresden is a hack, a coward, a bully and a hypocrite.
Also, Harry is supposedly there to find the controller of the ghost (which will somehow help him defeat the ghost or something). He shouldn’t be taking time out to piss off random dragons – it just adds to him seeming to have no self control (and no consistent interest in stopping the ghost).
Yeah, pretty much (but then again, it’s not like we ever expected Harry to have a normal human sense of morality).
He seems to have an inhuman sense of morality. I’m sure it’s a mistake on Butcher’s part, but Harry’s morality lines up real well with the actions of the vampires we’ve met so far.
(If it were intentional, it could be interesting. A bit of a tweek on the anti-hero, where the anti-hero who is the protagonist and sees themselves as heroic truly is no different from the people they’re fighting. Both only care about the people who belong to them in some fashion. And their own lives, of course. But in order to do anything interesting with that, you’d have to have intended it.)
Ooh! This would be a more realistic take on the usual “monster hunting monsters” plot. Honestly, I’m glad these books exist because discussing how they failed results in some pretty interesting writing ideas.
soulgazes are completely involutary,Harry nas no control over them. And they don’t hurt people,it just let’s people a bit shaken at what they see.
About him being a coward,you have to understand The Sight is not small potatoes,it’s extremely dangerous,wizards who use it to much are mentally scarred,and he still uses when needed it and will pay a terrible price for it in later books. And I think a coward would just have skipped town when he realized there being ghosts attacking,Harry knows even a weak ghost can kill if it gets lucky. Yet here is trying to find the source of the hauntings.
Except Harry could completely avoid soulgazing people if he abstained from looking them in the eyes at every opportunity. As for them being harmless, so is stalkinng someone and reading their private correspondence, tecnically. I hope I don’t need to explain why such an enormous breach of someone’s privacy is bad. If it was estabilished that a) Harry has no control on the soulgaze whatsoever and it just happens when he looks at someone, not necessarily in their eyes or b) he considered it a morally wrong but necessary action, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. Butcher instead chose not only to write it as an easily avoidable thing that his protagonist does anyway but also to leave more than a few hints that Harry enjoys fucking with people’s heads this way.
I wouldn’t be calling Harry a coward if he didn’t spend so much time bragging about his supposed badassery and provess with magic. Also, considering how damn lazy and reluctant he is about solving the case, it hardly qualifies him as being brave or even a decent person.
soulgazes are completely involutary,Harry nas no control over them. And they don’t hurt people,it just let’s people a bit shaken at what they see.
Harry explicitly says he drops avoids eyes when dealing with people he doesn’t want to soulgaze. In most other interactions, he explains he’s staring right at the person but the other person drops their eyes because they’re scared to soulgaze him.
This would absolutely be bullying even if it was just unsettling, in the same way a flasher is still a creepy pervent even if it’s not as upsetting as something worse would be. Furthermore, Harry told us that looking at his soul is so tramautic some people have fainted from horror even knowing what they were getting into. And yet, he still meets eyes with everyone he can, almost entirely ordinary humans with no defense against him, and forces them to look away.
But that doesn’t matter to Harry,because what he sees is a bully abusing others.
No, he thinks he sees someone bullying him. I absolutely agree that’s the core of his character. He flips the fuck out when anyone does anything that could even be mistaken for a challenge to his authority. He treats those around him with complete disrespect but even a fraction of that toward him is unacceptable.
The dragon isn’t even an asshole to him. Harry opens the conversation rambling like an idiot in a way that could be considered disrespectful and the dragon obviously finds irritating, but merely corrects him regarding the fact that no, dragons do not have to be giant lizards all the time. The dragon chooses to avoid using Harry’s actual name during this correction, which most of us would consider a polite move given what saying his name does and even more polite given that other people around might hear it. And for some reason – maybe it’s the reminder the dragon is stronger than him and saying his name would hurt him- Harry snaps back a correction. Harry opens being irreverent, but that’s maybe the drugs talking and the dragon does not appear to hold it against him. Harry then spits upon the dragon’s good manners, at which point the dragon informs him that hey, fucking dragon here you rude little monkey.
I should add here that god fucking knows what’s even polite behavior for dragons. It’s entirely possible that he’d have been fine if Harry just responded with a boast about humans being awesome back, and he definitely seems fine with Michael’s assertion of power instead of becoming the sort of hissing jealous mess Harry is every time anyone else is cool. It’s even pretty plausible that his opening move of repeating Harry’s name back was meant along the lines of someone quietly telling you your fly’s open so you can fix it before everyone sees your dick/mindcontrols you because you just told them your true name.
At this point, Harry says the dragon’s full of himself. The dragon STILL does not harm him. The dragon doesn’t even snap at him yet but just asks what the fuck. Harry THEN continues to antagonize the dragon by BRINGING UP OUT OF THE BLUE the idea of human sacrifices as if that’s exactly as big of a deal as being told to stop insulting a stranger for two seconds. And given Harry doesn’t even know enough about dragons to know this was one, there is no fucking way he has any clue if actual dragons have anything to do with that. For all we know, that’s not only wrong but an ethnic slur.
At which point Harry explains he’s not impressed and so long as he’s not impressed Harry gets to keep saying the dragon is a pile of limp dicks for the rest of the conversation. And the dragon is the bully here?
Do you know what else we know about the dragon? The dragon thinks humans are pretty neat! He’s got an authentic Roman centurion outfit and the most likely reason is because he actually was one for a while. The ROMANS. The guys who were all about orderly armies that worked together as a unit, when they weren’t working together as a unit to build all sorts of amazing things. Those are the humans this dragon loves. He’s wearing a human suit dressed in his prized human uniform from his human job that he’s kept looking perfect for two thousand years, and this FUCKING DICKWEED comes up and starts slurring about how like, nah, can’t be, dragons are just like scaley fat fucking lizards.
i don’t know,Farla. when I read it and re00read it it seemed pretty clear to me that Ferro was trying to intimidate harry and michael as if he was better than them and harry just stands up for himself.
Well, you saw my interpretation of the scene pretty much line by line. What’s your take on each part?
sure thing. lets go
“Michael,” I murmured, over my shoulder. “Look at his costume. It looks like the real thing.”
“It is the real thing,” said the man in a bored tone of voice, not looking at me. He exhaled a plume of smoke, then put the cigarette back between his lips. Michael would have barely been able to hear my question. This guy had picked it right out. Gulp.
Okay,so far neither Harry nor Ferro did anything bad.
then the True Name thing happens
I staggered, and Michael caught my shoulder, keeping me upright. Dear God. He had just used one part of my full name, my true Name, to reach out to me and casually backhand me off my feet.
At this point Harry hadn’t done anything insulting,he stated the roman suit was intresting and introduced himself,and Ferro uses its name to backhand him. As a show of power,as “Haha i’m stronger than you!” that to me was wrong.
Then harry being kinda dumb strucken,or maybe just dumber that he thought he was desn’t realize Ferro is a dragon and has to be told by michael and it’s like “What,dragons are supposed to be big”. In other circustances that would be a little insulting,but harry was clearly still surprised by the backhand and had no intention to give offense but the dragon takes the offense. Then he calls harry on a different name. harry doesnt like that. i actually harrys is wrong at this moment Ferro is not being a bad person right now,when he gives a majestic speech about how awesome he is,and harry points out he’s got a huge ego i simpthathise with him here,i don’t deal well with egocentrics either. Harry says he won’t do any kind of sacrifice to him or bow down to him in any way,which is another very harry thing to do,never bow down even it’s smart thing to do. (I actually think this is a flaw,i think clever people should bow down to those wh are powerful if they need to save their skins,but i admire harry’s conviction.
And then Michael reminds them He actually killed a dragon before and the scene ends.
So in resume,harry shouldn’t demand to be called by his own name,but he shouldn’t take the egocentric speech either.
At this point Harry hadn’t done anything insulting,he stated the roman suit was intresting and introduced himself,and Ferro uses its name to backhand him.
Except what the dragon says implies that’s an automatic result of saying his name. He says he wasn’t he wasn’t exerting effort, though it leaves it unclear if he would be capable of saying it even more gently. Going on to use a different name, though, does not make any sense as an insult – it doesn’t even make much sense to interpret it as an insult. I could see Harry introducing himself, the other party saying a different name, and Harry mistaking that for an insult rather than an attempt not to bandy about his true name, but the dragon just said it perfectly. All parties involved know it’s known. The only reason to switch to a related name is if Harry really will keep getting smacked by any truename utterance. And that, in turn, suggests that switching names was an attempt to be nice that Harry spat on.
Now, it’s possible that repeating the name at all is a dick move, but given how incredibly dangerous it was to do and how super easy it would’ve been to actually hurt Harry with it, it seems like attempting to sober Harry up by pointing out his horrible, horrible mistake is more likely well-meant.
now,when he gives a majestic speech about how awesome he is,and harry points out he’s got a huge ego i simpthathise with him here,i don’t deal well with egocentrics either.
It’s in direct response to Harry insisting he be called by name, and opens with, Don’t tempt me to show you what I can do by speaking your name and making an effort, mortal. More, it’s only egocentric if this is between two equals and it’s clear the dragon actually is crazy powerful compared to Harry. A blackbelt stating you don’t want to fight them because they’ll hand you your own ass doesn’t mean they’re full of it. It means they actually are a really good fighter and for god’s sake stop embarassing yourself by putting up your fists and throwing mock punches at them.
More, That my true form here would shatter this pathetic gathering of monkey houses and crack the earth upon which I stand He’s literally a giant dragon. He literally is so big he does not fit. It would be absurd for a human to say this because humans don’t work this way, but this isn’t a human. Harry was saying he can’t be a dragon because dragons are big . He’s getting testy about it, sure, but he’s not just saying this at random, he’s saying it because Harry’s arguing with a dragon about how dragons work.
“I have to work not to break stuff, show more respect for that!” gets a response from Harry that boils down to “lol bullshit, loser!”. That’s what insulting someone’s ego means, that they think they’re better than they actually are. And Harry just said this in response to what appear to be factually accurate statements from the dragon regarding size, age, and power. Yeah, humans don’t accidentally wreck buildings and someone claiming so would be an arrogant bullshitter. This isn’t a human.
Harry says he won’t do any kind of sacrifice to him or bow down to him in any way,which is another very harry thing to do,never bow down even it’s smart thing to do. (I actually think this is a flaw,i think clever people should bow down to those wh are powerful if they need to save their skins,but i admire harry’s conviction.
Only if you were ever asked to bow. If someone’s telling you to stop being a dick to them and you respond with MAN FUCK YOU WHAT THE HELL YOU THINK YOU’RE GOD’S GIFT HUH YOU THINK I’M GONNA WORSHIP YOU THINK YOU’RE SPECIAL HUH YOU THINK YOU DESERVE THAT WELL FUCK YOU BUDDY then you’re a dick with anger management problems.
This is not, “Bow or I kill you.” This is, “Hey! Back the fuck off already.” to which Harry responded, “Oh yeah? You’re not so tough, you wanna go, huh? Huh???”
And this is all without the possibility that anything Harry just did is even more offensive in dragon culture than the obvious ways it would be in ours. And it probably was given Michael de-escalates things just fine by threatening the dragon – someone who’s a real egomaniac should react incredibly badly to threats, sort of like how Harry’s acted this whole scene, rather than handling it calmly and disengaging.
1) Harry is strongly tempted to look at the dragon with his third eye but resists the temptation due to possible danger to his mind; he then spends a significal amount of time regretting this act of cowardice in the face of a great mystery (which possibly leads to him making dumb decisions in the future). 2) Harry uses his wizard sight (it’s a dragon! who wouldn’t give in to curiosity?) and pays a price for it.
Well, Harry’s also made it clear he’s a complete coward about this, but yes, that aspect should then impact what happens next, like making him keep his sight off when he actually needs it on to examine something else. Maybe he was planning on flicking his sight on to check out individual targets he could isolate from a crowd instead of feeling up their auras but now that he knows the sort of things he might see, he’ll do the more time consuming aura touching only.
he gets more sociopathic AND more dumb as the books progress
Interesting; could you give some examples?
Tbh, Harry’s dumbassery doesn’t seem to progress in a linear manner, but I see him apply less and less brain power to solve the cases in each book. In Storm Front we’ve seen actual, albeit somewhat hapless detective work, Fool Moon has him figuring some things out, though it’s mostly a mindless checking on different werewolf groups, but Grave Peril so far have felt like a sequence of almost random events with Harry doing extremely stupid things like what we see in the last chapters. Or maybe I’m just growing more annoyed with Butcher’s plotting.
Yeah, I see your point. And when you put it like that, I suspect it’s no coincidence that A) Butcher starts moving away from the noir detective stuff from next book on, and B) that’s where most fans recommend you begin the series.
(I read Grave Peril as a much younger reader, and felt desperately stupid because even going back and rereading chapters I just could not get how one plot point followed from the last.)
Hm, switching genres for something less mystery focused might actually change this problem.
>>I read Grave Peril as a much younger reader, and felt desperately stupid because even going back and rereading chapters I just could not get how one plot point followed from the last.
I feel you. Last chapter I thought I was forgetting the plot before going back and realising that nope, it was just that disjointed.
I’d say that plot-wise, the books actually do get better once Butcher switches to more straightforward adventure instead of trying to write a mystery. If nothing else, as a character Harry is much more suited to go into a proverbal dungeon and smash things instead of trying to uncover what’s going on.
Of course, it doesn’t really solve the issues with characterization and worldbuilding, but at least things are happening and mostly make sense.
Hey, there’s hope for everyone. Maybe by his 50th book Butcher will learn to run his worldbuilding by a ten year old with some brain power.
Шэму руфкв руэы руфвштп ещцфквы сщтсдгышщт ща еру ыукшуыб фсегфддню
Fuck, wrong configuration. What I mean to say is that I’ve heard Butcher is heading towards a conclusion of the series with a trilogy, so there probably won’t be 50 books.
Which is good, since it means that complete readthrough of DF novels is a doable goal.
talk commie to me
Пролетарии всех стран, объединяйтесь!
Землю – крестьянам, заводы – рабочим!
Ешь ананасы, рябчиков жуй,/ День твой последний приходит, буржуй!
So, this might just be Google Translate not being good with Russian, but nothing about that post sounds communist in the least.
Which one? The first post in Russian is gibberish. I forgot to switch the keyboard to English.
The second, on the other hand, is two famous communist slogans (Proletarians of all nations, unite! and Earth to the peasants, factories to the workers! with the latter being a more popular version of We must seize the means of production!!), plus a famous short poem about the upcoming death of the bourgeoisie.
Ah, blatantly false propaganda and threats of mass violence. Now that sounds more like communism!
Translate said something about pineapples, so I now expect some Mississpi governor to call for a pineapple boycott.
The translation is:
“Eat your pineapples, chew your grouse,
Your last day is coming, bourgeois.”
Except, you know, in rhyme. (I’m also not entirely sure “grouse” is correct, but whatever.) Such food were associated with rich people back in the day, so it’s… ah… a very down-to-earth version of decadence, basically. The kind of decadence where you have enough to eat, and the food is good, you monster.
At times like this, I can’t help but thinking about the story of this one movie made as pro-communist propaganda by the American Worker’s Party (or some similar such political organization) that was banned in the USSR because it showed the workers of America living in single-family detached homes and driving cars to their fair paying eight-hour day service jobs.
Clearly, such nonsense is capitalist propaganda designed to erode the morals of the proles, and must be banned.
I haven’t been commenting on these much specifically because I lost even the slightest ability to pretend that I had any clue how any of these plots flowed from one plot point to the next and how they all connected. I’m glad to see that at least one other person felt the same way. It makes me less stupid for being unable to follow along with the plot of a fucking Dresden Files book.
Definitely not just you. I also don’t understand how we’re 26 chapters in since fucking nothing has happened.
I’ve had this problem with all three of the books so far, it’s just that each one is becoming nonsensical earlier and earlier. I got lost with the first one’s ending, the second one around the halfway point… This one lost its sense to me… uh… like basically after the set-up was done.
Oddly enough, the best book of this series I’ve read so far involved Harry going undercover in a porn studio. And interacting with porn stars. Female porn stars. Doing porn.
Once this one is done, there are only two left before we get to that one! I can’t wait until we get to that book. It’s going to be… It might actually be the most openly skeevy since that book y’all sometimes mention that was about raping teenagers to repopulate the Earth or something like that? It’s sad when the high point of this series, for me, is “I can follow the logical process that was involved in creating this string of events and how they connect to one another”.
I don’t want to say much about it because y’all get testy over spoilers, but in the world of Harry Dresden, it’s canon that male-targeted lesbian porn is a psyop designed by someone who thinks lesbians are hot but gay men are icky. And that’s not even the worst part about that specific plot point! It’s not even the worst plot point of the book! And yet it’s still somehow the most technically competent one I’ve read. Let that sink in for a moment.
(What is the worst part is kind of a spoiler, so I’ll let Farla discover it on her own.)
… So it’s kind of like the lesbianism in the Dreden Files series, come to think of it.
To be fair, lots of things happened. They just have zero connection to each other, so there is no sense of rising action. At this point, we should be getting a sense of upcoming climax, of the truth of the case revealing itself, plot coming to fruition, etc. But since the novel has failed to create a sense there is a bigger picture at all to be uncovered, since every thing that happened so far felt like a GM rolling random encounters table (and quickly individualizing them on the fly so instead of “angry fey and her minions” we’ve got dommie cougar with hell dogs), it feels like the plot is yet to start.
Oh, yeah. Unlike a lot of the books reviewed on this site, things definitely happen in the Dresden Files. It’s just that none of them make sense or are logically connected to one another, so while I can keep pace with individual scenes and understand what is happening on the page I’m reading, the larger picture and how the events tie together isn’t apparent to me. Because there isn’t and they don’t.
@CrazyEd, we’re actually a bit more OK with spoilers for DF. While it’s still best to avoid them, it won’t earn you the same amount of ire as, say, Umineko spoilers.
In any case, we have a discussion post for spoiler discussions: http://www.dragon-quill.net/dresden-files-chatter/
See, I generally don’t find my enjoyment of a story “spoiled” by knowing about spoilers, but I definitely will find my enjoyment of Farla’s disgust (in a decade when she gets to reviewing Blood Rites) spoiled if she knows what’s coming before she has to keysmash about it in disgust.
I don’t think anyone on this site has gotten as angry about something as Farla will about that book since Act got mad about John Green.
>> the best book of this series I’ve read so far involved Harry going undercover in a porn studio. And interacting with porn stars. Female porn stars. Doing porn.
We’re in for a fucking ride. I can hardly wait!
>>in the world of Harry Dresden, it’s canon that male-targeted lesbian porn is a psyop designed by someone who thinks lesbians are hot but gay men are icky
Does this guy get his ideas from the worst parts of Tumblr.
No one is as obsessed with gay sex as straight men, I s2g.
I dunno, have you seen how many fics there are on AO3 where the plot is “characters argue over who is the gayest but then end up agreeing that they’re all the gayest”?
To be fair, AOOOOOOOO was literally founded by porn writers exiled from FFN, so its content is rather skewed towards certain themes and shouldn’t be used as baseline.
I dunno, Tumblr does it too, they just don’t do it in prose format. Fandom culture loves its precious gay babies.
Actually, AOOOOOOO was founded by LJ which was founded by porn writers exiled from FFN. The people who went straight from FFN to a new porn archive are the AFFN crowd. That’s why AOOOOOO has fancy options like colored fonts.
So what phylum of fanfiction writer am I in, Professor Farla?
You’re feral! Which is in fact a real classification and if it sounds insulting yes, 80s fandom absolutely meant it that way. People who primarily do other things but one day come into our fanfic dens are considered feral when they creep inside, whether lured by rogue plotbunnies or the scent of our fanfic buffet. A feral fan is one unfamiliar with fannish tradition and/or not interested in hearing people explain about how all fandom is descended from Star Trek and Kirk/Spock and anime doesn’t exist.
… I… Uh…
Welp.
Actually, what’s weird is he’s coming off as smarter but crazy/crazy lazy. In Storm Front we see him looking for evidence and then saying, “Shit, I dunno what this means!” a whole lot. In this one, he doesn’t seem to be having sudden revelations and just does stuff once he can’t ignore it any longer, as if he knew about it the whole time but was hoping to avoid having to actually do anything.
So, the dragon* who considers human beings to be mere “monkeys” likes to style himself after a human culture… …why?
* I’m not even going into how D&D-ish and un-mythological it is to have intelligent dragons who are literal wizards, as opposed to beasts who may or may not fly and most often breathe poison instead of fire, or sorcerers who turned themselves into dragons for various reasons.
ETA: To be fair, I’m mostly talking about the Western tradition for dragons, so it’s possible Butcher was inspired by different traditions, but Ferro really feels like more of a D&D dragon than anything, what with him actually knowing magic instead of having a few supernatural powers.
He’s a furry?
Eh, “monkeys” isn’t even that insulting when we’re talking about a fire-breathing reptile and not a fellow hominid like an elf. They’re basically winged lizards, we’re basically tailless monkeys. While it’s formated as a standard arrogant rant, by all appearances it’s factually true – the dragon would presumably crack the buildings in half if he wasn’t intentionally trying not to, because he actually did nearly crack Harry in half just saying the guy’s name. It’s entirely relevant to the topic of “holy fuck how stupid are you that you want me to keep calling you by your true name?”
So, I’m fooling around with a predictive keyboard trained with Storm Front, and that’s the very first sentence it gave me:
” i said i was sorry already figured out for ourselves in the car again and was breathing hard to do with her death sentence all by itself was elegant and i didn’t want to get in any trouble with my boss ”
It’s… interesting.
Fooling around some more:
” i said i was sorry. ”
“i do not get rattled by corpses blasted from life by magic more intense than anything i could manage”
the vampire hissed at me in the rearview mirror again. Marcone almost smiled back at her. She was wearing a long coat that covered her pantsuit.
” i thought i would have to indulge in highly questionable research that would probably be enough to get me there before you can tell me about her. ”
Murphy snorted.
The poor AI made no sexist comment about Murphy snorting. It’s got a ways to go.
I like the implication that Murphy snorted at the idea of Harry doing research.
And once more with feeling. Longer this time as I tried out more combination. Fixed capitalization somewhat as well.
“I said I was sorry already. It was a killer look at the time. I would have to indulge in highly questionable research that would probably be enough to get me there,” I said. “I have deigned to grant you a single request of some small nature to be both benevolent and wise.”
I had been carrying my blasting rod or my staff down to the subbasement. The woman was in her twenties and I didn’t want to be found. Probably an advanced case of male menopause and I didn’t want to get in any trouble with my boss. She was a woman of average height and striking eyes. I gave her the bill. But I had the sinking feeling that the skull was probably right.
I had to do some work for someone who would pay me to not do something that bad. The moon was waxing toward full overhead and I saw her anger at being manipulated at the same time even more nervous than before I could let my mouth get me into more trouble for me to miss seeing a tear streak down one cheek. Her lips parted in a silent way to the mirror on the ceiling.
“No, he was a soldier of the night. It was hard to tell me to go out there and win. We’ll have to take precautions.” She glanced aside to the very large and very modern smoke poured out from the bottom of the stairs.
She shook her head again.
The phone rang several times before a quiet voice sounded.
“You do not trust my word that i was afraid of them. But I do have a godmother of the house to try the back door. I took a pencil from my pocket and pushed the play button with it, “ he said. “What would i be looking for other than that moment of silence? ”
He didn’t want to get in my pocket and continued to stare at me from the stove behind the door. I did the same.
It was my turn to get defensive.
“I am an air spirit of intellect and i didn’t want to be all skull.” I have a choice whether to take my deal or not. “I think you know what i mean.”
My instincts told me that something else was going on in his life with the same false cheer I had summoned up. I have to wake up to bad puns in the car. I did the same with a drop of perfume before I turned around to face the woman. What I wanted was the escape potion. I might need it at all times. The phone rang again almost the instant I put it down.
“I like to be made the fool of the night,” he said. “What can I do for you today?”
“You don’t know what i would make in the future equations of the house, and I did the door to the library,” I said.
“If you do not trust my word, wizard, then how can I help you?” he asked.
So I took in the details as I tugged my talisman off over my neck and was parted off of the dark skin of her forehead and shaggy eyebrows. She didn’t want to get into the head of the house alive and I didn’t want to get in any trouble with my boss. Wizards aren’t like a little kid that would turn her into a real magus of the house. But if I let him out of the room with them in his own way to the mirror on the ceiling, then he would have to start being more careful not to say anything to anyone who knew I was a wizard making it a point not to glance at my face. They had the look I had seen in my day. Let’s say anything to anyone who knew I was a wizard making it a point not to glance at my face.
“You’re a little more than forty paces from me,” I said. “Smart of you to fulfill your end of the line called out to someone I think can help you. But if I did that I could have done the same thing to her. ”
And when I find how you did it and can trace it back to you without exposure to the things a wizard sees and hears, I would kill you.
I love it! Any chance you could train it on the entire series, á là Harry Potter and the Portrait of what Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash? http://cheezburger.com/4252677/a-bot-just-wrote-a-chapter-of-harry-potter-and-its-an-absolute-masterpiece
Well, I mean, training it is easy, you just need to compile the books into one txt file. The main issue is that the process of writing is fairly involved: you need to manually pick words out of suggested ones, avoiding gibberish and cycles, looking out for new combinations and fixing the capitalization issue, so I’m not really up for the project.
If anyone else’s interested, here’s the app itself: http://botnik.org/apps/writer/
It’s fairly easy to use.
So I popped the first half of City of Bones into this and…
“The door to her mother’s artistic carcass garden was a long black leather and velvet coat. Clary wondered if the clave would approve of the door. Simon blinked at Clary with a scream. He was standing on top of her mother. Clary wondered uneasily if anything had happened to her mother. Everything Jocelyn Fray was, she was wearing.”
“Jace was right behind them with a definitive click of the automatic lock and caught her breath in his hand. Jace slid a hand across her back. She staggered backward into his arms and pulled her headphones outcutting off isabelle’s eyes.”
“She could identify the blue-haired boy tearing at Jace with hands that glittered as if tipped with metal. His eyes were the color of antifreeze. The blue-haired boy was making Clary suspect that he was packing a little too much for her mother’s bedroom.”
“Alec agreed the taller boy was something like a cross between an alligator and a centipede. His grin vanished entirely as Simon asked him to make out. Alec asked him to put on a tutu and execute a perfect pirouette. Clary wondered if the clave would approve.”
“Simon said Jace reached into his jeans and there was no reason for any warlock to be interested in her chest.”
“Clary gagged and opened her eyes. Her mother’s poetry was terrible. ”
I think I’m on to something here.
Will you finish the rest of this book, Farla? Or have you stopped reviewing it? (I can understand if you have.)
Been busy, but I should be back to it soon.