Mortimer Lindquist
Why would you do this to a child? Did his parents not love him?
had tried to give his house that gothic feel. Greyish gargoyles stood at the corners of his roof. Black iron gates glowered at the front of his house and statuary lined the walk to his front door. Long grass had overgrown his yard. If his house hadn’t been a red-roofed, white-walled stucco transplant from somewhere in southern California, it might have worked.
The results looked more like the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland than an ominous abode of a speaker to the dead. The black iron gates stood surrounded by plain chain-link fence. The gargoyles, on closer inspection, proved to be plastic reproductions. The statuary, too, had the rough outlines of plaster, rather than the clean, sweeping profile of marble. You could have plopped a pink flamingo down right in the middle of the unmowed weeds, and it would have somehow matched the decor. But, I supposed, at night, with the right lighting and the right attitude, some people might have believed it.
I’m sorry you don’t think it lives up to your awesome WIZARD door stencil, but let’s consider that he’s evidently making his living doing this while you’re limping along because the police force has literally no one else they can go to.
Right as he gets there, he sees poor Morty lugging not only that horrible name but a suitcase and realizes the guy is trying to get out of Dodge.
I shook my head and went on into the house. The door was a business entrance—there was no tingling sensation of crossing the threshold of a dwelling uninvited.
Bull fucking shit.
Look, you got away with it last time by pointing out that Victor, praise be his name and his work ethic, didn’t have the benefit of your silver-spoon wizarding education, so he didn’t know he was inadvertently fucking up his threshold wards.
This guy is part of the magical community – so much part that he’s merited at least one visit by the White Council itself just to threaten him away from ever considering disobeying them. Unlike your magic that’s mostly about fireballing, he’s dealing with ghosts, which we’ve so far established are 1) not pleasant and 2) can totally hunt you. Plus yeah, the discrimination by the council and the worry that they might just decide to attack him on suspicion of wrongdoing. And in addition to all this, at least as far as Harry knows, he’s no longer got the power to defend himself – just the knowledge of exactly how big and dangerous the other guys still are.
The only reason he’d be using his home as his business is if he didn’t want to spend any of his time outside of his home wards. (And that illustrates how stupid it is to make business any sort of factor – an agoraphobe working entirely from home because they’re obsessed with the idea of home being safety should be strengthening the wards, not eroding them.) The business/home distinction is already a dumb asspull, I completely refuse to believe there’s no way to push in the other direction.
Even if it’s difficult, li;ke maybe you have to make a big show of inviting everyone in to your home, well, this is perfect for that! His yard is already way more theatrical than making a point about inviting customers in and treating them as guests. His profession is also very much a chatty service type that lives on getting people to voluntarily throw you extra money because they’re so happy with how you said exactly what they wanted, so it shouldn’t be that hard to push things in the general direction of “doing a favor and being given something for my trouble” rather than “business transaction” or however else the magic wants to view it.
And if we weren’t starting at the position of how to make sure Harry is at top power in his confrontation with some poor smuck who isn’t even in the game, this could be such a good chance to develop the home ward thing! The idea Victor had fucked up his own wards was obviously an attempt to paper over that plothole, but it did make emotional sense – he didn’t have any attachment to that place as a home. His kids and wife were in his actual house and he was doing his magic sidebusiness in the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses extravagance he only had in the hopes looking like the guys who had the promotions would get him one, and his magic itself involved a whole lot of loveless sex with strangers he didn’t care about.
This guy, on the other hand…the very fact Harry is sneering at his decor makes me think it’s there because it’s what he wanted. He could make himself a niche as the professional-looking medium if he wanted, he’s still got more magic than the average complete fake and he’s drawing on a lifetime of real experience, but he didn’t. He wanted a bunch of spooky gargoyles and black iron and plaster statues and never having to mow his lawn, and you know what, that’s awesome. This should be the counterpoint to Sells, someone who’s happy with what they do and makes it a part of their life rather than a stepping stone.
But, that would mean Harry doesn’t get to bring a bazooka to a fistfight, so no.
“Shut the door,” I said. “We need to talk, Morty.”
He squealed and whirled around.
“Y-you,” he stammered. “Dresden. What are you doing here?”
No, it’s time to ALPHA THE FUCKING MALE things.
“Look, Dresden. I told you guys before—I get the rules, right? I haven been doing anything you guys talked about.”
Aha. The White Council had sent someone to see him. Morty was a professional con. I hadn’t planned on getting any honest answers out of him without a lot of effort. Maybe I could play this angle and save myself a lot of work.
At least with male characters, Harry gives us some justification for why he’s going to proceed to treat this guy like shit. It’s still going to be completely in excess of anything the guy did, though, and I think Harry’s just making up excuses anyway. I can see the argument that someone lying to people for a living might be prone to stretching the truth in the rest of their dealings, but they’re not going to treat you exactly like a mark. Plus faking talking to ghosts after making an attempt to legitimately summon one isn’t really the same thing as being a confidence man unless we’re to believe Morty is regularly talking people out of some amazing sums in the process, and even if plastic and plaster is Morty’s aesthetic, I bet we’d be seen some sign of his con-made millions if he had them.
“Let me tell you something, Morty. When I come into a place and don’t say a thing except, ‘Let’s talk,’ and the first thing I hear is ‘I didn’t do it,’ it makes me think that the person I’m talking to must have done something. You know what I’m saying?”
Harry, on the other hand, has a suspiciously good handle on conning people. I feel like he’d be a real success at things like calling people to say it’s the IRS about to lock them up for back taxes.
In this case, though, I’m pretty sure it’s just fucking up the investigation. Harry makes it clear that anything that’s happening must be Morty’s fault, so of course he starts desperately denying he knows anything. Even a straightforward, “Tell me what you know or I’ll assume you did it,” would be preferable here. Hell, “Tell me what you know or I’ll tell the council you did it and we both know they don’t actually fact-check, buddy,” would be an improvement! At least it’d be clear that you want the information and you won’t do anything if he gives it, as opposed to trying to crush his will to live until he babbles anything you want and cowers in the hopes it’ll end in grudging mercy.
Oh, also Harry flings around magic to slam doors, just like he did with that poor photographer back in the first book, but without even the faint belief that the guy he’s harassing might be part of this.
“You know,” I said. “I’ve read your books, Morty. Ghosts of Chicago. The Spook Factor. Two or three others. You did good work, there.”
His expression changed, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Thank you.”
“I mean, twenty years ago, you were a pretty damn good investigator. Sensitivity to spiritual energies and apparitions—ghosts. What we call an ectomancer in the business.”
Interesting that when Harry’s talking about the guy, it’s necromancer, but to his face when he’s just swapped to the Good Cop mask, it’s ectomancer (and “what we call” suggests this wasn’t a term he’s expected to be familiar with despite referring to his entire skillset – so quite possibly Harry is bullshitting a new word on the spot to butter the guy up by saying that he’s no longer considered one of the necromancing scum.)
He avoided looking directly in my face. Most people do.
Even Good Cop mask Harry is still the fuckingest ALPHA MALE in the room, though.
“And now what? You run seances for people. How many times do you actually get to contact a spirit? One time in ten? One in twenty? Must be a real letdown from the actual stuff. Playacting, I mean.”
He was good at covering his expressions, I’ll give him that. But I’m used to watching people. I saw anger in the way he held his neck and shoulders.
I think I’m right about the business/home thing. He’s not humiliated by the comparison, he’s not some has-been clinging to scraps of glory – he’s mad at Harry’s dismissal of his job.
“I provide a legitimate service to people in need.”
“No. You play on their grief to take them for all you can. You don’t believe that you’re doing right, Morty, deep down. You can justify it any way you want, but you don’t
like what you’re doing. If you did, your powers wouldn’t have faded like they have.”
His jaw set in a hard line, and he didn’t try to hide the anger anymore—the first honest reaction I’d seen out of him since he’d cried out in surprise.
Wow, it’s almost like you did everything in your power to make him want to hide anything important from you, then kept pushing until he got pissed off! What a completely unforeseen result from barging into someone’s house to threaten and harass them.
Now that this guy has been provided with a shitton of motivation to mislead Harry into a gruesome death, it’s time to actually ask him the damn questions.
Q: So, uh, ghosts have been popping up a lot.
A: No shit, Sherlock.
Q: Okay but like why?
A: Why are you asking a has-been who can’t contact ghosts, dumbfuck?
Q: Oh come on man, you’ve still got other contacts. You’ve gotta know something, that’s why you’re leaving, right?
A: Did you read that last book I wrote, about how we were all going to die?
Q: Uh, yeah, about barriers and ghost killing us all or something, I skimmed it, but I figured it was just you getting bullshitted by ghosts like you bullshit people, anyway how’s that relevant to what I asked?
A: I wrote the barrier is coming down. Why are you asking me about a barrier coming down problem if you read my book about the barrier coming down and don’t think it’s relevant. What other answer did you think you would even get. How fucking stupid are you. Who the fuck is plotting this.
“And you think it’s falling to pieces, now? Morty, that wall has been there since the dawn of time. I don’t think it’s going to collapse right now.”
“I will totally forget that in a previous book I claimed there was a steady and inexplicable upswing in magic and how all sorts of magic critters that used to be stuck in there are getting out here. In fairness, I’ve had at least a dozen head injuries since.”
Wall.” He said the word with a sneer. “More like Saran Wrap, wizard. Like Jell-O. It bends and wiggles and stirs.”
Huh. That really is a much better way of looking at it, isn’t it? Thanks, probably not reappearing in this book guy!
I mean really, think about it. Plastic wrap deforms when pushed – something very big might not be able to fit through but push the whole of the barrier into our world enough that it could do a lot anyway. Imagine something trying to bite you, and they can’t swallow because the plastic’s there but there’s enough force to still crush you. And the holes left when something does punch through close up a little, and a big tear has the plastic mostly flutter back down, so it still takes a bit of a push to get through unlike a wall where once you break a hole it’s just there for anybody to walk through. Size/power ratio would be a big thing, like maybe you see vampires more than dragons because vampires pack a lot of power into something that only needs a human-sized hole, while dragons have to tear an entire dragon-sized one. (Or whatever the metaphysical version of that is. I’m thinking fae might be kind of diffuse, so maybe they have more trouble coming over, while vampires seem more solid.)
Then there’s jello, where the holes completely collapse, but there are now cracks where something small can slither through, needing enough power to push between the chunks but not needing enough power to break anything further. That works better with the idea that no matter how big a thing punches through, it never leaves an actual hole anything can just hop through, everything still needs to exert effort, but it’s less – and also suggests that certain things can be optimized for getting through the cracks while there’s plenty of things of similar power that can’t fit through and never make it to our side. Jello also doesn’t deform as much, so it’d fit if big things couldn’t do much of anything to us unless they actually get onto our side, but because of that the size/power ratio will matter less.
Plastic wrap system, you’d be seeing a lot of inexplicable events that couldn’t be clearly linked to a particular entity. Massive amounts of deformation would be possible without any breach. Actual breaches would be rare but very dangerous, because the hole they leave behind would likely attract others trying to shove through too, and pushing through repeatedly would keep stretching the hole wider and worsening the problem. Stopping something about to push through would be a big deal – it’d leave a stretched area but an intact seal that could slowly recover. Jello, the barrier is actually pretty stable and self-repairing, with breaches only doing a little damage, but they’re more common – doesn’t take much to get jello to crack, after all. You’d almost never see inexplicable events as things largely have to get through to cause trouble, but you might see a failed breach leave a ton of cracks smaller things take advantage of even though the big danger never got across. No last minute saves here, as soon as something pushes hard it’s already cracked things and you’re looking at a long period of small things creeping through, so it’s better to stop it before it happens, but completely failing and a giant thing getting through wouldn’t be as disastrous either.
“Good God, wizard. The past two weeks, the border’s been waggling back and forth like a hooker at a dockworker’s convention.
This simile, though, seems entirely wrongheaded. Surely a hooker at a dockworker’s convention is the one who has to do the least to get customers.
Anyway, the rusted gears in Harry’s head grudgingly squeal into half a turn.
“You’re saying that this instability has been making it easier for ghosts to cross over from the Nevernever?”
Does he have to say that? Jesus, Harry.
Him pointing out the barrier’s going down is one thing, but apparently he has to explain to you that the barrier being down makes it easier for things to cross the barrier.
(Shouldn’t this have come up when they were messing around with the barrier back with the ghost? Harry noticing it was easier to tear a way in, or harder if the barrier’s instability isn’t a wall or jello or plastic wrap but more like a repelling substance that sometimes isn’t properly balanced so it’s easier to slide one way or another depending on the setting.)
Morty, meanwhile, doesn’t even remark on Harry’s jawdroppingly stupid observation.
“And easier to form bigger, stronger ghosts when people die,” he said. “You think you’ve got some pissed-off ghosts now? Wait until some honor student on her way out of the south side with a college scholarship gets popped by accident in a gang shootout. Wait until some poor sap who got AIDS from a blood transfusion breathes his last.”
Whoa there Einstein, first you need to explain to Harry that people die when they’re killed.
(Also wtf with those examples.)
Harry manages to turn this into “superghosts” and we finally get a bit of proper conspiracy theory apocalypse out of this guy in response: “New generation of viruses is coming, too. Things are going to hell all over. Eventually, that border’s going to get thin enough to spit through, and you’ll have more problems with demon attacks than gang violence.”
I said at the start of this that Butcher is basically a ninety year old man shaking his cane at how whippersnappers are ruining everything, and I stand by that.
There’s a lot wrong in the world, but it isn’t just happening for some mysterious reason that probably has to do with rap music and a lack of old fashioned value and women not wearing dresses enough. When the scary news organizations talk about superbugs and pandemics, if you actually bothered to read beyond the headline, you’d find a bunch of people with “expert” next to their name explaining why it’s a concern.
And I am absolutely down for the world falling apart for no reason! That’s quality horror. But putting it next to things that do have meticulously studied and understood reasons and giving them both a shrug of incomprehension pops that balloon. It’s not really incomprehensible at all, is it? You’re just a pack of idiots. If we could push past you guys and pick up an issue of WizardNews, it’d have people discussing how an over-reliance on fairy summoning is causing barrier erosion, debate about demon-summoning being environmentally clean if done properly but exposing people to risk of corruption and possibility of summoning failure meltdowns, calls for greater reliance on human-powered spells and charms hampered by the fact there just isn’t enough power to meet the magical demand…
Harry then goes huh, wait, if the barrier is turbulent, then are the waves natural or is something splashing around?
Morty is not interested in speculating. He then gives a very nice speech that doubles as explaining why Harry’s attempts to needle him about his lack of power backfired so badly:
“You don’t know what it’s like, Dresden. To speak to things that exist in the past and in the future as well as in the now. To have them walk up to you at the salad bar and start telling you how they murdered their wife in her sleep. “I mean, you think you’ve got a hold on things, that you understand, but in the end it all falls to pieces. A con is simpler, Dresden. You make order. People don’t give a flying fuck if Uncle Jeffrey really forgives them for missing his last birthday party. They want to know that the world is a place where Uncle Jeffrey can and should forgive them.” He swallowed, and looked around the room, at the fake tomes and the fake skull. “That’s what I sell them. Closure. Like on television. They want to know that it’s all going to work out in the end, and they’re happy to pay for it.”
While this is all great, it’s the bit about the future that’s especially chilling. If he’s speaking about ghosts, that means there are the ghosts of things before those things happen. Just dealing with ghosts is going to be nerve-wracking enough without adding in that sometimes they’re telling you about atrocities that they’re going to have done.
(Also concerning – the book just dodged the usual bit of snark about how no psychic ever checks and finds out the person’s currently in hell, which makes sense given the ghosts aren’t really people….but given the implication that a proper necromancer can call up any dead person, and the fact it seems only some people leave ghosts, and we’re left with the possibility that when he’s asked to find someone he’s actually casting about for the soul. And we know hell is a real thing and souls really do go there.)
He then tells Harry more than the guy deserves, which is that an impossibly bad thing appeared last night, something he identifies as “a nightmare”.
I thought of ruined cars and rosebushes planted in consecrated ground.
What Harry does not think is that if it only manifested last night, the only way someone could know it was coming for them is if that someone had actual visions. Unfortunately, this is already wholly IC for Harry so we still can’t say if it’s the curse affecting him.
He started to turn away. I wanted to let him go, but I couldn’t. The man had become a liar, a sniveling con, but he hadn’t always been.
I rose and beat him to the door, taking his arm in one hand. He spun to face me, jerking his arm away, glaring defiantly at my eyes. I avoided locking gazes. I didn’t want to take a look at Mortimer Lindquist’s soul.
Haha, fuck you Harry! Who’s the real alpha male now?
Harry desperately tries to pretend it’s him by advising that Morty take some time off to get his mojo back.
Read. Relax. You’re older now, stronger. If you give yourself a chance, the power will come back.”
He laughed again, tired and jaded. “Sure, Dresden. Just like that.”
It’s like Harry didn’t hear the part where Morty explained his powers were horrible, he cracked under the weight of the monstrous reality, and lying to people that everything’s fine is a huge step up from really hearing dead murderers babble their sins in his ear while he’s trying to eat.
Before the cab takes off, he throws one last thing out to Harry.
“Under my chair there’s a drawer. My notes. If you want to kill yourself trying to stand up to this thing, you might as well know what you’re getting into.”
I choose to interpret this as Morty literally advising Harry into getting himself killed confronting this thing. He knows it’s bad news, he knows it needs to get taken down, and if Harry’s gruesome death gives everyone else more data points and attracts the attention of the heavier hitters in the council, it’s a very small price to pay.
Harry, of course, assumes that his awesome advice to chill and try to get back into the swing of horrible dead people appearing to you uncontrollably connected to was some root of the person he had been, deep down somewhere, that wasn’t dead yet because the only thing that makes you a person in Harry’s eyes is being a fellow member of the magic user class.
Also, the “notes” are vellum journals. On Amazon, that goes for $9 a page. See, Harry? He has plastic gargoyles because he likes them, you judgmental asshole.
By now you probably know i love harry dresden something fierce. And that’s why i agree with everything you said so far in this chapter,because it showcases all of harry’s flaws. He IS arrogant,he does think he knows better than most people and he IS judgmental as fuck right now,he thinks morty is an asshole just cause morty not doing much wizarding anymore. and he always tries to be an alpha male because he’s insecure,the abuse he suffered in the past left hi with very little social skills.
He does get quite bettter but while he doesnt feel free to call him on it,other characters will do the same eventually
But Ectomancer is not made up term. Morty calls himself that in another book
Yo Farla. By now you’ve probably aware i really like Harry. So let me tell you right now you’re right about him in this particular chapter. It showscases all of the man flaws,he’s arrogant,he’s judgmental and he always tries to be the biggest alpha male. because he’s insecure and the abuse he endured left him with no social skills. You’re right to call him on it,oher characters will do the same eventually.
eventually
That’s really not good enough. We’re three books in. First book, a woman died because Harry fucked around. Second book, a woman died because Harry fucked around. The only reason we don’t already have a third dead woman already is because this time Harry did the minimal effort necessary to foist her off on someone with enough morals to actually try to help. And Harry’s now standing next to a paladin and still no one’s pointing this stuff out.
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Two women in the first book, if we’re looking to blame Harry for… Paula? Bianca’s bloodbag.
I’ll give him a pass there. Narratively it’s yet another example of women being disposible, but Harry’s part in it was a valid accident. He really couldn’t have expected that the vampire would attack him which would drain her which would make her drain someone else which would kill them, especially when he admitted he had no idea how vampires even work.
So difficult, separating genuine incompetence from malicious incompetence.
“Good God, wizard. The past two weeks, the border’s been waggling back and forth like a hooker at a dockworker’s convention.
This simile, though, seems entirely wrongheaded. Surely a hooker at a dockworker’s convention is the one who has to do the least to get customers.
Good of Butcher to remind us that he’s the misogynist and Harry is his self-insert. Mort’s shown absolutely no reason to throw out lines like this, but he’s a male side character in a faux-noir book, so Butcher gives him the sexist metaphor. Two birds, one stone. It’s the same reason he throws out ridiculous examples of people dying to become ghosts. Like, is the person getting shot in a gang shootout really more of a tragedy because they had a college scholarship? Like it’s not already enough of a tragedy that poor inner city kids are shooting each other?
Big speech about Jell-O
This may be one of my favorite things you’ve ever written, and it actually makes me want to praise Butcher for a relatively brilliant analogy for the spiritual barrier. It’s so good, Butcher is getting spillover praise.
Haha, fuck you Harry! Who’s the real alpha male now?
Okay so what we need to do is keep a running tally of the people Harry has avoided eye contact with. So far, off the top of my head, it’s been just Linda Randall and Mortimer. I think he may have avoided Morgan’s eyes, too, but that might be because Harry was too busy checking out his naked steel.
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Could you blame him, though?
What I love about reviewing fiction is there’s always a chance to go on some weird tangent and think up something new!
Also I may have had a lot of dealings with both plastic wrap and jello.
Yeah it’s clear you’d performed some serious clinical trials involving jello and a spork.
And no ghosts have escaped yet.
“I’m sorry you don’t think it lives up to your awesome WIZARD door stencil, but let’s consider that he’s evidently making his living doing this while you’re limping along because the police force has literally no one else they can go to.”
I think this is unfair. Dresden tries to deal with his clients fairly; when in book 1 he was tasked with exorcising a house that wasn’t actually haunted, he only charged for driving out there and verifying the house instead of going through a sham exorcism and charging the guy an inflated bill, and he offered to direct Monica elsewhere for free if it turned out she didn’t need magical help. Whereas Morty just bilks his clients for whatever he can get. Him apparently having more money is due to him being less scrupulous, not being better at magic.
“The only reason he’d be using his home as his business is if he didn’t want to spend any of his time outside of his home wards.”
Or he finds that having a home office is what his customers expect. There’s a couple of ‘psychics’ where I grew up, and they all ran offices out of home-like structures. Maybe that helps to personalize it, make it seem like you’re not just buying a reading like you might buy a coffee but instead are doing something personal and intimate with someone who has invited you into their home as a friend would. This doesn’t actually make it a non-business transaction, so it still wrecks his thresholds, but it may be necessary for the con.
Also, maybe he just can’t afford another office. All his stuff is cheap junky replicas, he might just not be as well off as you think.
“Interesting that when Harry’s talking about the guy, it’s necromancer, but to his face when he’s just swapped to the Good Cop mask, it’s ectomancer”
As I recall, Michael was the one who called Morty a necromancer, not Dresden. Dresden just said that Michael was wrong and Morty is not a necromancer, since Morty isn’t strong enough to actually raise zombies or perform resurrections. It’s just here we find out what Morty actually is–an ectomancer, someone who can talk to spirits, but not bring them back to life or anything like that.
“I think I’m right about the business/home thing. He’s not humiliated by the comparison, he’s not some has-been clinging to scraps of glory – he’s mad at Harry’s dismissal of his job.”
The worldbuilding contradicts that.
In this universe, there’s a reinforcing effect between believing a spell is right or proper to cast, and actually casting it. This is why dark magic corrupts and grows; once someone casts a murder spell, that reinforces within them the idea that dark magic is an appropriate reaction to whatever situation, which in turn makes them able to cast more powerful murder spells, and so on.
Here the opposite effect is occurring. Morty doesn’t feel what he’s doing is the right thing to do. He therefore can’t cast very good spells, and when he does, he gets a rebound effect where he’s even less happy with the idea of casting those spells than before. If he truly believed he was doing a good thing, as he argues to Harry, he wouldn’t have any problem using his magic, but because he knows what he’s doing is wrong, he’s strangling his own talent.
“But putting it next to things that do have meticulously studied and understood reasons and giving them both a shrug of incomprehension pops that balloon. It’s not really incomprehensible at all, is it? You’re just a pack of idiots. If we could push past you guys and pick up an issue of WizardNews, it’d have people discussing how an over-reliance on fairy summoning is causing barrier erosion, debate about demon-summoning being environmentally clean if done properly but exposing people to risk of corruption and possibility of summoning failure meltdowns, calls for greater reliance on human-powered spells and charms hampered by the fact there just isn’t enough power to meet the magical demand…”
Dresden is doing that, though. After seeing a bunch of unusually strong ghosts he checked with Mortimer to see what was going on; now that he knows the barrier is weak, he asks if something is weakening it; if it is then he works on finding out what that something is and how to stop it. I’m not sure what else he could be doing that he isn’t besides calling the Council, which historically hasn’t been terribly helpful when he needs them.
“What Harry does not think is that if it only manifested last night, the only way someone could know it was coming for them is if that someone had actual visions. Unfortunately, this is already wholly IC for Harry so we still can’t say if it’s the curse affecting him.”
Or if she was sent by whatever is doing this to get his protective amulet. Or if it’s just a coincidence; she gave him generic messages about some unknown menace haunting her, and it could be just luck she pulled that scam during a several-day period when there were in fact more ghosts than usual haunting the city. There’s other options besides Lydia being a legit seer.
“It’s like Harry didn’t hear the part where Morty explained his powers were horrible, he cracked under the weight of the monstrous reality, and lying to people that everything’s fine is a huge step up from really hearing dead murderers babble their sins in his ear while he’s trying to eat.”
If Morty really thought it was better that he not be using real magic anymore, his powers wouldn’t have collapsed on him like they had. He’s clearly not happy with who he is or where he is, hence Dresden trying to help him.
“Also, the “notes” are vellum journals. On Amazon, that goes for $9 a page. See, Harry? He has plastic gargoyles because he likes them, you judgmental asshole.”
Or he had some left over from back when he was legitimate? Maybe vellum is a better material for writing notes about ghosts, for whatever reason, so he stockpiled some back then.
Or if she was sent by whatever is doing this to get his protective amulet. Or if it’s just a coincidence; she gave him generic messages about some unknown menace haunting her, and it could be just luck she pulled that scam during a several-day period when there were in fact more ghosts than usual haunting the city. There’s other options besides Lydia being a legit seer.
Yes, let’s keep looking for more reasons that the starved desperate girl was evil and manipulative, rather than a legitimate victim. Harry would be proud. And, really, coincidence? Harry could tell for a fact she had some power, scam artist or not. The ghost appearing for the first time specifically targeted her physical location out of everyone in the city.
Or he had some left over from back when he was legitimate? Maybe vellum is a better material for writing notes about ghosts, for whatever reason, so he stockpiled some back then.
You just said at the very beginning of your comment that being legitimate does not earn you more money. In fact, you earn less money, because you turn away the fake requests. So you need a more consistent excuse here.
“Yes, let’s keep looking for more reasons that the starved desperate girl was evil and manipulative, rather than a legitimate victim. Harry would be proud. And, really, coincidence? Harry could tell for a fact she had some power, scam artist or not. The ghost appearing for the first time specifically targeted her physical location out of everyone in the city.”
Harry made one amulet that could protect him, and very shortly thereafter someone showed up and specifically asked for protective amulets–not for him to banish the ghost, not for him to bodyguard her, but for the one thing he had that could help him against ghosts. Being suspicious of the random stranger who shows up looking for the one effective tool you have against the monsters trying to kill you is reasonable. Especially since there’s plenty of monsters that can look like absolutely anything. Not to mention that in Book 1, his client Monica gave him a scorpion talisman which then almost murdered him–he’s learned a little about being wary of his clients.
“You just said at the very beginning of your comment that being legitimate does not earn you more money. In fact, you earn less money, because you turn away the fake requests. So you need a more consistent excuse here.”
It’s perfectly consistent. When Morty was legit, he scrimped and saved to afford proper materials because he had no choice if he was going to actually do anything useful. (Just like how Dresden sets aside a little money to buy various magical stuff, like uranium dust, despite not having much left over). Now that he’s a con artist he doesn’t need to buy quality items, so he gets cheap crap and has a little left over for tacky decorations, but he still might have an old box of unused vellum from back when he cared.
Why doesn’t he have more, actually? If not for himself then for other people involved like McAnally’s guys, Murphy who probably investigates ghosts’ rampages, Susan who would investigate such stories given an opportunity, etc.?
That aside, you may notice that Harry doesn’t think about any of this. During this chapter specifically, he doesn’t appear to think about Lydia and reevaluate his opinion about her one way or another. Before that, he didn’t think that she came to rob him of protection, either, he though she legitimately needed help, he just assumed she didn’t deserve it.
So, whether or not your reasons are valid, they’re not Harry’s reasons.
It almost killed him because he stuffed it into his table and forgot all about it instead of investigating, getting rid of it if it were no use or locking it inside a circle or a ward.
Monica, meanwhile, had no idea that the dried scorpion was actually perpetually motion scorpion, so she couldn’t warn Harry about it, but she did say it belonged to her husband who was into magic, so Harry really has no one but himself to blame for the whole fiasco.
Now that he’s a con artist he doesn’t need to buy quality items, so he gets cheap crap and has a little left over for tacky decorations, but he still might have an old box of unused vellum from back when he cared.
I’m sorry, but it really reads like you don’t know how income vs. expense works. You’re basically saying that Morty has more income as a con artist, and spends less money because he’s not buying quality materials, therefore he only has “a little” left over for tacky decorations?
Just like how Dresden sets aside a little money to buy various magical stuff, like uranium dust, despite not having much left over
Farla’s already done a better job than I ever could dissecting Dresden’s finances back in Book 1, but suffice to say they make absolutely zero sense. Butcher doesn’t know how budgets work either.
Being suspicious of the random stranger who shows up looking for the one effective tool you have against the monsters trying to kill you is reasonable. Especially since there’s plenty of monsters that can look like absolutely anything. Not to mention that in Book 1, his client Monica gave him a scorpion talisman which then almost murdered him–he’s learned a little about being wary of his clients.
First off, he’s got the dust, Bob to do research, and a boatload of his own magic power. He doesn’t have just one effective tool. He is a tool. Second, he was already wary of Monica! He immediately assumed she was lying or deluded about the problem and never took her seriously. He threw the scorpion into his drawer and forgot about it, not even bothering to test it for magic. Monica didn’t intend to murder him with it; Sells took advantage of his idiocy and carelessness. He put off the work and basically stole $500 until threats to his life finally made him actually do work.
The random stranger was, again, a starved, abused, possibly homeless and and definitely desperate child, and Harry knew this. Yet here you and he are, looking for reasons not to help. Even the other guy who likes Dresden didn’t take his side on this one.
–not for him to banish the ghost, not for him to bodyguard her, but for the one thing he had that could help him against ghosts.
Yes, this behavior is consistent with what she did with Father Forthill – she didn’t want anyone else having to face the ghost and get hurt. Even Harry admits it was a heavyweight superghost. It’s understandable that she doesn’t believe he’ll be able to defeat it. All she’s trying to do is run.
But hey, you know, alternate character interpretation and all that.
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That seems rather self-contradictory to me. What we see here is Morty clearly stating he hates his powers and doesn’t want to deal with real ghosts. Since believing in the righteousness of your spell (even if you mingle with evil) reinforces it, it stands to reason that believing the spell to be horrible and fearing it would erode your powers.
Really, Morty resenting his powers and subconsciously trying to get rid of them makes the most sense here.
If Morty wanted to do that, though, he could just not use them at all and let them fade away from disuse. But Dresden indicates that he’s still trying to summon ghosts, meaning he does want to maintain his magic… he’s just disgusted with himself at what he’s using it for.
Yeah, except he knows what’s out there and knows that without magic he would just be more vulnerable to it, so he’s afraid to lose his edge completely.
Dresden tries to deal with his clients fairly
What does that have to do with mocking the guy for haing plaster rather than marble statues? He’s not complaining that this guy is wealthy and using the money he scammed people out of to buy high quality props, he’s sneering at how cheap they are and how much better his stuff is. The one time we do see a sign of the guy having wealth, the notes, he’s totally fine with it.
Or he finds that having a home office is what his customers expect. There’s a couple of ‘psychics’ where I grew up, and they all ran offices out of home-like structures.
That’s because magic isn’t real so fake psychics in our world have no concerns about wrecking the best protective wards avaliable to them. This guy lives in terror of a mass of ghosts and demons bubbling out and swamping the world. If he couldn’t do his business anywhere else, he’d wouldn’t be doing it at all.
Dresden just said that Michael was wrong and Morty is not a necromancer, since Morty isn’t strong enough to actually raise zombies or perform resurrections. It’s just here we find out what Morty actually is–an ectomancer, someone who can talk to spirits, but not bring them back to life or anything like that.
No, Harry said Morty wasn’t a necromancer because he can’t summon ghosts properly anymore and is basically powerless. What you’re saying would’ve made sense, but it’s not what’s actually in the text.
If he truly believed he was doing a good thing, as he argues to Harry, he wouldn’t have any problem using his magic, but because he knows what he’s doing is wrong, he’s strangling his own talent.
Except he doesn’t want to summon the ghosts in the first place. He believes his power isn’t worth anything, and that having it was a curse, and that his customers are paying him for comfort and not real ghost contacting. Possibly a later book will refine this into something where Harry’s right, but from what we’re presented, he has no reason to want his powers back and seems to have actively tried to strangle them so the voices would stop.
Dresden is doing that, though. After seeing a bunch of unusually strong ghosts he checked with Mortimer to see what was going on; now that he knows the barrier is weak, he asks if something is weakening it
Morty wrote an entire book claiming the barrier was weakening decades ago. Harry supposedly read it just to dismiss the entire thing outright on the basis of he felt it probably wasn’t true because his gut said so. Harry proceeds to never look into it again, even when he says in the first book there’s been steady increases in magical inursions, even this book when he’s saying ghosts are suddenly much more easily able to interact with our world, and it’s only seeing this guy running for the hills that gets him to even consider it. That guy, in turn, has done no research into why or if anything can be done.
Replace “magic barrier” with “ozone layer” and maybe you can see how criminally ignorant and uninterested in the world around them everyone comes off.
Or if she was sent by whatever is doing this to get his protective amulet. Or if it’s just a coincidence; she gave him generic messages about some unknown menace haunting her, and it could be just luck she pulled that scam during a several-day period when there were in fact more ghosts than usual haunting the city. There’s other options besides Lydia being a legit seer.
It could just be luck she pulled this scam hours before a ghost monster manifested for the first time and tried to kill her exactly as she claimed?
Maybe you could outline exactly what burden of proof you’re requiring from her, and why you don’t expect it from anyone else in the story.
This was supposed to be a reply to Singapore but turned into its own comment, weirdly.
I honestly don’t know why thresholds are even there. So far, every time Harry was gearing up for a fight, the boundary didn’t matter. His own home is reinforced with wards, so the natural threshold doesn’t matter, and churches are powered by faith, so again, doesn’t matter.
I mean, it’s a cool idea since it can lead to nice evocative descriptions of how crossing the boundary is like stepping into another world and such, but Butcher doesn’t actually use it.
(Also, on related note, for some reason Japanese media absolutely adores the idea of boundaries having metaphysical weight. Like, they’re in every story involving occult that I’ve recently read/watched. I don’t think Western media deals with it quite as often, wonder why it is.)
And it never changes. Harry does the same thing in that short story I’ve reviewed recently to a bunch of young wizards who weren’t even remotely antagonistic to him.
Honestly, at this point I wonder why Harry doesn’t start every fight with a henshin transformation activated by yelling ALPHA MALE.
You go, Morty!
Should be branch into Morty/Harry/Marcone love triangle now? Morgan fell out of the race by this point, I think.
Morty’s too good for Harry, and we never even had a seriously good Marcone/Harry snip. I think yours and mine combined were less than 500 words.
Yeah, I remember in early Inuyasha, you always see him hopping over the torii, and then you start to notice that all demons always move above the gates, never through them like the human characters. It was a nice little detail.
I think maybe Western stuff has, or at least went through a, more egalitarian/leveling period, where there was a lot of boundary blurring. Most of our threshold stuff is dead and it’s just a few fossilized remnants bopping about that we no longer remember the origin of – vampires needing an invite is generally viewed as a bizarre idiosyncracy and even used to argue vampires are just a pile of random weaknesses, mushroom circles are at most remembered as a sign of fairies generally existing, and you’ll see references to fae things living under hills as if they’re just hobbits who like to live in domes.
Actually, what is the origin of fairies under hills? Vampires and doors I assume is a sacred hospitality thing, but the others I don’t know about.
Also having returned from Kyoto, I can say yokai are gonna hate the imperial protected shrines, what with torii going from the foot of the mountain to the top.
I’m pretty sure it’s about the reversal – you walk OVER hills in the real world, but if you can walk UNDER hills you find fairies. And those places under the hill are totally different than literally under a hill, so it’s definitely a transition of some kind.
It’s possible it’s a general association between otherworldly spirits and the land of the dead (which can also be the home of the gods, such as the Irish / Welsh Otherworld), which is often accessed by going underground.
Gah, I would read a whole book about Mort, the burnt out psychic who’s sick of murderers bothering him at the salad bar, alpha-wizards knocking him around his home AND mocking the decor, and other people’s shit in general. It presents an actual, interesting internal conflict there, along with a lot of fascinating potential for development/future storylines/shit, I think I’m actually going to steal this general idea for a story of my own.
The morality play Butcher is going for with Mort is so weird. It comes out to “Mort is pitiful and bad for not lording his power over other people and calling them idiots while they’re in morning, and also it makes him unhappy, which is also bad because ???.” It’s so damn convoluted.
I think it’s an attempt to hide the power imbalance. Without him pretending to care, this is just Harry stomping all over someone who’s magically crippled, but by saying that no he does care and this guy is just choosing to be a weakling, it’s ~tough love~.
But he could have been just a shitty person who abused ghosts to learn their secrets and scamming people without shame. Why give him all those hints at sympathetic story if Harry’s just going to bully him anyway?
At this point, we’re just too far gone from what the books are still pretending to be: a detective series with an unambiguously heroic protagonist who can’t leave even one troubled soul (Mort) alone. Mort has to be slightly sympathetic so that Harry becomes even more sympathetic for trying to help him.
I was thinking about how a barrier between the physical and magical is all well and expected, but what’s really telling to me about the nature of the barrier is in how it’s maintained or repaired.
Expanding the saran wrap metaphor is interesting because could imply that a will can deform the barrier to make long-lasting stretched and weakened areas, but enough skillful manipulation can cause torn edges to latch back on to each other. (Ignoring the frustration that whole saran wrap will spontaneously stick to itself without the need to tear it first, and its ability to make pockets.) The Jell-O metaphor, like you said, permits a deformation up to a threshold, with a substructure that allow quick recovery and zero trauma from a small force. Above that threshold it cracks, but the structure forces any tears to shut immediately. Neither of them really address how tears are ultimately repaired, though.
I believe Butcher could have used a far superior model, better for a couple of different reasons: an oil-water barrier. Pure water and pure oil CAN be forced to mix by either an outside force (eg, practitioner will) or an emulsifying agent (the weight of culture, superstition, or environments that allows easier passage at a specific location), but the two naturally force each other apart, with a polarity based on gravity (I guess, sunlight? Or mortal life force?).
So, first, a model based on an oil-water repulsion would remove the need to speculate about the nature or source of a third material, dividing two, because the division is a sponteous result coming from their essential nature. A situation in which the sides are fully separated would be the only barrier needed, caused by a fundamental inability to communicate, similar to a liquid meniscus seen from the side.
Second, then, explaining how to traverse and repair a breach becomes simpler from fewer moving parts. The ease of passage would depend on the existing amount of emulsification, both by traffic and by similarities between the two sides, and also on which side they naturally arose from or have more affinity for (hello changelings). As in real life, a fully separated emulsion would require more energy than one that has been recently agitated.
In order for a tear to mend naturally, you would simply need to block traffic, but you could also hasten it by altering the identity of the culture or environment on one side (removing soap from oil and water from the metaphor, or turning desert into lush golf courses and replacing natives inhabitants with western capitalistic executives for the books).
Using this metaphor, as you can see, also make it seamless with the world building and dovetails into Butcher’s own lore. The saran wrap is fundamentally unmoved by changes that don’t focus on it, whereas the Jell-O doesn’t allow for multiple small hits because it has too much resilience up to a certain point.
Last, this model would make the division seem natural and universal, rather than machinated. This is a pretty important stickler point, because otherwise you (me, mostly) leave with the feeling that something ELSE caused the divide, and continues to enforce it.
There are further implications and questions with an oil-water model: there must be an unquestionable difference between in matter that causes a divsion (safe yes), and there should be some essential nature that directed and maintains the polarity (gravity is good for up versus down, but what maintains the direction of reality vs unreality if not mortal attention, the sun, or, if you want to get crazy, dark matter?).
Last, this model would make the division seem natural and universal, rather than machinated. This is a pretty important stickler point, because otherwise you (me, mostly) leave with the feeling that something ELSE caused the divide, and continues to enforce it.
The problem is that does seem to be how it works, even if there’s no sign of what that force might be or why. Once you’re across the barrier you seem okay, rather than like a droplet of water suspended in a sea of oil.
(Although that does make for an interesting system – the more magic you concentrate in an area, the more it can form its own mini-oil or water bubble. If different densities, than the bigger those get, the more often they would pop back into the main area, disrupting/dragging along everything in their path.)
The bigger issue with a natural division is that it seems too easy to make it permanent. The less people believe, the stronger the barrier gets, the less magic happens, the less people believe… Unless the real cause behind the magic upswing is the rise in superstitious bullshit in recent years.