Well, this seems an appropriate time for a revival.
The rest of the Council meeting was somewhat anticlimactic—for me, anyway.
Dammit, Harry, I don’t care about you, I care about offhand comments that will let me work out how the wizard government functions!
The Merlin ordered the wizards to disperse immediately after the meeting via preplanned, secure routes. He also distributed a list to everyone, noting the Wardens near them to call upon if help was needed, and told them to check in with the Wardens every few days, as a safety precaution.
Yes, that’s better.
Which is to say, wow, what quality bullshit! For the sake of The Drama, they didn’t warn everyone about the vampires going in, even though the situation is bad enough that they need special “preplanned, secure routes” to leave by. Like that’s going to do fuck all if they gave away their locations on the trip here. And a lot of them are parked right outside! Given the difficulty of getting a car that’s decent and also works with magic, anyone who arrived by one is going to be leaving by one.
And telling them about nearby Wardens they could call for help MIGHT have been a bit useful in the past few days while there’s random vampire attacks, don’t you think? It can’t possibly be any sort of safety precaution given they’re apparently handing out mundane paper with a list of absolutely every Warden, which is roughly a million times worse of an idea than sending a magic message personally telling people about just the ones relevant to them – and this when we’re told wizards value memorization and can flick wizard-vision on to perfectly remember anything they see.
Next, a grizzled old dame Warden went over the theories to a couple of newly developed wards meant to work especially well against vampires.
I appreciate the offhand reference to women having any sort of relevant position, and this is the only thing we’ve heard that actually sounds like both a good idea and something where it makes sense to collect everyone before distributing the information. The Wardens continue to be great.
Representatives of the White Council’s allies—secret occult brotherhoods, mostly—each gave a brief speech, declaring his or her group’s support of the Council in the war.
1) Oh dear lord they seriously have no magical allies, it’s humans only.
2) Oh dear lord anyone with strong magical talent is considered a wizard and part of the WC whether they want it or not, therefore we’re talking about organizations whose membership criteria involves not being strong enough to qualify for the WC.
I hope the vampires will be relatively gracious in victory. Pre-psychotic break, Bianca did seem more invested in the wellbeing of other people than anything we’ve seen from the non-Warden members of the council, and the vampires are also the only group we’ve seen working with humans. Plus we know they aren’t bigots because they were also willing to work with that ghoul and Bianca’s party had a fae and a dragon.
Also, christ, so not only the wizards themselves but those representatives not only saw the clusterfuck of a power struggle but how the issue came down to “is Harry a full member or a nonperson we give zero shits about and would torture to death ourselves in a heartbeat for the slightest gain”? If those brief speeches ever were sincere they sure as fuck aren’t now. I wouldn’t be surprised if every last one was going to head back to recommend they defect.
Do you think these even are “allies”? Or are these groups the WC decided they should be ruling over because they’re humans and magic-users, but without any of the rights the WC gives their actual members?
…huh, if anyone knew anything, that’s where the most likely spies are. Wonder how many of them got a look at the sheets of paper detailing all of the Wardens, where they are, and how to contact them?
Toward the end of the meeting, Wardens showed up in force to escort wizards to the beginnings of their routes home.
Seriously, though, if that’s a concern now, how many wizards do you think got killed on the way to the meeting?
The Senior Council, I presumed, would loiter around for a few days in order to see if I got killed trying to prove that I was one of the good guys.
There’s no way I’d be so lucky, but I feel like pointing out the only valid reason to say this would be to foreshadow them all getting taken out by a bomb or something. There’s a war on, a war they are losing. Not only is this place not secure, not only should you never have everyone in charge clustered in even a secure area, but also they have actual things they should be doing.
Also, despite all that about leaving carefully and with Warden escorts, Harry just walks to his car.
and drove away with all the raging power the ancient four-cylinder engine could muster. Behold the angry wizard puttputt-putting away.
This would suggest the techbane has zero tie to his emotional state, or alternatively, that it’s only certain types of attention and being massively distracted actually helps matters.
Harry whines about how he’s going to die working for Mab, on the basis of no evidence, and also maybe there’ll be splash damage on bystanders. Honestly I would actually buy Harry feeling more responsibility toward the nebulous faceless masses than he does once they show up with and he can see their faces do not have the precise amount of acceptable makeup. Certainly he feels no responsibility for the actual murder victim whose name and picture he does have.
He then pity-parties more with a pep talk about how much his life sucks but he’ll have to do this more.
This war is mostly your own fault
Entirely. It’s entirely your fault. Several times over.
Time for Murphy! Will this be good, because Murphy, or very very bad, because she’ll be encountering Harry?
We get our exposition about how the Special Investigations and how Murphy’s in charge.
The city had appointed SI to make sure the paperwork stayed nice and neat, with no mention of preposterous fantasies that could not possibly exist.
We’re now several books in and still no mention of the fact this branch of the police is absolutely fabricating evidence left and right.
And look.
Of course Murphy has good reason to do so. But it’s fabricating evidence. It’s the cops deciding who they think should take the fall, and then making it happen. You absolutely need to address exactly how this is working out! What kind of things do they do? Who are they pinning things on? What happens when cases are less clear-cut than finding a cackling madman surrounded by dead bodies who summons a demon in front of them? Because the point of trials and legally admissible evidence is that the police are not supposed to just say they personally figure this person did it so lock them up.
Also, the fact no one notices them fabricating evidence in this area of the police force, for example, strongly suggests it’s rampant in the department as a whole.
Now, I get that this book, in part because it does not actually give a fuck about noir or social justice or honestly just not being a rampant dick, does not care about the issue of police corruption. But in that case, you can just lay out that the way the police are handling it is morally sound.
For example, you know what’d be nice to say clearly? That they only convict people they catch in the act, like cackling madmen summoning demons. They don’t, say, get Harry to point to the killer then redo the autopsy to say “gunshot” and plant a gun on the person Harry identified. That a lot of their making the papers look right is about saying the tooth marks were from deer chewing on the body after the person drowned and not a kelpie dragging them in. And that they also intervene if an innocent person is going to take the fall for a supernatural killing, even if it means the case stays officially unsolved. Just anything about them having limits.
Murphy lives in a house in Bucktown, near a lot of other cops. It’s a tiny place, but she owns it. Grandma Murphy left it to her. The house is surrounded by a neat little lawn.
Hm, looks like Harry’s going to continue to have a thing about houses this book.
I noted, as I waited, that Murphy had a steel-reinforced door just like I did. Though I doubted she’d had as many demons or assassins showing up at it.
Do you have any evidence for that, Harry?
Murphy, sadly, is a mess when she shows up at the door, so much that Harry’s description of her isn’t even leering!
The woman didn’t look like the chief of Chicago PD’s monster hunters. Her bright blue eyes were heavy, weary, and underscored with dark bags. She stood five feet nothing in her bare feet. Her golden hair was longer on top than in back, with bangs hanging down to her eyes. She wore a pale peach terry-cloth bathrobe that fell most of the way to her feet. In her right hand she held her automatic, and a small crucifix dangled on a chain wrapped around her wrist.
It is still doing the weird thing about how she doesn’t look like a cop. Because no cop has bags under their eyes or answers the door with a gun.
(Also, I’m suspicious of the bare feet thing. Why wouldn’t you wear socks, Murphy? Why is it important you be barefoot?)
Incidentally, Harry has just been going on about how he can totally drop in on Murphy, they’re buddies. It’s increasingly clear he has not actually interacted with her between last book and now, because they’re not actually buddies.
Murphy does not invite him in. Harry takes this with his usual terrible grace.
“Uh,” I said, “Murph, are you all right?”
She nodded.
“Okay,” I said. “Can I come in?”
“We’ll know in a minute,” Murphy said.
I got it then. Murphy wasn’t going to ask me in. There are plenty of monsters running around in the dark that can’t violate the threshold of a home if they aren’t invited in. One of them had caught up to Murphy last year, nearly killing her, and it had been wearing my face when it did it. No wonder she didn’t look exactly overjoyed to see me.
“Murph,” I said, “relax. It’s me. Hell’s bells, there isn’t anything that I can think of that would mimic me looking like this. Even demonic fiends from the nether regions of hell have some taste.”
You’re a fucking asshole, Harry, and also, literally the monster took your exact form last time. If Murphy didn’t know you were a fucking asshole, if she had the slightest positive feeling toward you, she’d have shot you in the face as soon as you tried to get an invitation because for any decent person, that’d be a tell it wasn’t really them.
Harry tells us about thresholds again, this time emphasizing that they vary.
My apartment, for example, didn’t have much of a threshold—it’s a bachelor pad, and whatever domestic energy is responsible for such things doesn’t seem to settle down as well in rental spaces and lone dwellings. Murphy’s house had a heavy field surrounding it. It had a life of its own; it had history. It was a home, not just a place to live.
Harry living alone = sucktastic threshold. Murphy also living in a “lone dwelling” = powerful threshold.
Yeah, I know it says she got it from her grandmother, I can buy that helping, but she’s also an overworked cop who lives alone and also mostly at her job. Harry has a demonic pet, a (rapist skull) roommate, we hear at length that his supposed “bachelor pad” has a ton of fancy wall hangings and other alterations to personalize it for him, and he spends loads of time at home.
Murphy’s place was … dare I say it, cute. The room was done in soft yellows and greens. And there were ruffles. The curtains had ruffles, and the couch had more, plus those little knitted things (aren’t they called doilies?) were draped over the arms of the two recliners, the couch, the coffee table, and just about every other surface that seemed capable of supporting lacy bits of froo-fra. They looked old and beautiful and well cared for. I was betting Murphy’s grandma had picked them out.
Murphy’s own decorating was limited to the gun-cleaning kit sitting on the end table beside the holster for her automatic and a wooden rack over the fireplace that bore a pair of Japanese swords, long and short, one over the other. That was the Murphy I knew and loved.
So the house isn’t really hers. It really does not sound like she should have much of a threshold at all, going by the rules – if Harry’s analysis is accurate, she’s functionally living in someone else’s house, but someone who’s dead and no longer calling it home.
(I also would think her own behavior sounds like it should be eroding any protections further – she clearly does not feel safe here, let alone happy. Even as she used the threshold’s power, she still felt the need to answer the door armed.)
Harry then tells us that he’s confused and worried by Murphy’s uncharacteristic behavior, and even more bothered by the fact dealing with it will presumably take time and is therefore an enormous inconvenience.
I needed whatever information she could get me. I also needed to help her with whatever it was that had hurt her so badly.
I think the second part is really just about the first.
Harry goes on to say he’s never seen the inside of Murphy’s house before.
I frowned. “You know, if conversation is too much for you we could play charades. I’ll go first.” I held up my hand with my fingers spread. Murphy didn’t say anything, so I provided her end of the dialogue. “Five words.” I tugged on my ear. “Sounds like … What Is Wrong with You?”
God, I hate Harry so, so much.
Anyway, she’s got an open photo album out, and when he does this she looks at it, and that finally clues Harry in to the fact it’s relevant because he is truly an amazing detective, and it’s of her wedding.
She apparently married at seventeen, to a tuxedo-clad man who had to have been ten years older than she was and it turns out the reason she’s moping is not because oh my god I’m so sorry Murphy but because that was her “first love” and he just died of cancer, because marrying at seventeen, to someone way older no less, is completely normal if you are a ninety year old man who never speaks to women.
He died at forty-three, so Murphy is apparently in her thirties, which in turn would appear to canonize that yes, Harry is at least mid-thirties because as we all know female love interests are never, ever older than the man.
Now, I said we learn she calls this guy her first love (christ, when do you think the relationship started? How old was she? Sixteen? Younger?) and it’s because she’s asking Harry about if he can possibly understand losing that, so it’s time for Harry to compare tragedy dicks by saying fuck yeah he does, and that he can make it even squickier than her marriage!
We got adopted by the same man when we were ten.”
Murphy blinked and looked up at me. “She was your sister?”
“I don’t have any relatives. We were both adopted by the same guy, that’s all. We lived together, drove one another nuts, hit puberty together. Do the math.”
THE MATH IS YOU FUCKED YOUR SISTER HOLY SHIT HARRY I THOUGHT YOU WERE BOTH TEENS.
TEN.
TEN IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE AGE TO SAY SHE’S TECHNICALLY NOT YOUR SISTER.
Look, wizards are clearly fucked up. I can buy that this could happen, especially when everything points to them being kept very isolated and it’s not like Harry had the slightest clue how this was supposed to work given he also gets fucked at sixteen by his godmother.
But Harry has been out in the world long enough he should have picked up that no, nothing about that relationship was healthy.
We then get a largely coherent explanation of what happened.
Justin decides Harry should do black magic. Harry books it. Justin sends a demon. Harry beats it. Justin goes back for Elaine, who binds Harry, then Justin tries willbinding Harry, but Harry beats free of both Elaine and Justin’s spells and then also beats Justin himself. Justin and Elaine burn.
You can really see why no one believes Harry’s version of events, honestly.
No mention of where sexy godmom is in this, but I would personally place it as when the demon starts chasing Harry. She powers him up enough that he can beat the demon and then burn through Elaine’s binding spell far faster than expected.
Anyway, point is, let’s all think about how much harder Harry has it.
“Greg left me. We tried to talk a few times, but it always ended in a fight.” Her eyes welled up with tears. “Dammit, I should have at least gotten to tell him good-bye.”
What I don’t get is why the detail about him being so much older. Usually this setup is two people marrying right out of high school, where the point is that neither of them quite know what they want or even who they are yet and it’s also their first real relationship. It makes perfect sense a situation like that would lead to still caring a lot and mourning the relationship but fighting like cats and dogs.
But someone who’s twenty-seven and someone who’s seventeen… That’s the sort of thing that you get when what the older partner says is compatibility is really obedience. And here she is, hating herself for it when most likely the fights boiled down to him ordering something and her not rolling over fast enough for him.
Murphy then apologizes for being upset, and for holding a gun just because she was horribly tortured for trusting someone who looked exactly like Harry before.
Harry finally registers that wait, Murphy is drinking and taking pills at the same time, that’s possibly bad, and checks to see that it’s Valium. Because everything else about this seemed so fine.
“Murph, I’ve never seen you with a drink in your life. And Valium? It makes me worry about you.”
Of course not, you only interact with Murphy during work hours. And the fact only now are you worried wholly justifies that Murphy only interacts with you during work hours.
Murphy explains she can’t sleep. Harry doesn’t get it. She explains she can’t sleep, so she’s taking drugs. Harry doesn’t get it. Murphy says she’s having horrible night terrors. Harry doesn’t get it. Murphy says she wakes up screaming and somehow that finally gets Harry to remember that right, Kravos tortured her horribly. Murphy, presumably because she is incredibly drunk, does not think it’s weird she had to explain that five times.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about it for a long time. Trying to figure out what I did wrong. Why he was able to get to me.”
I ached inside. “Murph, there wasn’t anything you could have done.”
Murphy then explains at length that yes, yes that is the issue. This isn’t about finding an excuse for why it’s not her fault, this is about the fact there is nothing she can do to stop it from happening again.
God. Poor Murphy. She’d taken a spiritual mauling before I’d shown up to save her. The thing that attacked her had been a spirit being, and it had torn her apart on the inside without leaving a mark on her skin. In a way, she’d been raped. All of her power had been taken away, and she’d been used for the amusement of another. No wonder it had left her with scars.
So what happened to her was, in Harry’s opinion, rape, but also he needed it painstakingly explained that she was in fact traumatized by it.
I mean I guess in fairness Harry did apparently get raped at least twice without even getting into the mess of fucking his sister and he’s successfully just put it out of his head, so perhaps of all things for Harry to not get this one actually has some valid psychological underpinnings.
Speaking of Harry’s issues, he’s also still got the greater horror of actually doing his job hanging over him. She asks why he’s there, because obviously he’s only showed up for a favor, and he passes along what Mab gave him. Murphy says that it’s an accidental death, he explains that according to a fairy it was a murder.
Murphy agrees to let him see whatever the police have in return for him telling her if it actually is a murder.
“Murph,” I protested, “come on. I don’t want to pull you into anything that—”
…you know, I wonder if her relationship with her first husband is informing her willingness to put up with Harry’s bullshit. Like I said, that kind of age gap combined with how very young she was really points to someone who wanted to be in control and make all the decisions. She doesn’t like the way Harry treats her but she may not believe she can expect anything better.
Harry explains to us, the reader, that he doesn’t want Murphy involved to protect her. We all remember how well not telling women anything has worked to protect them, don’t we?
Do you know why Harry agrees? It’s not because he realizes that hasn’t worked. No. Of course not.
Murphy had been hurt. She was afraid, and if she didn’t force herself to face that fear, it might swallow her whole.
Every other woman made the mistake of expecting Harry to want to keep them intact. But Murphy is broken and Harry’s found it’s inconvenient as fuck, so he’ll do it.
Murphy, meanwhile, registers his injured hand and fixes the bandage.
“I’m trying to read here, Murph.”
“You’re still bleeding. Puncture wounds will ooze forever if you don’t keep them covered.”
“Yeah, I tried to explain that, but they made me take the bandage off anyway.”
In the second book Harry healed up from getting beaten nearly to death within a day, after burning tons of his magic.
I guess this might be a magic wound his wizard healing can’t touch, only in that case he should actually need Murphy to properly dress the wound and explain this sort of information instead of supposedly knowing and handling it fine originally.
We learn that the guy’s official cause of death is falling down the stairs. They actually did a surprisingly thorough check to make sure there wasn’t anyone around to shove him, but Harry notices that there’s a mention of mystery goop that was found by the first person on the scene and there was no sign of it later. He then explains that ectoplasm is what magical constructs use.
“So when whatever it is that has made this ecto goo into matter has gone, it turns back into…?”
“Slime,” I said. “It’s clear and slippery, and it evaporates in a few minutes.”
Harry has been working with them for years and he never mentioned this incredibly relevant thing to look for. This thing that he can’t even check his own because only the first people on the scene would ever see it.
He then goes on to tell her that also, it’s possible to portal between here and the Nevernever, another thing you’d really think would’ve come up before given whether teleportation is real is going to be relevant to the average case.
“Jesus Christ,” Murphy muttered. “So someone—”
“Or something,” I interjected.
“—or something could have gotten into the building and out again. Just like that. Past all the locks and guards and cameras. How scary is that?”
Seriously. He never mentioned this before in any other case.
Look, I’m willing to accept it’s mostly bad worldbuilding but god.
This could actually work if Harry established he’d intentionally not explained anything about how he solved cases for them before now, and then made a point about how his relationship with Murphy before now actually had not been this great buddy-buddy thing but after the events of last book he’s decided he should explain what he knows and his reasoning. Then it could be character development instead of a plot hole.
“God. That poor old man.”
“I don’t think he was helpless, Murph. Reuel was mixed up with the faeries. I kind of doubt his hands were squeaky clean.”
Harry conflates “not helpless”, “working for fairies”, and “evil and probably deserved to die”. We know fairies aren’t inherently evil, so working for them doesn’t require doing anything wrong. We know Harry is now on his second coerced fae relationship, so we know working for them also doesn’t necessarily involve a choice. And we certainly know that fairies using you doesn’t mean you’re capable of defending yourself. So, why does he do this? It might just be sheer contrariness, trying to be all grizzled and unsympathetic.
Murphy reiterates that seriously, tell her if it was a murder, and Harry reiterates that he doesn’t wanna. She insists, he agrees, we’ll see if he actually follows through.
He then heads back to his house and finds someone inside.
a slender woman standing by my cold fireplace, all graceful curves and poised reserve. She wore a pair of blue jeans over long, coltish legs, with a simple scarlet cotton Tshirt. A silver pentacle hung outside the shirt, resting on the curve of modest breasts, and it gleamed in the light from my readied blasting rod. Her skin was pale, like the inner bark of an oak, the living part of the tree, her hair the brown-gold of ripe wheat, her eyes the grey of storm clouds. Her fine mouth twitched, first into a smile and then into a frown, and she lifted elegant, long-fingered hands to show me empty palms.
…
She lifted herself onto her toes, but she was tall enough that it wasn’t much of an effort for her to kiss my cheek. She smelled like wildflowers and sun-drenched summer afternoons. She drew back enough to focus on my face and my eyes, her own expression gentle and concerned. “Hello, Harry.”
It’s his dead sister who he fucked when he was a teenager!
So one of my quarantine hobbies is reading actual hardboiled detective novels, and I’m finally seeing some of the first works whose genius Butcher butchers. Once you put them side to side, it’s just… incredible. Every blurb compares Harry to Philip Marlowe, but Marlowe’s very first monologue was about how he painstakingly made himself presentable for a meeting with a wealthy prospective client. Harry can’t do the same thing even when his life is at stake.
That bit near the end of Storm Front/beginning of Fool Moon, where the cops think Harry is an evil gangster but all the crooks know he’s actually a good guy, is lifted directly from The Glass Key. In Harry’s world it’s of course a poor-me complaint that he can’t get work he never does anyway. In the original book it was a ploy between two corrupt political machines, where the loss of credibility with both respectable and unsavory people was neatly done in one scheme. And maybe the best part was that it didn’t even work; it was a throwaway move that was abandoned quickly once the other side caught on. The books are full of things like that. They’re great; I can totally see how they inspired many more books of dubious quality.
I’ll have thoughts about this specific chapter later, just wanted to gush a bit.
Yeah, I wonder if it’s a matter of actually not realizing that, or if he thinks it’s a way to make Harry cooler. Like this pathetic beta male actually cares what he looks like because consequences for his actions exist, but not Harry, Harry shows up when he wants looking how he wants and the client will beg for his help anyway.
I think it’s a matter of Butcher’s firsthand exposure being maybe seeing The Maltese Falcon once in the cinemas.
I reread some Chandler recently, and what I was most struck by was just how good of a person Marlowe is. Marlowe refusing to have sex with an intoxicated woman in his apartment because the right thing to do is help her get home safe is a far, far cry from whatever the fuck is going on in this book.
Like, there’s a lot of violence against women in the first gen of hardboiled (Hammett, Marlowe, etc.) but it’s always done by the bad guys. The stuff written at the kind of turnover of the genre in the 30s and 40s is really empathetic and complex, and it’s when it starts to transition into the 50s and 60s that you first start to see “bad men hurt women” transform into “men hurt women” into “hurt women.” By the time you get into the 70s, the empathy and genuine kindness of the OG hardboiled detectives has been completely subsumed into ALPHA MALES battering women, and it’s such an insult to the artistry of what men like Chandler were doing, of what they were trying to say, of the very real social changes they were earnestly wrestling with.
I talk about the violent turn the genre takes in, oddly enough, an upcoming Umineko post, but what Butcher does is so, so typical of the later-gen men who just use the genre as an excuse to hate women, and it’s such an insult to the people who invented the subform.
Yeah, there are tons of examples in the early books of actual hearts of gold, not just Harry’s whiny ‘well I guess now that I’m being personally threatened I’ll kill the villains who have already hurt you’.
One of the most staggering examples to me is the Op in The Dain Curse. The dude is so dedicated to getting the ‘cursed’ young lady out clean that he gets her on a detox regimen, because he knows she’s using the morphine to cope with her horrible circumstances and he doesn’t want it weighing her down once he’s done doing his detective work. That’s how you hero.
A silver pentacle hung outside the shirt, resting on the curve of modest breasts, and it gleamed in the light from my readied blasting rod.
Mmmmm, no thank you.
Why are all these relationships so gross? I don’t have the energy right now to go back and check every relationship in the books so far, but all the relationships in this chapter are Not Great. Seriously, that girl he’s spent so long thinking of just as a girlfriend, they were raised together since they were ten?
That’s the best part.
Like, it would be so, so easy to make those relationships less weirdly problematic. Just say Murphy and her husband were the same age, rushing into life without understanding it. Just say Justin adopted Harry and Elaine when they were fourteen or something, it works for anime.
But no, Butcher had to specifically go out of his way to make A Thing here. At this point, it’s not even digging your own grave, it’s building a full-fledged mausoleum to accommodate entire generations of corpses of bad ideas. It’s glorious.
it works for anime.
Does it, though? Does it reeeeaaaally? I want you to look me in the eye and tell me it does.
…OK, so maybe not.
I mean, that is Shinji’s second-least incestuous ship, so…
When I saw this on the front page, I expected it to be talking about Matou Shinji.
… It still works.
Does Matou Shinji even have ships?
Wait, don’t answer that.
Too bad.
I’m here to remind you that Shinji canonically has a harem.
It’s particularly confusing when Harry’s type seemed like it was milfs in the first book. But then the second had the
high schoolcollege werewolves and the third had sexy homeless child.Well, he was sixteen when he started dating Elaine. It’s a fair bet his type was “girls” back then.
It could be the matter of the first book being painted by the numbers. We’ve talked before about how Butcher wrote it to prove he can write formulatic shit, so it’s possible he was just reaching for the most noir-ish things he could think of, and noir does tend to favor mature women.
Even then there is a weird emphasis on cheerleader voice and Murphy being smol and cute.
It wasn’t so much Butcher trying to show he can write formula as him trying to show that writing formula is bad.
As Butcher tells the story, he had already gotten his Bachelors in English Literature and was going for his Masters degree, and he didn’t trust his teacher’s advice because she did not herself have any relevant degrees. (She was a successful fantasy author who had written and sold many novels, but she didn’t have formal schooling about writing books). He decided to prove that he knew better by scrupulously following all of her lessons, doing the worksheets, etc., and producing what he figured would be a dull, formulaic, cookie-cutter book nobody could possibly like. However, the book he produced was good enough that his teacher told him he could sell it, and it eventually it became Dresden Files 1. Since then, he’s acknowledged she was right and has recommended her classes and her ‘how to write a novel’ book every chance he gets.
Probably something in-between, I’d say. The WC claims authority over all human magic users by default, but seems to mostly content itself with throwing Wardens at obvious problems and otherwise leave its subjects alone. It’s believable that some occult group would want them to, you know, act more like a government: offer protection, enable education, etc. They already get to deal with violence inherent in the system, may as well make use of the rest of the system.
Of course, a lot depends on whether they can ally themselves with various non-human factions and how they stack against the WC. Vampires, at least, seem nice enough, and, technically, if you become a formal vassal of a vampire court, the WC should leave you alone…
IDK, maybe the WC is normally the least-bad option where they are dismissive and paternalistic, but easy to manipulate into doing something for you if you genuflect before them loudly enough and wear a cool robe.
but seems to mostly content itself with throwing Wardens at obvious problems
But do they even do that much?
I could see the occult groups accepting WC oversight in return for protection, but we know Harry and the rest of the magical community weren’t able to call for backup during any of the massive clusterfucks that were the past three books, or any of the other stuff that was going on between them. We don’t quite know who knows about the WC for the most part, but Mort knows something very bad is happening with the ghosts and his reaction is to run away and assume any WC representative who shows up will only make things worse. And the way they talk here makes it sound like anyone short of a full wizard gets chucked right to the wolves without a second thought, the issue is just that Harry is a full wizard so they need a reason to hand him over for the vampires to slowly torture to death.
Yeah, I phrased it badly. What they do is send Wardens specifically when there is a warlock flinging dark magic around (which may have more to do with the need to protect secrecy than actually solving problems), not necessary to deal with other problems.
It’s actually possible that Mort skipped town in part because if any Wardens were dispatched, he’d be killed as an “obvious” cause of ghost problems.
So, what it means is that those occult organizations already have to toe the line and not do anything fun like altering the past or transforming people into newts, but they don’t really have many benefits, and with Wardens not really being available in time, they at best put a stop to a rampage or punish the guilty (assuming they can find the guilty, given they generally aren’t familiar with communities they govern), but not really save people from said rampage.
Perhaps the condition of their support is that Wardens would be stationed in their territory and work closely with those organizations. We know that even a fuck-up wizard like Harry can utterly subvert local balance of power, so getting an actually competent wizard on your side may be worth a lot.
Though, honestly, I’m more curious about those organizations themselves. Like, who are those people? What do they do? How do they make sense of the world, what is their credo?
It’s definitely a choice to drop “yeah, there are numerous occult organizations semi-independent of the WC” with zero elaboration or follow-up.
So I’m forced to imagine Unknown Armies cabals are now a thing here.
This is canon to DF now:
Diabetes costs keep rising beyond the ability of people to pay, mental health is often written off as a joke, missing limbs have no permanent pain solutions, and comfort with one’s body or finding peace in illegal substances aren’t even really considered health issues. The South Street cabal is already opposed to the system before the campaign begins but things start to get violent in the first session.
The South Street cabal are a group of adepts who have been working together for a few months now. They all met in different ways but are united by their one true hatred: the state of healthcare in America. It’s weird enough to have more than one body-modifying occultist in a city, let alone in the same room together, but they all have such different styles and approaches that it doesn’t create conflict. In fact, there’s something comforting about having people under-stand your weirdness so well without undoing the paradox of energy that magick creates.
WHO THEY ARE
The five cabal members realized that their strength was in a shared understanding of body modification and the magick that arises from it. Together, they created Khrusomancy and began practicing their magick together as a cabal to accomplish small tasks. Sometimes they use it to help an individual with a certain project (stealing medical supplies for Antoine’s modifications, for example) or to gain more income for the whole group (hyping Lucia’s performances to produce more cash flow). They’re a pretty close-knit family and like many families, they’ve grown closer through their shared struggles.
The healthcare industry isn’t just some mundane human structure. Much of its corruption is due to horrific magickal influence the cabal believes to be much like their own. Each member had strange encounters regarding their healthcare, such as witnessing bizarre creatures disguised as hospital workers, pharmacy techs, family doctors, and insurance adjusters, but they didn’t see these signs until they awakened as adepts.
Magick has opened their eyes to this insidious menace: other adepts and cabals working hard to steal life, happiness, and autonomy from unknowing human populaces. These people taint the thing the cabal holds most dear: agency in healthcare and well-being. Confronting these sinister forces and ejecting them from the healthcare industry might actually make a difference in everyone’s lives — at least here in Philadelphia. It also works to eradicate a darker manifestation of Khrusomancy and allows their interpretation to grow stronger in the cosmos, though they’re not consciously aware of that fact. The cabal pursues leads to follow up on the occult sightings and associated rumors.
WHAT IS KHRUSOMANCY?
Khrusomancy is a magickal tradition that focuses on changing the body to change the world. Through body alteration and various forms of extreme surgical modification, khrusomancers seek to alter external forces shaping culture, society, and even the environment.
A big issue to me is the only thing we see Wardens doing is going for the people they already know about, which suggests all registering your organization would do is as soon as anything goes wrong the Wardens wipe you out and only actually investigate when killing everyone they know about didn’t solve the problem.
But, it’s possible that’s something that only applies to semi-rogue WC members. Maybe registering your occult organization normally protects you against that because the individual members are now vetted to be non-wizard-caliber, so when the Wardens and their complete inability to actually investigate before just beheading likely candidates skip over you entirely. If it gets you safety from preemptive beheadings and a (magic?)phone line to the Wardens, that’s actually a pretty good deal, especially given how hands-off the WC seems to be otherwise. And you could then see why these occult organizations might still prefer the WC over the vampires, who do a better job of running their territory but actually do run their territory rather than assuming whatever the have-nots are getting up to is irrelevant.
It’s actually possible that Mort skipped town in part because if any Wardens were dispatched, he’d be killed as an “obvious” cause of ghost problems.
It’s possible he just didn’t want to be anywhere a Warden was being dispatched to, because they get dispatched when things are bad, and he doesn’t want to be anywhere near it.
How is it even possible for a 27 year old to marry a 17 year old? Surely as soon as the man goes to try to register his “marriage” the investigation for statutory rape would start? To say nothing of how much it looks like sex trafficking. Where were the Chicago PD when a 30-year-old man was in city hall claiming a minor was his wife? And where were her parents? Was she emancipated?
Or was it “marriage” in the sense that some church was like “yeah this is totes normal congrats” and it was never legalized?
The obsession of a certain class of creepy old guy with how hot and sexy statutory rape is is among my least favorite creepy old dude moves.
So I looked it up at the time, because I too was thinking this sounded hard to believe, but:
1) Seventeen is currently legal in the state, and a lot of those laws are actually horrifically recent, so if this is set in 2000 and the marriage happen ten years ago…
2) Age laws are actually about avoiding single mothers. If you’re willing to marry the kid you raped it’s cool – there are exemptions to the minimum age for marriage in a bunch of places if the kid getting married is currently pregnant or has already had a kid herself. So yes, everyone at that wedding knows the guy’s been fucking a teenager and everyone’s cool with it because he’s making an honest woman of her.
The unfun thing I learned today is that in some states, if you’re a pedophile, there’s no minimum marriage age if you get your victim pregnant. Thanks, US!
But! Age of consent aside (and also, TIL it’s 16 in most of the US, because everything sucks), the marriage age in every single state is 18, and in two states and Puerto Rico it’s 21. In Illinois, you need parental consent to get married at 16 or 17. Unless Murphy was emancipated or had the consent of her parents, this couldn’t happen, and her parents being on board points to something really seriously being wrong with her home life far beyond one creep.
That said, according to wiki, a minimum age was only instituted in Missouri, Butcher’s home state, in 2018 (a bill which, incidentally, also banned someone over the age of 21 from marrying a minor, because men are so awful that needs to be a law). I wonder if Butcher wasn’t just going with what he knew and assuming the IL laws were the same.
tl;dr This isn’t possible unless Murphy’s parents are some sick fuckers.
and her parents being on board points to something really seriously being wrong with her home life far beyond one creep.
Oh, I figured we can take that as a given. It’s a full traditional wedding with a photographer and everything. Plus if her family objected back then, she’d have people on her side when the divorce happened telling her he was a creep who took advantage of her.
Pretty much the only question is if her family actively supported the relationship all the way through or if they reacted to finding out about it by being upset but telling her to get married so at least she wasn’t living in sin. Given she’s in her grandmother’s house, possibly she was raised by Grandma, who may have been more accepting of very young marriage and possibly extra motivated to get Murphy in a new relationship before her last living family died.
Given she’s in her grandmother’s house, possibly she was raised by Grandma, who may have been more accepting of very young marriage and possibly extra motivated to get Murphy in a new relationship before her last living family died.
I interpreted it as her getting her grandma’s house because her grandma died and her parents already had a house.
Missed this!
Actually, her being raised by her grandma is the one thing that could make this sad but not horrifying. I could totally see someone that age being worried about Murphy being alone in the world and relieved she found someone to take care of her before Grandma dies, with Grandma just thinking the age gap and young marriage is normal. It’s still messed up, but it’s the kind of messed up where her grandma meant well and Murphy may not have been exposed to alternatives.
I wasn’t trying to make it less horrifying. I was trying to clarify what I thought Butcher wrote. Which would basically be the exact opposite of making it less horrifying.
Comment nesting strikes again: this was a response to Farla.
Oh, yeah, I see it now. There was one more level of nesting before it got into the straight line nesting. My bad.
I believe most, or at least many, states allow you to get married at about 16 or 17 with parental approval. Not sure about Illinois specifically, but a lot of the Mid-West is like that.
Well, this seems an appropriate time for a revival.
So now we know how to get Farla to post a review of another chapter. We just have to make Act post another Umineko chapter.
a grizzled old dame
Butcher is officially no longer secretly ninety. He’s at least one hundred.
Representatives of the White Council’s allies—secret occult brotherhoods, mostly—each gave a brief speech, declaring his or her group’s support of the Council in the war.
I wonder how big of a blasting rod was pointed at them to get that support. Because that’s really the only reason to give it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if every last one was going to head back to recommend they defect.
Well, the vampires have far more to offer them than the WC does. Would you rather get dragged into a war you have no chance of benefiting from, or… go to a fancy vampire party?
Yeah, the bar of what an ally has to offer is that low, I guess.
Also, despite all that about leaving carefully and with Warden escorts, Harry just walks to his car.
In a well written book, this would be clear evidence they want Harry dead.
and also maybe there’ll be splash damage on bystanders
At least there’s pretty strong evidence of this. Shit, the WC should just hand Harry over to the vampires. They’ll all be dead in a week.
Certainly he feels no responsibility for the actual murder victim whose name and picture he does have.
… Well, I’ve already forgotten them, so I can’t really criticize Harry for it. Who are we talking about, again?
Who are they pinning things on?
I kinda assumed their job was more keeping things from getting pinned on the people who didn’t deserve it, and sweeping the actions of the people who took care of the problem (Harry) under the rug. They don’t have to fabricate evidence, because the cackling madman who summoned the demon is dead. They don’t have to throw someone in jail when a vampire drains someone of blood, they just have to make sure the death doesn’t get ruled a homicide.
It’s still fabricating evidence, but it’s not pinning things on people. It’s probably not as hard as it seems. Lots of cases just go cold for perfectly normal reasons.
I can buy that helping, but she’s also an overworked cop who lives alone and also mostly at her job
I think it’s more a matter of… attachment? Harry has a lot of crap, but he could pack it all up and move out the next day, and not think a single lick about his apartment. Harry’s home is safe and comforting because it’s the magical equivalent of the White Tower. Murphy’s is safe and comforting because it’s lived in and familiar.
That was the Murphy I knew and loved.
Considering how much Harry actually cares, or knows, about Murphy, maybe she just likes grandma decorating. Of course her office is spartan and utilitarian. It’s an office. You’re not supposed to have a knitting basket in your office.
What I don’t get is why the detail about him being so much older.
Maybe Harry is just overestimating his age because he’s a little fat or something? Harry seems to think Murphy currently looks like she’s seventeen, so I’m not sure he’s the best at estimating ages.
This isn’t about finding an excuse for why it’s not her fault
Sober Murphy would’ve known that it’s pointless trying to explain that to Harry.
In a way, she’d been raped.
I’m sure this will be handled with all the delicacy and care of the last rape victim the series introduced.
We all remember how well not telling women anything has worked to protect them, don’t we?
You know, there is something to be said of not getting people involved in things to protect them from those things, but it seems like Harry has a bad habit of deciding to not get people involved in things to protect them only after he has gotten them involved.
Harry has been working with them for years and he never mentioned this incredibly relevant thing to look for.
… Isn’t this not even the first time Murphy’s encountered ectoplasm on screen? Ah, Urban Fantasy. Why use your perfectly convenient narrative trope of just having the narrator explain to the reader what something is, when you can have a character that should have probably experienced it before ask about it?
It’s his dead sister who he fucked when he was a teenager!
Surprisingly, she’s not the least bit stacked.
I think it’s more a matter of… attachment? Harry has a lot of crap, but he could pack it all up and move out the next day, and not think a single lick about his apartment.
Would he, though? He describes the place a lot. If nothing else it’s an incredibly convenient location – two stories, easy access since the door’s on the ground floor and with a sheltered basement for him to work safely in. He goes there when he’s hurt and it holds the stuff he values. And although he has an office, we keep having Harry needing to rush to his office from his house because he’s at home by choice and at the office only when someone else is going there.
every time the subject comes up it’s about how this posting is supposed to ruin the person’s career
If it gets out that this is how she’s closing her cases, it’d definitely ruin her career.
We know whatever Murphy’s doing, it’s pleasing the higher-ups
The suits in charge of police forces want cases closed. It doesn’t look good for their reelection as police commissioner if there’s a lot of unsolved mysterious crimes.
everyone agreed all anyone wants out of Special Investigations is for whatever weird thing is happening to stop so the case can be closed
That could absolutely be what’s happening, they just don’t know just how weird the “weird thing” is. Special Investigations is just a formalization of constantly getting handed shitty headaches of a case because you pissed off your bosses.
… Which would actually be far more interesting than what Murphy does now. Imagine if she was constantly handed vampire cases because she pissed her bosses off by refusing to just close cases, because she’s basically a PC from nHunter?
Would he, though?
All that is from a practical perspective, though. Not an emotional one. If your childhood home burned down, you wouldn’t think “Aw, shucks, that place was only two blocks from the local train station and supermarket!”
Is it just me or does this series keep getting worse? In the previous books we were wadding through bullshit, but at least the bullshit was bizzare enough to be entertaining. This book ruins a pretty good beginning with several chapters of trial nonesense.
Gah, I can’t even imagine how must it be for you to read it first-hand.
>>Murphy does not invite him in. Harry takes this with his usual terrible grace.
Idk why I’m still surprised, but holy shit, Harry has no redeeming characteristics whatsoever. Why is he even doing this! He’s like a Stephen King villain.
>>Harry living alone = sucktastic threshold. Murphy also living in a “lone dwelling” = powerful threshold.
Hm. What if this is about personality though? If we keep in mind that magic consumes emotions and go with the theory that Harry is so OP because he puts too much of himself into his spells… maybe there’s just not ebough of him left to keep a proper threshold? And Harry giveы us a nonesensical explanation because he’s in denial.
>>I mean I guess in fairness Harry did apparently get raped at least twice and he’s successfully just put it out of his head
Actually… What if he didn’t? What if his wierd goldfish memory with upsetting things (including not realising that Murphy may be traumatised by her recent experiences) is due to some magic bullshit? I bet the wizards don’t have therapy and nobody was going to bother with helping Harry anyway. So, he was abused by Justin, had his sister/girlfriend brainwashed, was raped by Fairy Godmom and finally forced to burn basically his closest family to death (or so he thought). Even with therapy and support people don’t just get over this sort of shit, but Harry seems fine despite getting neither. So Harry dealt with trauma in his usual way, by throwing magic at it, and it messed with the way he reacts and processes emotions. I bet the rapist skull is involved somehow; he both knows evil magic and seems to have complete control over Harry.
Offtopic from the last chapter:
>>And you want a bitter noiry ending? Have Harry spit in Morgan’s face with his whole “I guess you’re okay and I will be vouching for you tomorrow” because of course Morgan wouldn’t give a fuck about what just happened, the other guy wasn’t a member of the WC!
>>I wonder what would’ve happened if apprentice Harry went to Morgan?(…) What would Morgan do then? And if the answer is “obey and do nothing”, just like he’s abiding by their decision now…how would he feel that time around over Harry ending up dragged before the council for murder?
…Is it bad that I ship Farla!AU versions of these two unironically? I swear it started as a joke, but you just keep adding depth to the characters and hitting all of my favorite dramatic tropes in the process. I actually want a full-length book about this. D: What am I supposed to do with this? Why aren’t you the one who wrote this series?
I like Farla’s Morgan and Harry too! I don’t necessarily ship them — the age and power difference keeps getting in the way, especially if they meet when Harry’s an apprentice — but I’d be fascinated to explore a nonromantic relationship between them.