Last time, concussion. Today, we learn Harry did indeed pass out!
He wakes up to enjoy the usual symptoms of concussion, which roughly involve abject misery. There’s just something particularly awful about your head hurting compared to the rest of your body, isn’t there? I don’t know if it’s your body freaking out because the important part is there, or a psychological thing where we treat the rest of our body as an add-on but “us” as the area we see through.
What I’m getting at, is Harry’s misery humanizes him. Have we not all been miserable?
Given that I would never live that down, I made a wisecrack instead. “Do you have a little white dress? I’ve had this deep-seated nurse fantasy about you, Murphy.”
Wait no this can still be saved if his relationship with Murphy is one where that’s an acceptable thing to
“A pervert like you would. Who hit your head?” she demanded.
arg.
Although I’m pretty sure last time she was already telling Harry to stop poking the case because she could see he was getting beat up, today she realizes he’s getting beat up on the case. Harry insists he is totally fine and will be driving home, and she explains that driving while incoherent is illegal because he will kill someone, possibly himself. He says he can’t afford a cab, which tells me Harry is also shit at getting out of speeding tickets. “Why yes officer, I am totally plastered but I didn’t have money on me for a taxi after buying all this weed, plus I’ve been up 48 hours straight so I’m really impatient to get home, and that’s why I ran the last five red lights.”
Murphy really should just put him in the drunk tank to sleep it off, but she’s probably worried about the liability issues if he ends up in a coma and people start arguing about if you’re supposed to let people with concussions sleep or not.
When Murphy leaves, Harry decides he’ll show her how perfectly okay he is by getting up going home himself, and just manages to vomit. Incidentally, Harry keeps going on about how Murphy is super gentle and so great.
I remember her helping me out to her car. I remember little pieces of the drive back to my apartment. I remember giving her the keys to the loaner, and mumbling something about Mike and the tow-truck driver.
But mostly I remember the way her hand felt on mine-cold with a little bit of nervousness to the soft fingers, small beneath my great gawking digits, and strong.
Police being known for their soft and well-moisturised hands.
She scolded and threatened me the entire way back to the apartment, I think. But I remember the way she made sure she held my hand, as though to assure herself that I was still there. Or to assure me that she was, that she wasn’t going anywhere. There’s a reason I’ll go out on a limb to help Murphy. She’s good people. One of the best.
But aside from the unpleasantness with her being turned into a mommy figure, at least Harry seems to be accepting her help and appreciating it, and the emphasis is off her being naggy.
Of course there’s also the problem that Harry’s suddenly presenting their entire relationship in a far rosier and downright love interesty way, which is bad because he treats her horribly.
Mister came running up and hurled himself against her legs in greeting. Maybe being short gives her better leverage or something, since she didn’t really wobble when Mister rammed her, like I do. Or maybe it’s the aikido.
Maybe it’s the fact no normal person is knocked over by a cat.
She tried the light switch, but the bulbs had burnt out last week, and I hadn’t had the cash to replace them.
The author has apparently forgotten Harry’s claim he doesn’t use them because bulbs just don’t work around him. Apparently now he uses candles just out of poorness, because the author doesn’t know comparative prices.
The phone rang. It was in arm’s reach so I picked it up. “Dresden,” I mumbled.
“Mister Dresden, this is Linda. Linda Randall. Do you remember me?”
Heh. Do men remember the scene in the movie with Marilyn standing over the subway grating?
That a 1955 movie, for the record. I realize it’s an oft-parodied scene, so people will be more or less familiar with it (…if they have television anyway, though it doesn’t seem Harry does) but I really can’t believe it’s anyone’s primary association by this point.
Incidentally, if we must have Harry’s associations be old-timey movies, then To Have and Have Not (1944) might work. That’s closer to the right time period and the one where there’s there’s sexy whistle-explaining, which actually fits with the fact Randall has been heavily pursuing the sexy-talking angle over the sexy-wardrobe-mishaps angle.
“Are you naked?” I said. It took me a minute to register what I’d said. Whoops.
To get into another angle, while Harry’s concussion may be screwing up his brain/mouth filter, it doesn’t seem to be producing anything that wasn’t already there. But this is actually a benefit to Harry because it convinces Murphy she doesn’t want to eavesdrop on Harry slurring his way through the worst phone sex ever. I’m told that theoretically, Harry’s sexism will eventually cause him trouble, but in the sense it’ll get women killed and then he’ll feel bad about how they’re filling up his fridge. It’s not a flaw that actually hampers him directly, and it’s presented positively when dealing with Bianca and currently helping prevent Murphy from realizing Harry has a secret lead.
Randall says she can meet him tonight, and Harry thinks for a second maybe there was something he was supposed to do…? But he can’t remember so he goes with it. He also admits his car is exploded (I think he’s forgotten he has a second one that he left at the police station, illustrating why Murphy is so very, very right), so he can’t really meet her anywhere.
She poured that rich, creamy laughter into my ear again. “Tell you what. Give me an extra hour or so to go home, get a nice hot bath, make myself all pretty, and then I’ll be there in your arms. Sound good to you?”
Okay, remember when I told you to guess about her survival? Time to resolve that.
She’s going to die, and I think she’s going to die in the “take a bath” period, meaning that she might have survived if Harry had said no, this is important and he’s concerned about people’s deaths and not how much sex he might get to have with her, please come as soon as possible.
Murphy comes back to yell at Harry for having a date when he can’t really handle complete sentences, and this reminds him he was supposed to do something Saturday. He remembers he’s working for another client and goes to call her. He gets her kid (you see, back in the ancient 2000s, people only had “landline” phones. You may have seen them at your grandparents! They plug into walls to get telephone calls that travel over wire instead of through the air. Kind of like cable TV. Back then, it was a very expensive big deal to have a personal phone line, so people would simply give out their home phone numbers and then the kids would answer the phone all the time. It was truly a primitive era.)
“Hi,” I said. “I need to speak to Monica, please.”
“Who’s this?”
I remembered I was working for her on the sly and answered, “Her fourth cousin, Harry, from Vermont.”
Yeah, his concussion suddenly turned off for convenience.
The kid calls his mom, who pretends she’s talking to someone else, running through synonyms for “I don’t want that thing you have”.
“Cancel? You don’t want me looking for your husband anymore? But ma’am, the money-” The phone began to buzz and static made the line fuzzy. I thought I heard a voice in the background, somewhere, and then the sound went dead except for the static. For a moment, I thought I’d lost the connection entirely. Blasted unreliable phones. Usually, they messed up on my end, not on the receiving end. You can’t even trust them to foul up dependably.
“Hello? Hello?” I said, cross and grumpy.
Monica’s voice returned. “Don’t worry about that. Thank you so much for all of your help. Good day, bye-bye, thank you.” Then she hung up on me.
I took the phone away from my ear and stared at it. “Bizarre,” I said.
Because Harry is a terrible, terrible detective, he just rolls with this and makes a joke about Murphy being his mom. And after helping him into his bed, she kisses him on the forehead. Maybe this was intended to be a love triangle or something.
Then someone calls and doesn’t reply when Murphy answers the phone, and Harry falls asleep feeling like he’s missing something. Anyone remember what it is?
“What I’m getting at, is Harry’s misery humanizes him. Have we not all been miserable?”
The great humanizator:
http://www.seacats.net/teaparty/src/13352160486.jpg
“Given that I would never live that down, I made a wisecrack instead.
“Do you have a little white dress? I’ve had this deep-seated nurse
fantasy about you, Murphy.”
Oh, God. When I was making that joke in my snippet, I didn’t know Harry actually fantasied about putting Murphy in a dress.
“Of course there’s also the problem that Harry’s suddenly presenting
their entire relationship in a far rosier and downright love interesty
way, which is bad because he treats her horribly.”
I think he’s just drunk or equivalent due to the head trauma. “Yer a good people, Mu’phy. I’ll go out on a limb fer ye ev’ry day. Do you want now? ‘Cause I will!”
Oh god the grail has spilled over into the Dresden Files side. At the same time, a creepy tune is sweetly swimming in my brain right now. Please let there be no terrible fire in the comments section.
And wow, I never realized that light bulb information, or all the other hints. And Yeah I would have remembered the make circles line better, it fits the noir thing too, what with Bogart.
I can’t really see Kotomine running for President with Gil around, so this is assuming Gil dies but Kotomine survives the Grail War. In that case, who’d be his running partner?
edit: The answer: Johnny Marcone.
Yeah, his concussion suddenly turned off for convenience.
Wow, I wish I could just forget concussions. Usually that’s the only thing I can’t forget when I have one.
She’s going to die, and I think she’s going to die in the “take a bath” period, meaning that she might have survived if Harry had said no, this is important and he’s concerned about people’s deaths and not how much sex he might get to have with her, please come as soon as possible.
Just to play DA here, a serious assassin is probably not going to be hindered overmuch even if Linda leaves immediately. Whoever it is knows she has sensitive information, so the window for killing her is urgent. Taking a bath is fatal, yeah, but if it’s a magical person, killing her en route or even in front of Harry’s front door seems possible, if less wise. edit: And then I read that you said “might” and now I feel like an idiot.
This is actually a pattern to the series, where Harry is trashed and completely drained of energy and barely able to stay conscious, but then it all disappears just long enough for Harry to save his own sorry ass.
I actually picked up the book two days ago and finished it yesterday. I can say that, unfortunately, despite how horribly the book treats women and how clumsily it tries to make the main character pitiable when he obviously isn’t, it was not worthless and I rather enjoyed myself reading it.
This is actually a pattern to the series, where Harry is trashed and
completely drained of energy and barely able to stay conscious, but then
it all disappears just long enough for Harry to save his own sorry ass.
This is nowhere near unique to this series. I’d be willing to lay odds that like 99% of action/adventure literature centered around a male hero have the dudes chugging along for far longer than they should (unless they’re in the middle of the story and they need to be defeated/captured because plot).
I would say it’s fine to enjoy flawed works as long as you acknowledge those flaws and critique them. Otherwise a number of works you can enjoy would be very limited.
I mean, Fate/Zero isn’t exactly kind to female characters, but I wouldn’t call it worthless.
http://usakohoshino.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/fatezero-23-9.jpg
Uniting flawed works under a banner of lenience… I praise your efforts. But, mediocre authors, did you not realize? That all bad fiction is forgotten, when the books are closed.
Now awaken, Ea! A stage befitting you has been set! Look up, and behold! Critical Analysis!
Oh, obviously there are works flawed to the point I can’t enjoy them. As well as good works that could be great if not for their flaws.
My point is that people shouldn’t feel bad for enjoying flawed works, and neither should they get defensive against people pointing out those flaws. Acknowledging both good and bad parts of the work is the key to good critical analysis.
DF does some things right. Mostly when it doesn’t pretend to be anything meaningful and does fun things like undead T-Rex. So I understand why it has fans.
Yeah, no, I’m well aware of it; I’m not guilty for liking it or anything, I’m just sad to have to admit it on this blog in particular, where despising it is encouraged. I’m just making a joke based on the picture you gave me.
Oh, got it, didn’t recognize the speech at first. I am now curious about litcrit Gilgamesh.
Heheheha, yeah, I think I should have included a picture to make it more obvious. I imagine that if books existed when Gilgamesh ruled, he’d totally nitpick the shit out of them.
I don’t know, he seems to be more a broad strokes type of person who would dismiss books outright if they failed to capture his attention.
“It is a waste of my time to explain why that so-called ‘work’ is unworthy of ink spent on it to those who know it already. And it’s an even bigger waste to explain to those who don’t. If you can’t see the flaws, you are nothing more than a mongrel who should submit to the judgment of your betters.”
Though now I want to see a post from this blog written by Gilgamesh:
“Ha! That mongrel doesn’t comprehend what makes the noir genre work! How could he even hope to implement that non-existent knowledge successfully? Normally it would be well beneath my dignity to say anything more on the matter. The fallings of that faker tainting words of better men with his pen are as self-evident as my glory. But your king is generous and decided to explain what should be obvious in a language even you can one day hope to understand.”
I can’t imagine him talking about feminism, though. Well, I can, but I wish I didn’t.
First feminism would need to be explained to him.
He would actually agree with its ideas.
“Of course men and women are equal. All of them are my subjects, existing by my sufferance and finding meaning in fulfilling my wishes.”
Yeah, I dunno, the Fate route kind of suggests otherwise, with the whole “it should be a woman’s joy to be held down and violated” language and such. I don’t think he’s saying it just in regards to Saber, but more of a general thing.
Perhaps he would say the same of men if he were gay?
The thing I’m trying to say is that Gilgamesh putting himself above everyone doesn’t necessarily equate to him putting everyone else on the same level. If Gilgamesh were gay, he might have the same opinion about women regardless of his preference for men. It’s not like being gay renders women non-entities to you.
I am just speculating that it’s his feelings because they are the object of his attraction, specifically. Nobody here is seriously arguing that Gil is not a misogynist, I thinK.
Who knows. I don’t know that there’s concrete evidence or Word of Nasu that he isn’t bi, but either way, I’m just disagreeing with the basic idea illhousen and Farla are suggesting, which is “I am King, therefore everyone else, male or female, is an equally worthless subject.” Gilgamesh is more discerning than that, as far as I can tell.
I think he’s talking in relation to himself most of the time. As in, it should be woman’s joy to be violated by him, specifically. And man’s joy, while he’s on it. He’s not picky.
See, but then he says “It’s not like you are a virgin,” which suggests he recognizes the existence of other men, and their right to have some of that sweet ass, at least until he comes to claim it.
Not necessarily.
Like, with literally anyone else, I would see it, but with Gilgamesh, I don’t think he respects the rights of anyone. “Not like you’re a virgin” is a comment that therefore seems more like “But you’ve already had sex, so what are you afraid of? Don’t you realize sex with me is a million times better because I am perfect? Why aren’t we having sex normally I get stuff seconds after I realize I want it.”
I suppose it was my mistake to frame anything in terms of “rights”, yeah. So instead this line, that Gilgamesh says to Shirou:
“Oh, lingering affection? I would assume so. This treasure is beyond you. I understand how you must feel. It must be really vexing to have it taken away by another man.”
He understands that Fate!Shirou, like Gilgamesh, has been vying for “ownership” of Saber. That’s what I mean by “rights”. Gilgamesh isn’t the sort who considers a woman tainted if she loses her virginity to someone else, but on the flipside, he also doesn’t think a woman belongs to the man who takes her virginity, but just to whomever is strong enough, i.e. himself, to take her.
edit: Like he treats Shirou with more empathy than he treats Saber.
I think he’s empathizing only in that he assumes Shirou is feeling the same thing as him regarding wanting to rape Saber, while he has no concept of not wanting to have sex with himself, as he always wants that. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t think Shirou successfully raped Saber since he respects Saber’s stabbity prowess but thinks nothing of Shirou’s abilities.And I assume if Saber chose to rape Shirou, he’d be similarly “wtf why are you objecting” only without the respect he gives Saber for backing it up with stabs.
So he’d be pro-rape, but equal opportunity about it.
I mean, sure, Gil is all about the Might Makes Right crap, but I still don’t think he’s extending it to women. Look at the quote again. He’s referring to Saber as “treasure” and “it,” but he’s discussing Shirou’s situation with him on (relatively, for Gilgamesh) equal terms.
In other words, he recognizes Shirou as an “owner,” no matter how shitty he is, because he’s a man and he can claim ownership of women by fucking them. Saber, meanwhile, ran a country and kicked all kinds of ass, but she’s nevertheless “treasure,” and all the points in her favor only serve to make her a better trophy; none of her merits go towards making her an equal human being.
So like, Gilgamesh is treating Shirou as a higher level of being than Saber, despite that being frankly ridiculous and something no one else in the story does, excepting Shirou himself. That’s what this passage says to me.
I think he views everything as treasure. Gilgamesh starts the story with his citizens all overworked because he views them all as slaves. He certainly doesn’t think much of Shirou.
“Where are you going? There is no one left to intrude. That piece of shit is not the man you should be running to.”
He never thinks Shirou actually won Saber, because he’s baffled she chooses Shirou and is equally baffled by the idea Shirou would try to fight to have Saber. He views them both as “it”, but one is a quality treasure and one is a worthless thing he’s going to kill for taking up space. He can understand worthless thing being sad not to have quality treasure, because hey, Gilgamesh also dislikes the idea of anyone having his good treasures and has recently spent ten years not having this particular one. He has no frame of reference for why quality treasure would have any attachment to worthless thing, though – which fits into how he keeps trying to explain to her that no seriously, he’s got this, she won’t need a master to keep existing once he pours grail crazy on her, that’s the only reason you’re protecting the otherwise worthless thing right?
“and is equally baffled by the idea Shirou would try to fight to have Saber.”
But he’s not equally baffled by that idea. That’s basically the only idea about Shirou that he relates to. When Shirou is getting back up to try and fight Saber, Gilgamesh says his little “it must be vexing to have it taken by another man” thing. Even though Shirou is a worthless thing, he’s still a man, and one who is trying to retain ownership of his treasure despite the advances of another man. That’s exactly the point I’ve been trying to make.
When Act was reading through this scene, she or someone in the comments pointed out that Gilgamesh was saying the same sexist things Shirou has been saying all along, like “Even if you are a king, you are still a woman.” Some people have the headcanon that Nasu was writing Fate!Shirou as a parody that intentionally insults the audience. So if Gilgamesh is acting just like him, that should be damning evidence right there.
He is baffled that Saber would choose Shirou in his presence, because of course Gilgamesh should be superior by every standard imaginable. But there’s no indication Gil thinks that, in the absence of Gilgamesh, Saber should live a life of pious chastity. Calling Shirou a piece of shit is just a statement of quality; he’s still a man, and Saber is still a woman even if she is a king.
His first line when he interrupts the date or whatever is “Where are you going? Do not take what is mine, kid.” He doesn’t address Saber with something like “what are you doing hanging on the arm of some guy” like a normal person who is aware of the autonomy of their lover might. The culpable one in this situation is Shirou, the one who took the woman who seemed available but actually had Gil’s name written on her ass. Then when he cuts Shirou in half, he’s all “A lion doesn’t suit you. I will take that woman” showing again that Shirou not deserving Saber is purely a question of the quality of the individuals involved, and not a comment on the equality/inequality of men and women.
So, yeah, I dunno. Maybe you really are right about this, that Gil’s ego somehow makes him think men and women are equal just because they all have the “Not-Gilgamesh” tag, but I just don’t see it. This scene seems to just scream otherwise. If you can refute it, I’ll bow down and call you Master, because I just don’t get it.
I can’t imagine him talking about feminism, though. Well, I can, but I wish I didn’t.
Nah, I think he’d be pretty okay. “How can you think men are better than women? You’re all NOT ME and therefore equally inferior cockroaches to be crushed. Get it right.”
Huh, I just wrote a post saying more or less the same.
Yeah, it makes more sense. Wonders of inflated ego: when your megalomania is strong enough, it somehow can sometimes make you more progressive. From a certain point of view.
You are a wise woman (?), illhousen. :-)
A man, actually. Though I guess ‘Internet person’ is more appropriate in the context.
Oh, somehow I thought you had identified as a woman at some point. My bad. :-)
I mean, Fate/Zero isn’t exactly kind to female characters, but I wouldn’t call it worthless.
Urobuchi would. He kind of intentionally wrote it that way.
(I would too, because I have major problems with his work as a whole, but specifically with his presentation of nihilism.)
There’s a difference between “hero is on the ropes, but rallies long enough to take a desperate chance” and “all hero’s injuries/setbacks/problems disappear for two minutes”
I agree, there is a difference. However, there is a great deal of overlap between them, and I often find, at least, that the narratives too-often cross over into the latter. Sometimes they’ll try to say “yeah, I can barely breathe, as I run almost as fast as a speeding motor vehicle.” It’s lip service. Act ran into it a lot in the Fate route (and will during UBW’s conclusion as well).
I think part of it is a medium thing. I don’t see it as a big problem in visual media, it’s easy to show the person staggering as they accomplish whatever. You can even do a POV shot of their vision blurring. But in text, you’re mostly talking about what your character does do, so it’s a lot harder to get across that they’re still messed up as you write them doing whatever.
Yeah, you’re probably right about that. The problem with DF, at least in the first book, which is for now the only one I’ve read, is that it doesn’t really properly establish what it looks like for Harry to fail at a critical moment. As with this concussion, his body gives out in safe, controlled environments. We don’t really see what it looks like for his spells to fizzle or his legs to give out at really important times and what not, and since he never actually fails at any spell he casts, it gets pretty weak as far as developing tension goes.
Video games have their own weird problems about this, where you have the character be weak in cutscenes while the player would be like “dude, give me back control, we can beat this.”
Wow, I wish I could just forget concussions. Usually that’s the only thing I can’t forget when I have one.
Try having two, or three, or four. At some point, you’ll be able to forget you’re concussed!