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Soysaucebeast posted:Lea and Maeve were both infected at the same time so it can't just be one person at a time. This is wholly speculation, but I feel like what was done to Maeve was something other than simple possession. I think Nemesis* knocked out the restrictions that the Winter Lady mantle placed on her behavior, and she was free to disrupt things as she pleased on her own. So she was working in the Outsiders' best interests as a power play of her own rather than being directly controlled. ___ *He Who Walks Five Hundred Miles and He Who Walks Five Hundred More Just To Be The He Who Walked A Thousand Miles To End Up At Your Door
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Oct 5, 2020 15:56
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I sorta feel like Outsiders might not be limited to the "exists in a fixed point in spacetime" limitation that everyone else seems to be.
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Oct 5, 2020 16:01
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ConfusedUs posted:I sorta feel like Outsiders might not be limited to the "exists in a fixed point in spacetime" limitation that everyone else seems to be. A variety of other beings aren't. Dresden explains this as it pertains to Loa in Death Masks so it's already a definite phenomenon in the series.
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Oct 5, 2020 16:03
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I visited a Barnes & Noble for the first time in probably a couple years and was confused when I saw Battle Grounds sitting on the shelf. Couldn't figure out if it was a new short story compilation I had missed or if Peace Talks got it's title changed at the last minute. Having two new Dresden books available has made my week. It's an awesome surprise after all the wait.
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Oct 5, 2020 16:20
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I really hope Dresden's next "power-up" comes from him just sitting down and learning how to not be a poo poo wizard. During the end battle when he was talking about all the cool tricks people were pulling, like Ramirez's self-fueling disintegration spells, but all Dresden had was "throw people up really high", it really made me wish his approach finally became scalpel rather than firehose. It would really put into context exactly why everyone is scared of him rather than him effectively functioning like a zombie. Massive power but just shambling around all the time cause he uses 150x more power than he needs to. I get that that's part of Dresden's shtick, but he can only sell so many parts of his soul to so many different parties before it's just a jumble of nonsense.
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Oct 5, 2020 16:51
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I am easily amused and I cackled like a madman at using Eggus Chennus to demonstrate magic to a disbelieving mortal, right down to bands of energy rippling between his hands.
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Oct 5, 2020 17:34
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Mortanis posted:I am easily amused and I cackled like a madman at using Eggus Chennus to demonstrate magic to a disbelieving mortal, right down to bands of energy rippling between his hands. Yeah, that was pretty funny.
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Oct 5, 2020 17:40
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Mortanis posted:I am easily amused and I cackled like a madman at using Eggus Chennus to demonstrate magic to a disbelieving mortal, right down to bands of energy rippling between his hands. What’s this reference?
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Oct 5, 2020 19:21
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Beachcomber posted:I had a thought rereading Peace Talks. I don't think they are super powerful by default, Bob is because he's old and has been learning from deadly wizards for hundreds of years. gerg_861 posted:I found it very odd that Cristos was part of this whole defense, and I suspect that that was a case of 'keep your friends close, but your enemies closer', and I agree with the sentiment that Harry being kicked out of the White Council is a long play. I've just re-checked the passage, and it says that the vote was done with McCoy and Listens in hospital, but was unanimous. There is NO WAY that the Gatekeeper votes to boot Harry without it being part of a plan (unless this is sloppy writing and he was still away Gatekeeping). Lea was kept busy at the Outer gates which were mentioned to be under especially heavy attack. Presumably the Gatekeeper was also busy keeping gates there and quite possibly the vote to boot Harry was made while L2w, McCoy, and Gatekeeper were busy/wounded. Beachcomber posted:I am confused about how they're acting like Thomas can't recover. Don't they just need to feed him and he'll bounce back? They don't even necessarily need to kill anyone if a bunch of the nameless Raith girls did what Lara did on the boat. In Peace Talks, Lara says he's been pushed so far his Hunger is eating his lifeforce and for plot reasons this is, or is almost, impossible to stop. I guess it could be like having a really strong immune system then developing an autoimmune disease. Once his Hunger sees him as food then even dumping in other lifeforce as Lara does only delays it eating him. CHaKKaWaKka posted:And did Butcher really just make up Conjuritis so he could do a callback to the "For my next trick, anvils" thing? I thought it was pretty funny but I'm not sure punchline was worth the setup. I hated Conjuritis, although that bit was amusing. In PT it was said that it can be caught from being around a new talent, so perhaps it's meant to show that Maggie is magical too, but it was an awful plot point. It's also weird that Harry doesn't know about this common thing and that no one will explain it to him. Everyone posted:He probably will bring in the hacker guy. It's clear to me that the castle will function as "Harry HQ" as he's building his power-base. I also suspect that Marcone realizes that and probably approves of it. He knows he can deal with Harry. As in literally makes deals with him. He might sometimes work with the White Coucil, but Marcone knows damned well that they think of him as an up-jumped mortal. And that if they found out he had the Coin they come after him without hesitation or mercy. Harry won't unless Marcone gives him a good enough reason, which he hasn't so far. Note that Marcone has already yielded the Eye to "the Wizard of Chicago" and specifically not to the White Council. The Denarian Coin might give him a personal power boost but Marcone's greatest asset has always been his bent for long-term strategy. Would the council really care? The Denarians are (or at least were, I am not sure if they got kicked out for their Ivy antics) signed into the accords as just another power. They don't seem to be kill on sight for anyone besides the Knights of the cross (and even then it's to save the coin holders rather than hurt the fallen) and I don't think the council has helped against them at any point in the books. Part of that is them not being told, but there's nothing to suggest the council would care about, let alone declare war over, Marcone having a coin. I mean, he wanted to claim the Eye openly, which would be an even bigger evil weapon. His Divine Shadow posted:I didn't feel that ruled out the other possibilities of other walkers also doing it at the least. I had gotten the impression of it spreading sort of as a diease from earlier books and have a hard time quitting that mindset, so it's gotta be typed really clear for me, made it seem a lot more dangerous than just one guy possessing someone, in that case it's limited to just one person at a time. Yeah, I think there's just the one He who walks beside but his influence can be spread like a disease. He seems a bit like a denarian coin but can influence multiple people at once. He can perhaps only directly control one person at a time, but in Cold days he's certainly in at least Maeve, Justine, and Cat sith at the same time. My own thoughts on Battle ground is that it was decent and makes Peace Talks a little better retroactively. I reread PT just before reading BG, and knowing I had the next book ready to go left PT feeling much less cut off, although it still is when looked at on its own. The writing seemed better, but perhaps just because Butcher could focus on action scenes. I still think there's just too much story packed into PT/BG which wasn't fleshed out though, and it feels weird that Dresden doesn't talk to or about Ivy or Bonea much or at all. The latter especially seems almost forgotten, which is very strange given how long she was being foreshadowed for. A few things which seemed odd to me: Nemesis is in Justine and has been for some time. He wants to be invited onto the island while Harry is distracted to somehow release the sleepers. OK... except didn't he have this exact circumstance during Cold Days? What prevented him from acting then while Harry was distracted or totally exhausted and Alfred was pinned down by the Ladies? Harry knows the island far better now and is almost untouchable on it, which was not the case in CD. Harry was briefly suspicious of Alfred in PT, which seemed to go nowhere and much of BG was entirely depending on Alfred doing his job. Harry even entrusts him to store the Eye afterwards. I feel like a little more time could have been spend telling us who lived or died. For example, I was sure McCoy was dead, but not only did he live he's in good enough health to still be used as the most deadly threat the Council can offer Harry? I thought he was kicked into mush. It also seemed like Christos must have been killed, but was he? It would have been a big deal since he was a senior council member and strongly suspected to be Black council. Did Listens to wind die or is he crippled? A broken spine sounds pretty bad, but on the other hand a master shapeshifter reforms his body at will so perhaps he can just shift it better? Was River Shoulders ok? Did Listen get killed? It seems doubtful that Rudolf will see justice for killing Murph, and indeed punishing him (as in, murder charges) for freaking out in such a freaking situation might not even be justice. I would have preferred Harry-vengeance/guilt, but I guess we'll see. I was surprised Harry didn't use any of the more physical Winter powers. There was no ice-punching or icy claws. I thought he was going to at least rip up the huntsmen early on, but aside from jumping off the building he just sticks to his gun and staff. I get that he doesn't like to use it too much, but he started the scene saying it was tugging his winter strings and that he was about to let it loose. Oh, and is there a Highlander type thing going on with the starborn? Drakul seemed to be one and wanted to harvest others. Mab gave Harry a little tip about being immortal. If starborn really are competing to become The One then it's all the sillier that no one will tell Harry that people might want to chop his head off over it. Darkrenown fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Oct 5, 2020 |
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Oct 5, 2020 19:26
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Drone Jett posted:What’s this reference? Big Trouble in Little China
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Oct 5, 2020 19:27
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Mortanis posted:I am easily amused and I cackled like a madman at using Eggus Chennus to demonstrate magic to a disbelieving mortal, right down to bands of energy rippling between his hands. Just got it now.
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Oct 5, 2020 19:31
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docbeard posted:This is wholly speculation, but I feel like what was done to Maeve was something other than simple possession. I think Nemesis* knocked out the restrictions that the Winter Lady mantle placed on her behavior, and she was free to disrupt things as she pleased on her own. So she was working in the Outsiders' best interests as a power play of her own rather than being directly controlled. After hundreds of years as the winter maiden Maeve was willing to destroy reality in order to lift the mantles restriction on getting laid
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Oct 5, 2020 19:34
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Oh yeah, Rowling was mentioned above and while this clearly isn't the place to talk about her, is there a thread about her/terfs/trans rights somewhere on the forum?
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Oct 5, 2020 20:07
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Battle Grounds was good enough. It certainly suffered a bit from being a divided-book cash grab which messed up the pacing for a couple plot threads Lara and Justine are heavily featured in the first book, then do almost nothing for this book until a hasty conclusion is tacked on for both. Overall I appreciated the quicker nature of the narrative though, you get the impression that Butcher is making an effort to advance the story to its conclusion by closing off extraneous plotlines. Some conflicts like with the White Council feel a little rushed, but I'll take rushed if it feels like we're making progress towards concluding this series. I also appreciated the relative absence of unnecessarily long introductions every time a secondary character is re-encountered. Surprisingly little male gaze from Harry is another nice improvement. Overall I enjoyed it more than Skin Game, and I'm cautiously looking forward to the next installment. It seems like Molly's unrequited love for Harry is still a critical plot point moving forward. Pairing Harry off with Lara seems to be an attempt by Mab to combat this, doubtful it will work though. Similarly Mab's comments about love and hate being the same emotional force, with her own cold logic opposing both, seems connected to her other conversation with Harry that he should kill Molly if Mab dies and Molly is about to become the new Winter Queen. Molly's love of Harry is an emotional weakness that could have catastrophic consequences if manifested in the Queen of Winter who needs to be coldly logical etc. Again, I appreciated the lack of the usual comments from Harry that he finds Molly attractive, but remembers her as a little girl etc.
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Oct 5, 2020 20:22
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Looking at the spoilers Did Butcher really fridge Murphy just to give Harry fee-feels? Seriously? That is the end of that character, she gets to join Susan in 'dead so Harry Dresden feels sad and can gently caress more hot women' heaven?
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Oct 6, 2020 01:33
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ImpAtom posted:Looking at the spoilers Did Butcher really fridge Murphy just to give Harry fee-feels? Seriously? That is the end of that character, she gets to join Susan in 'dead so Harry Dresden feels sad and can gently caress more hot women' heaven? More because she was too old and increasingly too under powered for where the plot is going.
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Oct 6, 2020 01:36
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ImpAtom posted:Looking at the spoilers Did Butcher really fridge Murphy just to give Harry fee-feels? Seriously? That is the end of that character, she gets to join Susan in 'dead so Harry Dresden feels sad and can gently caress more hot women' heaven? He didn't fridge her unless your definition of fridging is 'a woman in a relationship dies' which would be so broad as to be completely useless. Honestly everything leading up to and surrounding her death was the strongest part of the book by far.
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Oct 6, 2020 01:36
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Drone Jett posted:More because she was too old and increasingly too under powered for where the plot is going. In a world where Waldo Butters apparently is now the protagonist of a Dynasty Warriors game that excuse doesn't make a ton of sense. Zore posted:He didn't fridge her unless your definition of fridging is 'a woman in a relationship dies' which would be so broad as to be completely useless. From what I have been told she died in a completely pointless way killed by what amounted to a joke character and then Harry spends the rest of the book using his pain at her loss for powerups before being told she is Permanently Forever Dead No Matter What. Even if it's well written that sounds an awful lot like "Butcher got tired of the character and killed her" especially after spending the last... what, five books making GBS threads on her nonstop?
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Oct 6, 2020 01:40
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That's a nonsense reading. She died as part of a long-running character arc (Rudolph has been hounding her for many books now) and her death is only one of the many deaths that Dresden is using as motivation to keep him going. He breaks down real bad for it later, but it isn't a fridging.
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Oct 6, 2020 01:44
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Gnoman posted:That's a nonsense reading. So correct me if I'm wrong but what I was told by my friend who read the book and the spoilers here: Murphy is helping Dresden and then Rudolph shows up in a panic and murders her. Then Dresden gets angry and the plot becomes about how angry he is that his girlfriend got murdered (again) and has to be talked down. There is no point where that plot is about Murphy except Rudolph existing. And I know you're inaccurate about the last part because my friend actually read me the parts where Harry explicitly is only using Murphy's death including constant repetitions of "Murph is gone" and descriptions about how emotion can be used to power up magic.
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Oct 6, 2020 01:47
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ImpAtom posted:
Rudolph isn't a joke character, he's literally been her personal nemesis for a bunch of books now. Her death also really doesn't inspire Harry, it makes him absolutely break down and the only thing that pulls him together is the thought of his daughter dying if he doesn't. Also she got taken to Valhalla as an einherjar and can't come back to earth until nobody living remembers her. Which is blatant foreshadowing that she absolutely is going to come back with a pretty major powerup at some point, probably when Ragnarok breaks out during the final trilogy. The restriction mostly seems to be to explain why she isn't just going to show up as one of Odin's mercenaries the next day Zore fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Oct 6, 2020 |
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Oct 6, 2020 01:49
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ImpAtom posted:So correct me if I'm wrong but what I was told by my friend who read the book and the spoilers here: Murphy is helping Dresden and then Rudolph shows up in a panic and murders her. Then Dresden gets angry and the plot becomes about how angry he is that his girlfriend got murdered (again) and has to be talked down. There is no point where that plot is about Murphy except Rudolph existing. Rudolph is trying to arrest her, his current partner finally figures out he's full of poo poo and abandons him, then Rudolph negligently discharges the gun he's holding on Murphy, killing her. THIS ENTIRE EVENT only exists as part of the long running "Rudolph is out to get Murphy" plotline. This is followed by Dresden going berserk and having to be talked down from murdering Rudolph in turn, but that's largely it until the post-book wrap up when we learn she was Chosen as an einherjar. He's reminded of her periodically through the battle, but not much more often than he thinks of the dozens or hundreds of random Chicagoans that die by his side. You're judging a book you haven't even read entirely from excerpts.
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Oct 6, 2020 01:53
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But for real there are like 6-7 books left in the series? I'll eat a hat if Murphy isn't a major character in at least 3 of them. Butcher is absolutely going to have an evil version in Mirror Mirror and there was no reason to make her an einjerhar if she isn't coming back for the big apocalyptic trilogy at the end
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Oct 6, 2020 01:56
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Zore posted:Rudolph isn't a joke character, he's literally been her personal nemesis for a bunch of books now. Her death also really doesn't inspire Harry, it makes him absolutely break down and the only thing that pulls him together is the thought of his daughter dying if he doesn't. Rudolph is Murphy's nemesis to the degree that he is the scummy IA guy who is harassing the good noble cop from every movie on the planet. At every chance he is shown to be a corrupt coward who is literally a source of comedy at every single chance presented. Even after he murders Murphy and Dresden is threatening to murder him there is a focus on the fact he both peed and pooed his pants. I donno. I gave Butcher a whole lot of credit earlier in the thread that he had a plan for Murphy. As it stands now it looks like his plan was "I'm tired of writing a female character who can't be described as the sexiest sexpot who ever sexed." Maybe I'm just willing to give him less credit after the COVID thing but I just don't buy that this is totally a natural ending for Murphy's plot arc. It's not even the dying thing (her becoming an einherjar was basically one of the two running theories since Skin Game at least) it's basically dying like Tara from Buffy. Edit: I also admit my opinion on Rudolph is also colored by Marster's reading of him which is absolutely comical. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Oct 6, 2020 |
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Oct 6, 2020 02:02
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But it's pretty obviously NOT the ending to her arc, just a thing that needed to happen along the way and honestly I kind of liked that Butcher did it this way instead of some ultra heroic cliche thing. The books and Butcher certainly have their issues but I was pretty satisfied with how that bit went down.
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Oct 6, 2020 02:13
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ImpAtom posted:Rudolph is Murphy's nemesis to the degree that he is the scummy IA guy who is harassing the good noble cop from every movie on the planet. At every chance he is shown to be a corrupt coward who is literally a source of comedy at every single chance presented. Even after he murders Murphy and Dresden is threatening to murder him there is a focus on the fact he both peed and pooed his pants. So I think the scene touched on a theme that Battle Ground was leaning really hard on, that ultimately the mortal world was more dangerous than the supernatural one. Murphy is told in both Peace Talks and Battle Grounds that she's too injured, things are too dangerous. But in situations where they're facing supernatural foes across both books Murphy is an invaluable asset who contributes a lot. She kills a giant that was about to murder Harry single-handedly right before the scene with Rudolph. And then Rudolph kills her without even meaning to. One of the things the series absolutely beats into your head is that the Supernatural world is terrified of the mortal world for exactly that reason. Rudolph is a coward and he kills someone who qualified to become an einjerhar entirely by accident. Humans are incredibly messy and ultimately more dangerous than these ancient monsters. Its reinforced with Harry's volunteer army of Chicagoans who help hold off the Formor and the fact that for as terrifying as everything seemed, the bad guys were on a time limit the whole time because once even the National Guard arrived they were completely hosed. I dunno, it worked for me. And I stand by the idea that she is absolutely still going to be playing a pretty major role moving forward
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Oct 6, 2020 02:17
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Eh, fair enough. I won't argue about it any more without reading the book(s) and that won't happen anytime soon. Sorry.
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Oct 6, 2020 02:24
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E: Never mind
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Oct 6, 2020 02:44
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Zore posted:But for real there are like 6-7 books left in the series? I'll eat a hat if Murphy isn't a major character in at least 3 of them. Butcher is absolutely going to have an evil version in Mirror Mirror and there was no reason to make her an einjerhar if she isn't coming back for the big apocalyptic trilogy at the end I know originally Butcher said we were looking at 20 "case books" and then a three book "apocalyptic finale". It might be 21 case books now with the Peace Talks/Battle Ground split, but yea 6-7 more is about right. As for Murphy: Her death really didn't come off as 'better kill the love interest!' to me. For one, like other people have said, she's absolutely not done being in the series. This is more like Susan becoming a vampire and just bouncing for a couple of books before coming back as a supernatural rear end-kicker. And two, it actually felt realistic. It wasn't some bad guy using her as leverage to get to Harry, and it wasn't some "there's no other way!" sort of thing. It was a stupid accident from a character with a history of stupid accidents. It was sudden and is going to mess up Harry and Rudolph for a while, and it wasn't played off as overly dramatic. It just was. It was funny to me though, that the two major battle books (this and Changes) only had Harry's love interest die out of all the major characters. It's not looking good for Lara, lol. Soysaucebeast fucked around with this message at 03:50 on Oct 6, 2020 |
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Oct 6, 2020 03:47
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Soysaucebeast posted:I know originally Butcher said we were looking at 20 "case books" and then a three book "apocalyptic finale". It might be 21 case books now with the Peace Talks/Battle Ground split, but yea 6-7 more is about right. I don’t think Lara is gonna make it past the next year.
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Oct 6, 2020 04:06
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ImpAtom posted:Eh, fair enough. I won't argue about it any more without reading the book(s) and that won't happen anytime soon. Sorry. Why are you apologizing? Having such a strong take on something you admittedly haven't read is a weird stance to take, but I don't think anyone cares whether you're going to read it or not.
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Oct 6, 2020 04:25
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Pepperidge Farms cares.
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Oct 6, 2020 05:31
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Arguing about the dresden files is good actually
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Oct 6, 2020 06:03
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Edit: nvmnd
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Oct 6, 2020 08:41
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It was, at the very least, a woman being killed specifically to further a man's storyline. Like, that's not the worst thing in the world, and it was done fairly effectively here, but let's not pretend it's not exactly that thing that happens pretty much all the time in stories with male protagonists. Though I absolutely agree she's exactly as permanently dead as Justin is. (Don't you people "Word of Jim" me, he's lying about this and it's really obvious Justin will be back in some form or another and probably already is.)
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Oct 6, 2020 10:59
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docbeard posted:It was, at the very least, a woman being killed specifically to further a man's storyline. Like, that's not the worst thing in the world, and it was done fairly effectively here, but let's not pretend it's not exactly that thing that happens pretty much all the time in stories with male protagonists. The problem I have here is "specifically to further a man's storyline." Could you give me an example of a love interest dying in a novel that would not further the protagonist's storyline? Or are you saying that having love interests die at all is problematic?
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Oct 6, 2020 11:12
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Killing off a love interest to "up the stakes" or whatever for the plot is lazy, yes.
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Oct 6, 2020 11:53
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biracial bear for uncut posted:Killing off a love interest to "up the stakes" or whatever for the plot is lazy, yes. Except it didn't up the stakes in any way. In fact it had the opposite effect of the trope. It wasn't in any way a fridging.
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Oct 6, 2020 12:41
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It's beside the point anyway. It's bad writing to include anything in a novel that doesn't contribute to the movement of the story. Every death should have a purpose, be it to demonstrate the seriousness of the situation, to provide a motivation, to provide some insight into a character's background, or to cause some emotional fallout. Otherwise, why is that scene even in the book? The problematic aspects of that trope are when the dead character was given practically nothing to do- when they were presented as nothing but a possession for which the loss of provides a revenge motive as the driving force of the protagonist.
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Oct 6, 2020 13:12
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Masonity posted:Except it didn't up the stakes in any way. In fact it had the opposite effect of the trope. It wasn't in any way a fridging. I think it did "up the stakes" but it do so in a very different way. Usually when the guy's love interest get killed, it's by the bad guy and that gives the (male) hero the determination to "win the day." In this one, Murphy's death played out more like the death of Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which sent Willow so crazy she almost destroyed the world. Murphy's death didn't center or strengthen Dresden. It distracted him from dealing with the invasion and sent him on a self-assigned mission to murder Rudolph as painfully as possible. It took fighting two of his friends and taking a (permanent?) burn from Butters's Sword to snap him back to reality.
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Oct 6, 2020 13:14
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