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Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




why oh WHY posted:

That gif pretty much sums up every Dresden Files book written. What is it from?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7cNFRDvl9E

They've got a whole series of short, Dresden inspired clips. They're also the ones who did the Skin Game fan trailer.

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Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




So my friend is reading The Dresden Files for the first time. He's in the middle of Dead Beat (I am stupid excited for the climax for him. I've spoiled it, but he doesn't remember), basically where Harry meets Lash in Bock Ordered Books. And he's already calling Butters picking up the sword. It's crazy.

He thinks Murphy is going to actually get the sword, but he really wants Butters to. It's his crack theory. I love it.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




Omi no Kami posted:

It's reminding me of that time Fox bought the TV rights to Neil Gaiman's comic about lucifer owning a piano bar and having long, introspective conversations with angels, demons, and everyone in-between, and turned it into a police procedural. Like, TV Rook is so far removed from the source material that they could've just called it MI7 or something and saved the licensing fee.

Oh man don't remind me of the Lucifer TV show. I came home from work one day and my boyfriend was watching it and asked if I was familiar with it. I told him I'd read the comics and really liked them, but didn't know there was a show. So I ended up watching an episode or two with him and honestly there was just enough references to piss me off.

The show is SO BAD if you're familiar with the source material, but my non comic reading boyfriend loves it. So now he just watches it when I'm not there to nitpick at it.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




Wait where is this short story? Apparently it got published and I never heard a peep.

Edit: I just realized I never finished Brief Cases. I bet it's in there. I should get around to finishing that at some point, I don't think I've read any of those short stories before.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:

Ya'll making me regret the fact that I stopped reading those at around book three. I think kid me just couldn't find any more of them.

Let me make your day: http://animorphsforum.com/ebooks/

K.A. Applegate has said that she's ok with her books out there as free ebooks. At least as far as I remember from a random forum post I read on here back in the day. If it's :filez: I can edit this out.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




I started listening to the Dresden Files audiobooks for my re-read up to the new books in a couple months. James Marsters is really good for the most part, but man I can't get over when he mispronounces words. The two big ones so far have been Charybdis (Kerry-diss vs Cuh-rib-diss) and impotent (im-potent vs imp-a-tent). I know it;s not the biggest issue ever, and I am absolutely going to keep listening to the books, but every time he gets a word wrong it just sticks in my brain.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




Deptfordx posted:

Yeah Simmons went nuts post 9/11.

Also I preordered the next two Dresden books on Audible a couple of months ago while I was using up all my exisiting credits pre cancelling as part of lockdown economising. Battlefront, the second one out this year, just got cancelled (they refunded my credit obvs.) and looking online I'm not the only one.

I think there was a glitch or something in the system, because I heard about them cancelling the pre-orders a month or so ago but then people could immediately re-order it. I just checked and it looks like it's still available to pre-order on both Amazon and Audible.

Soysaucebeast fucked around with this message at 21:20 on Jun 11, 2020

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




Darkrenown posted:

Huh, so in Changes when Harry meets Odin for the first time he compares his laugh to Santa's. And then in Cold days... It's a neat touch and there's a number of these little bits of foreshadowing that I'm only noticing during a series re-read.

It's more fun when you realize that actual real life Santa is at least partially based on Odin also. That's one thing I'll give Butcher, his mythology is almost always completely rooted in actual, real world mythology with minor differences here and there.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




StrixNebulosa posted:

Okay, uh, to be clear: I'm happily on the side of "your kink/fetish is not my kink/fetish" except when it comes to sexualizing children or basically anything to do with children, that's loving illegal and gross and I will not put up with it. Poly meanwhile might be a real red flag but it's between consenting adults who probably know what they're doing. So Butcher being sloppy in that description still isn't okay with me, like how the gently caress did he not realize what he was doing.

While I agree, she is roughly 18 in Peace Talks. According to the wiki she's 12 in Small Favor, and with each book roughly one year apart from each other, that puts her right at 17/18. I mean she's still young, but I don't think Butcher was sexualizing a child. Also, while the hips comment is obviously male gaze-y, I don't think it was meant to be sexualizing at all, I think it's just clunky writing from Butcher.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




Darkrenown posted:

Harry fights Formor at the start of Skin game, and kinda in Ghost story - they are attacking Molly and he briefly processes her to cast a few spells. They have mostly been active while he was dead though.

Molly also goes up against them in Bombshells.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




Gnoman posted:

There was a screenshot of Butcher's social media that purported to show him being skeptical of the entire thing. Despite being posted the same day it was dated for, it could not be found on any of his social media accounts.

This is the screenshot. From what I recall, Butcher acknowledged it was legit, but then also came to the realization that he was wrong and needed to learn more about everything. But that was six months ago in this hellworld, so I could be misremembering and it could be fake.



Edit: I just went scrolling through his dang Facebook feed to February (dang it's a pain to go back eight months) and I didn't find the above post, but I did find this. It's the only non-meme Covid related post he's had in the last 8 months. It's a little 'both-sides'y but it's definitely not the worst take I've read.

Jim Butcher on April 6th posted:

Dead from poor isn’t any better than dead from virus.
The problem with the shutdown is that it also kills people, with economics: your chances of death go up 63 percent if you’re unemployed, and a simple analysis of insurance tables suggests maybe 4K people die in the US every year for each percentage point of unemployment.
(Some suggest this number is as high as 40k, but that appears to be based on data from the 60s and early 70s, which is at least as old as I am, but maybe I’m insufficiently informed. The takeaway here is that everyone agrees that there is a positive correlation—they just disagree as to the degree.)
So unemployment, in the past couple of weeks, has gone from 3ish percent to 10 percent. That’s a 7 point increase in unemployment, which means that between TWENTY-EIGHT THOUSAND AND TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY THOUSAND *PEOPLE* have died or will die, already, here in the US, FROM THE CURE. IN ONLY TWO WEEKS OF LOSS. And more and more people will die from the cure as the economy continues to collapse—and if it goes too far, the inevitable collapse means we’ll be socially distancing with crossbows and flamethrower guitars.
We’ve just sacrificed tens of thousands of mostly lower-class Americans to give us a chance to save hundreds of thousands of covid victims. It’ll just take a while to set in, and when they die, they’ll do it almost invisibly.
BUT. Covid is also a deadly bug. Probably would kill a couple million people if we didn’t do anything, maybe as many as 10m-20m, absolute perfect storm, worst-case scenario.
Those are big scary numbers, but here’s the simple truth: we are going to win the war against the virus, period. It’s just a matter of when.
It is therefore unarguable that if we don’t find a way to change course, at some point we’re going to be issuing an economic death sentence to more people than we save from the virus—and since those people are mostly coming from the poorest sections of society, it’s kind of important that we don’t turn a blind eye to their suffering by ducking all moral responsibility for their plight. The lockdown is like chemo—sure, it fights the cancer, but it ain’t exactly kind to the rest of you while it does so.
The problem is, how do you decide when to stop the chemo? It’s not like there’s any kind of precedence to look to for guidance. (China is clearly lying about its numbers, and it shares little commonality with the US, socially or economically anyway.)
So if you’re someone thinking “they just want profits over saving people’s lives!” maybe consider that if the US economy crashes, conservatively, hundreds of thousands of Americans will die. Tens of millions more in foreign nations will die in the chaos of the power vacuum and from lack of US support. Maybe look into how bad things got during the Great Depression. How hard it was, especially on children. Our much more central role in the global economy will make it that much worse for that many more people.
And if you’re someone thinking, “There is no good reason to be doing this, this thing is just a flu,” well, you need to go over some basic medical theory and look at some historic records of the horrors of pandemics. NYC treated Covid like it was just a flu for a little too long and the bug is hammering them now. They’re expecting considerable chaos as it gets worse.
We can’t hide from this until a vaccine comes out. It just isn’t gonna be possible. Society will break down first. Sooner or later, we are gonna have to go out again.
So I guess it’ll all come down to timing. Where is the sweet spot where we maximize the number of lives saved? Where the ultimately limited and descending curve of covid fatalities meets the ascending and unlimited curve of economic fatalities? God knows. We’ll have to guess.
What I do know is this: Sitting at home forever isn’t an option. If the economy isn’t rolling again in the next few months, wildfire covid is going to be our fourth or fifth biggest problem. And even if we restarted it this second, a lot of people are gonna die economic deaths anyway as a result of the fallout.

Soysaucebeast fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Oct 3, 2020

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




Drone Jett posted:

She gradually recovered from being so super pissed about Nemesis grabbing what's her name that her voice isn't crushing everyone anymore. She was fine in Cold Days, I think from beginning to end (she whispered the kill command in her own voice to him, I know), I can't remember if it was much before that.

I think she was talking at the end of Ghost Story when Harry woke up. I think she only had a couple lines though. It's been a couple months since I reread that one so I'm not certain.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




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.

Lea and Maeve were both infected at the same time so it can't just be one person at a time.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




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

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




What novella are you talking about? I read through all of them (and all the mini ones on Jim's website) in the run up to Peace Talks and I don't remember that at all.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




Gologle posted:

I remember they had a big ghost battle with somebody, I figured it was Mavra because she's the only undead character I remember in the series.

Nah, you're thinking of Corpsetaker. She's the one doing all the work on the spooky side of the street in Ghost Story. She's trying to get everything arranged so she can get a new body (Mort) to hop into. It makes perfect sense for her to have an army of ghosts since she's always been a top notch necromancer.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




I've always been of the opinion that Justin killed Harry's dad to get him as an apprentice/enforcer. He may have done the same thing with Elaine, too.

Also, I just realized that Elaine is also starborn since she's the same age as Harry. I wonder if Justin needed one for some reason (especially since he had ties with He Who Walks Behind) and got Elaine/Harry as a spare.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




I think Changes (#12) is my favorite of all of them, but that's closely followed by Dead Beat (7) and Turn Coat (11). Dead Beat is just plain FUN while actually having stakes, Turn Coat is a good pivot in how the whole series feels to me, and Changes is just Changes.

toanoradian posted:

I'm reading Dresden Files from the start for the first time.

If you're interested, I went through and made a blind Dresden reading order list a few months ago I could send you (or post here if other people want it). It's got all the books, short stories, and microfiction in reading order (as opposed to in-universe chronological order. I did make that list too though if anyone wants it instead) with what book each short story is in and the URLs for all the microfiction. My boyfriend was getting into the series a few months ago for the first time and asked me to make him that reading list and mark all the stuff he could skip since he reads so slow and wanted to get caught up so he could talk to me about it.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




toanoradian posted:

Yes please. I didn't know there was a reading order, I just read the novels by publishing year. I looked up the short stories on Wikipedia thinking Harry's first meeting with Michael is going to be there, but I got spoiled about Butters being a Knight instead, so now I'm not looking up anything about the series.

For the most part you'll be ok just reading the novels by release year. The reading order is just if you want to get into the short stories too (and some of those are dang important I feel). Here's my Google Docs link to the blind reading order. I've got things color coded (blue for novels, red for short stories I think are important, and regular black for stuff that can be safely skipped) and direct links to the microfiction that Jim puts on his website/his Google Docs. There's absolutely no spoilers in that list, just names, color coding, and where everything is.

If anyone wants the chronological reading order I did, it's here. It's basically the same as the other reading list sans color coding, but lists any non-Harry POVs for short stories.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




Up Circle posted:

the short stories are completely irrelevant

A bunch of them are, but I wouldn't say all of them. There's one that shows Ivy firing Kincaid after Changes, and there's one from Morgan's POV where he talks about Harry's mom. And of course you find out about Gard being a valkyrie and see the whole Molly/Carlos thing that gets referenced in the books but never explained. And that's just what I remember off the top of my head.

Like I would never say they're mandatory, but some are important because they introduce new factions, include some important backstory, or show how characters react to major plot points that end up shaping things in ways Harry isn't aware of.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




biracial bear for uncut posted:

The first of those isn't really worth the time it took to track down and the second one completely breaks the plotline of everything that happens in the books related to Morgan and how he treats Dresden in literally every book published before that short story.

Eh, I disagree, but to each their own. As for them not being worth the time to track down though, I literally have links to all the microfiction in that list I posted earlier. Like the link goes directly to the story, not just to Jim's website, so getting there is literally just two clicks from this thread. I'm sure everyone will have different opinions on what is and is not important, I just tried to put everything in one place so people can decide for themselves.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




I think people are still salty about Harry's comment in Peace Talks about Ivy's hips. The male gazey stuff has gotten way better as the series as gone on. It's still not perfect, but compare Peace Talks to Storm Front and it is a world of difference.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




Ok, I've never even heard of Murderbot, but I just sent a sample of the first one to my kindle. I won't have a chance to read it for a few hours, but in the meantime, what's it about/what's so good about it?

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




toanoradian posted:


Reading Cold Days and Skin Game back-to-back is a fantastic experience. Looking at the publication dates, Jim Butcher didn't write a full novel between 2015 and 2020. What happened? Health problems?

Basically life. If I remember correctly Jim got divorced, then remarried and then had his house get renovated. The renovations kept getting delayed so he was living with his in-laws and apparently that wasn't a good environment to write in. I think he had a dog die somewhere during all that too maybe?

Everything's all settled now though, and he's said he plans to get back to his pre-2015 pace. The series is almost finished anyway. There should be about three more books and then an "apocalyptic finale" trilogy. That was the original plan anyway, I'm not sure if that's stayed the same.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




Exactly. We're 17 books in and aside from the recent hiatus Jim puts out a book a year or so. So it's nothing like GRRM taking ten years per book or anything. Butcher will probably have everything completed by 2020 and we'll still be waiting for Winds of Winter.

I'm not saying the end is right around the corner, but keeping in mind the entire life of the series it's relatively close.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




toanoradian posted:

I wish we could stop talking about an author's relationship based on nothing.

A quick question: with Side Jobs and Brief Cases published, are there any more uncollected Dresden short stories?

There's only one (Monsters in Parallel Worlds is a Goodman Grey POV), but there's a handful of micro fiction on his website.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




Beachcomber posted:

We did, yeah.

It's either known or strongly suspected that this started as one book, but together it was too big to be cost effectively printed as one volume, so it was hacked in twain and padded to puff up the halves a bit.

I thought Butcher confirmed that somewhere that it was supposed to be one big book. I think he said that it would be literally too big to be printed as a paperback, so they split it into two. I think he said he wanted to release both books within a week or so of each other, but his publisher didn't want to compete with themselves and they wanted a year between the two. They compromised on the 2.5 months. Frankly I was glad for the delay because I do a complete series re-read every time a new book comes out and I was just slow enough that I didn't get to Peace Talks until a week or so before Battle Grounds was due to come out.

Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




I don't think I've ever had a book just mentally exhaust me the way Battle Ground did. The mayhem just kept going and the pauses in the action were few and far between.

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Soysaucebeast
Mar 4, 2008




OscarDiggs posted:

Is it recommended to skip the first two Dresden Files books still? Since the new one came out I've been meaning to do a reread but I know both of those were the weakest.

I don't recommend new readers skip them because even as weak as they are, they are foundational. But if you've already read them once and still remember the plot then go for it. I generally read book one and skip book two because the FBI wolves are a little much for me in places.

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