Dresden Files Reread - Storm Front Chapter 15

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I hate almost everything about this chapter. 

The cop that found Dresden sitting naked on the curb had been sent to collect him to take a look at the scene of Linda Randall's murder. She was killed the same way as Tommy Tom and Jennifer Stanton, although I notice that her heart wasn't torn out as forcefully - it was a foot away, on the bed, not splattered on the ceiling. This could be because of all the other magic Victor Sells did on the same night, or because no on involved in the casting had any particular beef with Linda, they just needed her out of the way. 

Dresden gets a minute to reflect on how sad it is that he and Linda never had a chance at a relationship, that they might have really understood each other. I agree, and this moment, prompted by a couple of pizza boxes in the kitchen trash, is basically the only good part of the chapter. (Although for me, it was the half-burned candles. That's how she made a space, a rental, where she probably couldn't paint or hang pictures, something that was hers. This was Linda's Small, Quiet Room.) 

Murphy has pretty much figured out that Harry knew Linda, and Harry does not want to talk to her about it. Even though Murphy's position is more correct (he should talk to her, and withholding information will make it harder for her to do her job), I honestly have more sympathy for Dresden. Murphy has repeatedly disincentivized open communication, including in this chapter, when she reacts to Dresden saying 'I think they're using the storms' with 'why didn't you tell me sooner' rather than like 'oh, good job, that's information I can use'. This is a classic case of Do Not Punish The Behavior You Want To See, and if there's a good reason for it, we never find out. Dresden, on the other hand, is absolutely being irrationally twitchy, but he's coming from a place of having spent his entire adult life being unfairly suspected by the White Council, including in these murders. (I mean, not that unfairly, but it feels unfair to Dresden, and it represents a monumental failure to recognize that he might have grown or changed at all since he was 16). So of course, he thinks Murphy will do the same thing. He expects to be treated as a suspect like, all the time, and Murphy isn't exactly going out of her way to allay those fears. She already threatened to put him in protective custody for admitting to investigating on his own, and now she's also prepared to consider him a suspect if he won't tell her how Linda got his business card. Dresden claims to be having a psychic premonition, so he can tell her what he knows without falling into either side of the catch-22 she's created, and of course she's angry about that too. 

On the other hand, Dresden also wants to keep secrets because he thinks that will protect Murphy from the murderer, and the Council, and even if that weren't patronizing as hell it would still pretty much be bullshit. In Dead Beat, Dresden tells Butters that pretty much anyone can make a magic circle, so he could teach Murphy how to do that, and it would almost certainly keep her safe, especially now that they know the time windows in which there's an actual risk (so she wouldn't have to be in a circle literally all the time, which would make it kind of hard to continue the investigation). I would also be interested to know where Dresden got this idea that the White Council will kill people for knowing that they exist. W never see any evidence that this is a real thing. 

The other interesting bit in this chapter is that we get out first mention of Marcone's role in the death of the Becketts' daughter. Apparently they sued him for wrongful death, and his lawyers blocked the case, but then he offered them money and they refused it, which is weird. Wrongful death isn't a criminal charge - money is all they would have gotten anyway. If Marcone wanted to avoid an admission of wrongdoing, he could have tried to settle out of court, without engaging in legal shenanigans. My best guess, actually, is that that's basically what did happen, but the Becketts refused because they wanted him to have to formally admit fault, so Marcone's lawyers shut the whole thing down, and now Murphy is presenting a skewed version of events ("He avoided the case, but then offered them blood money") because Crime Lord. 

I don't know, everyone is just being awful here, and I don't think Linda would have wanted that. Hopefully, the next chapter will be less upsetting. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things. 

Several Small Updates

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Normally, I try to stick logistical updates at the end of the other posts, but I somehow ended up having like four of these at once, so they're getting their own little post. 

1. Once we have a confirmed release date for the Wheel of Time TV show, I'm going to start a chapter-by-chapter series like I'm doing right now for Dresden Files. The emphasis is going to be a little different - Wheel of Time is a complete series, and its handful of unanswered questions are likely to remain so. Thus, rather than searching out clues to the ongoing mysteries of the plot, we will, with the full benefit of the hindsight, be looking at the social, economic, cultural, and ecological landscape of the world itself, and the technical execution of the series's moral arguments and immensely complicated character arcs. And the food. I'm gonna get really detailed about the food. 

2. Until we have a release date, I'm going to try to increase the frequency of the Dresden Files posts to twice a week, Wednesday and Saturday. There are a lot of books in the series, and they're all at least 30 chapters, running to upwards of 50, so posting more than once a week is kind of necessary to finishing in any reasonable timeframe. 

3. The experiments with timed fiction writing sprints are now underway, so I should have results to report in about a month. I'm doing one set of tests with random - but known - durations between 5 and 30 minutes, and another using a random/secret timer app, because apparently such a thing does exist, to see if not knowing the exact time actually helps. Before I found it, I was intending to use the wait time between rounds in the Pokemon TCG online "on demand" tournaments, so the unknown-time set are still officially "tournament trials" in my notes, even though they no longer have anything to do with tournaments. 

4. Sometime in the next week or so, this blog is going to start having ads. I'll try to keep them unobtrusive, but I'd like to get a little extra monetization going, and I don't expect anyone's Patreon budget is gonna increase very soon. I will at some point set a threshold over on the Patreon goals past which I can take them back down. Also, if you see any ads here for Bad Things, like particularly scammy vanity presses and the like, please let me know. I don't know the exact process for doing something about that sort of thing, but I do know that there is one. 

The next Dresden Files post will be tomorrow/the day after tomorrow depending on whether you're reading this now (functionally still Monday night) or Tuesday morning. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things. 

Dresden Files Reread - Storm Front Chapter 14

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We immediately pick back up with Susan trying very hard to have sex with Harry, something which would definitely get them both killed, since the magic circle in which they're taking shelter is only about 3 feet across. Falling down, or lying down, would break the circle and let the toad demon either hit them with acid or attack more directly. This is definitely not a love potion, it's a lust potion. And I don't just mean in the sense that a potion probably can't create "genuine" love or whatever. Love absolutely has a metaphysical dimension, and while in the context of The Dresden Files there is no compelling established reason that a potion should not be able to affect is, it is generally accepted in fantasy that this is Something Magic Cannot Do, so fine, let's assume that's the case here. Love is also a biochemical process like any other emotional or relational state, and there's no early reason a potion shouldn't be able to replicate that. (In Fool Moon we see a potion that can complexly affect the emotions of people who didn't even drink it, just by proximity). And inappropriately trying to have sex with someone while a literal demon is watching you and trying to figure out how to kill you and the object of your affections is giving you an unambiguous 'no', is not generally characteristic of that state. The first thing could be understandable, oxytocin is a hell of a drug, and one of the big things is does is create a sense of safety, so it's not unreasonable to think that magically ramping that up, or simulating its effects, could interfere with a person's ability to assess danger, and by extension whether it is an appropriate time to relax and indulge ones urges. But this does not account for her utter disregard for Dresden's consent here. There are emotional states that can contribute to that, but love is not any of them, although it absolutely can influence how, for example, aggression or entitlement manifest in behavior. 

I see five reasonable possibilities for what went wrong here. 

1. Bob was deliberately fucking with Dresden, saying it was a "love potion" while knowing full well that it was not. 
2. Du to a combination of bad romance novels and working for at least 3 different evil wizards, Bob's sense of what love is supposed to look like is wildly skewed. (Textual source of "at least 3". In Proven Guilty, Bob says of Little Chicago, that "none of the evil geniuses I've worked for could have done this". "None", not "neither". This would not necessarily have been significant, but in the previous book, Bob identifies his two most recent previous owners as Justin DuMorne and Heinrich Kemmler, both of whom could very reasonably be described as "evil geniuses", although I that that label applies somewhat better to Kemmler than two DuMorne. If those two were the only evil wizards for whom Bob had worked, it would have been both natural and...tidy to say "neither". The only reason to say 'none' is if he had worked for more than two evil geniuses). 
3. Bob was doing his best with the recipe, but magic responds to the personality and intent of the caster, and Harry, who hasn't had a bilaterally loving relationship with another human since he was 16, and is at this point in the series still pretty sketch, may not be emotionally capable of creating an actual love potion. This would echo some things from elsewhere in the series, like Molly's anger at Nelson contaminating the fear spell she uses on him and Rosie, the impossibility of folding up sunshine in a handkerchief when you're not actually happy, and Dresden's assertion that he's "bad about" projecting his own thoughts and feeling when trying to do object reading. 
4. The ingredient substitutions created a hornier, sleazier potion than would otherwise have occurred. We don't know what the romance novel page said, but we know the ones Bob likes include things like women's dresses getting ripped off, which doesn't bode well for the consent level. And I don't know to what extent potions retain the physical and chemical properties of their ingredients, but if the answer "at all" we're also dealing with at least 10 fluid ounces of tequila, minus whatever cooked off while it was on the burner. 
5. Bob was fine, Harry was fine, the potion was, in and of itself, fine, but Susan is already sort of horrible, already doesn't respect Dresden's consent or autonomy, and already views her potential relationship with him almost exclusively through the lens of its being an opportunity for her to have an exciting adventure and get a good story of it. ("Have you ever thought that you'd like to die while making love? I've thought that many times", an actual thing she says with her real talky parts, barely has anything to do with Dresden as a fellow participant, much less a person). The carelessness and entitlement were already there; the potion just reacted badly with them. 

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Whatever went wrong, the situation is drastically untenable, and Dresden asks Bob to throw him the
bottle with the escape potion. Bob, however, has decided to be a pain in the butt. I sort of don't understand why, given that the acid spitting toad demon seems pretty likely to just keep wreaking havoc and quite possibly dissolve the skull which is his only refuge against the dawn, but as we've discussed, Harry in the early books is sketchy and horny, and I guess the opportunity to ogle co-eds is worth maybe dying for. He's not getting off his incorporeal ass and helping unless Harry gives him a 24 hour pass. 

This also suggests that while Bob needs permission from the owner of the skull to leave it, and parameters can be placed on that permission (24 hours, or he can't leave the lab, or whatever), and while Bob generally has to obey the orders of whomever he's currently bound to, he cannot actually be ordered to leave the skill. This is a very reasonable failsafe against the current owner ding something like ordering him to leave the skull while outside during daylight, and thereby destroying him. And that in turn, is consistent with what Luccio says in Small Favor about his intended function being very similar to that of the Archive, albeit on a smaller scale. Bob may not be quite as apocalypse-proof as the Archive, but he is by design a very durable little depository of magical knowledge. (He survived the destruction of at least two previous owner's labs). Both the existence of those safety features and the way Luccio talks about Bob also imply that he was a purpose-made thing. We know he's a spirit of intellect, and we know spirits of intellect can be created by accident, when mortal have brain sex with spiritual entities. That's how you get a spirit of intellect. Which means that Bob (like Harry?!) was conceived for a specific purpose. Sometime circa the founding of the White Council, either a human decided to get brain-pregnant and then places these "rules" on Bob either before or immediately after he was "born", or a spiritual entity of some kind, a ghost, the shadow of a fallen angel, a demon (maybe), or gods only know what else, decided to have brain sex with a moral for this purpose, in which case they may have been able to build those parameters in at conception. This would be a really clever application of bloodline magic, especially if the initiative were on the part of a human practitioner. Bob is better able to look after himself, harder to destroy, and far longer lasting than an enchanted object, and his continued existence feels less like a consent violation, and is less subject to awkward clashes of personality, than generational magic like the Archive or the curse on Harley MacFinn. One wonders if he might have been an early draft of the Archive, or even an attempt by an ancient Archive to replace her own function so she can stop. If I have my timeline straight, which I very well might not, at the time Bob was created, Archives were still routinely suffering mental health issues. Alternatively, he may have been an attempt by someone like Nicodemus to create a resource akin to the Archive, but able to be kept under the control of the side of evil. In which context, it seems conceivable that his kidnapping of the Archive (again, in Small Favor, which is also the first book in which Bonea exists, even if neither Dresden nor the reader knows it yet) may have been a second attempt at the same idea. Revisiting old schemes centuries later is way is classic Nicodemus, so. I will reexamine this later, when I'm looking at the relevant sections of Small Favor. 

Eventually, Harry agrees to the 24 hour pass, and Bob throws him the bottle with the escape potion. Dresden tells Susan to split it with him, saying that he thinks he can "cover [them] both in the focus department". Given that what you need to focus on to use the potion is "being away from here" (per Dresden's instructions to Susan in the previous chapter), this serves to underscore the he does not want Susan to be trying to have sex with him. He wants to be Away From Here, and that include's Susan's amorous advances. If he kind of wanted to stay and see where this went, toad demons notwithstanding, he wouldn't have the clarity of purpose necessary to get them both out of there in one piece. If the first-person description of becoming the wind is anything to go by, this is not a straightforward bit of magic, and the risks of distractions or internal conflict about which way to go when temporarily transformed from a solid state to a fluid should be as apparent as they are unpleasant. 

But they make it, out of the apartment and into the pouring rain. This leaves me with so many questions about how potions in this setting actually work. A properly made potion can do things the caster could not otherwise accomplish. Whatever it does to turn you into the wind, you can apparently still pass through an active circle and keep the effect going. Same goes for running water; even when you are in a gaseous form, with all the surface area that implies, heavy rain, which can disrupt most evocations if you're standing in it, and complicate the hell out of thaumaturgy. Literally. What. Are. Potions?

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Of course, "outside" doesn't mean "safe". Dresden plans to get to a flooded street a few blocks away, on
the other side of which they should be safe from the demon because running water, but they're slowed down by Susan's recovering from the unpleasant effects of mixing potions. She's not hitting on him anymore, but now she's throwing up. Before the demon can get to them, though, a spooky, shadowy figure appears and starts telling Dresden how doomed he is. It is, of course, Victor Sells, although Dresden doesn't know that yet, but he does make it clear that the whole demon attack thing is his doing.  We don't see anyone else use this specific type sending anywhere else in the series. There are a few kind of similar workings, like the communication stones Harry and Ebenezer use in Changes, and the communion spell between Harry and Elaine. It can't possibly be a question of the Third Law, because literally every other version of long-range magical communication we see, including the mass telepathy spell that the freaking Merlin uses in Turn Coat, skirts closer to that line than this. My best guess is that it's actually just really hard, and that in addition to using the storms, which most wizards wouldn't risk, Victor may actually have some natural talent for long-distance magic. Of course, it's unlikely to matter unless one of the Sells kids resurfaces. 

Dresden delivers a sort of magical slap through the sending, which startles and upsets Victor enough that he cuts the villain monologue short and calls his demon to continue the attack. Dresden catches part of its name, but not enough to seize control of it. Lacking other survivable options, he uses the storm himself, calling lighting down through his own body and channeling it back out at the demon, which kills it pretty good, or at least as good as one can kill something for which a physical body is a temporary convenience. And so of course that's the part Warden Morgan saw. At this point, I'm kind of wondering what exactly Morgan's job even is. He's the White Council's official executioner, and he was apprenticed to Luccio, who at least as of Dead Beat is the Captain of the Wardens (I don't know whether she already had the job as of Storm Front). That would lead one to expect that he's kind of a big deal, but his primary responsibility, apparently since Dresden left Ebenezer's farm, so for roughly the past 7 years, is just hanging out in Chicago following Harry around. Is this a specialized high risk assignment, because Scary Warlock Dresden (or because Starborn)? Is it a punishment for challenging or annoying someone higher up on the Council? Is the relative safety and tedium of mostly watching Harry not get paid to sit in his office and read bad paperbacks supposed to be some kind of light duty assignment while he recovers from...something? He doesn't seem to have any close supervision, which could really be supporting evidence for either a position of particular trust or a deliberately dead-end assignment. 

Regardless of how he ended up with this job, he makes some noises about suspecting Dresden of summoning the toad demon, but mostly he's there to let Dresden know that he's asked the Council to convene the day after tomorrow, to hold a hearing on whether or not Dresden is behind the murders. He's fairly certain that they will decide he is, and expresses a truly distressing level of enthusiasm for the possibility of getting to chop Harry's head off. Harry agrees about the likely outcome of the hearing, although not about how much fun his decapitation will be. Morgan stalks off into the rain, to be almost immediately replaced by the fourth, and least threatening, intrusion of the night - the cops. It's okay though. Susan is sure this will make a great story for the paper. 

Dresden Files Reread - Storm Front Chapter 13

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Dresden wakes up in the middle of a thunderstorm, and finally begins to suspect that the killed could be
using the storms, although he's skeptical, since the precise use of that kind of power is apparently pretty difficult. We also get a really detailed description of what the storm feels like to Dresden's magical senses, which is just cool. 

Dresden still hasn't remembered the Susan was supposed to come pick him up for their date, so he's rather caught off guard when she shows up at 8:30. He's also expecting Linda to arrive at 9. I actually went back and checked, and Linda was supposed to get there at 8. If Dresden had remembered this, he might have realized something was wrong, but instead he worries about how "catty" the confrontation is likely to be if she gets there while Susan is waiting for him to get out of the shower. Apparently it doesn't occur to him that Linda is supposed to be giving him information about the murders, not having sex with him (however likely it is that she would have opted to do both), and if he just let that conversation be on the record, all would probably be forgiven. (I mean, it also doesn't occur to him that a reasonable person would accept 'sorry, I made this appointment when I was semiconscious from a traumatic brain injury. Susan is preemptively jealous at the mere possibility that Dresden is expecting someone else to come over, because this relationship is Just The Worst). 

Then a toad demon shows up, and distracts the hell out of everyone. This is actually one of the only times in the series that we encounter a demon as-such. Technically, the White Court vampires contain demons, and the Red Court are demons, but that sort of takes a backseat to the fact that they're, y'know, vampires. It's not clear whether the skinwalker in Turn Coat or the Ick in Changes are demons in the conventional sense. The skinwalker seems to be more closely comparable to the Fallen, despite its being corporeal, and judging by the Ick's likely source material, it seems likely that it's actually a semidivine being in the same general category as Mouse. Outsiders are sometimes called demons, but they're their whole own thing - demons come from the NeverNever, and Outsiders come from somewhere else, wholly outside our reality. The only other times we meet demons are Chauncey in...Grave Peril?, Nicodemus's horrible cat things in Death Masks, the flying monkeys in Blood Rites and the eusocial things in the gray suits that Binder uses in Turn Coat and Skin Game. 

The fight is really, really detailed, with practically every bullet and step accounted for, although we don't know exactly when during the conflict Dresden loses his towel. Describing the chunk the toad demon dissolves out of the couch as "heart sized" is a nice touch. Dresden recently spent a bunch of hours doing research that must have included getting real familiar with the dimensions of the human heart, so of course that's where his head goes. In general, though, this combat tells us more about the author than the characters. The painstaking level of detail is typical of a first-time author, and if I didn't already know Jim Butcher played tapletop role-playing games, this would pretty much tell me, because of how easy it actually is to follow, and especially to keep track of everyone's position relative to each other and tactically important things like the couch, the front door, and the trapdoor down to the lab. 

Then Susan drinks the love potion rather than the escape potion, because of course she does - if this had been any more heavily foreshadowed, it would have just been a notification. What's interesting is that the level of foreshadowing also means that this, one of the stupidest things in the book, does not involve anyone acting carelessly or making bad decisions. Dresden labeled the bottles clearly, in an effort to avoid specifically this. Susan couldn't see the labels, because the lab doesn't have electric lights, and she has neither magic with which to light the candles nor the knowledge of the (cluttered, disorganized) lab's layout necessary to locate matches, and the candles themselves, in almost total darkness. I suppose one could blame Bob for insisting Dresden make the love potion in the first place, but there's no reasonable way he could have seen this coming. Dresden almost never allows other people in the lab. (Which is also why it's not unreasonable that it's a total mess and the matches aren't anywhere obvious). 

The chapter ends with Dresden and Susan trying to squish into a magic circle, as the love potion beings to take effect...

Apparently at some point I did two chapters in one post, because I could have sworn the last one was Chapter 11 and this is Chapter 13. I will go back and add the double chapter to the appropriate post title so there won't be any confusion. I'm hoping we're actually back on schedule now, and we should have another Dresden reread post on Saturday and then keep ticking along normally from there, but I try not to make promises I'm not sure I can keep. Until next time - be gay, do crimes, and real All The Things. 

Some Actual Insights For Once (NaNo Follow-Up)

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This year fell somewhere between the qualified success of 2018 and the unmitigated disaster of 2019. Actually, now that I'm doing the math, it's almost exactly between them. I hit about 75% of my 2018 goal (48 out of 50 pages), and about 25% of 2019 (13 out of 50). This year, I managed 20 out of 40, which is dead on 50%. It's also 4171 words, which feels like a decent accomplishment, at least in light of my word count goal for the year. 

What I'm discovering is that, for the kind of high volume drafting I'm going for in November, not having enough time to write is not, as such, a problem. The most I've gotten done for NaNo so far, in 2018, most of the actual fiction drafting I got done was in 15 second to 2 minute snippets while things were loading or printing at my Government Office Job. I also including written worldbuilding and other notes in my page count, and worked on that at my breaks. Even with the worldbuilding pages though, I'm still fairly sure that was the year I got the most actual fiction drafted during NaNo. When I have longer stretched of time to work, I have a tendency to start thinking about the implications of what I'm writing, whether it makes sense, where I'm supposed to go from there. This is not a bad thing - it produces cleaner, more coherent drafts, scenes that are more likely to more or less work as-is, and even in the order they started in. But writing sessions too short to start worrying about what I'm doing are better for the 'Eh, we'll fix it in post' high speed drafting that any version of NaNo requires. 

I haven't read anything that I can recall about these kinds of micro-sessions. I've heard of 5 minute sprints, but nothing shorter than that, so I might someways be going against conventional wisdom here. But the 'slowing down to think it through during long stretches of unstructured writing time' phenomenon is a Known Thing. I'm going to be experimenting more with short sprints going forward, to see if I can harness this in a more structured way. I feel like the uncertainty of writing while waiting for things, not knowing how long it is, just that it's short, may actually be part of what worked about that, so maybe I can find a timer with a little bit of randomness built in. 

I do need that time to plan and worldbuild and make decisions though. Like, it's important. Short sprints notwithstanding, I'm not really a pantser, and I need to know what I'm writing, what a given scene or chapter is trying to do, or I will stall out eventually. I'm not a perfectionist, but I have a hard time moving forward without a plan. When I do have a lot of open time to write, and I'm unable or disinclined to do sprints (the impact of which, as I said, I am still in the process of examining), that planning, whether it involves a little bit of outlining or conversation with a beta reader or writing partner to work through the next set of decisions I have to make, needs to have already happened for me to make good use of the time. Making arbitrary or semi-arbitrary decisions, the kind you need to make about a zillion of in the writing process, especially in the first act of a novel, when you're still setting everything up, introducing everyone, and, in speculative fiction, establishing the world, is inexplicably draining for me, and I'm godawful slow at it sometimes. I have to leave myself enough time to make those decisions at a pace I can actually manage, even, perhaps especially, when I'm trying to get a lot done in a few weeks. This was, I think, the other thing that worked about 2018. When I had longer periods in which to write, I was using them to make worldbuilding notes, write character profiles, and generally get out ahead of all that decision making. Without a regular work day, I will need to consider how to work in time for this part of the process. 

So, that's what I got. Dresden Files reread posts will resume later this week, and I've got two book reviews in the planning stages. Until then -  be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things. 

Dresden Files Reread - Storm Front Chapters 11 & 12

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This is one of those logistics chapters, where a bunch of little things need to get done and bits of information need to be established before the middle part of the book can start. The 12+ hours Dresden spends researching how to rip someone's heart out with magic are glossed over, which was probably the right decision, even though I would have loved to see that conversation with Bob. 

We get our first look at the police station that houses SI. While he's waiting around for Murphy, Dresden has a run-in with a 3-eye user. The guy freaks out while being put into holding, and almost falls down the stairs, and when Dresden intervenes, he announces that he can see that Dresden is a wizard, and sees "those who walk before, and He Who Walks Behind". He Who Walks Behind is explained, although not in any very great detail, but "those who walk before" is less clear and more intriguing. It could be a reference to the other two Walkers, whom Dresden has yet to encounter at this point. It could also be about Dresden's like, lineage as a Starborn, a magical descendent of Merlin, or the Winter Knight. Hell, it could just be about how many lineages, prophecies, and plots started at the dawn of the universe or therabout in which Dresden is somehow enmeshed. This encounter convinces Dresden that 3-eye must actually give its users the Sight, since there is no other reasonable explanation how the man, who was definitely not a wizard, could have seen the mark of He Who Walks Behind on Dresden's aura. 

Dresden explains to Murphy that tearing someone's heart out by magic would be virtually impossible for one wizard working alone, unless they were unconscionably powerful, or incredibly precise. (Dresden says he might be able to do it, to one person, without killing himself. Given where he places himself on the power scale in the early books, and how we see him get stronger throughout the series, it seems entirely possible that, post Cold Days or thereabouts, he could probably totally do this). A group could do it working together, but murderous criminals don't usually have the mutual trust and unity of purpose necessary for a serious group working. Since the 3-eye drug apparently actually works, and it would take a similarly skilled or powerful magic user to create it, Murphy puts this together with the fact that there has been conflict between 3-eye suppliers and conventional narcotics (Marcone's people), and concludes that it was this conflict that prompted the murder. This is very reasonable, and pretty close to right (mostly it just neglects some secondary motivations). It's the most reasonable Murphy has been all book, and she immediately ruins is by getting mad at Dresden for pointing out that he can be more helpful if she actually... lets him help. And for having gotten hit over the head with a baseball bat, which as far as we know was caused by Dresden being involved at all, which she hired him to be. 

At that point, Dresden kind of falls off his chair, because of the head injury and the being awake for about 24 hours straight. It is a damn good thing Dresden has that whole wizardly enhanced healing thing, because he gets quite a few head injuries in the first half of the series, and under normal circumstances that shit is cumulative. 

In the aftermath of Dresden's collapse, Murphy takes him home. There's a lot of attention here to caregiving and handholding and nervousness, which ends up feeling like Murphy is already being set up as a love interest, although Dresden seems to think she's just being a good friend. I would find this interpretation more plausible if I didn't already know that Murphy eventually does become a live interest. She gets Dresden home, and Linda Randall almost immediately calls. The ridiculous innuendo feels a little more natural here, since he opens the conversation with "Are you naked?". Linda has some information she thinks might be important, and arranges to meet Dresden at 8pm that evening, double booking with his date with Susan, although he doesn't remember that. He remembers he's forgetting something though, and after a minute wracking he brains, concludes that he was supposed to call Monica and give her an update. When he gets her on the phone, though, she calls him off the case, without giving a reason. She's also having problems with the phone, on her end, which Dresden doesn't read any more into than that phones can't even be consistent in how they mess up around him, but on a reread, it becomes obvious that it's a clue, technically perceptible by a first-time reader, that Monica is involved with magic. 

Food: Murphy brings Dresden a cup of coffee in a styrofoam cup when he's waiting for her at the police station, and tells him it cost 50 cents. 

I was sort of almost maybe ready to handle the amount of packing and carrying things and oh fuck what do we do with the cat involved in travel, and then I had to move. Again. I'm feeling kind of self-pitying and Genesis 4:12 about the whole thing, but I'm also just fucking exhausted. And NaNo is real. May you all have a relatively painless late November. Be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things. 

Quick Update on Goals

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While the chaos of moving has put me catastrophically behind on my of my objectives, there was an
unexpected silver lining. When I went to the mall to double check the phone number of the cell phone repair place, so that I could commence bothering them about how to get it (and, sadly, my money) back so I could have it repaired somewhere closer to the new place, it turned out they were back up and running, and having once been poked about it, they were able to get it done in about an hour, so I once again have a working phone. Since we only lost a little over a month of this year, that means time-based goals are back on the table, although for the sake of continuity we will be keeping the pages read goal as well. Right now, I'm looking at the same as last year, 1200 hours of reading and 1000 hours of writing, since I didn't have a chance to actually test those out. Trackers will be going up in the sidebar in the next few days. 

Also, it is NaNo WriMo. Longtime readers, and anyone who's met me, will know that I share Chris Brecheen's reservations about NaNo, and that even if I thought trying to write 50,000 words in a month weren't completely unreasonable for most writers, I certainly can't do it. But I like to set a goal for November that I think I might actually meet, in order to both capitalize on and contribute to the general energy of The Month When Everyone Is Writing A Lot. Having failed at goals of 60 handwritten pages in 2018, and 50 in 2019, this year, we're going for 40.  That's 40 pages of fiction on a single project - this year it's the urban fantasy story - and it doesn't get its own tracker, but I'll try to keep you all posted on how I'm doing, and let you know how I did on December 1st. 

Whatever you do, or don't do, for NaNoWriMo, I wish you the best of luck with it. Be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things! 

Advice Column: Keeping Track of Everything

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Audra asks: My story has gotten absurdly long. I need a way of tracking everything. I have a detailed timeline, but it doesn't distinguish between storylines (which intertwine anyway). Outlines have never worked for me. Same with bubble maps. Simplifying the story would probably be smart, but I've considered it and all the pieces matter. I want to make cuts when it's done rather than try to cut before I know what's important. Any ideas for keeping track of this mess?

Hi Audra,
I love crunchy technical questions like this. Keeping track of "everything" is a tall order, and I don't think there's any one tool that can do it all, so I'm going to make a few different suggestions, that can go together or be used separately to give you a handle on what's going on. My first recommendation is for your timeline.

Use a Spreadsheet
When you're tracking multiple characters or storylines across the same period of time, the best tool I know of is a spreadsheet with dates (or other time markers) down the left-hand side, and the different characters or storylines across the top, as well as one for general world events that aren't specific to any one storyline. I helped maintain one of these for my husband when he was working on his thesis, and we had things like in the "World" column like, 2012 "Year Of No Good Things". We also used color coding to indicate the time of year for events in different columns in the same year so they could be in the same row. If the month or date mattered, we put that in parentheses in the cell. The project was four stories that took place over the course of almost two centuries, so years were a good unit for the rows. If your story is set over a shorter time span, you might do better to use months, or even weeks or days, as your basic unit. I also mention that we were dealing with 200 years of plot (from 1870 to 2063) because I want you to understand that I speak from experience when I say this: Do not over-systematize this. You will already have some empty space, because not everyone will have stuff going on at every row. Don't freak out and feel like you have to fill this in. At the same time, do not exacerbate this issue by adding rows that don't have anything in them. This may mean that you have some abrupt jumps, but that's better for a readable, usable timeline sheet than leaving empty space where you don't need it. Get very comfortable with your "add row" function so you can add things as you go. Below is a screenshot of the one I put together for my setting, which I was planning to do one of these days anyway, so thanks for the motivation.




You'll notice that I used years for events that are history in my setting, then split down to months when I get to the places where stories start happening. If I wanted to write a story about, say, vampires emigrating to the US, I would probably break a chunk of the 18th Century into months as well. This is a world and timeline shared between stories when don't overlap often, so for your more intertwined stories, you may need more sophisticated ways of marking where different people's storylines interact.

Notes and Outline Document
I say "Notes and Outline", because that's what I call it. I'm a kinda flashlight method writer, so I am mostly outlining things I've already written and, if I'm really on it, the next couple of scenes I'm planning to do. You don't have to include an outline of any kind. Basically, this is a single document, divided into sections, where I can keep a lot of different kinds of information that I might need to refer to while I'm writing. I keep the one for Pointlessly Contrarian in a Google Doc, with horizontal lines separating the sections, bolded headings, and a table of contents at the top which uses in-text links for navigation. The automatic contents sidebar thing they have now is cool, but it isn't yet reliable enough for our purposes, and Word doesn't have an equivalent as far as I know. (They also didn't have it when I started working on Pointlessly Contrarian). Some of the sections are information I want to be able to find without searching, like Carson's class schedule and short bios for all the secondary characters, but others are more process oriented, like a list of "open questions", things about the characters, setting, or plot that I need to figure out or decide at some point. I also have a "bits and ends" section, so that when inspiration strikes for a line, scene, or description that doesn't fit anywhere, I have somewhere to put them.

Note Cards
Writers use note cards in a lot of different ways, and at some point I should probably do a post just about that. What I'm suggesting here is a technique that I think originally came from screenwriting. Write a short description of each completed or planned scene on a lined 3x5 card, You can give each scene a name at the top, but you don't have to. (I do suggest numbering the scenes in the order in which they appear in the story). Sometimes it helps to split the information up into:

• Who is in this scene
• What happens
• What does it accomplish (e.g. "this is where Protagonist gets his magic sword", "update on the villain's plans", "protagonist realizes love interest likes him back")

But you don't have to do that either. You can use color-coding here to differentiate plot threads or types of scene. If you can't write small enough or clearly enough to put anything useful on a 3x5, you can type something up and glue it on, but be careful with this. You're not trying to fit the entire scene on a notecard!

Once your cards are made, you can pin them up on a cork-board or spread them out on a table or the flood. This should allow you to kind of get the whole story up in front of your face so you can see what's there, what's missing, what needs to be rearranged. It's a way to get a top-down view of the book.

Even when you're not in a places where you can spread the cards out, if you carry them around, you can flip through them to remind yourself what's happened in what order, and where everyone is. In addition to its logistical function, this technique can help you see parallels or connections between your plots and characters that aren't always obvious when you're in the thick of it, and thus suggest new directions you could take or ways to deepen and complicate what's already there.

Reread Regularly
This is a good habit to get into for a longer piece even if you aren't having trouble keeping track of it. At set intervals of time or word count (like, ever 2 months, or every 10,000 words) reread the whole story from beginning to end. You can edit while you do this, or make notes of things to go back and change later. This is not when you generally want to be doing serious revision – if it' more than a sentence-level edit, made a note and move on. The idea here is to make sure there's a reasonably up-to-date version of the story in your head, and to give you regular opportunities to catch inconsistencies or places where the plot threads might have gotten tangled. This is sort of the opposite of the strategies I described earlier for getting the whole story shrunk down or zoomed out enough to see and move all the pieces; here, you're making sure you remember what all the pieces actually are. If you switch between different perspectives throughout the story, it is worthwhile to occasionally mix up these rereads and read all the sections from perspective A, skipping over the rest, then go back to the beginning and do the same with perspective B, and so on. If you have other clear section types, like by major storyline, or time period, try doing it that way too. Also, every 50,000 words or so, reread the whole thing out loud, or get someone else to read it out loud to you. It will help you figure out whether you're actually making sense. 

Study Your Story
This is sort of the broad version of several of the points above. What you have in your working draft is a large body of complicated knowledge that you need to be able to understand, apply, and explain. (The "explanation" here is that you will sometimes need to make references in the text to prior events - at this stage,no one reasonable will ask you to explain a first draft work in progress of this length). That means you need to study it, the way you would study a textbook, or a subject you're interested in. If you have existing study skills that aren't covered by any of the previous suggestions, use them. Read through and take notes on separate paper. Mark up a printed copy with a highlighter. Make flash cards. Make an 8.5x11 notes sheet like you're gonna have to take a short answer exam about your story. Whatever already works for you to run all that information through your brain in a new direction to help you solidify it, and get the key points into a form more accessible than The Whole Thing. 

Create A Private Wiki

Disclaimer the first: I have not actually done this and thus cannot offer detailed advice. 

Disclaimed the second: This has the potential to be a truly massive time sink. 

Most authors who use this technique talk about it as a thing for series bibles, to keep book-to-book continuity straight, but I think it's valid for any story big enough that you're having trouble keeping track of it. Basically, you use one of several free or low-cost options to create a fanwiki, but only you can see it, and you put everything you know about the story in there, with pages for characters, places, special items, whatever, all nice and cross-linked like Wikipedia. Brandon Sanderson and Seanan McGuire have both said they do this, although neither has written about it in detail anywhere that I could find. 

I lieu of talking about how best to go about this when I have no personal experience on which to base advice, here are the two best articles I found about it. 

https://www.tor.com/2019/01/07/how-to-create-a-wiki-to-support-your-fantasy-worldbuilding/

https://heartbreathings.com/using-a-wiki-for-your-series-bible/

I would recommend breaking the normal rules of the internet and actually looking at the comments on the Tor article. Lots of good suggestions, and the author was actually in the thread for a while, answering questions. 

Do you know, the working title of this post was "August advice column"? Audra, I hope something in here is useful to you. Everyone else, remember to keep sending me questions. Until next time - be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things. 

Dresden Files Reread - Storm From Chapter 10

Photo by Anastasia Vityukova on Unsplash

Content Note: Substantial discussion of smoking - no sensory details. 

As soon as he leaves the meeting with Bianca, Dresden calls Linda Randall. She finds time to make a weird, inappropriate joke about "investigating my privates" - has anyone in real life ever talked like this? - before making it clear that if he wants to talk about Jennifer Stanton, she doesn't want to talk to him. Dresden determines from background noise that that she's at the airport, and decides to disregard her clearly states preferences and go bother her in person. I think talking about how terrible everyone's boundaries are in this book is getting repetitive, so the less said about this the better. 

Once Dresden has her cornered, she acknowledges that she and Jenny not only used to work together, but were at one time roommates in the sense of Oh My God They Were Roommates. Unless I'm seriously forgetting someone, this makes Jennifer and Linda the only canonical f/f couple in the series, and neither of them survives the first book. I am not counting Justine's various lovers from Ghost Story onward, mostly because those are one-off encounters for Thomas's benefit, but especially in light of the information revealed at the end of Battle Ground. I also note that Linda is one of two characters in the entire series who definitely smoke, the other being Madeline Raith. Since we know there are EMTs in this series who smoke, it is of course possible that Lamar or his partner, whose name escapes me, also smoke, but w haven't had names matched up with nicotine intake there. This is odd only because in 2005 (as reasonable a snapshot year as any for this series), over 20% of American adults smoked tobacco, so in a series with dozens of named characters, I would expect to see a few more of them. Many Dresdenverse characters are in high stress jobs, the cast is skewed male, and a bunch of them have on kind of preternaturally good health or another (can Wizards even get cancer?) so I would think, if anything, that more of them would smoke. Oh, I guess Shiro had his cigars. Does that count?

Linda also reveals that Jennifer called her the night she died, asking if she wanted to get together again for the engagement with Tommy Tom. At that time, Jenny didn't seem to think anything was up, at least as far as Linda could tell. This is also where we get out first glimpse of the Becketts, and the immediate impression that something is Very Wrong with them, especially Mrs. Beckett. 

In between almost every action or interaction Dresden attempts, he chills for a minute and considers his next move. Just from a writing perspective, I have mixed feelings about this. It gives us good access to Dresden's thoughts, and a sense of what's coming next in the story. I can't help feeling like this could be smoother if Dresden had someone to talk to, but it would change the mood of this first book so far I'm not sure it would be a worthwhile tradeoff. 

In any even, having gone over his options and priorities, Dresden follows up on Toot Toot's information, and makes contact with a terrified pizza delivery driver, who has already spoken to Victor Sells. He reveals, without ever realizing it's not Victor on the phone again, that there was an orgy at the Sells's lake house night before last (the night Tommy and Jenny died, although Dresden has not yet made this connection), and that someone else was sneaking around taking pictures. I do wonder how it is that Harry and Victor sound so similar on the phone, but maybe this kid is just too freaked out to pay attention. This is when Dresden first thinks there might be more to this than a cheating husband, but he's still leaning towards "midlife crisis" rather than anything more nefarious. 

Harry heads home to do the dark magic research Murphy wants, but is interrupted by a man with a baseball bat, who bangs him around a little before warning him to stay our of the murder investigation. Dresden concludes, not unreasonably, that it was Marcone who sent him, and I don't remember at the moment whether that's correct, or if we're ever told which of his conversations prompted this reaction. 

Stay tuned for Chapter 11 at some point soonishlike. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things. 

Dresden Files Reread - Storm Front Chapter 9

Photo by Ján Jakub Naništa on Unsplash

This is the actual longest chapter of the first book, but it does a much better job of not feeling like it than Chapter 2, which is some 5 minutes shorter. 

When Harry finally wakes up, it's 3 in the afternoon, and in a few hours, he will have to go meet with Bianca, vampire proprietress of the velvet room. But before he can do that, Murphy calls and berates him for not already having gotten results on the difficult, illegal magical research that she asked for all of 25 hours ago (and has already been told may not be possible), and tries to forbid him to see Bianca, including threatening to lock him up to stop him. Honestly, his fear of randomly getting put in protective custody if he cooperates with the police makes some sense if this is normal behavior for Murphy. Her behavior towards him is frankly unprofessional, and "they're friends" isn't much of an excuse when she has yet to act friendly towards him either. It's just demands, hostility, and zero respect for Dresden's boundaries. 

Dresden gears up and heads out, reflecting that the White Council might not actually be that upset if Bianca killed him, then scolds himself for paranoia, observing that if he continues thinking like this, he'll end up turning his little basement apartment into the Fortress of Solitude. And that's kind of what happens, gradually, between this book and Changes, so that's some pretty solid foreshadowing right there. This is also where we get the first instance of the "wizardry is about preparation" speech which occurs in almost every book. 

The Blue Beetle breaks down just as Dresden is getting to the mansion that serves as the Velvet Room's base of operations, so we get a whole bit where he's standing there arguing with a security guard. This doesn't accomplish a whole lot in terms of plot, except to establish that Bianca is nervous about letting a wizard into her house, but we do get the first mention of Listening, and of the fact that vampires respond to faith, not to specific symbols. It's a bit odd that neither Dresden nor Bianca is willing to rely upon, or even mentions, the obligations of guest and host that are later established to be foundational to the supernatural community. We also see Dresden's sword cane for the first time, although the security guard takes it away from him. I don't think we actually see him use it until Blood Rites, and I don't know whether the earth magic it's imbued with there is already present here. He only talks about it as a blade, and option to defend himself without having to rely solely on magic. 

The second Dresden mentions Jennifer Stanton's death, Bianca goes for his throat, apparently convinced that Dresden must have committed the murder because he's the only local wizard strong enough to do it, which is information in and of itself, although it's not clear that Dresden realizes this. Between Bianca's attack and Dresden's counter with a literal pocket full of sunshine, Bianca's true, gross, batlike form is revealed, which is embarrassing for her and disturbing for Harry. Even once everyone calms down and the vampire gets her face back on, the conversation is... strained. It doesn't help that Dresden is bleeding from a cut acquired during the scuffle, but we get quite a lot of Bianca's feelings about Tommy Tom, her own employees, and sex work as an industry, which is not as cringey as it could be considering it's Jim Butcher writing this. Dresden does also get a lead: Linda Randall, who used to work for the Velvet Room and was close to Jennifer. This conversation is also where death curses are first mentioned, although we don't get the technical details of how they work, just that they're something that can happen when a wizard dies, and they're dangerous enough for Bianca to worry about. Bianca tells Dresden he has to leave, calls Paula in, and begins to feed upon her. This is where we, along with Dresden, find out about the addictive narcotic properties of vampire saliva. 

There's two things that stand out to me about this interaction with Bianca. First of all, she's a crazy person. Attacking him like that was a monumentally bad idea, no matter how sure she was that he was the killer. Similarly, she would have had to already be kinda unstable for her interaction with Dresden to push her so far that she accidentally ate someone. Honestly, I'm surprised Ortega allowed her to be elevated in Grave Peril. Bianca is a liability. 

Second, Bianca is attached to the humans she considers hers on a level that we are later given to understand is not normally possible for vampires of the red court. I see four possibilities here. The boring answer is that this is a first book and Jim Butcher simply hadn't settled on how exactly vampires think, act, and feel. A more interesting possibility is that capacity for prosocial behavior in vampires is inversely correlated with sanity. This is supported by the Eebs, who are extra crazy and very attached to each other, and the Red King, who has totally lost his mind and must have some capacity for prosocial behavior in order to run the entire vampire nation. Third, Bianca may be contagioned, which we know can allow supernatural creatures to disregard the normal incapacities of their species, and is supported by her association with Cowl and Kumori, and her gift of the dagger to Lea. Fourth, we may be looking less at genuine attachment and more at something akin to the proprietary anger Harry describes in the Winter fae he influences in Battle Ground. Of course, none of these options are mutually exclusive. 

Dresden waits outside for Paula to come down with Linda's contact info, but of course she never does. Eventually, someone else comes down with the phone number, along with a note that says only "Regret". While Bianca barely comes up again in this book, this moment marks the beginning of a conflict that informs every subsequent book until Changes. 

Sorry for the long, late chapter. I had to get our reading and writing goals for the year posted first. Expect Chapter 10 on Saturday as usual. Be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things! 

2020-2021 Eeveeyear Reading and Writing Goals

Here at Mint and Brambles, the beginning of October is the "new year" for my annual reading and writing goals, because I am still very tied to the academic year, but I'm also a bit of a disaster. It also gives me a month's lead time before NanoWrimo to figure out what I'm doing for that. Writing 50,000 words in 30 days is not a thing I can do, but I like to do something. 

Last year, our goals were to write 20,000 words of fiction and 250 handwritten pages of whatever, read 100 books, get two short stories done and ready to submit for publication, and spend 1000 hours writing and 1200 hours reading. I...achieved none of those goals. Well, I might have hit the time goals, but we'll never know, because I stopped having a working phone in December, and due to a combination of global pandemic and me being a disaster,  that situation still hasn't been rectified, and none of the tech I'm using to fill in the gaps can run my time tracking app. I managed to read 74 books, write 14731 words of fiction, and do 191 handwritten pages. I didn't work on short fiction at all. Looking over my progress bars, I'm mostly struck by how close together they are. I did try to keep things in balance, catch up where I was behind, but there were times during this year when it was wildly mismatched. In particular, one handwritten page in my current notebook can run to over 200 words, so doing on of those adds a lot more to my word count than it does to my page count. Getting into a rhythm with the Dresden Files reread over the summer helped a lot with catching my page count up. I still can't decide if the phone situation helped or hurt how many books I managed to read. Normally, I'm a book audiobook reader, and the interim "phone" doesn't run audible, but it does run Nook and Libby. I read faster with my eyeballs, but time I spend playing phone games is no longer really able to double as reading time. Other complications include the fact that a lot of my audiobooking is rereading, and that I do spend less time playing phone games now that I don't have access to MergeDragons. 

I do regret the loss of time tracking, because a lot of my reading this year was really long game manuals and a couple of thick, dense academic books, and without that, I don't have any way to account for how much more time and work that was compared to, say, reading the latest October Daye book. Since I still don't have a working phone, I'm going to incorporate a page count reading goal for the coming year. Page counts are easy enough to look up, so I should be able to do this for ebooks and audiobooks as well as physical books. I also stand by leaving rereads out of my book count, but reading some books over and over is part of my writing process, and this is a writing blog, so I'll be adding a separate goal for a certain amount of rereading. 

Reading, writing, and page count goals are all returning, updated to 150% of what I actually accomplished this year. This puts all of our goals somewhat higher than last year, which is gonna be interesting given that I didn't reach last year's goals in the first place. It's good to reach a little. I was having issues actually doing blog posts since they "only" help the page count, so this year we're gonna have a goal for blog posts as well. 

Reading Goals

• Read 111 Books
• Reread 80 Books
• Read 38150 Pages (includes audiobooks, does not include rereads). 

Writing Goals

• Write 286 Handwritten Pages
• Write 22096 Words of Fiction
• Write 75 Blog Posts

I don't know how close I'll come to reaching any of these, especially the new objectives. One of the things this blog is about is learning in public. Please join me in the coming year as I attempt to be gay, do crimes, and read ALL the things. 

Dresden Files Reread - Storm Front Chapter 8

 

Photo by Laura Lee Moreau on Unsplash

Dresden, get your fucking cat fixed. 

Dresden gets home, and we get a description of his basement apartment and the boarding house it's in. We are finally introduced to Mister, Dresden's inexplicably enormous tomcat. Mister is a wonderful cat, and I don't get on people for doing the indoor/outdoor thing, but if you're gonna do that, you really need to get them neutered. (Doing this early on might also have spared Harry some embarrassment in Summer Knight). Did they not have low-cost spay/neuter programs in Chicago at this point in time? Actually, this raises an interesting question. There's a popular fan theory that Mister is half-Malk, which would technically make him a changeling. Since Malks talk, and Mister doesn't, he presumably either Chose mortal or didn't Choose at all. Given that he was at least 17 and still going strong the last time we saw him, I'm betting on the latter (this is also the strongest evidence we have that he is part fae). But in either case, Mister is running around out there siring little quarter-Malk kittens, and like, are they changelings? Do they have to Choose? Do Malk changelings even get the Choice, given that they're half cat rather than half human? 

Once he's said hello to the cat, Dresden goes down to the lab to do some potion making, which is referred to here and (as far as I can recall) nowhere else as "alchemy". We get some discussion of how he handles heat and light, since gas and electricity are out of the question. 

Then we get introduced to Bob. As they argue about whether Dresden will make a love potion as well as the escape potion he actually needs, I was struck by how mean they are to each other. This isn't the playful banter we get in later books, it feels hostile. If we found out any time before Dead Beat that Bob's personality reflects his owner, this would be really cool, subtle characterization of Dresden, and it's still very effective on a reread. It also puts an interesting light on Dresden's self-perception throughout the middle and later books that he's becoming a worse person. "These days, I'm not a very nice person." (Proven Guilty). Bob becomes more pleasant, more moral, and nicer to Dresden over time. In this book, Bob is hostile to Harry. He's also lazy, sneaky, transactional, and generally kinda sketch. Which implies that, at this point in the series, Dresden is a similarly sketchy dude – and he fucking hates himself. 

On the subject of character development, in White Night, when Dresden is having Lasciel-induced anger issues, he at one point has to stop what he's doing and count to ten, and reflects that he hasn't had to do that since he was a kid. In this scene, however, he has to count to 30 to not smash Bob's skull. The time gap should be something like 7 years, but he isn't a "kid" here, he's in his 20s. Did Dresden just...forget how angry he was in the early books? Is Lasciel fucking with his recall in White Night? Is he just really, really committed to the idea that he's only become a worse person as time has gone on?

I find the mechanics of potion making in this series kind of fascinating, and I don't think I'm alone in that. Consistent with the idea that magic comes from life, and especially from people, five of the eight ingredients for each potion represent, not the elements or the directions or some other schema of the natural world, but the five senses. The others are the base liquid, and ingredients representing the mind and spirit. Much of the ritual magic we see later in the series uses a similar component spread, albeit with no liquid and two sets of sensory items, one specific to the caster and one specific to the working, rather than a single set based on some unspecified interaction between caster and intent. There's also no magic circle here, but maybe the beaker or cauldron like, is the circle? I would love to know what the process is for getting sounds into jars. Honestly, I would read a whole short story just about Dresden gathering potion ingredients. 

Also, Dresden presents potion-making as a stress hobby, something he does to unwind and productively kill time when he can't sleep, but there's more to it than that. He can literally put his difficult emotions (worry, anger, stubbornness) into the potions, and then they're in there, providing energy for the magic, rather than in him where they do nothing useful and make it hard for him to sleep. This is how a lot of magic works in this would, and while Dresden presents himself as just a huge magic nerd with no social life, I think it's possible that the reason he has no other hobbies might be tied to the fact that he has no other coping skills. 

Information about low cost spay/neuter in Chicago can be found here. Most major cities have programs like this, and some states offer low-cost spay/neuter to Medicaid or SNAP recipients. 

Be gay, do crimes, and get your cats fixed. 

Dresden Files Reread - Storm Front Chapter 7

Photo by Sacha T'Sas on Unsplash

 
Apparently I actually covered a substantial portion of Chapter 7 in the previous post, and it was already only a bit over 13 minutes of audiobook, so this is going to be a short one. 

The rest of the chapter is just Dresden driving home and thinking about his backstory with Morgan, the White Council, and his old mentor Justin DuMorne, who at this point I think still hasn't been named. 

Do you know, the way Dresden lays it out here, especially in light of additional details we get in Ghost Story, the Doom of Damocles actually seems like a pretty reasonable choice, legally speaking. I'm opposed to punitive justice in general, incarceration, and especially the death penalty, so my discussion here is solely on the legal argument, not the moral one. Dresden killed DuMorne, and they had literally only his word that it was in self-defense. A third party, Elaine, was also thought to have died in the resulting fire, and we're never told how her "death" fit into the proceedings. We've got one dead warlock, whom the White Council was thitherto unwilling or unable to bring in, one apparently dead apprentice, and the other obviously traumatized apprentice who admits to killing them (or at least DuMorne), and says he was protecting himself. Honestly, if DuMorne hadn't been a known bad guy, I think they would have killed Dresden on the spot, and it wouldn't surprise me if Dresden's status as a Starborn and McCoy's grandson played more of a role in the decision to risk keeping him alive than any self-defense argument. 

And that's the other thing. It wasn't actually self-defense. Not by any standard that would hold up in a mortal court of law. Not unless there's something big that we still don't know about what happened after Harry ran away. He went back to the house. He didn't have to. As far as we know, he ran away, he fought He Who Walks Behind, he decided he needed to take out DuMorne, he went to the Leanansidhe for help getting strong enough to do it, and then he went back to challenge DuMorne, and he killed him. That is, by any conventional legal standard, premeditated murder. He thought Elaine had turned against him voluntarily, so he didn't have the dubious defense of trying to rescue her. It was reasonably clear that DuMorne wasn't going to stop coming after him, and Dresden didn't know about the White Council, but he had access to Lea, and he could have made a deal with her for protection, rather than for the power to defeat DuMorne. I don't know how much of that background the Council had, and their definition of self-defense may well include "he was going to keep magically attacking me from a distance unless I stopped him", but the whole thing look's sketchy as hell, and I honestly can't fault Morgan or the Council for continuing to be suspicious at this point in the story. 

Dresden Files Reread - Storm Front Chapter 6

Photo by Danny Giebe on Unsplash

Mister is mentioned again at the beginning of this chapter, but still gets no discussion or description. We haven't even been told he's a cat. So I guess this is an early version of "Tell us something your cat does but say 'My roommate...'"? Dresden only stops home long enough to collect some supplies, and then it's off to the Sells's lake house. On the way, we are introduced to the Blue Beetle in all its mismatched glory. 

We get another one of these intensely detailed descriptions of Lake Shore Drive and the house itself. I will never know for sure why it matters how big the driveway of this house is, but I do know. I'm being picky here - this kind of detail is a great way to show that Dresden is casting about, not sure what he's looking for, and technically this is the first indication we get of the possibility that there could be large gatherings happening here, but it's a lot of detail and it takes kind of a long time. This is also where we get the film canister, which Dresden nominally picks up because they're useful for holding spell ingredients, but he neither notices by feel that there's film inside nor thinks to check. 

As much as Dresden is here to have a look around, he's also here to summon fairy assistance. This is where we get the introduction on how True Names work. It's also where to get introduced to "magic circle theory". Putting it that way makes it sound as thought there is a whole field of magical study on the construction and application of magic circles. Which, now that I think about it, is actually backed up by the variety of materials and activation techniques we see throughout the series, and the number of different ways we see them used. Dresden talks in various books about the importance a of neat, geometric circle, the use of plain circles versus other shapes, and the significance of which way you draw a pentagram. Hell, in the next book we get introduced to Greater Circles, and the specialized materials they require. We've got circles for protection, containment, summoning, rituals, and all but the most simple (and thus potentially least powerful) require items or materials specific to their purpose. Magic circles are a whole thing. 

Oh, we also get the like, 98 level on thresholds, but not details yet on how human practitioners, or anything but vampires, interact with them, although we are given a general impression that they aren't great for human wizards. 

Dresden summons Toot Toot, a dewdrop fairy who makes a lot of threats, including to tell the Queen, before agreeing to ask around whether any of the local small fae have seen anyone at the house. I have two things here. First of all, we're introduced to the way that the fae can be bound by a promise made thrice. Also though, to which Queen is Toot referring? There are six, and while Dresden isn't yet aware of that, Toot Toot certainly is. He's also a wildfae, with no stable allegiance to either Court. Given which solstices we're between, and the fact that all the other options would be way too dangerous, my money's on Aurora, but the unspecificity is weird. 

Photo by Alan Hardman on Unsplash

Dresden has to wait around for a while, but when Toot Toot returns, he reports that mortals were recently "sporting" (having sex) in the lake house, and needed pizza to regain their strength. Dresden guesses, not unreasonably, that Victor Sells is there with a mistress and not doing anything spoopy after all, but worries, also reasonably, that telling Monica this will upset her, and that she might not believe him. His sympathy with Victor's possible boredom with a "timid, domestic wife" is kinda misogynistic, and it bugs me a little because by wording the same idea only a little differently, this could have been presented as Dresden understanding human nature well enough to know where Victor is likely coming from but not thinking his actions were valid. This is where we find out that fairies like pizza, and Dresden dismisses Toot Toot after agreeing to try to get pizza sent to the local little folk. 

And then Warden Morgan shows up. He's already got his sword out, and he's all ready to kill Dresden on the spot for violating the fourth law of magic. The book doesn't actually tell us what the Fourth Law is, so let's review. The Fourth Law of Magic says "Thou Shall Not Enthrall Another". In practical terms, it forbids any mind control of humans (except sleep spells), and the binding to your will of creatures from the Nevernever. It does not forbid using a nonhuman creature's true name to get its attention, or even forcibly summoning it, nor does it preclude using basically any means of coercion to get a human or a supernatural being to do what you want, as long as you don't directly mind control them. This feels important because Morgan asserts that Dresden's defense that a) he did not bind Toot Toot to his will and b) the broader application of the fourth law that would forbid using his true name to "suggest" he walk into Dresden's trap only applies to humans is a "technicality", and Dresden pretty much accepts that (while asserting his willingness to hide behind those technicalities). But... it's kind of not. Dresden is pretty unambiguously in the clear here, and either doesn't know it or would rather be antagonistic to the heavily armed magic cop than point it out. (Protip: "I just leaned on him a little" does not sound like the argument of an innocent man). Morgan clearly does know it, he was just using the summoning as an pretext to harass Dresden because he thinks Dresden is the one killing people with magic. He stops Dresden from leaving. Dresden punches him in the face. Morgan expresses his suspicions, which Dresden thinks must be coming from someone higher up in the Council. Then he punches Dresden in the face, and the chapter pretty much ends there. 

Food: As part of the fairy trap, Dresden brings milk, fresh baked bread, and honey in a squeeze bear. The bread does not contain any preservatives, but we are not given similar information on the quality or origins of the milk and honey. I do not think Toot Toot would accept honey that was partly corn syrup, but who knows. The entire meal is served on a hand-carved teak dining set sized for a person six inches tall. There is some discussion of the usual production process for bread, milk, and honey, and why the fae do not typically make these things themselves. And of course there is discussion of pizza. Pizza pizza pizza! 

We're closing in on the end of the 2019-2020 blog year here at Mint and Brambles. That should mean an increase in output as I try to get closer to hitting my annual goals, but I'm also trying to move, which may limit my reading and writing time. Whichever way the rest of this month goes, remember to be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!