Dresden Files Reread - Grave Peril Chapter 27

Photo by Megan Johnston on Unsplash

Lea is dressed as a waterfall, in a flowy blue dress with white lace at the hem, and a gauzy opalescent shawl. I'm not entirely sure what the symbolism is meant to be on this one, not lest because waterfalls are such an inherently variable proposition, which I suspect may be part of the point. My strongest immediate reference point is the role waterfalls play in children's fiction and family movies, in which they are something for going over, a sudden massive disruption and shift in the narrative that leaves Our Heroes disoriented, stripped of resources, and possibly scattered, but essentially unscathed, which isn't the first way it would occur to me to characterize Lea's presence in this book. Upon reflection...yeah, no. Of she hadn't given Bianca the sword, Harry still might not have made it out of there in one piece, but he would have had substantially more options. My actual personal experience of waterfalls is mostly of the little ones you see hiking in the Cascades and Olympics, about which there's not a whole lot to say other than that they're nice to look at, and mildly exciting if you happen to be a city kid who doesn't necessarily see a whole lot of Nature. Waterfalls may also be associated with change and impermanence, balance, evolution, and unharnessed potential or energy, but none of that immediately makes me go "Oh, yeah, that tracks with Lea's role here." It could, I suppose, be an oblique reference to to the hint she gave Harry back in the graveyard. This unclarity about the costume is made more frustrating by Lea's explicitly identifying herself as a metaphor. A metaphor for what, Lea? I know you're usually about artistic madness and lust for power, but what are you doing here, and how is it supported or subverted by your being dressed as a waterfall? We also get a description of glamour, including a firm confirmation that Lea's beauty is partly magical in origin. 

Harry meets her Little Red Riding Hood reference with one of his own, and then returns his attention to trying to persuade Susan to leave. She's not having it, insisting (wrongly) that she can protect herself and (validly) that if it's that dangerous, shes not gonna leave Harry alone here. Like, she's sufficiently competent, and has demonstrated herself to be adequately well-prepared that were circumstances even slightly altered, she'd be substantially more of an asset than a liability. The difficulties here are that she's not protected by hospitality, that Harry cannot accept with equanimity the possibility of her getting hurt, and he's not really in any condition to take care of himself, much less anyone else. Only one of those things would need to not be true. 

Unfortunately, Harry's obvious desire to protect Susan draws Lea's attention to her. She tries to make eye contact with Susan, and Harry narrowly intervenes, getting caught in her glamour in the process. She floods his mind with visions of what it will be like when he stops resisting and gives himself to her. The phrase "the tips of her breasts" makes an appearance, but the emphasis is on peace, rest, the absence of pain, and conflict, and responsibility. Harry, as I mentioned a few chapters back, and back in Fool Moon I think, is in a pretty much constant state of physical and emotional discomfort, and desperately needs a break. Not a great idea at this exact moment though. It physically hurts, but he pushes the glamour away and tells her "no". Very impressive, especially under the circumstances, but sadly this also makes the third time he's refused to honor their bargain. Threes, as Harry knows perfectly well when he's not drugged, concussed, exhausted, and trying to get his girlfriend to leave the monster party before something eats her, have particular significance in faerie, and this third refusal causes his magic to turn against him. 

Photo by rivage on Unsplash

Harry goes all wibbly, and Susan demands an explanation so that Lea can exposit a more thorough version of the above for the reader's benefit. She seems genuinely regretful, and I don't think it's just, as Harry suggests, because his weakening himself this way will leave her with less to "eat". I'm still not entirely sure what pre-sidhesicle Lea wants with Harry, but her feelings and motives where he's concerned have always been complex. I suspect the basic shape of the idea was to amuse herself with hm while keeping him safe and pliant for future use by Winter, but she does, in some sense, care about him, at least a little. 

Susan tells Lea to stop it, and Lea invites her to make a deal, not for Harry's debt, which she certainly couldn't afford, but for relief from the immediate impact of the broken oath. Susan is so startled by a request for her eyes that Lea withdraws the offer, and firmly refuses to give her Name. She doesn't really understand what Lea is asking for when she asks for Susan's love (which I suspect is an inappropriately high price in any case), and Lea retracts that as well, before asking for a year of Susan's memories. Given the disproportionate cost of Lea's first three offers, and how quickly she withdrew the two that Susan didn't immediately refuse, I suspect this was her real aim, and that she meant to create anchoring bias, making what would otherwise be a rather startling request sound reasonable by comparison. I don't really know what she wanted with Susan's memories of Harry, though a benevolent read suitable to her later characterization might be that she knew Harry would be able to restore Susan's memory, and was getting as close as the rules would allow to doing it for free, which might be supported by the stress given later to the sidhe's inability to give or accept anything without a fair trade. Only, in that case, why go bother them in the first place. I suppose it's possible that she, unlike Bianca, really was trying to get Harry to leave, and figure getting his newly amnesiac girlfriend to safety might be sufficient to make him do that, but since Susan isn't protected by hospitality, I feel like there would have been easier ways to do that, like, I don't know, sticking a glamour on Susan that made her do whatever anyone told her, rendering her both exceptionally vulnerable and more, rather than less, amenable to extraction. Then again, she may have been trying something like that when she attempted to force eye contact with Susan a minute ago, only someone intervened, so this is her plan B. That said, I'm not sure the benevolent reading holds up at all, since this is the book in which she tries to break Amoracchius. Susan agrees to it, and Lea seals the deal with a kiss on the forehead (also "the tips of her breasts" harden - please, Jim, just say "nipples), and then slaps Harry across the face. Now, this symbolism I get. The rejection conveyed by the slap basically cancels out one of the times he refused her, setting the balance back to two, and thus below the critical threshold. 

Harry starts to feel better right away, some of the effects of the red court venom apparently effect of the broken oath. Michael is still pretty upset, and tries to threaten Lea, but she interrupts him and offers to bargain with him, this time for the sword. Michael offers himself, but apparently such a bargain wouldn't hold once he had the sword back, and in any case he's too rigid, and righteous, for her tastes. She would, however, happily take Molly in exchange for Amoracchius. 

Photo by Matt Forster on Unsplash

I feel like there's some AU potential there. At this point, neither Lea nor Maeve has been infected, so  there's no reason to think Maeve will need to be replaced, but at the end of Cold Days Mab claims she had a different role in mind for Molly. She also says, earlier in the same conversation, that she "would have considered her a better candidate for Summer", and it's not clear whether she's talking about the same thing in those two places, so it's possible that Aurora was already infected, and Mab meant to replace her, presumably going behind Titania's back, which tracks since Titania is a bit too sentimental to approach this reasonably. It's almost Halloween, so they'd need to wait at least a year, to prepare her suitably, but since Ronal Reuel hasn't been murdered yet, there's no reason to think they don't have time. Heck, given that Molly is like, 11 in this book, they might be planning to go the full Tam Lin and give her seven years, wait until she's 18. It's also possible Winter wanted her for something else entirely, some role that either hasn't been explicitly named or with which Molly has never been associated. In any case, if Michael were taken by some temporary madness and did trade Molly for the sword, here's what I think happens: Michael gets the sword back. Lea, lacking an appropriate gift for Bianca, trades Susan to her instead. so Susan is still half-turned, and Harry still starts the war with the Red Court. Lea receives the dagger, becomes infected, and infects both Maeve and Molly. In Summer Knight, Harry almost gets into serious trouble trying to rescue Molly when after encountering her somewhere in Winter, probably as part of Maeve's entourage, but there's no substantial alteration to the plot until Proven Guilty, in which some other impetus will have to set up the raid on Arctis Tor. (Someone else will also have to make the suggestion that Harry tie Susan up while they have sex in Death Masks, assuming we want to ensure Maggie's conception). They find Lea and Molly in the ice garden. Molly's younger, more flexible mind was easier to disinfect, so she's been clean and just chilling for a little while now, perhaps working some mind magic to bring Lloyd Slate what comfort he can while he hangs from the tree. (Or making it worse - this would strictly come down to what she's been told about him, and by whom). Rosie and Nelson are never hurt, and the Council's suspicion of Molly (to say nothing of her very real sketchiness and instability) is prompted by her having spent almost a third of her young life in Winter, rather than by her history as a warlock. It's hard to know what happens from here, as we've got a very different Molly, and the plot is gonna diverge ever further as her role in the narrative becomes more substantial. 

Anyway, not only does Michael not agree, he physically picks Lea up buy the front of her dress and threatens to destroy her "for all time" if she doesn't stay away from his family. She laughs, apparently teleports out of his grip, informs him that rage weakens his power (which is good to know, and may help explain how things went for Murphy with Fidelacchius), and vanishes into the shadows. 

After Michael makes sure Harry is okay, and Harry makes a mental note to check in with Bob about the whole "self-inflicted spell" thing, they return their attention to trying to get Susan out of there. Of course, now they have a new problem - she doesn't remember who Harry is. 

See? I told you it would be faster. I don't know if the next one is gonna be quite this fast, but I've hit a lowish point in my annual workload, so there shouldn't be any more massive delays. Until next time, be gay, do crimes, and read all the things!

Dresden Files Reread - Grave Peril Chapter 26

This post contains extensive discussion of the biblical story of Samson, and the geographic area in which those events are said to have taken place - the ancient states of Philistia and Judah. Lest there be any suspicion that I'm trying to sneakily work in my own opinions on the current situation on Israel and Palestine, I do so openly and explicitly here at the outset. Israel is very actively committing genocide against Palestine right now. That's bad, and they should stop doing it. The modern state of Israel isn't, realistically, going anywhere without someone committing even more atrocities, so any reasonable long term solution should probably include its continued existence. I'm not any kind of expert on geopolitics, and I don't have any specific idea what a successful resolution to this mess might look like, but it would be a good start for the Israeli government to stop blowing up hospitals and residential neighborhoods, and for the US government to stop subsidizing them in doing so. Most of the people affected by this conflict are just regular folks trying to get through their fucking day, and I bear them no ill will whatsoever. That's it, that's what I got. I'm Jewish, sort of...that's, that's part of why I'm against genocide, you know? That and I'm like, a person, I guess. If some part of that bothers you, absolutely no one is gonna make you keep reading my blog. I don't want to host a debate in the comments. This was an accident of timing, and figuring out how to navigate that is one of the reasons this post took so long to write. Okay? Cool, now we can talk about the fun little fantasy book. 

Photo by Bart Zimny on Unsplash

Harry is naturally somewhat alarmed to learn that he's been poisoned, and wonders if his sudden abdominal discomfort is cause by the poison, or just anxiety because he knows about it. Michael asks what the poison is, so that's officially a pattern. Harry thinks all the time about what a good person Michael is, how he's kind and reliable and solid (and warm, and calloused, hang on I'm gonna come back to that in a minute), but what has stood out to me so far in this book is how intelligent he is, how he usually asks the most useful question in any given situation, and seems constantly to be turning around every piece of information he has, looking for how it fits together. Thomas doesn't know, but Harry, looking at he partygoers collapsing in a drugged stupor, works out that it's vampire venom, and explains that since it's a recreational drug, and they're serving the poisoned wine to everyone, it doesn't count as an attack on him, or any of the other representatives of the various supernatural factions. So Bianca is legally in the clear. Harry makes himself throw up in a potted plant, but since Red Court venom is topical and absorbs very fast, it only sort of works. I could have sworn that he also used the antidote to vampire venom that he made back in chapter...oh, never mind, I just looked it up and apparently he didn't do that until Death Masks. Suppose I can't hold it against him that he didn't violate the laws of magic by time traveling two books into the future to get it. Anyway, Michael thinks they should leave, but Harry refuses. He figures Bianca didn't expect him to show up at all, and that poisoning the wine is an attempt to scare him off. I know Harry doesn't have a lot of experience hosting social events, but there is a roughly zero percent chance that Bianca had all her wine poisoned between his arrival and his reaching the refreshments table, and it's not much more likely that she had it done ahead of time just in case he showed up. She may, however, have considered wizard deterrence a fringe benefit of what was mostly and effort to give her guests a good time, so I'll give this one a 4/10 on the contrivance scale. 

Harry says something about figuring out "who it is", but tells Thomas it's none of his business (actually, he says "beeswax") when he inquires. Thomas takes the hint and fucks off, and Harry tells Michael they need to check out the other two non-vampire guests. I guess the invitees from the Summer Court, the Wildfae, the Svartalves, the Denarians, the Fomor, and the LeChaise clan didn't show up. (I'm not actually sure the wildfae are signatories).

Before they go bother the guy dressed as a centurion, Michael reiterates his dislike for the human teenagers' being served as food. His language, "abomination before the Lord" and "consorting with these things" makes it sound like he's judging the humans as much as the vampires, which seems unlike him, but I suppose he's likely just disgusted with the whole situation. Harry reminds him that they're here for information, not to bring the house down on a bunch of nasties, so, y'know, foreshadowing. Michael responds "Samson did", and Harry says "Yeah and look at what happened to him." This is  nearly a non-sequitor, but there is so. much. going on here on a symbolism, foreshadowing, and worldbuilding level. 

Photo by iam_os on Unsplash

So let's start with Samson himself. He was born fated to deliver Israel from the Philistines and, for that purpose, a Nazirite from birth meaning he wasn't supposed to cut his hair, consume (or even touch) grapes or grape products, or interact with grapes or corpses. Harry isn't subject to any fancy religious restrictions, but he was certainly born into some complex obligations, and as a Starborn, he certainly seems to be destined to save a whole lotta people, so there's that. Samson was also, as the Dresden Files recons these things, very probably a lycanthrope. He was periodically possessed by the Spirit of the Lord, which gave him super strength. That's a natural channel for a spirit of something if ever I did see one. I think I brought up back in my Fool Moon reread that there ought to be natural channels for spirits of things other than bestial rage/ Bu there's also a bi of uncertainty concerning whether what came and talked to Samson's parents was an angel, God, or a god, which causes me some uncertainty about what exactly was possessing Samson, and his behavior certainly seems consistent with the lycanthropes from Fool Moon. Also the Abrahamic God is a spirit of everything, bestial rage presumably included. 

Arguably, any reference to Samson foreshadows both needless fucking complication and wildly misplaced vengeance. Before he married Delilah, Samson was very briefly married to a Philistine woman. At the beginning of the week-long wedding reception, Samson poses his 30 Philistine groomsmen (dude had no friends of his own, I guess? idk) a "what have I got in my pockets" level unfair riddle, betting them 30 full sets of clothes (a huge deal in any pre-industrial setting) that they can't answer. To be clear, I have no idea why he did that, although the strongest working theory is "to start shit with the Philistines. Well, they can't answer, but they bully his wife into getting the answer from him (by threatening to burn her father's house down while she and her father are inside) and reporting back. Unfortunately, since she was the only other person who knew what it had in its pocketses precious, it's pretty obvious who told them. So he yells at them about it and then makes good on the wager by killing 30 other Philistine men and giving their clothes to his groomsmen. Then he storms off and his wife is given to his best man. He comes back and asks to see his...wife? Her father, with whom she apparently still lives, refuses to let him in, so he... gathers 300 foxes, or jackals, and ties them together in pairs by their tails, attaches a lit torch to each pair, and set them loose in the fields. The Philistines respond to this drastic escalation by burning down this house of his, again, most translations say "wife", but it said earlier that she was "given" to someone else, so I'm not sure what the situation is there, burning her and her father alive in the process. Very few of these details line up precisely with anything in this book, but it's got a lot of the same energy. A lot of fire, a lot of getting at people through their female partners, a lot of wanton destruction and disproportionate escalation. Also possibly an opening of hostilities? The beginning of Judges 13 says that the Israelites were "handed over" to the Philistines (New English Translation - other versions sometimes say "delivered"), but Judges 15:9 says that the Philistines invade Judea, so I'm not sure what the status quo was before the wedding, but bringing Samson into the conversation could very reasonably be understood as a clue that starting a war is on the table here. Certainly, things between Philistia and Judea get a lot more intense over the course of the story. 

Photo by Corina Rainer on Unsplash

Most casual retellings of Samson's story focus on his time with his second wife, Delilah, and how she betrayed him but cutting his hair. They often don't mention that she was paid by the Philistines to discover and, if possible, remove, the source of his supernatural strength. See, when I was first making notes on this, I felt like Samson was an odd reference to make here. Plenty of other biblical figures faced off against armies of bad guys, or supernatural threats, and most of them aren't best known for having been betrayed by a lover. There are a lot of women in Grave Peril, a lot of them with active roles where they exercise substantial personal and narrative agency, but no one in Grave Peril is deliberately betrayed by a wife or girlfriend. Except, except, except this is the book in which Justine is introduced. I just checked Battle Ground, and she wasn't possessed by He Who Walks Beside this far back, although that doesn't actually rule out the possibility that she was infected by Nemesis, but still. I mean, I think it's as likely that Jim Butcher hit upon the idea for the thing with Justine while rereading in the course of writing Peace Talks/Battle Ground as that he really planned it this early, but in either case it's there. There is also Martin's long-game betrayal of Susan, and the Fellowship of St. Giles, several crucial prerequisites of which are also in this book, but that feels like a bit more of a stretch. 

So about bringing the house down on a bunch of nasties. Notably, Samson did not actually lose his powers, he just had to ask politely to have them restored, but this apparently did not occur to him until after he was taken captive, had his eyes put out, and and was forced to spend an unspecified amount of time grinding grain. Or he was just waiting for his moment. Either way, the Philistines throw a party about his capture, including a major sacrifice to Dagon, or Dagan, a stressfully complicated ancient Syrian god, referred to in the Tanakh as the head god of the Philistines. Samson is called in to entertain them, asks for permission to lean against the two load bearing pillars, prays for God to restore his super strength, and then...yeah, brings the house down is as good a way as any to describe it. He collapses the temple, killing himself and about 3000 Philistines, many of them civilians, in the process. Thing is, the Philistines weren't vampires, or demons. They didn't even consort with creatures of the night like the human guests at Bianca's party. Constructing Dagon as a demon here would be wildly ahistorical - the notion that the gods of other people are demons is, as far as I know, as strictly Christian notion, and not invoked in either the text of, nor, so far as cursory research suggests, Christian exegesis on, this passage. Philistia was a real confederation of cities in what is now the Gaza strip and a chunk of southwestern Israel, plus I think a little bit of northeastern Egypt. The Philistines were, and I cannot stress this enough, just people. This suggests three possibilities, and I don't like any of them. 

1. In the Dresden Files universe, the Philistines were, or worked with, demons, and either that information is recorded in their version of the Bible, or Michael knows about it someway else. That would reflect really, really badly on Jim Butcher. Like, I thought it was kinda cool on a first research pass, until I caught that we're talking about an event that's supposed to have happened in Gaza. (The words Philistine and Philistia do not always seem to refer to Palestine in the Bible, but in this instance it seems unambiguous). Yeah, no, bad things. 

2. Michael considers the Philistines, as the bad guys in this story, to be basically equivalent to vampires and similar, which reflects badly on Michael and seems rather out of character. 

3. Neither Michael nor Jim Butcher thought about this anything like as hard as I did, which would reflect badly on both of them but not as badly as options 1 or 2. 

Either way, not a good look for anyone involved. 

Image by Travel2h on Pixabay

Anyway! They approach the man dressed as a centurion. Harry remarks very quietly that his armor looks real, but apparently "Mr. Ferro" has supernatually good hearing, because he confirms that is is real. (He's also described as a man of "indefinite" years, and I'm honestly not sure if Jim Butcher was being clever there or if he meant "indeterminate".) Harry says it must have cost a fortune to put together, to which Ferro responds only with a smirk. I know this is probably meant to convey that he's so old he just kinda had a centurion outfit lying around, but the sheer rudeness of basically opening a conversation with a stranger by talking about how much his clothes cost makes his silence read more as a polite failure to notice a serious faux pas, and it's distracting as hell because Harry knows better. He isn't always polite, obviously, but when he isn't it's generally either a deliberate choice or a response to heightened emotion. This is neither.  I will forgive this on the basis that he's drugged and had three concussions in the past like, 48, maybe 60 hours, during which time the only sleep he got was the other time he got dosed with Red Court venom, and in the course of which he got a chunk of his life force eaten. Harry introduces himself, and when Mr. Ferro repeats his name, it hits Harry like a slap in the face, physically staggering him. We get a quick refresher on the nature of true names, which I thought were already discussed when Harry first got ahold of Kravos's journal, bu with a stress on how unusual it is to be able to hit someone that hard, or at all, with only part of their Name. This is an Elder Scrolls reference. While the physical force dragons can exert by speaking gets the most attention in Skyrim, the concept was introduced all the way back in Elder Scrolls: Redguard, which came out in 1998. I don't know if it originated somewhere external to the games. I'm not sure what Ferro did to Harry even operates on the same mechanism as the sympathetic magic with which Harry is familiar, much less that it plays by all the same rules. So when Harry asks how he did it, I don't think Ferro is just being a dick in saying Harry wouldn't understand. 

Michael points out that Ferro, who still hasn't introduced himself, is a dragon - his cigarette isn't lit, yet smoke issues from his mouth. While this is a fun and well-structured reveal for the reader, I don't know what it's supposed to be doing on a worldbuilding or characterization level. From whom, precisely, is the cigarette meant to conceal Ferro's draconic nature? Certainly Bianca knows, as would most of the other nonhuman guests, no one was expecting Harry to show up, and even if he did, he's bound by the same rules of conduct as everyone else here, to say nothing of the fact that if he gets uppity Ferro can just squish him. Ferro does introduce himself, as Mr. Ferro, and Michael says "Why don't I just call you Ferrovax", which seems to both impress and annoy the dragon. Harry objects that dragons are supposed to be big, with scales and wings. Ferro says, "We are what we wish to be," and I'm not sure if that's a general statement of philosophy, or information about how dragons, specifically, work. Or rather, it's certainly the latter, but I don't know if it's also the former. He also addresses Harry as "Mr. Drafton", to which Harry objects, apparently overlooking that this is probably an act of (pointed) consideration, given what just happened when Ferro used Harry's name. Actually, this may put some context on the cigarette thing. Dragons are big, aggressive apex predators, and if Ferro is anything to go by, deeply concerned with power. (In other words, a magnification of the species-level character flaws to which humans are inclined, but we don't need to get into all that). While this is never explicitly established to be the case in The Dresden Files, conventionally their biggest conflicts are with humans or with other dragons, and unlike humans, they're typically solitary, meaning that survival-level fear of conflict probably only kicks in when they might lose, rather than as soon as there's a risk of rejection by the group. Openly existing as a dragon in a space full of non-dragons, most of whom are also predators, but smaller ones who are unlikely to be a threat except as a group, may, as draconic etiquette recons these things, simply be too big a flex to be appropriate in polite company. Establishing that he can bat Dresden around like a cat toy just by addressing him directly makes the balance of power between them clear enough that it should prevent Harry from trying anything that could get messy, and pointedly failing to do so a second time signals that he's doesn't actually, y'know, want to fight, only Harry's a fucking primate (rather than, say, a cat) and gets upset because us social monkeys don't like it when someone opens a conversation by announcing, apropos of nothing, that they could beat us up if they felt like it. 

Photo by Max Letek on Unsplash

Ferro reveals that he's the oldest of his kind, and the strongest. Just how big a deal is this party? Or what kind of situation are the dragons in? Lord Raith sent Thomas, probably as an insult - he doesn't like the Red Court and he can afford to offend them a little to make the point. Mavra's here for the opposite reason - she's the strongest, and very likely the oldest Black Court vampire in the series, probably in the Americas, possibly in the world. The Black Court is weak and needs to curry favor, so sending the most impressive person they have makes sense, and because they're weak, it's reasonably obvious that her attendance is a compliment, not a show of force. Harry's here because he's local, because they need him, specifically, to start the war, and because he's probably among the most powerful wizards of the White Council who would actually show up - being refused might represent a loss of face for the Red Court, or for Bianca specifically. Even Lea makes a fair amount of sense, she's a lot more important in Winter's hierarchy than Harry is in the White Council's, but not actually much higher than Bianca is about to be in within the Red Court, and if the invitation was directed to her, or one of the Queens, she was a very reasonable person to send - Winter doesn't seem to like the Red Court, but erring on the side of politeness isn't gonna hurt them any, they're secure in their power, and Lea is such a menace that no one could reasonably take her presence as a gesture of placation. But why is Ferro, the oldest and most powerful dragon alive, apparently, personally attending this thing? One certainly gets the impression that there are not a lot of dragons left, but they don't seem to be in such a spot that they'd need to cultivate an alliance with one of the most numerous and least pleasant bad guy factions currently signed to the Accords. The Red Court are...common. He's an independent signatory, but he could have sent a representative, or just...not shown up. (Word of Jim is that there are only two dragons left in the world, which would account for Ferro attending in person, but that's extracanonical and in any case makes his claim to be the oldest of his kind considerably less impressive.) 

Harry takes this villain monologue in the spirit in which it was intended, and informs Ferro that he's not all that impressed. So Ferro, who is clearly not into people being unimpressed with him, squishes Harry, apparently using his pure, directed will, although there may be some magic in it, as Harry is able to deflect it with a shield spell once Michael distracts Ferro. I don't remember if we see anyone do this between here and Changes, but either way it's interesting that this is our first look at this trick, and Harry's ability to respond to it. First of all, it situates Ferro as potentially in the same league as Mother Winter and Odin, if not necessarily as truly on their level. Which in turn causes one to wonder if his anger at not being taken seriously might reflect a similar vulnerability to disbelief.  Gods and faeries need people to believe in them, not just in their existence but in their power, or they can dwindle, fade, something - the books aren't terribly specific, but it's not good for them. And under those rules, the 1990s were not a great time to be a dragon. The Hobbit hadn't had a screen adaptation for 20 years. Pern was still going strong, but places a heavy emphasis on draconic interdependence with humans. Recent (if they were out at all yet, the exact year in which this book is set being somewhat uncertain) animated films like Mulan and Quest for Camelot situated their dragons as somewhat ridiculous. Eragon and Temeraire, both dragon-human partnership stories, were still a few years off, as was Reign of Fire, which might have been more to Ferro's liking, although its use to a belief-powered would be somewhat limited by not that many people having seen it. Pagemaster, Jeremy Thatcher Dragon Hatcher, and the first two Spiro games may have been some help, but the consensus of the time, at least at my elementary school, was that dragons were extinct. 

Second, there's a bit of a throughline of character development here. Harry obviously has no idea what's happening in this moment, and he needs both Michael's assistance and a spell to get out from under it. Nine books later, when Vadderung does the same thing, he gets it almost immediately, and recognizes that he can't do anything about it as he is, not against something with that kind of power. Two books, and a disproportionate amount of character development after that, he not only understand what Mother Winter is doing, he responds quickly and effectively. It's not actually clear whether gods and similar can do the pure-will-squish because their will, or the force it exerts, is in some meaningful sense stronger than that of mortals, of it it's simply that, as their will is the means through which they exert power in the world ("let there be light", etc) they have a great deal more practice focusing and applying it. But it shows meaningful growth in Harry's understanding of himself, his abilities, and the world in which he lives. Harry, in the early books, clearly likes to think of himself as anti-authoritarian, but he still views the power and authority wielded against him by other as inevitable. He's just determined to make doing so as unpleasant for its wielders as possible. And when that's all you can do, you should do that. Add friction. Make them work for it. There's power to be had there. But it is nothing on the power of realizing you can just straight up say no, just refuse, and then doing that. In Peace Talks, Harry tells Ebenezer "no" in a pretty serious way, and I don't know that he could have done that if he hadn't already told Mother Winter "no" two books earlier. Come to think of it, given the Mothers' established history of leading Harry into importation realizations, it wouldn't surprise me if that's why she stuck him to the floor in the first place. 

Once Harry's no longer being squished, we find out that Michael's the one who killed Siriothrax, and then Ferro vanishes. Poof. Michael chides Harry for being provocative, and they agree that Michael will take the lead on any subsequent dragon encounters. So far as I can recall, this gun remains unfired. People are starting to thin out as the vampires grab their human meals and withdraw to less public areas of the house. Michael doesn't like it, of course, and this time Harry doesn't bother asking him not to start a fight, just that they wait to do so until they can check the Hamlet guy and Bianca herself. There's some (more) good setup in this chapter with how Michael, hitherto the more cautious and even-tempered of the pair, is getting more and more upset as the evening wears on, even though nothing as happened, at least as far as the behavior of the vampires is concerned, that he didn't already know about. Presenting through his perspective, established to be reasonable (except where his own family is concerned), what an outrage this is, and, crucially, letting Harry be the voice of moderation, situates us to understand, when Harry "cuts loose" later in the book, that while his actions may have been unwise, they were not excessive, immoral, or unjustified. Hell, in another nine books, he's going to effectively commit genocide against the Red Court, and this helps situate that as acceptable too. Which, to be clear, it is. The reds are monsters, at minimum a 2.5 on the Mind Flayer Scale. That justifies genocide. But oh wow does it ever make me even less comfortable with the comparison of Red Court vampires to Philistines. Like, this is good setup, very strong series writing, but did you have to bring real world religious conflict into it? 

Michael asks if it might not be one of the other vampires, but Harry doesn't think it's likely. A vampire powerful enough to pull this off would have overthrown Bianca by now, unless they were part of her inner circle. But that apparently consists solely of Kyle and Kelly, who have both been ruled out, Kyle directly and Kelly for not having the necessary "presence of mind". I would very much like to know how Harry is so sure that there's no one else in Bianca's inner circle, but maybe Red Court vamps always only have two trusted lieutenants, so even though Harry didn't know Kelly and Kyle existed until...night before last, now that he's aware of them he can fill out the organizational flowchart from there. Presumably he assumes that Bianca's "shadows" are other vampires. And I suppose his failure to consider that as Bianca's elevation must have had the signoff, if not the active support of someone who standards above her in the Court, there may well be a higher ranking vampire currently in Chicago, if not in attendance at this shindig, to the head trauma. 

Photo by rihab kaci on Unsplash

They're looking around for "Hamlet" when Harry catches sight of a red-cloaked figure approaching quickly and stealthily from behind the ferns. Michael pulls a knife, and Harry grabs them, but when the hood falls back, it's Susan, dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. The picnic basket full of weapons may be a reference to the 1999 Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Fear Itself", in which Buffy did the same thing, but the idea is straightforward enough for two people to have had it independently. But we need to talk about symbolism and foreshadowing again. Fortunately, Little Red Riding Hood's story is much shorter and simpler than Samson's, and I feel comfortably assuming that my readers are familiar with the basic details. I will note here only that in the oldest written versions clearly identifiable as Little Red Riding Hood or Little Red Cap, there is no woodsman, no rescue, but that rescues do feature in many of the older stories which (may) comprise its precursors. 

Conventional interpretations of Little Red Riding Hood often focus on maturity and sexuality, noting elements like the disobedience, or going astray, in stopping to pick flowers, the symbolism of the red hood or hat, the fear of being consumed, and the symbolic rebirth of emergence from the wold's belly. Some modern analysis envisions the wold specifically as a rapist, and revisionist retellings often feature either Little Red Cap and/or her grandmother defending themselves from the wolf, or the girl embracing her own wildness (typically but not exclusively sexual) and engaging with the wolf on her own terms. This set of interpretations is probably out most useful in reading the immediate foreshadowing presented by Susan's costume. Harry and Susan will both experience violent, sexualized, traumatic shifts in the trajectory of their characters in this book. Susan, of course, ends up as a half-vampire, and while both her entry into that state and its ramifications are clearly rough on her (and end in her death, eventually), the Susan we see two books from now is more mature, perhaps more comfortable in her own skin and certainly better contained by it (in the sense that she has firmer boundaries and internalizes more of what she feels, although the tattoos serves as something of a literalization), and stronger in most conventionally accepted senses of the word. Harry, on the other hand...kind of breaks. We'll get into that more when we get there, not least because this post already needs a lengthy disclaimer and I'd rather it didn't need a lengthy content warning as well. I will, however, note briefly that it radically alters his relationship with his own sexuality. It also prompts him to embrace, if not unreservedly, his own power, his own wildness, his own destructive capability, and seems to shake him, a little, out of the deny-ignore mentality he's displayed towards how own raw strength. He also, y'know, starts a war, a thing the participation in which has been regarded as a mark of or prerequisite for adult masculinity by a lot of humans for at least the past several thousand years. To be clear, as with a lot of the foreshadowing in this book, someone reading it for the first time could not reasonably predict what's coming, but it helps make things feel earned, effective, and natural when we do realize it. 

There is also the fairly central image of the wolf wearing the grandmother's clothing. Lea is gonna be explicitly associated with that in a few pages, so let's take that and run with it. Lea is a mentor to Harry, however messed up their relationship might be, and quite possible to Maeve as well, given her closeness to Mab. And by the end of this book, Nemesis will be using her as a disguise to infiltrate Winter and infect Maeve. None of the other Nemesis carriers we know about are notable mentor figures, much less female mentor figures to Harry specifically, but notably three of them do have white hair, which is a grandmother sort of thing to have. Four if you count Tessa's "silvery gray", and if she's infected, which if I remember correctly has not been confirmed at the time of this writing. So there's that. 

Anyway, Harry asks Susan what she even got in, and she explains, rather complacently, that she had a copy of Harry's invitation made. He starts trying (badly, but like, concussions, sleep deprivation, drugs, panic) to explain how much danger she's really in, but she tells him, essentially, that she's going to be fine because she knows the rules for vampire safety. (She does, in fact, know them). Harry tells her she doesn't understand, she demands to know what she doesn't understand, and Lea cuts in to explain that without a legitimate invitation, she has no protection from the laws of hospitality. 

Holy shit, okay, I think we're setting a new record here for Late Post, Long Post. Of you want the next post that unexpectedly rivals some shorter Master's theses to not take like three months, please consider becoming a Patron so I can spend more time on this and less on the work that pays the bills. Next chapter won't take this long, I swear. It will also, I sincerely hope, be considerably shorter. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!

Chicken and Rice for People Who Can't Be Trusted With Perishable Ingredients

Photo by MChe Lee on Unsplash

 Hi, yeah, hi. I know it's been approximately forever since I got a post up, and it may be a while yet. My
post on Grave Peril Chapter 26 is well underway, but it's been research intensive and is shaping up to be very long, as I had to summarize an entire story from the Bible and discuss the foreshadowing implied by each of its elements. So, while I'm finishing that up, here is the recipe for the meal I make more often than any other by an actual order of magnitude. This is writing related inasmuch as it is excellent for people who are distractible in the short term, scattered in the long term, and perpetually broke. The only two absolutely essential ingredients have been common offerings at every food pantry I've ever visited, and cost $3.50 for two batches at my local Walmart, even under current greedflation prices. It requires perhaps five minutes of concerted effort, two of which you can spend sitting on the kitchen floor, and dirties a maximum of three dishes and three utensils, counting those used to eat, none of which are pots or pans. Once it's going, it will be ready in 20-30 minutes, but you can forget about it for up to three hours before it suffers any observable ill effects, and eight before any portion of it is likely to be rendered inedible or hard to clean. I use a 2 cup Pyrex measuring cup and a tiny, pink, two cup capacity rice cooker for this. Alterations and substitutions are discussed below, but I would recommend doing your measuring in a microwave safe container.

Ingredients

1 cup white rice (dry)

1 4.5 oz can of chicken (same size as normal tuna can)

1 cube chicken bullion

1 cup water

Poultry seasoning

Directions

1. Measure out the rice and put it in the rice cooker.
2. Measure out 1 cup of water and drop in the bullion cube. 
3. Put the water in the microwave and start it for 2:30 minutes on high. 
4. Open the can of chicken. You can drain it or not, I usually don't. 
5. Put the chicken in the rice cooker. 
6. Add 2 generous pinches of poultry seasoning to the chicken and rice, or sprinkle until the entire surface looks lightly coated. 
7. Using the rice tool that came with the rice cooker, or another nonmetal implement, mix until combined thoroughly, and break up some of the bigger chunks of chicken, especially if you're planning to share.
8. When the microwave finishes, remove water. 
9. Stir until bullion is completely dissolved. If it proves stubborn, crush it against the side of the cup. 
10. Pour the chicken broth into the rice cooker. 
11. Start the rice cooker. 

My rice cooker has two settings - cook, and warm. If yours is more complicated, use whatever settings you would ordinarily use with the same quantity of plain white rice. If you have a 10 cup capacity rice cooker, I would advise doubling the recipe, as the larger heating element can cause it to dry out rather quickly otherwise. This recipe can comfortably be doubled or more by maintaining the ratio of 1 cup of water - 1 bullion cube - 1 cup of rice - 1 can of chicken. You can also use one big can of chicken for every two cups of rice. Brown rice may be substituted for white, but use 1.5 cups of water instead. (It's up to you whether you want to use 1 bullion cube, use two, or split one in half so you can use 1.5). If you have liquid chicken broth, by all means use that - it's better. It's also actually fine with plain water if you don't have bullion cubes or broth. The poultry seasoning is optional - that's my most recent addition, and you'll be fine without it. If you have leftover cooked chicken lying around, you can use about 4-5 oz of that instead of canned chicken. If you have canned (or leftover) beef, you can use that, with beef or chicken broth (liquid or started from bullion), but I haven't settled on a seasoning I like for this version. This should work fine with tuna, with dashi or chicken broth, but I haven't tried it and I would tentatively suggest lemon pepper in place of poultry seasoning. You could probably use tofu or mushrooms, and vegetable or mushroom broth, maybe with a little soy sauce, but I haven't tried that either. For microwavable rice, skip the addition of the chicken until you've zapped it for the prescribed time and it inevitably comes out undercooked, then stir it in before returning the mixture to the microwave. Feel free to play around with the seasonings if you want. 

Yes, this can be done on a stovetop. I wouldn't recommend it, because the "fire and forget" nature of the recipe is mostly lost when it risks burning if left to cook too long, but it's still an inexpensive meal with a little bit of protein and a lot of flexibility, so sure. If you already have a way of cooking stovetop rice that consistently produces good results, I have no desire whatsoever to challenge that, and you'd know better than I would when to add the chicken in that process. If not, read on.

 You must respect the rice. The process for reliably creating steamed rice is not complex, but it demands a little bit of precision and a lot of not fucking around. I'm assuming short or medium grain rice here - I can't help you with long grain.

1. Measure out 1 cup of rice and 2 cups of water or chicken broth. (Rice to water ratio should remain 1:2 if you increase recipe volume).
2. Combine in a saucepan. 
3. Open the chicken and drain it. 
4. Cook on high until the rice and liquid have just started to boil. 
5. Reduce temperature to low and quickly stir in the chicken. 
6. Cover, and allow to cook on low for 20 minutes.  Do not lift the lid. Do. Not. Lift. The. Lid. DO NOT LIFT THE LID. The rice is being steamed and for that to go as intended the steam must remain in the pot. Do you understand?
   
7. Remove from heat promptly. You may now lift the lid. 

Whether you use the rice cooker or the stove, you can serve the chicken and rice however you usually eat white rice, or really however you want. I usually use like, 3 tablespoons of butter and 4 tablespoons of lemon juice for half the rice. My partner uses salt, pepper, and a normal amount of butter. I keep meaning to try it with sriracha mayo but then forgetting. It's pretty good with just butter. Like, one of the major functions of this for me is it's almost no effort over plain white rice, but there's some cheap animal protein in there. 

Yeah, that's my recipe, the thing I eat All The Time. Honestly it feels a bit obvious spelling it out, but the transition from "Yeah, we'll have plain buttered rice again" to this took months of fussing around and having new thoughts about it, so perhaps I might spare someone else the same experimentation. I'm working on the Chapter 26 reread post, I really am. Until I finish it (and transcribe it, eeg), be gay, do crimes, and read all the things!

Dresden Files Reread - Grave Peril Chapter 25

Photo by DANNY G on Unsplash

It's very tense for a minute there, and Harry and Michael get ready for a fight, until Thomas laughs, and delicately implies that it reflects badly on Bianca's hospitality for everyone to get so upset. Harry takes the cue and follows up with a remark about how "this was a masquerade ball, wasn't it?". Bianca is described here, and I had not previously noticed how much she looks like Anita Blake, titular protagonist of one of the oldest series that fits tidily into the tradition of urban fantasy that The Dresden Files helped popularize. Anita, however, probably would not wear a dress made of fire, although she's scarcely to be seen without heels that do "interesting" things to the shape of her legs. She's objectively attractive, especially with the way she's smiling, but Harry isn't interested - he's seen her true, creepy, bat face. We also get the cameo by Cowl and Kumori here, dressed as the shadows to her flame. While there's no real way to catch it on a first read, this is one of the first real pieces of the Nemesis puzzle, and it makes some of the others easier to put together if you're watching for it. It's confirmed in Dead Beat that these two were Cowl and Kumori. In Proven Guilty, we find out that Lea's obvious madness and present ice cube status were the result of the knife she was given at this very party. In White Night, we see that Madrigal and Vittorio are working with Cowl, and then Vittorio calls on an Outsider. Technically, this makes it possible to work out the origin of much of the "world is getting darker" stuff several books ahead of schedule. There are obvious similarities between what's wrong with Kumori and what's wrong with Aurora, and we know they're in the "handing out cursed magic objects" business because of the athame, making it at least plausible that they were also involved with the wolf belts in Fool Moon. Based on the evidence as of the end of White Night, these two can be linked to enough of events of the first 10 books to make their involvement with the rest plausible as a matter of consistency, and their connection with the Outsiders, while less thoroughly reinforced, has sufficient support to situate them as a link between the Outside and those events, making it possible, just barely, to extrapolate that the Outsiders are systematically stirring up trouble and making people lose their baskets. 

In any event, Bianca implies that she's going to eat Harry, and he responds, more directly, that she oughtn't try it. She gives her people tacit permission to go after him, if they can manage it without being too overt, or at least that's how Harry interprets it. This prompts Harry to remember how nice the venom to which he was exposed to yesterday was. File under: Harry is in pretty much constant emotional and physical pain, and has a corresponding vulnerability to things that make him feel better; nothing that can reasonably be described as "narcotic" tends to hold much appeal for people who aren't someways hurting. They descend into the main courtyard, where Thomas reconnects with them, and tells Harry his entrance was "marvelous". He says he couldn't let it descend into a general brawl, though, because it would reduce the opportunities for intrigue. This is probably mostly a cover for helping Harry, but it's also a very White Court way of looking at it, and places an emphasis on their not only preferring to avoid direct confrontation, but actively seeking out opportunities to engage in social and political machinations, which is certainly present in their later appearances but gets less attention. Unfortunately, their conversation is interrupted when he has to go retrieve Justine from a Red Court guy who's hitting on her. 

Photo by Tetiana Padurets on Unsplash

No sooner has he left them, then Michael notes that they're being surrounded. The majority of the attendees are humans, dressed largely in black, with red ribbons around an arm of neck marking out those who are fair game for feeding. This is very reasonable and well organized, honestly, except for the part where Red Court venom is supernaturally addictive and our human feeder fish therefore can't reasonably be said to have given meaningful consent. But it's a good system. The actual Red Court vampires, in very literal contrast, are all dressed in red, and a few moments observation of the crowd confirms that they're forming a ring around Harry and Michael, making it impossible for them to leave without coming in reach of at least one of them. This is a relatively subtle instance of another one of our running patterns in this series: Jim Butcher plays tabletop roleplaying games, and he pays attention to spacing. They head for the refreshments table, hoping to make themselves harder to trap, and partially succeed - most of their pursuers can't maintain formation without being obvious, but Kyle and Kelly intercept them at table. Kelly has everything except the lower part of her face covered, to hide the burns she got fighting Harry earlier, and Harry makes a remark about her hitting the tanning bed a little too long. He was apparently hoping to provoke her into attacking him, presumably, although it's not explicated quite yet, because if she, and through her the Red Court, breaks the rules first, he can fight back, and move the inherent conflict of this event into a sphere with which he's more comfortable, but she smiles and hands him a glass of wine instead. Kyle expresses his regret that Susan couldn't be here, which is...interesting. I may need to take back my earlier assertion that Harry might have done better to bring Susan along in the first place. Kyle isn't terribly smooth or subtle, as vampires go, and in light of what happens later, it's hard not to read this at an indication that Susan's attendance at this party was both planned for and arranged. Which, uh...guys? I think we might have been too hard on Susan here. Bianca isn't Nicodemus. It's not her established style to go for a small win (making Harry have a really stressful, unproductive evening, or getting him into trouble with the Council for skipping the party entirely) while rolling the dice on a bigger one (starting a war between the Council and the Red Court). We know, with the benefit of the 12 or 13 books that follow this one, the power she serves, and it doesn't operate like that either. Nemesis is careful and systematic, and not given especially to opportunism. Bianca's plan doesn't work if Susan isn't here. I'm sure there was a contingency in place for if she arrived as an invited guest (they managed to kidnap Justine, although I don't remember how they made that work), but she had to be here. And some amount of hypnotism and mind control are within the established Red Court power set - they can't all do it, but if memory serves Paulo Ortega is in Chicago right now, and if Arianna can call upon the Eebs then so can he. There's also a known mind-invader running around, against whom Susan hasn't been warned and has no particular defenses. I don't think it's her fault, or even Harry's, that she made the incredibly bad decision to come to this party. I think someone made her do it. 

Kelly makes a remark about Harry being into men, which is the second time Harry's sexuality has been brought up in as many chapters, and at least the third time in this book. He takes it in stride, so she escalates, and despite Harry's warning her against it, tries to touch Michael. Naturally, she burns the shit out of her hand. Harry basically says "I told you so", and Kyle is so angry he nearly drops his flesh mask. Harry tells him to go ahead and break the peace first, if he wants, the White Council will squish this entire place, which is of course what this whole exchange was mostly here to do - remind the reader of the rules of hospitality that govern this entire event, and the consequences for breaking them. As I said last chapter, Jim Butcher is getting better at using foreshadowing effectively and giving out information at the pace he wants. The twins stalk off, but now people are staring at them, so Harry proposes a toast "to hospitality", and drains his entire glass. So of course a moment later, when he's barely had time to tell Michael that he ruled out Kyle and Kelly, as far as who's controlling the Nightmare, Thomas reappears to inform them that the wine is poisoned. 

I don't remember off the top of my head whether every chapter at this party ends with something this dire, but twice in a row certainly looks like the beginning of a pattern. I'll try not to keep you in suspense too long. Until next time, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!

Dresden Files Reread - Grave Peril Chapter 24

Photo by Mateus Campos Felipe on Unsplash

As they pull up to Bianca's mansion, Michael asks Harry to explain in more detail why they're at this party. So Harry runs him through the chain of reasoning: Someone is stirring up the spirit world in order to create the Nightmare, Lydia is somehow connected to the Nightmare, Bianca sent Kelly and Kyle to kidnap Lydia. This makes a pretty convincing case that Bianca is somehow involved with the Nightmare, as it would be a bit of a stretch to suppose that Lydia was involved with two completely unrelated supernatural entities. Even if Bianca isn't directly involved, though, she's currently hosting a party for most of the major bad guys currently local to Chicago, so there's a reasonable chance that whoever is involved, whichever dark power was feeding the Nightmare when Harry confronted it in the previous chapter, is going to be at this thing. This reasoning holds up pretty well, and doesn't hinge on any of the dubious parts of Harry's current theory. It was also a remarkably solid decision to review it all here, not least because, if I remember correctly, we're getting close to the part where things start not making any sense, and it's good to know that we've got a firm foundation under us when the nonsense starts. Now that Harry has felt the power of whoever or whatever is controlling the Nightmare, he should be able to identify them again, and a party like this is an excellent opportunity to vibe check a lot of bad guys and monsters all at once. It's a reasonable plan. 

Michael is not thrilled with...any of this, really. He doesn't like the plan, he doesn't want to be at the extremely dangerous party full of monsters, and he'd really like to know why the Nightmare didn't go after Harry as soon as the sun was down. Harry suggests that the Nightmare might be afraid to go after him, since he was able to bind it, but I don't think even Harry finds this idea terribly convincing, and Michael certainly doesn't. Nor is he especially reassured by Harry's insistence that they'll be protected by the laws of hospitality, which is honestly fair given that he's not willing to abide by them himself, if he sees innocent people in danger. As much as Harry is valid for wanting armed backup, I feel like he might actually have done better to bring Susan, who isn't much less adept at navigating supernatural politics, whose presence isn't in and of itself an insult to their hosts, and who probably could be relied upon to follow the rules if Harry explained properly. Before they go in, Michael asks Harry to pray with him, or at least shut up for a minute to he can pray. Harry reflects on how he doesn't really understand God, or trust most religious people. Which is fair, at least from his position, but then he thinks that he doesn't know how God can look at the way people treat one another and not chalk the entire human race up as a bad idea. As we say on Tumblr, I mean, God did look at the way people treat one another and chalk the entire human race up as a bad idea. That was a pretty significant thing that happened. Like I understand where you're coming from here but God very much did look at the way people treat one another and chalk the entire human race up as a bad idea. And the reason He hasn't done it since, at least according to the set of beliefs under discussion here, is basically that he pinky promised not to, after that one time. I would love to know what exactly Harry's background with Christianity is. It's established in one of the middle books that he knows the Pslams pretty well, and in Proven Guilty that he's not familiar with the Parable of the Talents, but does he seriously not know the story of Noah's Arc? Dude was in foster care for like seven years, between the ages of six and thirteen and he was never forced to attend Sunday School? That...that might actually be significant. We see full Wizards of the White Council from most of the larger religions, but smalltime practitioners are, at least if the ones we meet in White Night, and the supplies stocked at Bock Ordered Books, are anything to go by, are disproportionately neopagan and Buddhist. If the Council had a hand in arranging his care, which seems at least plausible, they'd naturally want him with people over whom they held some sway, and that's not a group that trends strongly to regular church attendance. Come to think of it, this would also help account for how Justin found him so quickly after his power manifested. Justin was no longer associated with the Council himself at that point, but he certainly still had contacts, and I imagine it caused something of a stir when word got around that Maggie le Fey's youngest came into his power. This would leave open the question of why they let Justin take him, but I can see a few possibilities. 1. They considered his going to the dark side a foregone conclusion in any case so they figured they'd watch and wait until he actually broke one of the Laws and then raid the house, take down Du Morne and both his apprentices in one fell swoop. 2. Justin's lair was somehow concealed from the Council (reasonably well supported by their failing to do anything about the rogue Warden for like, years). 3 They just didn't care that much.

Photo by Rebecca Matthews on Unsplash

They park on the street, rather than trust Michael's truck to a vampire valet, and arrive at just about the same time as Thomas and Justine, in their probably-Eros-and-Psyche couples costume, both scantily clad and unreasonably attractive, although considerably more page space is devoted to Justine's legs than to Thomas's supernatural beauty.  Thomas recognizes Harry, which weirds Harry right the hell out. He introduces himself, and we're informed that there are three vampire Courts, Red, White, and Black, which Harry claims he already knows, although I don't know that he actually did, and that the Black Court has "fallen on hard times". While I still don't think the situation with Kravos being dead is presented very smoothly, the effort has clearly improved Butcher's gradual reveal skills, because the little things, like information about the vampire Courts, and Harry's costume, are handled very well. Thomas walks them in and tries to give Harry a sense of what to expect. They'll be presented to the other guests and have time to mingle, and then they'll be formally introduced to Bianca who, as the host, will give them gifts. Harry asks why Thomas is being helpful (beginning of pattern, noted!) and Thomas pretty well dodges the question. He does, however, shake Harry's hand, and while he definitely has a magical aura, it's not the one they're looking for. 

As Harry and Michael enter the courtyard where the party is happening, they're hit with a blinding spotlight and announced as "Harry Dresden, Wizard of the White Council, and guest". Whether the spotlight was intentionally turned up and pointed into his eyes in order to embarrass and inconvenience him is left as an exercise for the reader. We finally get a description of Harry's cheesy vampire costume, with the tattered blue tuxedo and the fake blood and all. The gathered monsters get their first good look at it at the same time, and everyone goes for a weapon. 

And on that tense, cliff-hangery note, I leave you for the time being. I'm much happier with how this post, written on the computer like my previous Dresden Files post was, turned out, and it is much faster, so I think we'll be sticking with this for the time being. Until next time, be Gay, do Crimes, and read All The Things!

Writing from Emotion

Photo by Ethan Hoover on Unsplash

It occurred to me a couple of days ago that I wrote a post last year about how to, metaphorically speaking,  put your toys away without messing up any half-finished puzzles or Lego creations, but I never actually talked about the writing technique it goes with. If I was ever taught this as a way to write, I've long since forgotten where or when, and there's a good chance I've modified it out of recognition in any case. It draws from the meditation lesson scenes in Cold Fire by Tamora Pierce, and from a description of what was probably metta meditation that I caught on NPR when I was like 12, but that was 20 years ago and it hasn't much in common with either. I wouldn't necessarily consider this a meditation thing, at least, not any more so than any other internally oriented writing technique. Do be a little careful with this - it involves deliberately getting into a heightened emotional state, and might not interact well with everyone's mental health stuff. 

Start by setting the scene a little. Light some incense, or a scented candle, or heck, even a regular candle. Use a scent that matches the vibes of what you're working on, or just one you like. Put on some music, in line with the emotion you're using, the one you want to pervade the piece, or that prompted it, or emotionally neutral. If you already have a playlist for the story, scene, ship, or character, that should work just fine. Unless you live alone somewhere very quiet, the music is probably more important than the incense, because it's a light check against auditory disruption. Position yourself comfortably, ideally in a way that is not wholly incompatible with writing, and in which you are not unduly likely to fall asleep. Have your writing tools ready to hand. This works better if you're properly rested and not in a great deal of physical discomfort, but with practice it's doable, except maybe if you really have to pee. Go take care of that now if you need to. While you're at it, make sure you have something to drink. Room temperature is best, but warm is better than cold. The mammalian dive reflex is not conducive to what we're trying to do here. 

Now, you need to access the emotion you're writing from. Depending on your current headspace and how alexithymic you are, this might be as easy as breathing, or very, very hard. (More alexithymic is not necessarily worse here - a tendency to experience emotions as physical sensations is, up to a point, a benefit here). If you're writing fanfiction, think about the things from your source text that gave you the feels you're currently writing about. If you're writing original fiction, think about an earlier moment in your story that had similar emotionality, or something from another story or your own life that gives you those feelings. Keep trying until you feel something. 

Once you have that emotion, locate it in your body, and let it expand until it fills you to the skin. This will probably be very hard at first, especially if you're working with an uncomfortable emotion. This isn't how we're used to feeling things, even when we're reasonably well-adjusted, which most writers aren't, usually we're either doing something with an emotion (talking about it, laughing or crying, punching someone in the face), or we keep it kinda contained. It might go easier if you try to keep your hands and face still, but let your heart rate and breathing do what they're gonna do. You're trying to let the emotion build without giving it anywhere to go. 

Photo by Tengyart on Unsplash

Once you've got that, think about what you're writing. For something you already have underway, go back over the past couple paragraphs in your head, unless you already know they aren't right. For a new story or scene, consider what's supposed to happen, whatever summary or sketchy outline exists in your head. "Blorbo and Skrungly meet at the cafe and experience Feelings" is quite sufficient here, but if you can already see the way Blorbo's hands look on the register, the color of Scrungly's turtleneck sweater, if you already know he's going to ask about the blueberry scones, by all means throw that in there, and then just... Keep doing that until something comes to you. Often, I get about 2/3 of a scene, dropped in my head like it was brought over in a truck and delivered on a pallet. Sometimes, it's the whole scene, and once, it was two. Sometimes it's the exact line of dialogue I need to get going again. Occasionally, it's a single image, or I don't "get" anything until I actually look at the document, just a sense of urgency, when the ache in my chest becomes a kind of itching. 

Importantly, do not resist. Part of why this works is that heightened emotion slows down your critical thinking. But when you get something, you can't just say "Oh, no, this isn't what I wanted". I mean, you can, but you'd better say it while you sit down to write it anyway. You don't have to keep it in the final draft. You don't have to post or publish it, but you do have to write it. You have to trust that it needs to get written. It might turn out to be something for later in the book, or a story that needed to get out of the way to make room for the thing you were trying to write. It might be the beginning of something you've been trying not to write. But you can't keep that channel open if you turn back what comes through it. And very often, it is what needs to happen next, even if it's not what you planned. 

If my experience is anything to go by, the writing will probably go faster than us otherwise usual for you, although I suspect that if you are already fast, the difference will be less pronounced, but it will not be effortless. You may still struggle for exact descriptions, what precisely is said, or how to arrange the words to convey two things that are happening at the same time. Hold on to the emotion you're writing from, use it as an energy source of you can. If you're not done when you need to stop writing, I suggest banking the fire to make it easier to resume when the time comes, and to facilitate acting like a functional member of society in the interim. 

If this all sounds a bit intricate, well, it is, at least at first, but it gets easier, at least with practice, and a lot of the ritual may eventually become unnecessary unless you are really stuck. I can do it in a couple minutes sometimes, without music or incense, even with other people in the room, while reading a book on my phone with the Google doc open in the background so it's ready when I need it. I only break out the tools when I've been unable to make real progress for a couple of weeks. 

I've been writing this post in my head for a couple of weeks now, so I'm glad to actually have it on paper. Next post will be more Dresden Files. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things. 

Dresden Files Reread - Grave Peril Chapter 23

Photo by PhotographyCourse on Unsplash

Harry and Michael went on a shopping trip between chapters, gathering ritual supplies while Harry read Kravos's journal. Kravos was, apparently, a very thorough notetaker, going into disturbing detail about how he committed, and enjoyed, multiple murders. Fortunately, he recorded his search for a familiar demon, and the exact pronunciation of its name, with equal thoroughness. We get a refresher on how thaumaturgy works, including the different things a practitioner can use to create the necessary connection - you can use a physical representation of the person, any part of their body, or their Name. Human Names are difficult to use, and have an expiration date, because humans' self-concept is so flexible. If they're in a radically different headspace from where they were when you got their Name, or if enough time, or a significant enough life event, has passed that their sense of self has naturally shifted, it may not work at all - and you have to get it from them directly, no copying off a dead sorcerer's homework. Demons, on the other hand, are unchanging in their essential natures, and their Names are similarly immutable. 

Harry is trying to summon the Nightmare, and he's got everything he needs now, although he's having some twitchiness about working in the dark, even though it's daylight outside. There's some inconsistency about what time it is here. We're told at the very beginning of the chapter that it's "still full daylight" outside, which tracks with the assertion that they spent "most of the morning" gathering supplies. That should make it early afternoon right now, and while it would certainly have made sense for Harry to take a nap before starting the summoning, there's nothing to establish that he did. Sunset in autumn in Chicago is gonna be around either five or six pm, depending on whether it's before or after Daylight Savings. It's entirely possible that it's the tail end of October and the day sunset gets an hour earlier actually snuck up on Our Heroes while they were distracted, but that doesn't actually reduce the number of sunlit hours in a day, it just moves them. So I'm a little confused how it's meant to be, as Michael asserts a little later, only 45 minutes to sundown. Where did the other roughly 4 hours go? It doesn't take that long to set up a circle. In any event, he's got five white candles, and items representing all the people the Nightmare has targeted already or is likely to: his own shield bracelet, Michael and Charity's wedding rings, Murphy's office nameplate (a big deal, since she's the first director of SI who held the job long enough to get a real nameplate), and Mallone's retirement watch. He puts up a circle with incense, to contain the power of the spell, with enough room to stand inside it but outside the copper summoning circle. He doesn't use a second set of five items to represent the five senses here, which may indicate that summoning works differently from other rituals. 

As soon as he has the circle up, but mercifully before the summoning is properly underway, Michael calls down to ask whether he's done yet, and says the aforementioned about it only being 45 minutes until sundown. He's not pleased when Harry says he[s just getting started, which is understandable, given that he's not especially comfortable with magic in the first place, and he's anxious to get back to hovering over Charity. I do wish that in his decade or more of knowing Harry, his discomfort with magic hadn't prevented him from learning the first thing about it, such as "interruptions are potentially dangerous". The first step is to cut a small portal of the same type one would use to enter the Nevernever, inside the circle. This makes a lot of sense and, if I remember correctly, never comes up in any subsequent summoning, so now I have to wonder how any of the other beings he summons actually got through the veil between worlds. He makes a kind of prismatic mist by throwing water into the magical energy field of the spell, then cuts his finger and dabs blood on the edge of the circle. It hurts way more than a cut finger usually should, and the pain gets worse when he has to push the spell harder, which suggests that the pain is either part of a cost associated with the spell or a built-in signal to let the caster know if they're putting too much into it. The spell doesn't initially connect to anything, not until Harry guides it with his sense of the Nightmare. It does not seem to occur to him that this means the number he has dialed has been disconnected or no longer in service - possible, it's less surprising since this is supposed to be the demon's ghost, which might be less connected to the Name it carried while alive. 

Photo by Evie S. on Unsplash

He's just got ahold of it when Michael interrupts him again, this time to tell him that Susan is on the phone and she has something important she needs to talk to him about. He's persistent, continuing to try to convince Harry to take the phone even after the third or fourth time Harry expresses that he's in the middle of something. I don't think we see Michael Carpenter: The Man With Zero Perspective again after this book, and thank the Light for that. Okay, sure, he knows nothing about magic (except that it's pretty well established by this point that he does), and doesn't want to know what Harry's doing, but he's capable of recognizing what it sounds like when someone is actively struggling with a supernatural being! Finally freed from distraction, Harry asks the Nightmare who sent it, but it insists that no one did, that no one compelled it to hurt the people it attacked. It also threatens to continue coming after Harry's friends, their children, et cetera... So either it's lying about not having been sent, which I'm not sure it possible under the circumstances, or it does understand about love and friendship, which would mean it's not a demon. Harry doesn't really have time to consider the implications, though, because a third party starts feeding power to the Nightmare, power that matches the barbed wire spells, and he has to act quickly if he wants to get anything productive out of this endeavor. In another reasonably cool application of previously established magical principles, he uses the chunk of his power that's still inside the Nightmare as a point of connection for a spell to bind it, compelling it to only come after him, as long as he's alive. Then he has to lie down on the floor for a few minutes.  

Michael, having apparently recovered his characterization as a fellow competent monster hunter, built up the fire while Harry was downstairs, and fetches him a sandwich and a can of coke while Harry fills him in. He's a lot more concerned than Harry is about the part where the demon is now not only coming after Harry but likely to kill him as quickly and efficiently as it can, rather than playing with him like a cat toy and thereby allowing time for a rescue. He's also not sure how much help he can be in dealing with the Nightmare, since he doesn't have his sword anymore. Harry reassures him that God isn't gonna abandon him over one mistake, and stresses that he needs Michael, and that they'll get just as dead standing around doing nothing. Michael puts his big, strong, calloused hand over Harry's, and wow, male writers in the 1990s just absolutely could not recognize homoeroticism even while actually writing it, huh? Like, we're in "There was so much he wanted to say to Mat" territory here. I'll note that this was the era in which progressive men could sincerely express the belief that all women are bisexual, apparently with zero self-awareness. Anyway, Michael asks what their next step is. Harry picks up the invitation from Kyle and Kelly, and tells Michael they're going to a party. Funny thing, though, the invitation isn't in the same place he left it. 

This was my first shot at writing one of these on the computer, rather than drafting in a notebook and then typing it up. I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the results, but I was also sick for the entire week and a half I've been working on this, so I don't know how much of that's down to the process. We'll try it again next time and see if it works better when my lungs and sinuses aren't full of goo. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read all the things!