The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here
TheCuriousFan:
As you've read a lot of Dresden fan stuff online, has there ever been something that you've found on there that you've seen and thought to yourself "hey that was a really good idea" and incorporated it into the story?
Probably. I can't think of anything specific because once the book is written it's out of my head and gone, I've got the next one to think about. But yeah I'm pretty sure, I don't think it's from any of the online discussions but lots of times from talking to friends about it. I mean I've done stuff and been driving along in the car on a roadtrip and just nobody said anything for forty five minutes and suddenly I go "Justine's pregnant" and then I kind of get this *glance* "that's nice Jim". I do this stuff all the time I just start talking in the middle of a conversation that I've been having with myself with somebody else as though they've heard the conversation. I'm sorry Kitty but- where'd you go- stuff like that happens- oh there she is. But yeah chatting about stuff, it's normally not online discussions because by the time I'm going to online discussions I'm not really in a creative mindset, I'm in a famous guy talking to people mindset because I have to pretend to be somebody else to be able to talk to people. Rest of the time I'm just sort of at home, honestly if I could have just stayed home on the couch with the dog this weekend that would have been amazing. But also coming here is fun too, but in my heart of hearts that's what heaven looks like, it's a comfortable couch, a really good book and a dog and just waiting on Kitty to get home from work. That is a wonderful time. I'm a boring person really.
What do you read? *different person* Parks and Rec?
Oh Parks and Rec obviously. I think I've watched all the way through Parks and Rec like, eleven times now. That's our stress TV show when there's stress or depression Parks and Rec goes on because it's hard to be stressed and depressed with Parks and Rec on.
I have a question, Murphy is my favourite character, and finding out that she has a large family of cops and ex-husbands and-
Yeah big Irish cop families in Chicago, real weird.
I was just curious about if we're ever gonna see them again and what their opinion is on her new employment situation.
Okay I can talk about this because it's not really in the books and I doubt it's gonna come out anywhere anytime soon so I'll just come out and tell you. When she retired it was under a cloud, it was under a big cloud and that had to give her entire family pause and so that sort of thing tends to enhance and exaggerate existing relationships to whatever the next level of that relationship is. So if you're just sort of annoyed with somebody then you just don't like them anymore after something like that or if you like somebody and you decide you're going to keep liking somebody when they're under a cloud like that /you like them a lot, they're your brother/, like that, that's the kind of thing that happens. So she's become a big, not exactly a pariah but a point of contention in her family so she's been avoiding them a lot. Because people get in fights when she's there, they also get in fights when she's not there cause they're free to talk about her so... It's an Irish catholic family there's all kinds of conflicting things going on there.
So with the licensing quagmire no longer being such a tepid pit of despair, who would you picture for your ideal dream cast for a feature set of films?
*43:50 to 45:30 because I don't know any actor names so this answer might as well be unintelligible for me*
In the Cinder Spires, once the cats give a person a name, will they ever change it if it becomes inappropriate like Tiny is?
Oh absolutely they will. If you do something to distinguish yourself that is worthy of a name, whether it is something bold and brave or something really boneheaded, you get the name. That's the way how that works, you get named after the things you've done and the choices you've made and it's the same with the cats. If he acts like a jerk they'll roll their eyes and give him a stupid name, I mean he'll still be an honorary cat but they'll just be snide to him.
Hi, first of all I just want to say that your book series, the Dresden Files, is my favourite.
Thank you very much.
It's surpassed Harry Potter for me and I didn't think that was possible.
That makes me feel good. As I said thank you very much.
My question is, I saw a tweet from you about the possibility of a series coming out for television for the Dresden Files. Is there anything you have going on to make sure it doesn't end up like Season 8 Game of Thrones?
Absolutely nothing. The best you can do is say "listen, there's somebody that I know in Hollywood that has the appropriate skills and education to be doing this job and also happens to be somebody who's been a beta reader for me for a long time and I want them on" and they're like "that's okay and a reasonable thing" and I want to be an executive producer myself I want to have access to the writers room and say "yeah that's good" and that's about as far as I can go. I don't have the money to make even one episode of TV happen. I couldn't do a feature length- I could do a full feature length Hollywood trailer if I spent all the money I've ever earned. That's big stuff, you've got to have some serious juice behind you to get those things done. But I'm gonna do everything I can and that's going to amount to showing up and doing everything I can to make sure the writing is solid and then doing everything I can-trying to be the guy that helps think of ways around problems, hopefully I can do that in a useful fashion that would be great.
I just want to thank you for that because I really love the series.
Hello.
I love your hair it looks real cool.
Thank you *shakes hair*. You know I married into a fae court so it's just how it is.
*audience laughter*
So you swore fealty to Mab or something.
No I got married. I don't want to talk about any deals Kitty may or may not have with various supernatural entities, that's family business I'm not gonna bring it up with you all. Yeah. But I died it for the wedding and I thought "I like blue" and that was about my thought process.
Was the Spanish Flu a cover explanation or a side effect of the necromancy being done by Kemmler?
Oh you're clever, aren't you? I like you *nods his head*. That's my answer.
*audience laughter*
Does the White Court have any way to compensate for or make exceptions for wizards or any magic magic user with special needs?
What do you mean?
They physically can't move their bodies.
If a White Court vampire wants to get you all they have to do is get you alone for a bit and be able to touch you, that's all it really amounts to. But there's this whole issue with White Court vampires and wizards but we haven't gotten to that. Hahahaha, oh it's like heroin.
Are there characters who you built for the Dresden Files who didn't make it into the books who were *unintelligible*
Uh there's one character I wrote for the Dresden Files who didn't make it into the books and he- he made it in but only sort of in the background. In Grave Peril Harry and Carter LaChaise had this running thing where LaChaise kept jumping in the Blue Beetle and then various bits of Volkswagen architecture that were specific to Volkswagens kept saving Harry's life. But when my editor read it she said you've gotta cut it it makes the book too long. That was the book where the editor said "I love this book it's got this story and this story and this story and this story and I want you to expand on all four of these" and I'm like "great" "and cut it by fifty pages" "so make it longer and shorter?" and she goes "yes, and hurry." That's the writing business.
Throughout the Dresden Files were there any plot points that you wrote/that made it into the book that you personally wish you didn't have to write that way but knew you had to for the story?
No? But I've never wished I didn't have to do it that way for the story. It's /the story/, whatever needs to get done gets done and whoever needs to die dies for the story. That sounds psycho but it's absolutely true, but yeah I don't have much of a problem with that, the great thing about writing is, it's your world, you can do whatever you want, it's awesome. I don't understand why more people aren't doing it, it's amazing. Hey man.
So a mate of mine, he's in my Fate *unintelligible* give away plot points. So hypothetically speaking what effect would climate change have on the power dynamics of the summer and winter courts?
It's gonna depend. It's gonna depend on how much of it is due to choice. Free will and human choice has a lot of power in the Dresden Files and affects things very drastically. So how much of it is? How much of it isn't? These are huge questions and we're just people and not one of us lives long enough to get a really good answer because it would probably take a couple thousand years of observation of the Earth (about that), might give you a basic grasp of how it works, it's hard to say. It wouldn't be it's warmer so summer's stronger, it's colder so winter's stronger. Summer court and winter court are much more closely tied to human emotions on the planet. The winter court's a lot better because this planet's got a lot more bad stuff on it than good stuff, generally speaking, there's an awful lot of conflict, an awful lot of struggling to survive and that's all winter court stuff right there baby. When you're creating culture, when you're creating art, when you're creating beauty that feeds into the summer court. But they're there for people so they're more attached to people than they are to the natural world.
So theoretically if a winter court member were to kick off a nuclear winter, would that shift things?
Well that would get real winter real quick because suddenly life would be about nothing but survival and keeping your kids alive. And that's very much a winter court situation. Summer is when you have a little bit more time to do other things.
Do you have merchandise at your author signing later?
*no and even if he did you couldn't get it*
And a few ones I found interesting from Dragoncon 2014 that I hadn't found typed up anywhere.
I've got a question about how you've built your cosmology around the Outsiders being kind of extraplanar kind of extradimensional beings, I've noticed that the entirety of the Dresden seems very Earth-centric and I was wondering if you've given any thought to extraterrestrials, beings from another planet, and how they would fit into the Dresden universe and if you could elaborate on that at all?
It also seems very wizard-centric because the main character is a wizard on Earth. As far as extraterrestrials go, a lot of them are faeries having fun because you know, elves and little green men are kind of the same thing. But they can show up here, it would be a huge pain in the ass for aliens because if you think wizards disrupt primitive human technology you should see what happens to alien stuff. *audience laughter* Basically the aliens are like "man this place sucks, there's all these biological anomalies don't even get into orbit around that place man, that's just dangerous". You talk about crashed alien ships? Wizards. *audience laughter* Actually-okay we'll do that later but-We'll actually get to do some space stuff later but as far as the extradimensional stuff goes there's tons of extradimensional stuff, it just happens that some of them are a little bit more extradimensional or in this case non-dimensional. Because the establishment-the established canon of the Dresden Files is that the universe has been created and there are things that come in from outside of creation and don't like creation and want it gone because it's so disruptive and sucks, you know from their point of view. But that's a better story than writing the one from the outsider perspective because that's just dull, we've got to have one from home, from the human perspective. I think writing from an alien perspective would be odd, although my personal theory is that humans are nowhere near as unique and special as we like to think we are. Generally speaking, I think that humanity is a terribly terribly arrogant species, so you know it would be great to find out that people just look at us and go "yeah you're just intergalactics with bumps on your head, whatever." If we're just kind of the regular Star Trek alien-and we have eyebrows, and that's what makes you different, "yeah look at you humans, showing off your eyebrows."
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So in Skin Game you kind of had a Greek god come into play for the big Dresden universe but no idea what *unintelligible*, my question would be, are we going to see any more of the big Greek gods get in the midst?
Yes. You got to meet the reasonable one first.
Cool. Do they have certain-not winter but do faerie queens owe any certain duties to the reasonable guy?
Do they owe anything to him?
Sure. But that's actually a good one.
The whole point of Skin Game is that Mab is clearing her books, she's clearing all the red out of her ledger as it were. And that was why she was doing what she was doing but you can bet that she took care of the debts to bigger players first and worked her way down to Nicodemus so...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR6RCDkmH1I
A lot different cultures handle magic in a very very different way, and in a lot of older stories they're kept very separate but in America at least and in a lot of other places too, all these cultures and consequently these different ideas of magic, blend together in a very very interesting way. How do you guys handle that in your stories?
For the Dresden Files, this whole America fusion thing, in a historical sense it just started this past-we're only on like our second season. We kind of had that cool first season and now we're kind of wandering around I think, in the second season. But a lot of the people who were alive and especially the people who were doing magic, they were there when America was getting started. Listens To Wind, you know, he got to see the entire decline of the way of life of the native Americans, he had to live through that. People like Ebenezar and the Merlin, they were involved in the French and Indian war, so this whole America thing is new to them, it might not last, a couple hundred years, whatever. It's one of those cultural differences we have, one of my favourite sayings is "in America a hundred years is a long time, in Europe a hundred miles is a long drive". We've got a very very different experience culturally and historically than a lot of the folks overseas.
That being said, you get a different sort of point of view of magic based on who you are. Listens to Wind has a very native American, a very shamanistic approach to magic, his magic is very much based in the natural world. The guys who are the White Council old school, who are from the old world, they've got an elemental tradition of magic that comes up from the Roman empire and developed in the Middle Ages, they're the inheritors of that school of thought. You get to somebody like Harry Dresden... Harry's got this very, I think for him I kind of think of him as more of a colonial craftsmen of magic. He's somebody more like a silversmith... he's putting together what's going to work-not a silversmith that's too highbrow, he's a blacksmith, he's a plumber of magic. He's working with magic, with these forces and he's gotta put them together to get the job done and he doesn't really have an ego about it, as long as it gets the job done it doesn't have to make him look good, it doesn't have to support the dignity of wizardry. He's got goals, he's trying to get things done. Someone who is brought up in one of the older schools will have teachers who say "but you've also gotta stop and think about all these other things", Harry had a teacher who was more like "you know what, let's teach you how to not be a psychotic killing machine first and after that we'll worry about the niceties" so there's all these niceties that he never got and Harry never went to finishing school like all these other wizards who will do stuff with style. Even younger wizards who are more his age like Chandler, who was brought up in a very British tradition and Chandler's the kind of guy who would say "but a gentleman wouldn't", that's his point of view. For Dresden, he has a much more American point of view and I think we're looking at different philosophies just based on the history they're brought up with. And poor Harry has my history so he has issues with bullies, so stuff like that.
I was gonna ask the next question. The cloud of perpetually bad luck that seems to follow Harry, if he were to have a stretch of good luck, would that affect his magic?
Okay, the cloud of bad luck that follows Harry, is really, its you. *audience laughter* Because like I said I only write about the worst weekend he has every year, so the rest of his life doesn’t look like that just the parts that you see, you are the cloud of bad luck following him. As far as if he had a stretch of good luck- he got like twenty pounds of diamonds (anyone feel like doing a calc?) at the end of the last book *evil laughter*, let me tell you suddenly having a lot of money does not make your problems go less.
The show came out and I started doing well and there was money and all of a sudden I learned it just got more complicated- oh god. So now we get to have Dresden finding the complications, which that will be fun as well because lets face it he’s the Charlie Brown of the urban fantasy world, that's the way it is and that's the way it will be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAi-gsut4Vc
TheCuriousFan:
The person who uploaded this video was nice enough to include all the questions with timestamps in the descriptions. Once again skipping repeat questions. This one is Myths and Legends Conference 2016.
0:47 So for your audiobooks James Marsters did a fantastic job, I was wondering if you had any input on his characterisation or if it's all him?
*repeat that his input was mostly giving the green light and jumping for joy at hiring Spike*
1:50 Are you thinking of revisiting the Codex Alera, that world at all?
*repeat that we can go back to the Protoss showing up and there's no plans. Just the possibility that Jim has gambling debts*
2:40 The upcoming book is called Peace Talks. Back in White Night Lara told Harry she would destroy him with peace. Are they related?
*only says Lara is in Peace Talks*
3:14 Aeronauts Windlass I liked a lot and it seemed like you put a lot of detail into the ships and into the ship battles. Did you do a lot of research into that?
Sort of, I watched Master and Commander a lot. *audience laughter* I enjoy that kind of book, my favourite of the Trek movies is Trek 2 because it gets very Hornblower in Trek 2 in the ship to ship battle. And it's the Hornbloweriest of the Trek stories that we've seen so far. But yeah Horatio Hornblower's a favourite character of mine and then you get onto Captain Aubrey you follow up with that. And David Weber's Honor Harrington books have been a great deal of fun and it's like "I want to do nautical combat but I can't do it on ocean because you have too learn too much about it". It's /really/ specific on the ocean, like absolutely everything on a ship has it's own names and there's a phenomenal amount of learning to get it done and it is a universe unto itself, only one that actually existed. So I didn't want to go quite that deep, I just wanted broadsides and cool drama and sword fights. So I said "let's do it on airships and I can mix in some fighter plane stuff too," some World War II fighter plane stuff which is to say Star Wars dogfighting, so that was a lot of fun and I had a great time doing it.
4:50 Have you ever had characters that ended up very different to how you originally planned them? Can you have us some examples if so?
*Every character has a role but Butters is the main example of a character who ended up as more than they were intended.*
7:46 Speaking of characters, you left Cat Sith's fate sort of ambiguous. Was that intentional?
Cat Sith's fate? What? I mean obviously- off the ship and into the freezing water.
That's what happened to Harry and Harry's fine.
What's your point?
I was just wondering if Mab kidnapped him or something.
You're just trying to get more information out of me that I haven't given you yet. I see through your charade sir. I'm not gonna tell you the answer to that.
So he's alive.
8:32 Can you give us any information on the next Cinder Spires Book? Like anything at all?
The next Cinder Spires book is called the Olympian Affair. It's the two spires have begun the opening stages of a war, nobody is eager to commit all their forces yet, they're still trying to figure out who they can recruit to their team to help them. The next book is going to be especially concerned with figuring out where Spire Olympia is going to come down on the side of the war. And so we're going to be going off to Spire Olympia it's a diplomatic mission and we'll be peaceful, *audience laughter* because they always are. But we'll get to see a little bit more-we might get to go to the surface a little bit in this one and um, generally speaking we'll get to see more of the world, which is much bigger than Spire Albion. Spire Albion is very much the vanilla part of the world and so now I get to start doing more- you can't just start off in the wackiest part of the world, you've got to start off with the touchstone. And so we've started off there and now we get to start doing progressively more fun stuff, which is to say stuff the characters will not like, so.
9:55 What version of D&D is your preferred and is there a difference between being a DM and a player?
My preferred version of D&D is Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. That said, every version of D&D, except D&D 4, has it's own charm and it's own strengths to it and it's own kind of fun. D&D 4 also had it's own kind of fun it just wasn't the kind that I enjoyed. But I enjoy Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, I enjoy the fact that there's a little bit more personality written into the rules, there are are like skills for characters like Flee! with an exclamation point so it's not just Flee it's Flee! And things like that. I think it gives players a little bit more flexibility as to what they want to do with their characters and where they want to go. I like the world setting and how integrated it is with the rules, you can run D&D on anything in the world but I really enjoy Warhammer.
The difference between GMing and playing for me is I get bored with characters after two weeks and have to switch to a new one because "this character's boring, I've already done everything, I'm tired of that" as a DM I focus on-don't you come over and ask questions. *long sigh* Okay we're going to take lots of time for the rest of you so give everybody else a chance. As a DM I find that my writing has made my DMing worse so a lot of times so a lot of times I'll do my best to cliffhang the ends of sessions, I'll do things that are specifically designed to torment characters and give them a hard time. So it's- I do everything I can to troll my players that way, you know on the psychological level, and I usually have great success in doing so unless my son is playing because his counter-troll game is strong. But anyway so, there you go.
12:17 At what time did Ebenezer know that Harry existed, and does he know that Thomas is his grandson?
Not until it was too late. Not till after Justin’s death that he was able to find out. As far as Thomas, Stay Tuned. (copied from Serack)
12:44 Lots of the gods like Mab and Titania, it's implied that they used to be humans who achieved immortality through something like a Dark Hallow. Their immortal identities, are these people in fiction or fact that we would actually know who they are?
Some of them you would know who they are because some of them are historical people that have done things. Not all of them because a lot of times the people who get things done are not the people whose names you know. It's like some of the most critical events in the world-the guys who recovered the Enigma machine in WWII, do you know their names off-hand? You know Winston Churchill you know Eisenhower you know names like that, you know Patton's name. But the guys who turned the course of the war for the entire planet, they're not as well known. You could probably go find out but they're not the names that are on everybody's lips and in every textbook and it's the same thing with supernatural history the way I write it. Some of the people are famous some of them not so much, and not all of them were human at one time. Mab and Titania were but not everyone.
14:18 Within each of your novel series, writers put something of themselves in a lot of characters and they're all your children and you have a way of bringing them to where they are but which of the characters have you put most of yourself into? If you were to cast yourself in these universes, which character would you be?
Oh god, that's not even a fair question because if I was going to cast myself I'd be a White Court vampire that'd be fun. *audience laughter* As far as the characters that are most like me, I don't know, I just write these people. That's a deep question, I don't get into that, which is something that's well reflected in Dresden, he doesn't do that introspection thing a lot.
Yeah you have nothing in common with that guy.
*puts on accent* Shut up. Just shut up. *audience laughter*
I don't know I don't really think of that I try to build them and make them their own people and they're a lot like me and I can't help that because I'm the only person I know how to be and so, I just do my best to envision. The characters who are most like me... probably a lot of the little ones on the side, I like Lamar the EMT who knows that weird things are happening in Chicago and has shown up in a couple of books now and wants nothing to do with any of it. He's like "oh this is weird stuff? Nope, I'm outta here", that's me, that guy, right there, he's me.
16:13 So we talk a lot about humans but I actually have question about our favourite canine, so where did you get the idea for Mouse and why did you bring him in as such a major part of the story?
Okay, in the first place, the reason to give Harry some kind of guardian. His world was getting progressively more dangerous and I wanted it to be believable that he could survive the rest of the year when he wasn't on screen. So I wanted him to have this protector figure. And the second reason was because we got a dog, and it had been a long time since we had a dog in the family and I had forgotten how awesome it was, and Mouse is the dog my dog, who I lost last year, is the dog my dog thought he was. Now my dog was a Bichon Frise he was about this big but he was convinced he was a mighty warrior protector spirit. And to his credit, he saved my kid from a bear when he was a puppy, he fought a coyote when he was thirteen years old and broke a tooth off on it and got away. The dog was all but blind and deaf and I can only assume that somewhere out there there's a coyote limping and going "that bunny was completely unreasonable". But that's where Mouse came from and then basically because I had my dog, my dog was my patron writing spirit so whenever I was writing I'd be stretched out on the couch with a laptop and the dog would be right there between my ankles, that was his job. So yeah, I wrote my dog into that and that was the dog my dog thought he was, I never had the heart to tell him he was just a little French dog, I just didn't. I was pretty sure he was convinced he was a Rottweiler and it stayed that way. But he was able to pass on some of his dogging to my sister's dog, she got a Bichon Frise named Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is afraid of the dark. But my dog would boldly go out into the darkness where who knows what was and so Buffy would eventually learn "oh okay that's alright we can do that". And so he passed on his dog awesomeness to several other dogs so we're doing well.
18:38 Alright you.
So I have a two part question.
*sigh*
About Mirror Mirror.
Okay.
So is alternate universe Harry going to be like Pepsi, McDonalds, hockey stick, jeep.
Oh my god.
And obviously the hat. I mean the hat's canon anyway.
Thank you everyone. Panel's over.
Hey, that's only the first part.
Okay, you did say it was a two part question, please ask.
Are we going to get to see Susan wielding Amoracchius again?
Oh my gosh, that is such an inside joke, go away.
*recap of Mirror Mirror stuff from here*
20:22 So you put your characters through these absolutely torturous situations and it takes a really twisted GRRM kind of mind to really do these things to your characters.
Hey now hey now. Please continue.
How do you reconcile doing that to those characters with the fact that you are actually a nice guy?
I get no respect. I'm not actually a nice guy is the answer. I play one at conventions. That's what nobody understands, it's not that I enjoy torturing the characters, it's that I enjoy torturing all of you. But if I do it in real life they'll lock me away so this is the best I can do, I torture you guys in effigy. But yeah, I'm just gonna say it right now for anyone who wants to be a writer, you don't have to be a sadist to be a writer, I mean it's not required but... it helps a lot. Or at least an evangelical masochist, one of the two.
21:34 So at the end of Proven Guilty, when Molly became Harry's apprentice, she was under the Doom of Damocles. She's now the Winter Lady. Is she still under the Doom of Damocles?
*laughs* Yeah I'd like to see the White Council try and pull that. I'd like to see Mab's poker face on that one. You see the thing is, the White Council has all kinds of power, they really do, they can do all kinds of things in the world but at the end of the day, nobody wants to be the one to walk up to Mab and say "there's this little legal matter we need to clear up." Because nobody wants to be the one to cross Mab, they know she's dangerous and not only that she's /older/ than all the White Council and essentially it's a gerontocracy, the older you get, the more powerful you get as a wizard (ties in nicely with the Harry = 6 foot 5 10 year old one, good to have confirmation they also get stronger) and they all know she's been around longer than any of them. So nobody wants to be the one to say "well you know, I've been cruising along for three hundred and forty years here, maybe I'll just try my luck against Mab." *audience laughter* There isn't a wizard who thinks like that.
Except Harry.
Yeah Harry's stupid. He is-he has not got a rational perspective on the universe and that's just a fact.
22:59 You've opened up the Dresden world for an RPG, is there any thought of opening Codex Alera for one as well?
Yeah I'd be fine with that, I mean I'd be happy too if you want to go play there, if you just want your Codex Alera game and play it there please do. Have fun. That's kind of the whole point of the project, have fun, that's what we're doing.
23:22 Can you give some insights into when you're going to kill a character off? Do you make characters specifically knowing that I need someone to kill at this point and introduce them early on or does the story set something up and you realize it would make a lot of sense if this character died? What's your process for that?
Yes. Yeah there are characters that I've set up from the very beginning, it is not their fate to survive the story. There are characters who occasionally come along and I go "you know what? It's your time, look at this situation I've written, yeah, I didn't plan it either but there it is, you're outta here."
Are there characters that survived their original fate of getting killed off?
Yeah Butters did. I was gonna have Butters die horribly at one point. But as it was I was like "you know what I can find another use for you", polka will never die, not yet. You're welcome, see, I want to torture all of you.
24:37 So in regards to Molly and the process that she’s been going through and growing up and such and now she’s the winter lady… I’m kind of interested in… it’s kind of two fold. How long has it been since a mortal has become that level of a farie and what kinds of repercussions or changes do you think that we are going to see?
Well it’s been a while since there was a pure mortal… I mean technically Maeve and Sarissa are pure mortals and are only influenced by the mantle so… they were first generation half fae, but… As far as Molly being pure mortal… is she really any more is sort of the question and sort of what we are dealing with. I don’t know if you’ve read your short story yet.
It’s not out yet
It’s not out yet? Oh, Oh, ok, Well you should read that, definitely. It’s called Cold Case and it's Molly off on her first mission as Winter Lady where she finds out what the Winter Lady and what her purpose in the cosmos is essentially, and Molly gets to find it out the hard way because that's how I do it to everybody. But that's the Molly and Ramirez teamup short story. That is in an anthology, I think that is in Shawn Speakman's Un-something anthology.
26:35 So wizards and technology don't get along well, have you destroyed many computers?
*laughs* Man I burn out a laptop in nine to ten months, that's about how long the average laptop lasts me. And that's not playing video games on it that's just working, browsing and researching. Yeah I've got big dumb think fingers and when I type I type like *thumpthumpthumpthump* like that. So I start wearing the keys out and then it starts overheating because it's always on my lap on a couch somewhere and just sort of generally speaking I go through those things fast. I'm really terrible with any kind of machinery that requires regular maintenance so I'm trying to get better about that because it seems like the adult thing to do. But I have destroyed so many lawnmowers by just not noticing that chain in the yard, that kind of thing. Me and machinery have been the best of friends, I had a chainsaw for a while, I survived that. And now I use axes because they're much more reliable.
Shadowed Souls (anthology with Cold Case).
That's the name of the one that I did, I thought it was the Butters story in that one, the Butters story went to Shawn. Yeah that's the Shadowed Souls anthology, it's about mixed people-the general idea is to have it be about people who are essentially not really pure heroes anymore so that's why I put Molly in there. And that will be out November 1st you'll get to see Molly on her first mission as Winter Lady and see what her job is, I wasn't entirely sure what her job was until I got done writing it and then I was like "golly I am a sadist" so.
28:56 Going back to that question about Molly and the Doom of Damocles, what was the White Council's reaction when they found out that Harry, the black sheep, and then his apprentice are now like the two most powerful people in the Winter Court?
And not only that, he's also in charge of the damned island full of monsters *said while pointing down*, he's also taken over monster island what do you think their reaction is? You look at Harry from the exterior, oh my gosh he's the new dark lord, that's the new Voldemort, he is on the way. And not only that but he's secured his position with Mab now so you can't cross him without crossing Mab as well, not only that but his apprentice is even more highly placed than that so he's trained the next person up from him in the chain of command over in Winter, not only that but he's obviously got some kind of relationship with the new Summer Lady and also the current Summer Knight, he's forming this group of people who share information over this internet that wizards can't access, so he's got this spy network forming, are you kidding, he's the most dangerous man on the planet.
So they're crapping their pants.
Yeah exactly. It's not as much that as "yeah okay we're going to have to bump him up as a threat, bump him up again, bump him up a-it doesn't go any higher? Okay we're going to have to start taking action on this one" so.
Is he still part of the White Council?
Technically. Technically because the White Council subscribes to the "keep your friends close and keep your enemies closer" theory of things. And Harry doesn't really realise any of that because he's just stumbling along through his life doing stuff, but anybody who's looking at it from the outside are you kidding they've got to be flipping out right now.
30:56 There are a couple of things from way back that I'm wondering if we'll ever see again, like for instance a mention of the Jade Court of vampires or in the very first story that little girl Faith Astor should be in her twenties by now (Harry better not be horny for her or it'll be a shitstorm), are we ever going to see her again?
Yes, I wrote her to be the femme fatale that walks in to kick off the big apocalyptic trilogy at the end.
I liked her.
I'm lazy man, I don't like to write things I'm not gonna use later. I don't know how much Jade Court we're gonna see because they're written to be this extreme isolationist faction, by which I mean they like staying isolated. So the Jade Court, they remain mostly in the Yangtze river valley in China, they don't even call it China because they aren't sure if this whole China thing is gonna work out yet, as far as they're concerned it's still Chin, this whole unified kingdoms thing? Maybe it was a good idea, there hasn't been enough time to tell, only four thousand years. We might see some of their agents later on but probably not them themselves they're busy being celestial over where they are so.
Thank you.
32:16 When are you planning to have Michael and Charity find out about Molly?
*You've probably read this scene so skip*
32:54 So more of your life, what brought you to the University of Oklahoma?
A girl. My ex, Shannon, was going to OU and I thought that was a fine idea being a teen at the time. At the time they were buying national merit scholars, that's the only word for it, they were buying national merit scholars if you went you got a full ride and two thousand dollars a semester, just throwing around money. So I showed up there and was in the honours dorm for a while and-cause they were giving me lots of money so, that seemed like a much better idea than paying other people lots of money to go to school, somebody paying me? Yeah I'll do that. Thank goodness for standardised tests I've always been good at those.
Boomer.
Boomer sooner *rolls eyes* I could never get behind boomer sooner because of the football players, actually dealing with football players on the campus was- they were the kind of guys who would stand so they'd take up three urinals and they didn't really think anything of it that was just kind of who there were. But ..
34:07 Michael has kind of been an interesting perspective into the world and I was wondering, what was your inspiration for Michael?
The Sheep Farmer’s Daughter Series by Elizabeth Moon. It’s one of the better Paladin series I’ve ever read. And I’m like, You know what? I wanna do a paladin, I want to do somebody who is righteous, not self-righteous. Someone who walks the walk instead of talking the talk. And so I wanted to drop Michael in as someone who was very near a paragon of Christian and Catholic ideals… Not of Christian and Catholic Dogma, and that’s where that character came from. Someone who was very close to being a really, really good human being, and I wanted him to be there, especially as a contrast to Dresden because Dresden is always messing around in these murky areas and I wanted somebody for whom that was not an issue. Going into the murk has never been an issue for Michael because he’s a different person from where he stands and the way he looks at the universe that is not what he is going to do. But he’s also never going to be the guy who has to make the hard horrible choices that Harry sometimes has to. And the question is, is he avoiding responsibility, or does his belief allow him to create other options that aren’t horrible choices? How does that work? I don’t know. I wanted to write a story about it, maybe I could figure something out. But yah, Michael is the guy that I wish I was, the guy that I think a lot of people wish they were. (copied from Serack)
36:02 So you mentioned in one of the books that Molly has kind of an eight figure account in her bank account right now.
Yes.
Does Harry get paid for being the Winter Knight or is that not a thing?
Are you kidding? No no he can go ask for things. Harry already did get paid for being the Winter Knight by being given a bunch of power. The Sidhe are hyper-focused on obligation and keeping the sheets balanced, especially Winter. In Summer you can get a little bit more emotional and do some nice things and not hold anyone accountable for it but in Winter everyone accounts for everything. So sure they could pay Harry but he'd have to go live on - and be working shifts and doing things on their time and so on. As it is Mab's just made a deal "When I need you, you show up." He's kind of a consultant now and he's been paid in power. Plus he reaps a bunch of side indirect benefits of being Mab's strong guy; such as the White Council not just obliterating him. "That would be declaring a war, can't really do that, damn it, we should have killed this guy when we had the chance" that's what a lot of people on the White Council are thinking, even the people who kind of like him, "you know what, maybe we should have killed this guy when we had a chance", they've seen too many bad wizards come along. Everybody who is worried about Harry is looking at him and thinking "that's Kemmler again and it's just a matter of time before he starts digging into bad things, you saw what he did with the dinosaur" so. But yeah, they're not gonna pay him that would be too easy for Harry. Harry's the Charlie Brown of urban fantasy, he gets to open his treat bag and go "I got a rock".
38:00 Have you had a chance to play the Dresden Files Cooperative Card game yet?
*he hasn't had a chance to play and can't play DF RPG*
38:56 What do you think about writing dystopian futures?
Dystopian futures... I think if you really want to write a dystopian future try and write a utopian future and then you get a dystopian future, just that you may not realise that you have. Dystopian futures, they're fun. *shrugs* Really that's all about "we're human beings how can we screw up a perfectly good future?" because it's just a matter of how we're gonna do it, it's not a question of when or if. Things are getting better and we're doing pretty good overall and we're gonna screw things up as we go along the way, I guess we'll see what happens (said in 2016, a more innocent time).
As far as general dystopia goes, I can get behind it. Because there's always going to be things that need to be righted, need to be fixed. I'm not somebody who believes that the Federation is going to happen, I mean it sounds like a great idea but I think we could get there and find out what a terrible idea it was., it would come along to bite us later just because that's the nature of people. Really the best we can do is hopefully to leave each other alone a lot and as long as we're not walking on each other's toes then we just kind of go do our own thing without starting wars over it then we should be okay. That seems to be a reasonable goal "you know what leave me alone" "yeah okay" that would work out.
So you're not going to put anybody into a big Colosseum and make them battle.
Like I haven't done that already. I probably won't do it with children... oh god yes I will. Yeah one of the projects that is going to be coming out sometime in the future, in the mid-long term is going to be Maggie Dresden goes to school. She's gonna go to St Mark's Academy for the Gifted and Talented which Harry is gonna try and get them to rename Resourceful and Talented and they won't. But it's where a bunch of the supernatural kids go to school, kind of the scions of the area and there's an unspoken rule in place "we let the kids sort things out themselves, we don't get involved in the kids' problems as long as nobody dies the kids sort it out".
*just a general recap of the kid culture stuff from here*
42:42 A little while ago you were talking about Michael being a paladin and in one of the recent books you had Uriel bestow his power on Michael and Uriel said, “if you screw up with this, I will fall.” Is that what happened to any of the Denarians?
The Denarians were all either angels who sided with Lucifer, or they were angels who did not get off the fence… or did not get off the fence in a timely enough fashion. Lasciel was one of those angels who tried to play both sides off the middle and it did not work out for her after the angel war. Which makes her more bitter because her schemes fell apart. She was pretty confident about those schemes. But yeah the Denarians are all angels who either sided with Lucifer during the rebellion or were sort of cast out after, there was this whole crew of angels who were like, “well you know what, you deserted from this combat or you fled this battle and you're gone as well.” And they might not have been cast into the lake of fire but they wound up in other places. (copied from Serack)
43:55 What was your inspiration for Bob and was he always going to be into porn?
*you can probably recite this one off by heart if you're reading these transcripts*
45:36 Speaking of anxiety issues, given the number of huge furballs that Harry has been in that rival the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of the Bulge together in five minutes, will Harry ever suffer from PTSD?
Oh god he suffers terribly from it. It's just one of those things that he's denying and blocking out, I mean, he's had bad things happen to him. But he's also somebody who is very focused on other people so he keeps trying to soldier on and that's not something you can do indefinitely. We'll get to that as well but I mean, Dresden's got /issues/. *puts on French accent* He might have, as you Americans say, issues.*end accent* And that is stuff that he will have to confront eventually because you can't get away from that eventually you can't sustain it anymore.
46:32 So you said the fallen angels, they all followed Lucifer in this world too, so does does Lucifer have his own coin? And will he make an appearance?
No, are you kidding? He’s the [British accent] prince of $%&#@ darkness.[/British accent] no that doesn’t happen. No that was the deal, better to rule in hell than serve in heaven, and he does rule in hell, he’s not stuck in somebody's coin. We will get to see him on stage later, that’s not until the big trilogy. He’s freaking Satan, you can’t get any worse. (copied from Serack)
47:05 Will we see Billy or Jenny Sells again?
Let me think that’s way back…
Victor and Monica Sells’ kids.
Oh those two, oh God. Um.. Maybe… that could well be… Oh my gosh… I'd forgotten them, they were on a page or notes somewhere and now you’ve reminded me… *expression of painful consideration* I’m going to have to think about this. Yeah, uh, thank you for that question. I’ll work on it. Oh my God we will… That has to happen now. I mean they aren’t going to have a different view of Harry than the White Council does as far as they're concerned. (copied from Serack)
48:09 So we all remember the first Dresden Files television show and I'm wondering-
I like the way you phrase that. The "first" Dresden Files show, positive energy.
So, putting out positive energy, do you think there is a possibility of getting a better version of the Dresden Files tv show?
*just a recap of the maybes*
50:55 You've kind of introduced the Venatori and that side of and the thought process of gods and powerful beings going kind of extinct if they're not known, is there any chance we're going to see more of that side of-I know Harry can't be involved because of how it's written.
Oh the gods haven't gone extinct they're just doing other stuff that clears a better profit than being gods, because that's a pain. You've got to listen to worshippers all the time, you've got to answer prayers, make appearances, there's PR to think about... You can't hire other people to do it for you, it's not at all like being a rock star where you can hire other people to do that stuff for you and you can always be on the road and people scream and worship you and throw their daughters at you and all kinds of things like that. Sports stars, wrestlers, yeah like I've said we've still got the professional wrestling one to go so.
51:59 I know you probably can't give a very specific answer about this, but will we ever see what is inside Harry's soul that terrifies basically everyone that he meets when he soulgazes somebody?
I don't know can you see inside your own? How do you get the measure of your own soul except by looking at what's around you? And yeah other people do flip out when they see him but also look at the world around Harry and the people in his life, what does that reflection say about him? Harry's surrounded by people who used to be victims and are now out protecting people. He's surrounded by folks who at some point in their life were scared and horrified and didn't know what to do and are now knowledgeable and working together and generally doing more positive things with their life, hopefully as a result of what he's been doing in some ways. Or they're dead. You know, some of them died bravely, others not so much. But how can you tell what's the state of your own soul? I guess excessive navel gazing can probably reveal something, I don't trust that though, people are very good at lying especially to themselves.
53:27 A much simpler question, what's your favorite line from each of your three series'?
Um, from the Dresden Files my favourite line is "the building was on fire and it wasn't my fault", that's been my strongest opening I'm very proud of that craftwise. Running along through a burning building carrying a box of puppies with flying demon monkeys throwing burning poo at him, Harry Dresden ladies and gentlemen. From Alera, I don't know, I'd have to think about that one, I don't know. Probably some dialogue from the side characters, I enjoyed that stuff "look at Mandos he knows how to go out with style, who wants style? I'll strangle you with your best silk shirt" you know like. From the Cinder Spires, it's "If there are any problems I need you to over, around, under or through them" "I'm not sure I know how to do that" "I'm not sure you know how to do anything else", that's my favourite bit from that so far. Either that or some of the cat dialogue because they're so easy to steal scenes with. You know, Rowl lecturing Bridget about climbing a rope while he's riding on her shoulders all the way up. Rowl checks in at thirty pounds so.. him bitching at Bridget about climbing ropes is "it's perfectly simple how you climb a rope, just climb it" you know, like that. But cats get to be jerks and get away with it because they're adorable.
55:13 So I heard you wrote a short story for Larry Correia's Monster Hunter anthology, what was it like writing in a universe not your own?
Tremendous fun. I wrote a short story about the janitors at Monster Hunter International headquarters in Cazador. So there's all these epic monster-huntery Cthulhu gods and stuff, you know, werewolves and Frankenstein monsters and whatnot around, you know all these huge iconic and epic folks and I wrote about the janitor. So I like to think of it as the Xander episode of Monster Hunter International but it's great, it's called Small Problems and I had a tremendous amount of fun writing it, it's one of the better short stories I've written I think. I enjoyed it a lot and Larry got plenty of giggles out of it and I got to have lots of the stars of Avengers come in and make cameos in Agents of Shield, that was the story that I was doing so.
56:22 So I have trouble maintaining continuity in a thousand word short story, you're fifteen books in, do you find yourself going "oh crap I should have done something differently four books ago" and how do you deal with that?
When you should have done something differently four books ago and you need to change it? You get creative because you can't change it, the readers already have it it's already in the readers' head. And the readers only get the one story. And having continuity issues as a writer is understandable because as a writer you write something, you write another draft, you get somebody to read it, you write another draft, you write some more, an editor sees it, write it again, get a copy editor, write it again, and then here comes the final draft, you go through that. So by the time you're done with the book, by the time I'm done with the book I've got seven or eight slightly different versions of the same book in my head. And not only that but all that gets conflated with all the versions of the book that I could have written and didn't because I made different choices for whatever reason when I was telling the story. For example in the Dresden Files in Changes Harry could have gone one of three ways, he could have gone Darkhallow, he could have gone agent of Mab or he could have gone Lasciel's coin and it would have changed the story dramatically depending on which way he went and I wasn't sure which one he was going to choose until he got there. So in my head the Dresden Files is like this cloud of parallel realities that are going along which is why it's gonna be really easy to write Mirror Mirror because I already have all these parallel realities in my head anyway and this is just going to be one of them that is one choice different than the main line Dresden Files which I always love doing, changing one little thing and seeing-following the chain of consequence of that choice. Great fun if you're into that sort of thing.
Train of thought derailed, back to continuity, I employ beta readers and they help a lot, a couple of the beta readers have tremendous brains for continuity I mean unreal Hermione level brains for continuity that you just look at them and go "freak". And the wider fan communities help me out now, because for example the Dresden Files roleplaying game has now provided me with a reference that I can go look at when I need to refresh information I've forgotten, or "how many kids do the Carpenters have again? Let me go look up the Dresden Files wiki oh here they all are in order of ages, awesome, now I know it again." So I cheat a lot is how you do it. But if you're not fortunate enough to be able to cheat a lot or have access to people with freakish brains then you've got to take copious notes which I also have and you've got to be able to reference them to some degree and go "oh I remember this". So there you go that's how you handle continuity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N-5X2wf8JM
TheCuriousFan:
Might as well go for the one that announced Twelve Months as well since the Barnes and Noble one is still in deleted limbo and the other podcast q&a hasn't materialised.
...Thank you Jim, for breaking the curse of the Billy Goat.
You're welcome.
It's the four year anniversary of the day the Cubs made the world series.
That's true, that's true. Yeah I mean, actually it was the Cubs that did it and the Dresden Files world had to honour it because there had to be an explanation for it in the Dresden Files world. Because it was the king of the Tylwyth Teg who had enacted the curse, so once it was destroyed it was like "oh well I wonder what happened to him? Ohhhhh."
Ohhhh. That curse did not end well for him.
No, no it didn't.
Ken is a long time Cubs fan from before the Dresden Files so...
So you're a masochist.
Oh yeah. I was very long suffering.
I see I see. Yeah the Cubbies are Harry's favourite team because he vibes with them.
A lot moreso than the White Sox that's for sure.
Yeah a lot more than the White Sox yep.
Well I wanted to start with a question that has nothing to do with the books at all but has everything to do with you.
Okay.
What is the weirdest place you have ever met a fan? And please tell me it wasn't in a bathroom in a bar.
It has been there. Not the weirdest place... I was like in a random store in Australia once and had the clerk behind the counter just get all of a sudden wide-eyed *puts on awful Australian accent* You're Jim Butcha, I read all your books, you're amazing *end accent*. That was a little unexpected in a 7-11. Normally I'm only famous at conventions and inside bookstores, which I think is like the perfect level of famous to have, it's famous enough that you can feel nice but not so famous you have to hide in your house because people recognise you. It's not Hollywood famous, it's just right.
Well in that case congratulations, and it sounds like even in Australia, at a 7-11 you said?
Yeah. Just a random D&D nerd working his shift, there you go.
So do you play a lot of D&D or did you when you were younger?
*7:00 to 8:50, he's getting into 5th ed, likes Warhammer Fantasy roleplaying game, Chill is a tabletop game with horror rules, game with it ended up Black Company-esque*
That's on Harry's bookshelf actually. On that note I'm gonna pretend that I just spun the wheel of tangents *does routine act*. Circlebreaker on Discord actually asked "the Black Company has been sighted among Harry's bookshelves in one of the short stories but what are some of Harry's other favourites that would line his shelves"?
Harry likes the Drizzt Do'urden books, any book with Drizzt in it he likes.
Really? Okay.
The guy who is like an outcast from his own society but is trying to do the best he can, making friends as best he can along the way, yeah Harry likes those books.
Makes sense. Being D&D books so...
Yeah they're D&D books but he's like "I don't care, I'm gonna enjoy this". Let's see, he likes Heinlein, Asimov, he's really kind of an intellectual reader in a lot of ways, his D&D books are his guilty pleasure. But he likes Heinlein and Asimov, he likes Rothfuss okay, Sanderson he likes but thinks he's a little bit naïve (fuck that ï)
*laughter*That's well put.
Oh I have tremendous respect for Brandon, when my son wanted to learn more about writing other than just from me I said "go listen to what Brandon Sanderson has to say". Let me think what else, he likes the Temeraire books because they're mixed with history and they also have magic and weird things so that appeals to him. Lemme think, oh and Nine Princes In Amber, the Amber series, he loves that.
I was just gonna ask because I know that's on your shelf.
Yeah it's what I'm reading right now. I'm rereading that and oh my god I had no idea how hard that series influenced my writing. I mean it shouldn't come as a surprise I was playing on Ambermush like 6-8 hours a day while I was writing the whole first book, but yeah it was really influential.
Very cool, that's one I want to get into, we need to get into more Zelazny books.
Yeah he was just a great sword and pistol writer, you know, his characters are the kind of guys to show up to a fight with a sword and pistol just in case. Not quite sure what fight this is, maybe it's science fiction, maybe it's fantasy, but I figure a sword and pistol will do me good, that's sort of how they wound up operating and that was a big influence on Dresden.
Sounds like something that we will have to pick up then, sounds like that'll be on the blue team list for the near future. The internet makes research easy today but I seem to remember you saying that when you wrote Storm Front that you had not spent much time in Chicago.
No time in Chicago. I didn't actually get to go to Chicago until Dead Beat. That was when I started selling my second series and actually started making enough money that we could have food and so at that point I thought "maybe I should go to Chicago and look around".
So since you've had the opportunity to do that, what do Chicagoans think of Harry as their professional wizard? Or are they mostly oblivious as they should be?
Mostly oblivious. The ones that do know about him seem to like him a lot. They're less sure about me because I get things like parking lots around stadiums wrong. Who builds a stadium without a parking lot? Chicago.
In fairness that stadium's been there since before cars, that ballpark.
I see no reason why I should cut them that slack, that's lame reasoning.
Fair enough.
Except for SWAT, I actually had a guy come up to me in Chicago and say "I'm a SWAT commander, I was reading this short story you did with the hostage situation on top of a specific building. And I'm just wondering who you talked to about that to set that up, because if they're local we kind of want to keep track of them so." I said "dude I used Google Maps and my knowledge of Call of Duty and worked it out", and the guy goes "Google Maps?" and I said "yeah it's three dimensional you can kind of zoom in and see things from different angles, see where the lights are, figure out where the cones are going to be" and the guy just goes "ugh, god I hate the internet". He was up on towards retirement you know and he seemed to be one of the coordinator guys back at the office, he'd come to talk to me.
Interesting. Seriously, your level of research in these books is off the charts. And I'm not just talking about the geography of Chicago, your knowledge, swordfighting, of hand to hand stuff, of different magical mythologies and so on, you have got to be a voracious researcher of this stuff.
I don't know if I research so much as I do a lot of reading and I kind of am addicted to stories and so I like picking up stories that I haven't seen before and that come from different places. It's so interesting when you start getting out among people who were not connected to European society, their idea of a story is a very different one. China has a very different idea of a story after five thousand years of telling stories than America does after two hundred years of telling stories. Especially the written ones, the traditional ones, the ones that are long term in the culture, you know. And it shows you- I think it's a very good lens to show you how different people are, how they think about things and how they-their experience and the experience of their culture and their ancestry has changed them. And also that stories serve a different purpose in other cultures than they do in Europe culture, our stories all came from the Greek tradition, the idea of this catharsis of emotion, that's not something that's attached to stories in other places.
So anyway I've done a lot of reading and by the time you've gone through "Wow Russians had very different ideas of faeries than Germans did and the Norse did and the French did etcetera. How am I gonna incorporate all of this?" And so you have to think about it and work on it. My head is just a place that's full of weird stories. Especially the Native American ones, Native American stories are awesome because they don't have to make any sense at all and most of them are about Coyote or Raven and he was never very reliable anyways so... the story doesn't have to go in a predictable or reasonable direction. Especially Coyote stories, they're like "Coyote had a great idea one day", it's like "everything's going to go wrong, keep going."
Does that-that kind of lends a little with some of the pop culture references that you make with Roadrunner and Wile Coyote, super genius and so on.
Gosh yeah. Well I watched way too many cartoons when I was a kid and I think cartoons have influenced us all way more than we realise. You guys have seen Fury Road, right? That's basically an hour and a half long Roadrunner cartoon. It's even flat, first they're going this way, then they're going that way.
Very true, very true. So one of the things that has always interested me when we talk about magic systems and the worlds that are created around them, are the limitations. Because our world is the world that you're writing in and you've created or accessed a magic system that has some pretty interesting limitations to it. I always find myself wondering what's the next limitation Harry's gonna run into? When we first met him it was "oh I can only do so much if I've got" I saw the smile. Can you tell us anything about what's coming?
Yeah okay. Originally the whole plan was for twenty books and a big old trilogy to kind of capstone things at the end. Because I've had to split this book into two books and because I've been looking back over the course of the history of the story I'm gonna have to add another book in. I've gotta write, it's gonna a take a novel to deal with the aftermath of what happened in Battle Ground. I think the next novel is gonna be called Twelve Months and it's just gonna be about Dresden-well it's gonna be about more than that because it's a Dresden Files book with the usual insanity but the actual story is Dresden coping with all the damage he's taken over the years. You know that as a writer I'm not a fade to black guy in the Dresden Files, it doesn't happen very often, but it has happened. And every time I've the fade to black and that has happened, for the most part, it fades because Harry's pulling the curtain, because he doesn't share the really bad things with anyone, not even the reader. There are /bad/ things that have happened to Dresden and when bad things happen to you it's cumulative, it adds up. If you don't face it and deal with it it keeps adding up and adding up until it starts causing you psychological problems and difficulties with your friends and issues with your family. If you're out there in the middle of it you've got to be dealing with it, and he hasn't been. And we're gonna have a book about why, and the effects of the things that have happened over the years and the cumulative effects and how you deal with them and get over them.
Especially now that he's a father, that makes it especially emotionally charged.
Yeah he can't afford to just sit somewhere and feel sorry for himself or to drive himself to the brink of exhaustion and starvation trying to find a solution to his problems. He can't do that anymore, he's a grown-up, he's got a lot of things he's handling. And yeah, Maggie's the big one, kids change everything. If you've got a kid there waiting for you you can't be the guy that's sitting on the floor wailing poor me, that's not gonna work.
It's something we've covered in several episodes, how Harry takes all the guilt on himself and how that's not healthy. To see you say that we need something to deal with it, is that something that's been in the works for a long time or is that something that's come across organically kind of as you've written through seventeen books?
No, I wasn't planning to do a book about trauma and dealing with it, on account of I was busy not dealing with any of my trauma. But yeah when you start learning about it it's like "hey, this is something people need to know." And the idea's gonna be "look, I'm gonna show Dresden coping" and coping isn't always a particularly pretty thing or a noble thing. Nobody's pretty when they're in pain but it happens to all of us at some time or another, horrible things come along. And you've gotta deal with it and how do you deal with it. So partly this next book is going to be showing Harry Dresden figuring out how to deal with things that are not slobbery monsters trying to chew his face off, those he can manage, he's really good with those, that's doable no problem. All these other issues are a different thing and..
And he has a wedding to prepare for.
Yeah, no kidding.
*listener wheel skit* This one goes to Math Nut, who asks "if you were able, Mr Butcher, which other writer would you do a collaboration with ala Pratchett and Gaiman?
It would have to be somebody I hated. I wouldn't wish me on the writers that I like as friends, I'm terrible in a group setting, it is not my forte.
So I guess that Jim Butcher/Larry Correia collaboration is out.
Probably yeah. Although Larry did say that I could do a crossover. One of these days I'm going to do a crossover story that's gonna be the Denarians attacking the headquarters at Cazador.
Please do that.
Yeah that'll be fun.
I have one more collaboration I watched to pitch-one more crossover. Harry Dresden/Anita Blake.
Why not? I like Laura Hamilton.
I know you and Laura are friends.
Anita would beat Harry up, I mean Harry would just be like "okay, that's fine, alright, no that's okay no thank you I kinda have a fiancé" that would be Harry. You know, tripping through Anita Blake land. But the monsters are weirder there too. That would be the problem with the crossover with Larry, my god, how much puff would Harry Dresden be worth? Jesus Christ, he's an eight or nine figure target for puff based on the rules that Larry's world is running by.
I would buy that.
Well Larry's wizards are all "I made a deal with somebody" wizards, mostly you deal with warlocks in Larry's world, not with the straight-up spellcasters, I think that gives Harry a lot more-Harry's got a tremendous potential for destruction so as far as puff goes he's up there.
So when did you know you had something special in your hands with Harry Dresden? What was that moment like when you discovered it?
*23:45 to 25:45 is a repeat of the Summer Knight Dragoncon talk*
This leads into a question that, if it's alright Todd, I'd like to jump in and ask.
That's okay.
Something that I get a lot from our listeners and from other people that I talk to, they'll recommend the Dresden Files and they'll often say the first three books are good but wait until you get to Summer Knight, book for is when it really kicks off. How do you feel about those first three books that as you say, you kind of took off once book four hit, how do you feel now about those first three books? Do you feel they still hold up for you and do you enjoy them?
*25:45 to 28:50 repeat that they're the best he could have done at the time since they were written when he was new, Storm Front was literally a class project and that the plan is being stuck to religiously with the exception of adding BG and TM*
Has there been a book that has been particularly difficult for you to write in the Dresden series?
Ghost Story. Ghost Story was hard.
What made it hard for you?
It was mostly about my suicide attempt.
Oh.
Now we're getting somewhere, wow.
I tend to take my real life and use it with things, actually, all I'm doing is practicing therapy and I'm charging you all.
*laughter* Happy to pay for your therapy.
Yeah it was about, in the wake of it, thinking my way through all the various consequences that I hadn't been able to think of when I was in crisis. You know when you're in crisis you don't think so good, and so Ghost Story was in some ways a way for me to say "hey Clarence, this is what you would have given up, these are the things you would have lost and these are the people who would have been hurt and these are all the other things that would have happened at that point in the past if you'd been better at suiciding." And it's a reason for you to put things in order, to step back and look at your life and stack it in order, but yeah I mean, I wanted to write a book about the complications of death and what it does to the people around you, and you know, all of us, we're not replaceable. I mean Sanderson gets that one right, yeah Dresden might think he's a little naïve but he thinks Sanderson got that one right. Human lives are of infinite value to take any other stance is to start becoming a monster.
And I know that when we went through Ghost Story, I had taken my wife and daughter on a trip up to Idaho, one of the mountain areas of Idaho, and we were spending some time with family, and I would go on long with my-I listen to the books, I listened to James Marsters read your material. Which has been a very good fit for me otherwise I just run out of time in a day. I would leave and listen and then I would come back, my daughter attempted to take her life earlier this year and as I read through Ghost Story and heard some of the things that Harry was dealing with, about memories and the power memory has, I found myself thinking about new ways to talk to my daughter about those issues, I had no idea that that was where it came from for you, but I want to thank you for that because it has made a difference for us, it also caused me to cry a lot during that trip by the way.
And every episode that you recorded after that.
Yeah let's be honest, if there's one of us that is a little too in touch with his emotions in our team it's probably me.
Let's give Jim a little bit of credit for all of the punching and all of the action and all of the-Harry's a simple guy kind of writing which is fantastic, you managed to put really powerful emotions into every single story as evidenced by Todd who cries at every single discussion.
I do, I do. Especially when we're talking about the relationship between Michael and Harry. You said that a lot of the things that you write about come from you, do you have a Michael in your life?
No, I did. But he passed when I was about twenty one.
That relationship with Harry, that relationship that we have been able to watch as we've read through those books has been one that we in the Legendarium have continued to come back to to say "boy it's a good thing that Harry's got Michael otherwise what kind of a monster could he possibly be?" And it has caused all of at times to reflect upon the way that we influence other people so thank you for that, I know for me, as much as I'd love to say I try to be more like Harry I honestly try "gee what would Michael do in some of these situations?". Because Harry just blows stuff up but Michael seems like he might just take a little bit of time before he blows things up.
Oh sure, yeah. It's because of the difference of their personal philosophies. Harry Dresden is very focused on protecting the innocent because there's been times when he was innocent and had no one to protect him, that's something he focuses on and he doesn't worry himself too much about the people who are hurting innocent people, *laughs* he doesn't spend a whole lot of time thinking about what's fair to them and he's fine with that.
Michael is somebody who's different, he has answered a higher calling. It's something that has limited him, in many ways, but also something that gives him tremendous power wherever he is. Michael's philosophy is one that is greater than just defending the good against the evil, it's the "don't go forth and destroy evil, go forth and convert evil, go save it. Those are still-those people who've gone down that path, they need someone to save them, they need another chance, they need to be given a choice to- an opportunity to exercise free will and turn away from what they're doing" because ultimately that does more good for the world than just going up against somebody who is evil and slugging him out and taking him down. Because when you do that, you do horrible things to yourself as well, and that's all there is to it. If you go out there doing horrible things to people, even if they're bad people, it does bad things to you and you have to take it. And Michael has answered a different call, he goes out-his path is a lot more heartbreaking because he keeps trying to save people and most of them don't want to be saved. That's all there is to it and it breaks his heart when it happens but he has Charity, she's good with that kind of thing.
They've certainly been good foils for each other and really from a storytelling perspective, ways to embody different perspectives and make both of them very respectful, that's one of the things I've really appreciated about the way that you've approached things... is that, these characters are more real people than sometimes we get in the genre. Obviously we've got some really bad dudes and we've got some really good characters but most of the people that Harry deals with, they're human beings that are flawed themselves and are struggling with those flaws and it makes them really fascinating to read. When I read-or listened to Day One, and you indicated that Butters was supposed to be a throwaway character, I can't remember whether I gasped or laughed or did a little bit of both. Even with Butters and some of these side characters, wonderful examples of human beings trying to figure out how to deal with all the stuff they've got.
Those poor bastards.
*laughter*
They live in a universe ruled by an evil god and I feel sorry for them sometimes, not for very long, but you know, for a little.
*wheel skit again* This one comes from Iradandis "what question do you wish fans would stop asking you about your books?" I want you to answer this one carefully, and think back on all the things that we've asked you and don't say any of those things, that'd be great.
"Where do you get your ideas?" that's one of them. Because not only do they ask you you can't answer nobody knows where you get your ideas. Lemme think, I don't really get tired of questions because the ones that I've answered a lot I've usually come up with like a canned funny answer and then I can tell it and get a laugh. Plus you know I've already done that work so it's like kicking back, I believe in constructive laziness, it has done me great good in my writing career.
Working smarter not harder.
Yes exactly.
So your books have been filled with so many pop culture references, in fact, you probably aren't familiar with what we do here on the Legendarium, Ken does a recap of every one of your books and occasionally he tries to do them based on themes of some of the pop culture references you've done along the way.
Okay I'm gonna have to go back and look at some of these.
We've heard Star Wars, a lot of Star Trek, a lot of cartoons, D&D, The Office showed up one day as he was running through Demonreach and doing parkour and we got a laugh at that. Are there some pop culture references that you've been holding onto that you're just kinda ready to deal out that you can give us hints on or do they just- do you just say "yeah this one sounds funny I'll use this one now?"
I just use them. It's getting harder because it's so hard to find ways to get Harry to have seen The Mandalorian, you know. How does he see The Mandalorian (wait a few years for it to come out for a start)? Oh no that's not hard at all now he's got Bob back I forgot. Bob is a radio and he receives all EM waves so internet, cable, satellite, radio, whatever, he can receive all of those. So Bob can just- at this point Harry can just put Bob on a table and say "Bob, play Mandalorian" and then Bob can be a smartass and then not.
So we might have Harry looking at somebody at some point and saying "I have spoken, this is the way".
Yeah, this is the way, I have spoken.
It's been fun to watch your pop culture references evolve over twenty years I mean because you've had twenty years to go from pretty much always Star Wars to my favourite one about calling a titan Regina George.
Yeah, yeah that was fun. I'm gonna fill up the next one (not entirely sure here) with Gargoyles references.
Oooh yes.
Hey he's a wizard with a castle, Gargoyles.
Gotta have some Gargoyles. At least one Goliath reference.
Yeah I'm gonna have fun doing my gargoyles I'm basing them on Pitbulls so.
Nice. You mentioned Bob, Bob has been an interesting character bouncing back and forth between Harry and Butters and back to Harry, where did the idea for Bob come from? I know we're not supposed to ask where your ideas come from but that one seems so- the skull that everybody had on their tables during medieval times to remind them about their own life but then you've turned it into this palace for a being of thought, was he a nice plot device or did you find that someplace and say "boy I've gotta find a way to use this?"
*41:35 to 44:20 You remember that bit about canned answers? This one is about idiots in writing and talking heads*
...Between that and Bob saying "I'm going to Utah, nothing like this ever happens in Utah!" because all of us are based in Utah so we know, we're right there with you.
Case in point we could only get you over Skype you're not actually in Utah because nothing happens in Utah.
I stole that from my son actually, my son actually informed us of that when he was fourteen "I need some normal parents, I'm going to Utah, nothing weird ever happens in Utah."
*wheel skit again*
This question comes from Little Red Book and she asks "if you could have Bob for a day what would you ask him to help you do?"
I'd use him for investing.
This reminds me of our D&D episode when Todd had to keep reminding us that we are fun adventurers and we kept asking what the 401k plan was on this particular quest, whether we wanted to take the job.
You kept asking about healthcare.
That was an exceptionally fitting boring answer.
I played a horror D&D game that was set on a haunted house and it was like a demented haunted house like dolls would come to life and pull out their hairpins and stab you, that kind of haunted house. And then, wherever you got stabbed you would grow boils and you'd start being able to see a little doll inside the boil growing under your skin, that kind of horrible things. And I was playing a dark elf sorcerer who was going through the whole thing going "well yes obviously it's a little disturbing that there's a kettle of blood boiling on the kitchen counter but LOOK AT ALL THE STORAGE SPACE. *laughter* Once we've cleansed this house we must buy it." And he was just going through talking about how awesome the house was. So afterwards, you're not supposed to be able to cleanse the house you're just supposed to be able to make it safe for a generation, you know, but because my character had been talking about how good the house was and going shame on you to all the people talking about how horrible it was "shame on you, you're not grateful at all for what this place could be" but then the house turned around and liked my guy so we moved in. And then the rest of the adventure was based out of the haunted house, all these tax collectors were showing up trying to get the back taxes on the house, it would control them and animate their corpses and send them back. We were in the city of Dis so that was considered normal metropolitan business you know.
This is what happens when D&D adventurers grow up, we get stories like this. I had one more question, what other mythological realms-
Do you have a question? Do you actually have a question?
Yeah will you shut up Greg? That's my question.
Sorry go on, try again.
So what other realms of mythology that we haven't seen are on the way?
We're gonna get a lot more into Cthulhu, that's fun. We're gonna get a lot more of the other pantheons. we're gonna find out what all the gods have been up to for the past several thousand years. And the answer is professional wrestling, a lot of them, they get more worshippers that way than they ever did with temples.
Wow.
You ever gone to a WWF match? There's energy there, that's all I'm saying.
I cannot wait to see the Rock in the Dresden Files.
Exactly, right? Because you know what's Hercules been doing all this time (don't say a word about Greco-Buddhism)?
Appropriate.
Or he gets himself in films I suppose.
Yeah exactly. What else would he do? Thor's been more laidback. Thor's general plan is-he goes around to universities and is a walk-on on their football team and then he just plays on the line and has fun playing football and then he like joins up with the meteorological teams that go out and study tornadoes and stuff like that. He's like an intern for them he drives the car and- you know, into the middle of frantic hailstorms and tornadoes laughing like a madman. God of thunder doesn't care about that stuff, he thinks it's fun.
Right, that sounds delightful.
Alright Todd you got one more?
Yes, if this is a question that is too personal to answer you're more than welcome to say "that's too personal", but has there been something that a fan has said to you that really stuck with you as "yeah okay, I'm proud of what I'm doing?"
It didn't make me say I'm proud of what I'm doing, it made me very confused for a moment. It's been more than once that fans have come up to me and said "hey I would have lost my mind without your books, they kept me sane in Afghanistan, they kept me sane on a six month tour where the sub never surfaced, they kept me sane somewhere else" I get that a lot. And what can you say but "thank you, I'm really glad they helped?" But it's not like I set out to help those people when I wrote those, I just wanted to make enough money that my family could eat and not have to wear a tie. That was really my main goal as a writer, it wasn't my job to help those people but they come up thanking me. And I think to myself "if I say 'you're welcome' I'm taking credit for that." So normally what I say is "hey man if they helped you I'm really glad, and that's fantastic" and so I thought about it for a long time because I couldn't take credit for it so I couldn't say you're welcome and that didn't seem right either. And the conclusion I came to is a little bit longer- what it amounts to is "I was not trying to set out to help you, I was doing something that was genuinely good though, it wasn't like a huge bit of good though it's a little mustard seed bit of good". But that good was "I just want to write books that people will enjoy and talk to their friends about and have fun reading", that's been my goal as a writer. And because I did that and I did that with the idea of creating friendship and fun and things to talk about I put out a out a little seed of good and for some people that seed landed at the right spot and it got the right amount of light and water and it grew into something bigger. And the Dresden Files... for crying out loud they grew into something bigger, there's a lot of people taking shade under that tree. But all I did was put a seed in the ground, I didn't make the sun shine, I didn't make the rain fall, I didn't make the seed grow, but I put it in the ground I did that much. So what I tell people now is-what I tell people is "all I did was plant a seed, it was /you/ investing energy in it that made things happen and you walked yourself out of that dark, I just happened to give you a painkiller so you could get up and start walking, you walked yourself out of it. But if you really feel the need to pay me back, the way you pay me back is you go and plant some seeds of your own, go do small good things that help other people, that's how you pay me back, that's how you make the world better." It took me about ten years to get to that but eventually that's where I got to. I didn't really mean to do you good, I'm really glad if it did, if you want to pay me back go find some random person and do them good.
https://thelegendarium.podbean.com/e/a-conversation-with-jim-butcher/
TheCuriousFan:
*starts midway through a story about Brutus and Fenris*
...He'll just sneak up on him and jump on his tail, just jump on his tail, all the claws on his tail. Bru jumps up and runs away, Fenris takes his spot by the fire. That's just how it works around here, Fenris is the boss.
That's true love.
Alrighty, you want me to get started with all the spoilers and stuff?
Do it.
I'm on the official "we've got a script" today, so look at us, we've got our big podcast pants on so...
Nice.
So we are talking to the source of all knowledge about the Dresden Files, so if you are watching this and don't want to get spoiled, probably avert your eyes. We're also going to swear and shit because we're adults here so I hope that's okay with everybody.
We will be disappointed when we get told no.
So jumping in we've got a list of questions, we expect he's gonna answer about half of them but we wanted to get some of the bookkeeping stuff out of the way so the next project that we understand you're probably working on is The Olympian Affair, have you been making progress on it?
Yeah I'm working on it, it's one of those things where it's a very different kind of writing than the Dresden Files, there's a much different voice for the characters and they kind of have a non-standard dialect and so on that I'm trying to maintain and... It's a very different process than writing a Dresden Files book, writing a Dresden Files book is just like "okay what am I going to do to Harry today?", it breaks down to that simple, it's how do I make Harry's day worse today. When I'm doing stuff in multiple viewpoint books I've got lots of characters to juggle I've got lots of decisions to make about how I present things. Writing in third person is a very different process than writing in first person because you've got so many more choices to make. Another way of saying that is that you've got much more rope with which to hang yourself. But I ultimately I think third person books have more potential for- there's more ways, varying ways you can present your story. First person book, Dresden pretty much has to walk into the room and get punched in the nose in order to get anything done but when you're going third person you can show things so many more ways, it's both more fun and much more stressful.
You mentioned previously that there might be a novella between the Cinder Spires book we already have and The Olympian Affair, do you have a title for that yet?
No I don't really have a title yet I'm working on it. It's Benedict on a mission, Benedict gets sent out to go do cool Warriorborn stuff with a team of Warriorborn suicide squad guys and so off they go to manage things. But it's really just kind of a setup for the opening of a book but I kind of want to get the story going I had a great idea for how to get more cats into the story so I had to do a novella at that point.
Are you still sticking with the pattern for the Cinder Spires books where it's either three or six or nine?
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if I'm going to do three of them or six of them or nine of them. We'll kind of see how the second one does. Hopefully I'll be able to do something cool whichever way it turns out, I think if I can do six it'll be pretty great it'll be about how long Codex Alera was, if I can do nine it should come home to a pretty thundering epic end, that would be good.
So in terms of-we talked before we went live here you were thinking twenty two books plus the big trilogy, do you have a rough idea for the titles of the books between Battle Ground and the trilogy?
Not really. I know some of the titles, I know the next one's coming up-I'm not writing Mirror Mirror next I'm writing a different book next in the Dresden Files because I decided that after Battle Ground if we just jumped forward into an alternate reality rather than actually seeing what happened to this one that I really think it would undermine a lot of cool story stuff. As it is I think what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take a little bit of time and I'm gonna write something different than the normal Dresden. Normally Dresden is I write a book that's about his worst weekend of the year and that's what the Dresden Files is really about, Harry Dresden's worst weekend of the year. But the next one I think I'm gonna write is gonna take place over the course of a year and it's going to kind of show what it's like-
We'll follow him for a whole year?
Yeah, yeah. Essentially what I'm gonna do is write once a month I'm gonna be writing a book and it's like "this is how you recover when your world gets blown up" and that's what happened to Dresden whether you like it or not. That's what happened in the last book and you don't just take that and move along, just keep moving along with the themes you've got to stop and look at things once in a while, you've gotta stop and look at yourself once in a while. So I think that's what we're going to do in this next book there's g- I mean we will have the normal Dresden Files nonsense *Brutus comes in with a toy* here's Brutus everybody in case you wondered if you would get to see Brutus today. We'll be doing a lot of the normal Dresden Files nonsense but it'll be a little bit more spread out and he's got to survive twelve dates with Lara Raith and a bunch of stuff like that so it's gonna be busy.
Damn, that's a lot of dates with Lara Raith.
If the other book titles are still open to negotiation I still want to throw my two cents in to have Heel Turn be the wrestling book.
Heel Turn? Yeah not bad. I don't know I'm kind of going for more a pro wrestling vibe. I would probably-if I didn't already have the title structure going I would have called it Turnbuckle because that's such a great wrestling word and you don't really hear it anywhere else. But I think the wrestling book will probably be called Body Slam so.
Okay, I have to think about that. I liked Heel Turn for a really long time but-
It's just because EG advocates it every episode.
It's got the double meaning it's got people just instantly becoming a bad guy that you didn't realise were gonna be it's got that you know-
It's not bad.
I have methods to my madness.
*Brutus walks in again* Go on, go settle down. I gotta work, we'll play later.
So I think you said previously that the time travel book is probably going to be book number twenty two.
Yeah it should be the last one, I think.
So is that when we learn who fixed Little Chicago?
I mean gosh I just planned the time travel book to just go through and fix all the inconsistencies that are in the series that- I know there's some there and there'll probably be more. Honestly the whole reason to do a time travel story is just to do that. And then you get to play around with time travel.
Protip for any author out there, just make sure to say that's going to be time travel, any mistakes you make just fix up there.
Right. Gimme just one second I'm gonna let Bru out to chase the squirrels so he's not in here with us.
Squirrel chasing is important.
I mean if there's a squirrel moving in on his territory it's got to be put in it's place right?
Clearly the cat is more dangerous to it anyway.
Alright what's next?
So I'm assuming partial answer is going to be this next book that kinda manifested where we kind of follow Harry through the year but you added so much of the extra story stuff in Battle Ground is that kind of the intention where-I can't imagine you're kind of going to give us the answers to everything in this one book right we've got stuff with McCoy, we've got Lara, we've got the castle, Justine, Listens To Wind, we've got like River Shoulders-where's this all gonna-where do we get answers?
Oh eventually. *laughter* I'm not gonna tell you where you get the answers my gosh then you can skip all the other books and just buy the one with the good stuff.
Oh yeah, we would skip books. *laughs*
Because those would be the books with more questions.
We're gonna get some answers in the next book we'll get some more answers in the one after that although fewer. I mean Mirror Mirror is basically we're gonna jump over into the next universe and see how things are going. And we'll sort of be able to see-that universe will be a few years ahead of where Harry's universe is now so you'll sort of be able to see the direction things are going and that should be a lot of fun. Things got worse faster in the mirror universe that we're going to-there's actually an entire spectrum of parallel realities that are existing in the Dresden Files universe and this is just going to be the nearest parallel reality that you can get to that's significantly different. Because there's always a cloud of parallel realities that are almost exactly the same but not quite.
Yeah it's kind of like, I don't know if you've ever seen Stargate or those other sci-fi shows where one new choice basically means one new reality. Wherever there's a fork they split in a row and there's a new reality.
Yeah which is interesting because if you look at that from you know, Uriel's point of view then suddenly the battle of good and evil is all about choices because every choice starts creating more and more different realities, more and more universes eternally branching universes and are they going to be places where good things happen or places where bad things happen? That's kind of an epic struggle if looked at that way.
That's actually interesting because we've talked about that on the podcast several times. I think we all agreed on that even if there's a lot of realities there's one Uriel above all realities, is that how you see it?
Sort of. Yeah I mean Uriel's an archangel so he's like-he's kinda omnipresent in the universe in many ways. He's one of God's deputies he kind of has enormous amounts of power, all the archangels do. But yeah that would be the case, is that when you get to the really high levels of power, beings like Uriel are the same everywhere they go. So poor Uriel has to deal with millions and millions of Harry Dresdens because they're always causing problems and they're always making choices and they're always creating new branches for the universe so poor Uriel just has to deal with so many copies of this guy.
There are actually multiple Uriels but they're all kind of copies of the same guy.
No, no. There's one Uriel and he's everywhere. He just exists through all of the bits of time, but for example if you go to an alternate reality there would be a parallel Mab and the two Mabs would be parallel and they probably would be able to like know about each other and talk to each other if they wanted to but they're just really fucking busy they've got a lot to do. But Mab next door would be like "you work for me next door? Well now you work for me, while you're here you work for me".
Why not take advantage?
Yeah exactly, I mean it's Mab, what other way could she react you know. But she's-Mab is tremendously powerful but she's not powerful on a scale like Uriel is where he's in the parallel realities next door and spreading out and so on.
How do the Mothers compare to Uriel? Are they in all realities or are they in parallel?
They're much closer to Uriel because-well I don't want to talk about that yet I'll put it in the books. But the Mothers are much closer to being Uriel they're essentially nigh-unto being gods on the level with you know like Zeus or the Native American gods or the Hindu gods or something like that, they're kind of on that same scale.
So all the big things that stayed immortal and godly and powerful and have to-
And kind of had to take a step back from all the mortal affairs that were going on as a result. Most of the gods did that they were just sort of "okay we're gonna take a step back, we're not really gonna be involved, we're gonna become professional wrestlers" you know that sort of thing.
As for a question that will get a "I'm not gonna tell you", when do we get Thomas back?
When do we get Thomas back? Bold of you to assume we do.
You can't say that.
Maybe Thomas is just stuck there forever. I don't know, I don't know exactly, that's one of those things where it might be a while before we get an answer to that question, I don't know the answer myself.
We'll see him in Mirror Mirror.
It's gonna be weird because Thomas has been one of the most consistent characters as of appearing in each book so we're gonna miss him.
Well you could say he's consistent or you could say that he just hasn't grown very much, I'm not sure which is the case. I suppose you'd have to date him to find out. *unintelligible*
He's probably the character who's been in most books since he was introduced I think he was-he's shown up in one way or another in every book, there was one he wasn't in and I don't remember which one but besides that he's been in every book so it's gonna be a little weird not having him.
He's the muscle, you know. He's Harry's go-to thug you know so..."I might need somebody beat up, better call Thomas".
So one of Mab's thugs, Cat Sith, when do we get to see him again?
Oh, I don't know if he survived that.
Because no one survives falling into Lake Michigan.
Well yeah, not everyone. Not everyone has queen Mab there to save them the way Dresden did. Lemme think, yeah I don't know if we'll see Cat Sith again or not, we'll have to see.
We miss the murder kitty.
*unintelligible*
I will say he was a great character.
Great because he treated Harry the way a cat ought to treat Harry, and that was really the only reason people liked him, because he's a cat, he's giving Dresden no respect, this is great. You know, so.
Well we already had a cat for that it's just that this one can articulate it.
Yeah exactly.
So on the other seasonal side of the spectrum, Eldest Gruff, who seems like he would have been a handy kind of guy to have around in a giant titanic battle, was he maybe off doing something with Lea, Summer helping in that respect at the gates a little more or?
Anybody who wasn't-the reason you didn't see Lea around was because she was doing stuff that Mab would normally be doing. Mab had to be in Chicago overseeing that so Lea was at the gates overseeing the defence of the outer gates. And basically anybody that didn't-most of the folks you that didn't see that are involved in the faerie courts, if they weren't involved in that fight they were at the outer gates fighting.
So Eldest Gruff, is it fair to say he's kind of like the counterpart to Lea for Titania even if their roles are a little different in terms of power and responsibility?
No, nowhere close. Eldest Gruff is- I guess he's-I guess it's /close/, he's an advisor to Titania the way that Lea is to Mab. Neither Mab nor Titania take advice very well I'll tell you that much.
Great job to have.
Yeah well I mean when you're grotesquely powerful and people are afraid of you the advice comes in a little tepid anyway.
Well it's saved Harry's life enough.
Yeah. But uh-anyway I'm sorry.
When you wander like this that's when we're getting the real information so please-
Oh I know, I know, that's why I'm shutting my mouth.
We've just got to send him out on a tangent and we'll get there.
Right, it's why you've got to ask these open ended questions. Let the faeries just talk, so. So speaking of which, just keeping up with the character theme have you squared if Maggie Dresden is going to have powers yet and if so when do we get a taste of that?
I don't know yet and it depends on when I do anymore stories with her. I've got several ideas for what I could do with her and I'm not sure which one I'm gonna go with yet. I don't think she's just gonna be daddy's little girl and just be a duplicate of Dresden I don't think that works at all.
That would be too easy for him too.
It would be simple but I think I would have more fun doing something else so we'll see which way I go. None of the plans that I have have her being wizard Maggie but we'll see what happens.
So what about our boy Kincaid? Is he gonna come back and are we gonna-is he looking for a job right now I guess?
Well I mean if you're good at killing people you can pretty much always get work unfortunately in this world. But that said, he's out doing low profile stuff which is to say working for mortals. He hasn't been doing much in the supernatural world lately he's all depressed.
Aww.
Well I mean he shot her only friend, she booted him.
Her best friend shot her other best friend right, so.
Well Kincaid wasn't her friend he was hired.
Poor Kincaid.
So in the battle with Drakul and the vampire nobles and everything we see several other high profile wardens, you know at least wardens we're used to seeing around that aren't usually pains in Harry's backside get vanished one way or another. When are we going to see what happens to Wild Bill and Yoshimo for example? They're presumably turned or going to be so.
Yeah we'll see a little bit of that in the next book I think.
Well that's rough.
As to follow up on that, where did Chandler go?
Right? *laughter* Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know yet. I wish I could tell you, I don't know yet.
I bet you wish you could tell us.
Well now I don't wish I could tell you, but I wish I knew.
You wish you could withhold willingly.
Yeah I wish I could willingly withhold it, as it is it's involuntary and not as much fun.
Exactly.
It just looked really cool so we went with that so yeah. So other characters that were notably missing from Peace Talks and Battle Ground were the likes of Cowl and Kumori and obvious people working for the Circle or the Black Council that we're aware of. What were they busy doing?
Not being around Ethniu that's for sure.
They didn't want to get stepped on?
Yeah exactly. What point is there in showing up to that? The Black Council is not a go out in their masses and do battle sort of organisation.
Probably wouldn't last very long if they were.
Yeah exactly. The White Council smashes people like that.
Was there anyone significant that was at the battle of the bean that you didn't get to namedrop?
Probably. I mean, essentially if you lived in Chicago you were involved in it somewhere. I was tempted for a while to do a bunch of short stories about just like the little things that were happening along the way. You know, what happened at Mac's during the battle for example, what happened elsewhere? You know what was Morty doing during that fight? That sort of thing. There's plenty of people who were involved and just, you know, Dresden didn't see them or he never ran across them or they stayed at home. But essentially the city just went crazy for a night and any of the supernatural folks who were doing stuff were probably doing something-were probably scrambling. And you know I'm gonna be honest with you Battle Ground was a really great place for me to just kill a bunch of people so I didn't have to remember them anymore (surprisingly low number of characters permanently removed here unless Cristos really did die) you know, so.
Good reason.
Yeah, yeah, I mean every once in a while you've gotta kinda sweep through with some kind of apocalypse and clean out the cast a little on these long books or else you're just gonna lose track of everyone.
Well speaking of sweeping through people, so... Ethniu has this superweapon, the Eye of Balor, now that Harry has it is that the kind of weapon that someone even of the level of Mother Winter would appreciate or would she just kind of find that thing quaint and be like "aw that's cute but"?
Oh no, no, that was a weapon of Balor, he was a titan. He was one of the big bads of-he was the big bad of Celtic mythology. But yeah Balor's weapon is something that was so formidable that /the gods/ had to be afraid of it, it was something that-there were multiple stories about it, yeah I mean they're all gonna be impressed. You know at the end of the day when somebody puts a .44 magnum in your face he's got a .44 magnum in your face and that's what Dresden has, the Eye of Balor is a .44 magnum to anybody, it's dangerous.
Is it even like dangerous to Uriel? Or his boss?
If Uriel just stood there in it, yeah, I mean he wouldn't, it could kill him I mean it's- again it's one of those- I mean Uriel is... he's so powerful that he's not even on the scale with everybody else. I mean yeah maybe the Eye of Balor could disintegrate Uriel if Uriel couldn't just immediately teleport anywhere or make the energy go somewhere else or basically do anything at all to defend himself. If he just stood there like a dummy, sure somebody could kill him with the Eye of Balor. He's not going to, freaking archangel.
Well as a quick follow-up then, is that-cause we know um the faerie courts and the queens and stuff they were kind of- they had to come into being for a reason, was that part of Mab's mantle's creation-to be able to stand up to kinds of things like that as like a failsafe?
I don't want to tell you too much about it just yet, but yeah I mean essentially you know Mab has a role and a purpose. So for her to be where she is, yeah is was kind of her duty to be able to stand up to threats like that. She wasn't really anticipated to /have to/ stand up to a titan because everybody was pretty sure they were all taken care of but you know Ethniu's been laying low, biding her time. But at the same time, they did what was appropriate they got everybody together to take on the threat, or at least everybody they could.
So I know I was speaking about- you're probably just gonna hit me with a- you're not gonna tell me now, but somewhere down the line will we know who Mab was?
Yeah, I guess. That'll be something that comes in a little bit more towards the end but she's- you know she's one of these people who- we don't really know what's gonna happen to humans when we start living a really long time. We don't really know what's gonna happen to us and so to create Mab I just sort of extrapolated what happens to people as they- kind of the psychology of people as they get older while subtracting everything that goes along with degenerating, she doesn't degenerate. And the way I look at it she's just become more and more and more and more just sort of rational and grounded in this function of what she's doing to where every part of her psychology, every part of who she is as a person has become subsumed by needing to pursue this necessary function which is defending the mortal world.
So as long as she's doing that I mean that is all she can think about that's all she does and something that she's been doing for so long that it's just routine at this point. I mean, for her it's like "alright yeah, get up, do exercises, have breakfast, kill some enemies, go over here- torment some enemies, threaten some enemies, alright good, work day done." And it never really stops to occur to her- she never really stops to think "should I really be doing this?" because that's never a part of her calculation, her calculation is always "what I'm doing is necessary for the survival of the world, so I could worry about whether this is good or evil, right or wrong, but you know what I think I'll just do my job and move along to the next step" you know. Yeah I don't know what's gonna happen to humans when we start living a really long time but I don't know if it's gonna be very good for us, we'll have to see.
So speaking of Mab and her defending the mortal world and the Eye of Balor, does Mab have any other famous weapons stashed away magically speaking?
Or in famous monuments.
Yeah, weapons, monuments, that sort of thing. Well I mean she's got- sort of? Mab is kind of- she's sort of an absolute value in many ways. Mab doesn't go and collect stuff, Mab makes herself more awesome. That's really kind of more of her philosophy it's like "go out and get things? Yeah you can go out and pick up, you know, the spear of destiny and sure that would be a handy thing but you know what would be even better? If I made myself that much cooler, as much cooler as if I had the spear of destiny", that would be more Mab's tactic. She's not very material, she's not attached to things.
I misread the question actually, like with the battle of the bean, the weapons stashes, does she have similar stashes?
OH, yeah, Mab is big on being prepared, that's kind of one of her things and sort of what she does I mean, when you're a professional guardian it's kind of your job to be prepared. So yeah she has stuff like that all over the place.
Statue of Liberty filled with guns?
I don't know if the Statue of Liberty is, I mean how are you going to get everybody out there to get the guns? You'd have to use some other statues that's in a park in Manhattan somewhere.
The bull on Wall Street or something?
Yeah, bull on Wall Street that'd be a good place.
Oh so that's why the guy who cut off the balls of the bull he just- we never heard from him again. Mab was like "not showing my stash to people, okay?"
Right.
Besides, everybody knows that the Statue of Liberty is a giant mech waiting to happen, come on now, so.
Yeah.
So switching gears off of Mab for just a little bit at least, so with the White Council and everything like that we've gotten some words of Jim and we've seen it play out in the books that each of the wizards have more of a specialty, right, so Ramirez seems to be entropy magic and water, Listens To Wind is water for healing, Yoshimo's an air mage, what does Cristos do?
Oh Cristos is an earth mage.
Okay.
You got to see him in Battle Ground I mean that's kind of what he does, he does earthmoving stuff. Cristos can... he can moderate earthquakes, if you've got like a stone or ground based problem Cristos is the guy on the White Council you go talk to.
Is he better than McCoy?
Yeah I mean, he's better at his specialty than McCoy is. You know, McCoy is the one who is good at /everything/ and if you go and fight him in a duel it doesn't matter if you are awesome at earth because because McCoy is going to be better at air than you are- he's going to counter you. It doesn't matter if you're awesome with water he's gonna be good with fire and he's gonna counter you. McCoy is the guy who has been in so many fights and has done- has gone up against so many other wizards he just ain't gonna- he's just not gonna have a bad day is what it really amounts to, and when you're fighting a professional the guy who never has a bad day is really dangerous.
I was actually going to ask if it was like where he was compared to Morgan because I feel like Morgan was definitely very specialised in earth magic and was very good at it. But I guess Cristos is pretty far past him.
Um, Morgan is a guy who you want to have earth magic on when there's a fight happening because Morgan's the guy who can just go boom *pumps fist* like that and just bury somebody. Cristos can manage stuff like that too but Morgan was a tactical combat specialist, that's what he did. Cristos is not as good at tactical combat as Morgan was, he might not win in a fight against somebody like Morgan even though he's more powerful but Cristos has a much longer reach and can do more stuff from back at home and doing his research, do contact with earth elementals and other creatures of earth and stuff like that. I mean, he's got a great big talent stack that he can use and it's all- it's mostly involved with earth stuff. But he's not a fighter, he's a politician. He can go out and do big things and help in big ways but um he's not a "go screw up a bunch of people in a fight" sort of thing, he's gotta coordinate with other guys to get stuff done. So when you see him doing stuff in a fight and he's doing something impressive in Battle Ground it's because he's working together with Ebenezar.
So in the same vein of enforcers and fighters like that we've seen on the faerie side malks and fetches and the gruffs, are there any other races like that that have like a patriarch, like an eldest mantle and someone at the top?
Probably yeah, I mean, there's probably an eldest goblin- there's definitely an eldest goblin that's the Erlking, that's kind of what he amounts to. Basically of anything there's gonna be an eldest mantle somewhere because that's really important to the fae, they respect things that have been around a while. And things that go by quickly, like most mortals, they're fairly meh.
So as a quick follow-up, is it- *Bru is upset about squirrels stealing birdseed*
There are squirrels that are trying to steal bird food from the bird feeder and-
How dare they.
And sheriff Bru gets very upset about this violation of the law. Because only the birds are supposed to have that.
He's a just and honourable sheriff.
Yes, yes. So he feels the need to run out onto the deck and chase the squirrels away whenever we see a squirrel out there so. As a mammal he needs to uphold the mammal law.
If he doesn't who will?
Exactly.
So was Cat Sith, would he have been considered the eldest malk? Or was that Grimalkin?
Yes. And Grimalkin is doing it now.
So if someone like for example the eldest fetch gets defeated someone next in line kind of gets that eldest mantle?
Yeah the mantle goes to the next eldest yeah.
So same as the queens basically, it's the same general idea.
Yep, the next one in line.
Well now we know the knight mantles don't work quite that way they're a little more hands-on so-
There's more discretion there.
And as far as discretion goes who was the last knight that Mother Winter picked? What would be her kind of standard?
Oh that Mother Winter picked. You mean Mother Winter and not Mab, right?
Yeah.
Mother Winter would have picked somebody like- I mean if she was going for historical figures she'd go for people like Vlad Țepeș except Vlad was actually somebody else, he was actually doing other stuff. But yeah I mean that's the kind of- she picks people who are completely relentless about whatever it is they're trying to get done and that's the only thing Mother Winter cares about so Joseph Stalin, she'd pick him yeah.
Genghis Khan.
Oh yeah, excellent, good choice. Real achiever there, he really works hard, that's a bright young boy.
He's a go-getter.
He's got potential.
He is, he is. That's who we need, right there.
So on the historical figures end, are there any particularly noteworthy or famous magical wizard types out there, someone like Aleister Crowley was he actually something or was he just a fraud?
Crowley was... Crowley in the Dresden Files universe was kind of a con man who was this wizard who- he specialised in illusion magic and putting on great shows and stuff like that. He was kind of running his own cult and everybody was like "what are you /doing/?" All the White Council was just like "you are just ruining everything what is going on here, we /just/ got through the burning times and here you are doing this?" But yeah folks like that, like doctor John Dee, for example, he was actually on the White Council. He was an advisor to Queen Elizabeth, he was well known for being a wizard historically speaking. And there were several folks like that who actually were on the council but mostly the White Council's kind of stayed... they've tried to stay low-key for the most part. Instead you'll find most of the historical figures are connected to like fraternal organisations that are connected to the supernatural world like the Thule Society or the Venatori Umbrorum. So mostly the historical figures get connected to stuff like that.
If you're a king or a queen it's different because there's actual magical stuff associated with being a king or a queen. For example Mab does not disrespect Elizabeth in England, period. She just does not. Because the queen of England is the /queen of England/ and she can do things. And we'll get to see more of that as we go.
But she doesn't care if she's like in Australia or Canada or any of those.
If it's in part of her realm, yeah, that's a big deal. You don't screw with her in her realm but if she comes to America she doesn't necessarily have access to all that stuff. She's not walking on the ground that her family's been ruling for hundreds of years so.
So what is Mab's perspective on democracy?
Mab looks at democracy and goes "democracy, oh" and that's really about as much as she thinks of it, okay the humans are doing this.
Just trying new things again.
She was more impressed with the humans when they killed each other with swords.
It's a fun little lie they like to tell themselves.
They've got more destruction now but she really feels like they've gone soft, you know. It's Disney, Disney is the problem as far as Mab is concerned. Disney's making things too soft, the fairy tales were there to get you ready for the real world.
She should have bought it when she had the chance.
Yeah.
So when do we get to see Lea again?
Probably next book is what I would anticipate. Yeah I mean she's gonna have to check in on Dresden, he's got wrecked and she's still his godmother and all... Actually yeah actually she might be the one who shows up and slaps him in the face to, you know "get up, get moving," that sort of thing.
How soon will we learn the details of her bargain with Margaret? You've said before that it would probably cause them to throw down but when do they actually fight?
When did they fight?
When do Harry and Lea fight over the bargain Lea had with Margaret?
Oh. I don't know if they will. At this point I don't know if they will, Dresden keeps growing up on me and lots of things that I've wanted to do and I didn't necessarily get to do them while I was going along, I'll have to see.
You're saying Harry's gonna be too mature to pick that fight? Damn, never thought I'd see the day. Harry not taking a fight.
I so want to know what that bargain fully was, what did Margaret pay?
Oh we will get to do the details of that before the end. That's necessary, you're right. That's a good question, thank you, I'll have to show that now.
Yay. I contributed.
We helped.
So um, her- slight tangent based on her role which is to be kind of like at the gates when Mab's busy and all that stuff, as far as the guardianship of the gates over time, has it kind of been a cycle where one pantheon falls, the next one picks it up because the other one lost worship and this one got stronger? Or has there always been kind of like a coalition of whichever was top dog at the time was the one in charge?
It's almost always been a bit of a coalition. The fae have always kind of been the foot-soldiers of what was going on, but it's been more recently that they've been given autonomy, which is to say Mab and Titania. And when I say recently I mean like within the past few thousand years. As far as the immortal things are concerned, recent events are, you know, human history.
And were they kind of- to circumvent that whole problem of a continual transition because it seems like if you're losing power based on faith you'd want something a little more permanent like a mantle that goes and stays empowered at all times.
It was less about that... less about the whole thing running on faith and more about the fact that occasionally things got bad and the fae needed backup and that would be when "okay we've got to cover this one, who's got this one? Uhh how about Asgard? Yeah Asgard gets this one, go guys" you know like that. And that was how it went for a long time, pre-history that was pretty much how it went. But as things have gone on, the past couple of thousand years has been mostly the fae in charge. Because essentially they got a sponsor and then they were able to get some actual leadership put in place so.
They got a sponsor?
Yeah I've actually told everybody about it already, it's in the books, you'll have to come up with it yourselves.
Reread!
I know right? That's the next year of our life.
I'll give you a hint, reread Skin Game.
Could you tell us a little bit about the Librarians?
No, I will tell you nothing about the Librarians, you can learn about them later.
In Twelve Months?
Uhhh.... will they start getting there by the end? Yeah they'll be there by the end of the next book.
I'm sure they're harmless.
Men in black. You can't just tell us about them, so.
Well no, no.
They can't even just tell us about them.
Is Tilly in the Librarians? I think I've read that somewhere but that might just be a rumour.
No he's straight FBI.
Can you confirm if... I'm just gonna get an I'm not gonna tell you... is Elaine a starborn?
I'm not going to confirm or deny.
I figured.
You had to try.
Yeah we get some more information in Battle Ground so the question then became... we've had for a while that she was born in the right time frame I think is as close as we got and so we're like "is there /a/ starborn or not?" and obviously in Battle Ground there are multiple now and they're concurrently operating so it opens up some more of those questions.
Yeah there were forty or fifty thousand at first.
What.
Starborn.
Since the beginning of time or right now?
No there were forty or fifty thousand starborn in this cycle at first.
And then they get whittled down.
Yeah it's been about close to forty years there ain't so many of them left.
So is being starborn a pre... do you have to have been mortal to be a starborn?
You just have to have been in the right place. Really you just have to have been unlucky.
Okay, I was just thinking of if Drakul, that's how you say it right? If he was a mortal once, it was like a side thought I just had.
Ooh I mean, you'll have to see as we go along we'll get more stuff as we get to the grand climactic bits and it'll be fun.
Even if he had been mortal I had a feeling it would be a "you'll have to see".
Yeah.
Well you mentioned before once that he was something unhuman and got put mortal so I guess we're not going to get to find out what he was once yet?
Well not today.
So at least on his more historical timeframe um, I was wondering, there seems to be a slight discrepancy at least on how old the Black Court is because, is that just because Drakul and Drakula (go away book bot) I assume they're older than their historical personas?
Yes, Drakul especially. Drakul has been somebody that popped up in various places in history. I mean history's full of little monsters that aren't really particularly remembered and he's been several of them.
So kind of like Odin with his Beowulf and all that.
Yeah exactly. Once you're immortal and you're interacting with mortals and you know they're just a pain unless you deal with them Memento style, you know, by vanishing from their memory. It just makes life simpler for you when you're an immortal. Oh my gosh, the humans and their issues.
is his son old enough, how old essentially is the Black Court? Are they the oldest court or are they just...
Okay the Black Court itself is not too much older than Drakula cause has the one who really kind of went crazy making more vampires. His father didn't he just wanted a small handpicked crew of people who were awesome and that was his way of making supersoldiers, was Black Court vampires. But Drakula wanted more of that and sort of let it loose into the world and his father was very displeased.
So it was Drakul who made the Black Court vampires?
Yeah.
We were a little confused, we weren't sure if it was Drakula and Drakul was like "that's a neat thing you made there son, I'm taking it".
Drakul made them, Drakula was the one who made them popular I suppose is the way to think of it. But you've actually seen how Drakul operates, that's just how he's gone through his whole career. Is with this tight group of enforcers and then himself being awesome.
When we saw that scene in the graveyard and I saw that Mavra was the drummer I was like "who are these other guys if she's drumming?"
The old guard, the ones who are still alive, the ones who lived.
Kind of random question, in Peace Talks and Battle Ground Harry still talks like he's poor, what happened to his diamonds?
Oh he still has them he's just not spending them. Two million in diamonds is not nearly as much diamonds as you'd think it is (we need somebody to sit down and get the details on the size and quality of the diamonds to explain how twenty pounds of diamonds becomes two million). Especially when you've got to go trade, when you've got to go pawn so you can't drop too many of them in one place at one time.
That's when the police comes knocking.
Yeah, yeah. So his diamond wealth is sort of trickle wealth he's got to use a little bit carefully.
So we've now seen essentially all the accorded nations basically in one big fight. And you've put that in the books that the accords are something fairly recent and it seems like they stem from the kind of throwaway mention of the Unseelie Incursion in 1994 that comes up in Storm Front and is never talked about again.
That's right.
Are there any particular details or reasons for that event we could get?
I will tell you that it originated in a clash between the Summer and the Winter Knight and it just got out of hand and then things just got completely crazy and I kind of know the story of it in my head, I keep thinking that maybe I should write it up a bit eventually.
That would be cool. Was the Summer Knight the one from Summer Knight, the guy who dies in that book?
Yeah, Roland Reuel vs Lloyd Slate. It started with those two.
If you write it I'll give you a dollar, that's how this works right?
Awesome.
If you write it I will buy it, that's generally how it goes.
Okay.
That's more than one dollar.
I'm willing to do that contract.
In Cold Days Harry asked for help from Vadderung in exchange for a favour. When is Vadderung gonna call in his favour?
Ooh, when is he gonna call in his favour? *thinks to himself* The worst possible time, that's when. Okay yeah, that's the right answer. When will be the worst possible time? Oh god, okay.
*laughter*
You sent him down a path you shouldn't have sent him down.
I'd actually forgotten about that favour, geez.
He went down the path where Chandler went, we don't know yet.
Okay director you helped earlier, now stop helping. Now you're helping too much.
*laughter*
If at some point Harry can blame me for some of his problems I'm okay with this.
So I feel like I've read that you've already confirmed this but to be sure, Bob stays with Harry now?
Well Bob is with Harry now.
Will he stay with Harry now?
I'm not gonna tell you the future of the books, he's with Harry now.
I was gonna say "maybe Bob can be a good mentor to Bonnie" but then I thought about it for two more seconds.
No.
That's not a good idea.
Probably not.
Well now he's got a whole castle he can keep them apart in.
So you teased us with this in your last reddit AMA, you've said that you've already introduced Bob's parents so who exactly are Bob's parents?
I'm not telling you that you guys can figure it out.
So there are enough hints that we could figure it out already?
I have no idea. I've stopped trying to figure out what readers can figure out because there's some things that I drop that I think are just the most obvious thing ever and then people "oh my god I didn't see it coming" and then there's the other thing where I drop one freaking word in one book and somebody cross-references it and then goes to reddit and gets everybody on it and then they crowdsource whatever it is and come up with an answer for something that I was not gonna write for another two or three books and now you've already determined it and now you've ruined it for everyone, I hope you're happy with yourselves (people who manage that usually are).
Exceedingly.
That's who you guys are, these guys on the panel here, these guys are the fans who ruin things for other fans by thinking about it too hard.
Listen, the only fair thing is you just write the list of the things that were ruined and you set it out.
Okay, I'll do that.
That would actually be cool like, a Dresden compendium.
"This could have happened but some fan worked it out so I had to stop".
Here's the Mirror Mirror version of the series.
Nice.
When did Bob learn how to kill an immortal?
It's one of those things that he's known for a long time. I mean Bob was born knowing a lot of things based upon his parentage.
Mmm-hm.
Well speaking of the parentage I think you've mentioned once before something that... based on the way Athena was born she's basically a spirit of intellect but she also seemed to have had a body is there some- is that a godly thing or is there a mechanic by which a spirit could get a physical form more permanently?
Well let's just say that if Molly hadn't been around then Harry would be a much different person now and leave it at that. And when the spirit gets born of somebody like Zeus (and your mom is a titan/oceanid) he can do something about it more than Harry can. Zeus is able to go "yeah okay, you know what? Here's a body for you, there you go."
That takes care of that headache.
Yeah.
What equipment, if any, of Harry's survived the fire and will he ever get it back?
Very little. In fact, nothing really was magically useful after the fire at his place and there was very little left. Alcohol-based fires burn really hot and it's kind of an issue. As far as getting it back he has to build back and that'll be part of what he's doing, I mean that's part of why we're taking Twelve Months here Dresden hasn't had time to make good equipment I mean he's been making schlocky equipment for the past three books.
Yeah we were talking about it before.
Yeah he's just been- really he's just been throwing stuff together because he hasn't really had a base of operation or really much in the way of resources, that's gonna change now.
Well combined with Mab's training it has forced him to become a lot better without equipment so I'm looking forward to seeing how he will be with equipment again.
Well equipment is- generally speaking the White Council thinks of equipment as a crutch (not that it stops Eb, Langtry or Klaus). They're willing to allow that you can take a staff with you because it's so useful you can use it for so many things so a staff is considered fine but everybody else using equipment they must be a kid because that's kid stuff. Kids make toys because they can't really control their own power, they haven't learned how yet. Dresden makes toys to help him control his power because he hasn't learned how yet, he's gonna be looked at as kind of less than a full adult wizard until he starts doing things without using varous goo-gahs.
Like simply willing a shield into existence.
Yeah it's like you don't have a shield bracelet you just make a shield happen, that's what you're supposed to do as a wizard.
That castle that Marcone flew in to take place that clear has it's own history, it already has it's own spells, where was it from and what was it's name?
It's from Scotland.
And what was it's name?
I'm not telling you the name of the historical castle. I can't do that because then people show up places and again, I can't do that because it's guys like you that have ruined it, you know.
*laughter*
Does it have mythological significance? Could it have been something people would have thought "oh maybe this was Camelot once?"
No no it was just a little castle but there happened to be somebody there who wanted to make it nice and impregnable.
Someone whose name begins with M?
I'm not gonna tell you who.
Come on, that's like half the characters of the Dresden Files.
You're right, I should have just said M.
Because we know from Peace Talks that it was the Tuatha right? They at least enchanted it so.
They were the craftsmen who built it but anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGgyJNMA4q8
TheCuriousFan:
And the remaining ten minutes because character limit.
Well that was fun but switching gears again, or do you have a follow-up, director?
No.
Okay, so we wanted to ask about dragons because it's another one of the things where it's like if you go back in enough history that the story feels like it's changed or maybe we're just getting two pieces of the story right. So when Ebenezar says that he was responsible for Tunguska and Dresden says that the last dragon died there, was that the same event?
I don't think it was the last time a dragon was killed but it was one of the times a dragon was killed. Dragons getting killed is a big deal they're events like Tunguska.
And Eb was involved in that?
Yes.
Alright.
So was the resulting explosion, was it his power that's needed to take out the dragon or is that the result of the dragon essentially blowing up?
Well I'm not gonna tell you that. I mean we've got to have Harry worry about that when he's fighting his own dragon, don't we.
Of course.
What does Vadderung have on Ferrovax that kept Ferro from ratting out Dresden during Peace Talks?
The fact that Vadderung could have started a fight that killed Ferrovax. Yeah I mean they could have gone- that was all they were doing- they were sitting there waiting for one of them to pull the trigger. They were basically two gun fighters that were sitting there for the whole meeting with a hand on a pistol the whole time. And that was their dynamic. Ferrovax does not like Vadderung at all.
Is it more personal? Does he have any connection to being the world serpent or is that just because they're on the same powerlevel?
You'll have to see.
He's not gonna answer that one.
Nothing ventured.
Alright, are Hugin and Munin primarily bodyguards or do they function as spies as well?
Oh Hugin and Munin? Mostly bodyguards. They can go out and do stuff but they're not somebody that Odin sends out on a regular basis to do stuff. Odin sends them out on missions along the lines of "alright, Loki got Thor in trouble again, go arrange things so Thor can get out, don't let him know you're there," that's the kind of mission Hugin and Munin get. They do a lot of cleanup behind the scenes and they kind of resent the other gods, they don't have to do all the work.
They resent people like Harry.
Well, they just sort of dislike humans. Humans are complicated, they're always doing things, they're always changing, humans are the worst.
Nobody likes humans.
Really, I mean honestly.
Not even humans.
So the einherjar are revenants, they're people returned, how is that magic related to necromancy and the fact that the einherjar don't need a drum but they are dead and returned?
It's not necromancy it's something else (the soulfire + necromancy mystery remains)- it's one of those things that.... yeah I'll just tell you, I don't know if this is gonna come out anywhere, it's soulfire.
Holy fuck.
Where could that possibly come up? I mean, we don't know anybody who has that power, so.
Yeah that's kind of what Odin's got over the other gods and why the gods don't mess with him, Odin's got fuckin soulfire *unintelligble but I heard "can be real"*.
That's handy. Is that something he got as essentially a result of staying mortal and active in all this? The kind of thing he couldn't have ever gotten if he had stayed what he once was?
That seems like a very clever theory.
I'm known for those. Alright so now we've got to go to the real stuff that you're never gonna answer.
We're coming up on time though so.
That's true, but we can skip if we want to get a couple in.
Let's get one or two more in, we'll do a couple more.
Alright, so, then as much as we can get about Nemesis now that we can see it's taken someone particularly close to Dresden and his brother. Is there really just one way that it spreads from person to person/being to being or are there particular requirements that have to be met?
Not terribly. The only limit it has is how many places it can be at once, it can only be in so many places at once.
But it's more than a couple because we've seen at least a few at the same time.
More than a couple but there's a limit.
Less than forty thousand starborn.
Less than forty thousand starborn, correct. The whole point of the starborn is that they don't have to put up with the nonsense from the outsiders, stuff like Nemesis taking them over.
Reality's white blood cells.
Yeah.
Nice. If we want to continue with the train of thought then for a little bit, so there have been some implications that Thorned Namshiel or at least his coin bearer at one point was infected. If a coin bearer is infected is it just the host or does the angel get some of it as well?
Really fascinating question.
It was worth a shot, alright.
I mean, given developments that could mean it could go south fast.
Exactly.
Well in Cold Days Justine was on the island, did Demonreach know she was infected? That she was a walker?
No, Justine was there, lemme think... yeah she actually got onto the island, that's right, she did. Yeah. That was in Cold Days, where was it in Cold Days I'm trying to remember now.
She made it to the end I think, wasn't she one of the ones inside the circle?
That's right, they rolled up inside it. Yeah, the thing about Nemesis is, you can't tell when Nemesis is there unless you figure it out. It's from the outside, there's no magic that helps you with that, there's no way to tell. It's why it's scary. But you can figure it out and also Nemesis is an outsider and while it probably knows humans and the mortal world better than any other outsider it's still this alien entity that sort of only learns things by looking at it and sort of puzzling it together. It doesn't really understand humans, it understands humans about as well as, if you had a really, really, really big huge block of code and then you had somebody start reading it to tell what it did. You could have somebody that read the code and figured it all out but I mean it's a /big/ thing to figure out and humanity is sort of the same way so when Nemesis is looking at them it can't duplicate human stuff all the time, it can't duplicate human reactions all the time, it's imperfect, it's this alien thing. It can be anywhere but it can't be right all the time. But you also don't get any favours fighting it either, you have to fight it with like logic and intuition.
So if there's no magical way to detect it does that count for Grigori and fallen angels as well then? Because Mac was dangerously close to her in that scene we're thinking about. She was tending to his wounds was the particulars of the scene I think so.
Oh yeah that's right she was. Oh goodness, wow.
*laughter*
Ooops, we were helping again.
And Uriel was looking at her too when showing Harry the ghost of right now with Thomas and Justine.
Right.
Uriel doesn't know? Or did he?
*Jim shakes his head* Stuff from the outside, man.
So the British guy that's in Demonreach, the one that told Harry to piss off in the beginning of Skin Game, when did he get put into Demonreach? What was the warden that interred him there?
The one that interred him there was the first one.
*surprised looks*
I told you.
That's interesting cross-talk because you said that it couldn't possibly be Merlin because we wouldn't understand him.
Because his British would be too out-there.
But he's as old as Merlin, presumably.
And is perfectly intelligible in British.
Merlin gets away with time travel, he could have done it twenty minutes ago for all we know.
This is Jim bamboozling us again.
Once we know we'll think back on this and be like "that son of a..."
The original Merlin did it because Dresden's the original Merlin, right? I'm just kidding.
Merlin was supposed to age backwards wasn't he?
Right. Alright, do we want to call time, we want to be conscientious.
I've gotta wrap things up for today.
Okay.
We'll have to see you next time.
We appreciate it, we've got through quite a bit but we could go forever if you let us so.
Oh yeah totally, lets have boundaries, lets be professional.
Alright.
We want you to come back so.
*unintelligible in the future okay?*
Yep definitely thank you so much for your time.
*waves goodbye*
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