The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here
TheCuriousFan:
Another batch of interesting bits from Tyson's Corner VA 2018, Lexington 2018 and ConnectiCon 2019.
In Proven Guilty the first that Harry encounters big daddy Scarecrow his arm is chopped off by Thomas' saber, he's hit by the van, falls into a bus shelter... why is he not hurt by iron like he is in Arctis Tor?
Part of that is because of the nature of the way phobophages work, they're not actually there, they're projecting energy into a body. When he was in Faerie that was a different story. But when they're coming over to the Earth... nobody wants to drive their /own/ car in the demolition derby, you get a junker car and that's what he's doing.
Second question, when somebody is making... when a scion is embracing their supernatural power, how much of that can they do before the powers that be say "you've made your choice, you can't live as long as you have without saying you're basically on the supernatural side"?
An infinitesimal amount, to get the power you make the choice otherwise you don't get it (how this meshes with Irwin and Meryl I have no clue).
Sarissa lived for a long time and apparently she never made a choice.
Yeah she never went one way or the other.
So she just got to live.
Yeah she was just floating along. And you know her mother was queen of Faerie and that *unintelligible*
When Harry died at the end of Changes did that count against *crowd rumbling*
I think you're the biggest guy here you should be fine.
*laughter*
Does that against the death curse for him that he would die alone?
No not really (yay for inconsistency) because he more or less wasn't actually dead, he was just on life support and so far gone that his spirit was floating out there somewhere, basically Mab was just maintaining the silver cord that entire time until his body, until the wizard metabolism could start healing him back up.
---
How did most of the creatures in Demonreach get trapped in there and does it have anything to do with the circle on top of the island?
Second question I'm not telling you, first question I mean the warden of Demonreach put them there, that's how you get in there. That's some place that you know- it was fairly ballsy of Mab to step onto the island and say "give it your best shot kid" but she's that kind of person, so.
---
Are we ever gonna find out what Kincaid is?
Probably eventually. He's a scion but you'll see eventually.
---
We've done the Fae, we've done the Fomor, am I going to be introducing folks from other parts of Celtic mythology like the Fir Bholg?
You may have noticed in the course of the series that those things are popping up more and more, maybe it means something.
---
When Harry does on multiple individuals they always have unique reactions, are we ever going to see what they're seeing?
I don't know, I don't see how, it's all first person point of view, it's all from Harry's point of view. That's kind of the limit for all of us though, what do people think about us? When they look at us what do they see? You don't know, you can look in a mirror but that doesn't tell you what kind of person they think you are.
I was thinking more along the lines of someone else like Billy and Georgia, maybe they would have a soulgaze and talk about what they saw.
And eavesdrop on it? That's cheating. I suppose that could get it done... I mean I know what it looks like I'll see if I can figure out some way to put it in, that seems like something that would be sort of towards the end of the story.
---
In Proven Guilty there's a character at Splattercon!!! who seems to guide some of the events, like pointing Molly towards fear as a motivator, her name is Sandra Marling and I was wondering if she would ever show up again in future books?
How to answer that one properly... well that probably is the proper answer. Oh yeah that's right, I'm not gonna tell you because it's way better to find out the other way.
---
In Cold Days I noticed that Lacuna and Toot Toot are sort of like miniature versions of Murphy and Dresden where Lacuna is sort of a warrior princess Amazonian type and Toot Toot is just like a dangerous spaz. Was that on purpose or am I just reading into things too much?
I didn't do it consciously but there might have been some leftover English major stuff happening, you know, when I wasn't looking.
---
About Mouse, he hid himself so Harry tells the Buddhist monk that this is all there is and tried to contact them to say "we've got one more", so do they ever find out? Do the monks ever come back and ask to have Mouse back?
You're assuming the monks weren't intending that from the very beginning.
---
Can the three queens give Harry conflicting orders?
Ooooh, they can /now/.
*laughter*
That's awesome. You people brought this on yourselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZJiv_GT-Jc
----
So lots of stuff happened on that Halloween when Harry was born, Margaret died, Lord Raith got cursed even though he's supposedly immune to mortal magic but if it wasn't mortal magic.. was that part of the bargain with Lea?
Man I don't remember Lord Raith ever being immune to mortal magic, did I write that? No I think you're thinking of the Loup-Garou *tangent about how words you pick up from books don't come with pronunciation guides*
There is at one point Harry casts- does some spell at Lord Raith that is drawn into some kind of like field around him.
Oh that's right because he had the three porn star witches backing him up like the ones from Macbeth, that was my Macbeth reference, Macbeth, porn stars, sophistication. And they were covering him for that point and Dresden hadn't known about it then so. And what was the rest of the question?
I was gonna ask if that was part of Margaret's bargain with Lea.
Oh that whole thing with Lord Raith and so on, nah not so much. Margaret really... she created a lot of drama, she was kind of that kind of person and so yeah there wasn't nearly as much thinking ahead she was an extemporaneous sort of person so that wouldn't have been her bag to plan that out.
*unintelligible*
Can you just repeat the questions?
---
In vault seven in Skin Game every non-architectural artifact that we saw was pretty much directly related to Christianity and the history thereof in some way, so three questions, one, was vault seven dedicated to Christianity explicitly or did that just happen?
No no, that's the superweapons vault. That's where all the weapons go, not like the awesome weapons just the ones that the mortals might pick up and use to wreck things, you know, so.
Question two, are there other vaults after vault seven? So eight, nine, whatever?
Probably yeah, I only got the tour you know, so, I don't work there or anything, /yet/.
Are we going to see other superweapons from other vaults?
Um... maybe. I don't know, maybe. I mean it's not like it's very easy to go rob it, it's not like everybody could just go do that. You've got to have a lot of resources to pull it off, I mean somebody like the White Council could probably do something except I would just love to see the White Council discussing with each other "so okay who's going to be the one who dies?". I'm pretty sure that would get filibustered for a real long time among that crowd so.
*unintelligible comment presumably about the White Council not doing anything*
You know actually I think the White Council not doing anything is... that's favourable, I kind of feel that way about the federal government. I don't care who's in charge of it mostly I just say "could you just leave me alone please" and I think that's really mostly what you want.
Throughout the series we've seen Harry's powerlevel go up, how's his powerlevel in Peace Talks compared to the senior council?
The question is we've been watching Harry level up as he's gone through and you can be like "that's a fireball, he's fifth level, ice storm sixth-seventh level" like that. But the question is Harry's powerlevel as we've gone into Skin Game how does he compare to the senior council. And the answer is he compares to the senior council the same way he always has, he's this huge muscular thug as wizards go, that's what his power is, he's a powerhouse. But people who are better at magic can still whip him just like the big guy doesn't always win in a fight, it depends, big guy has a great advantage and all other things being equal the big guy usually wins but it's enough all by itself, Harry's big all by himself but he's still learning his skills, the senior members of the White Council would tear him apart, it would be like a good fight but still he'd wind up on the ground, so.
Are there any pantheons of gods you're really excited to write about or refuse to include?
There's none that I /refuse/ to include, but it's a lot easier to put pantheons in there that don't really have like a billion people following them anymore, you're just less likely to tick somebody off that way. I don't mind writing about Christianity because I grew up on the "fun" end of fundamental Christianity as opposed to the mental end and I'm familiar with both so. Lost my train of thought.
Pantheons.
So I'll do the Christianity stuff a little because I'm familiar with it, I've memorised books of the Bible I'm okay on my theology for Christianity. It's less so for other religions and systems of belief that I have not participated in and so don't really have the inside information on because reading books doesn't give it to you, you've actually got to talk to people and see them and it takes time and that's hard.
But I do want to do some other pantheons because you'll notice there's more of the old gods popping up as we're going along which means nothing don't think anything of it, don't worry about it.
*laughter*
But it's also- I mean there's been casualties among the pantheons since they were originally established. Thor is on the outs with Asgard in the Dresden Files universe, he sort of wanders the Earth alone because he's sick of- he had this huge disagreement with Odin back when Odin decided he was gonna be mainly mostly mortal and playing by the mortal rules so he could stay involved. Thor is just like, his general modus operandi is he goes around to campuses and then walks on and tries out for the football team and then gets on the football team and then goes there for four years being awesome and having to restrain himself from being too awesome to get noticed by the NFL because he doesn't want to do that. But yeah I mean there's this short story in my head I keep meaning to write about Dresden going down to the University of Oklahoma where this storm cell went crazy and riding around with the guys from the NSL trying to catch her and his driver is Thor who is interning for the NSL while he's playing for the OU and Harry never realises it but that's the story in my head, I keep wanting to go back to it. I kept thinking "ah put it in a comic book or something someday" but it just hasn't worked out that way.
----
Do you think there'll ever be any contact between Bonnie and the Archive?
Maybe. The Archive is- poor Ivy I mean she's had a terrible life she got the Archive dumped on her a few minutes after she was born and never got the chance to learn to be a human or to learn to be a kid or interact with other people, she's kind of had a miserable life. On the other hand, she would have a lot in common with Bonnie I suppose so yeah maybe, we'll have to see, a lot of the little stuff I don't know what is going to happen until it happens so I just have to be working on it.
Have you ever considered doing a side story with Ebenezar?
Nah not really, I have considered doing a spin-off series with Ebenezar. I mean I've thought about it I don't know if I ever will, it would be the French and Indian war from the point of view of the supernatural world so we'd have like Ebenezar when he was a young hothead and the Merlin when he was a young hothead that hated Ebenezar. And then you'd also have like this young knight of the cross running around with the name Washington (wow the swords' standard for good behaviour must have been /nonexistent/ back then) and that would be cool.
That would be real cool.
Yeah that would be cool, because hey, the sword of hope is a cavalry saber. How do you get through Valley Forge? Maybe if you have a sword of hope it helps, you know, like that.
---
Speaking of parallel universes what is your favourite that didn't make it into the books?
My favourite would probably be from Changes, my favourite parallel universe is Harry the necromancer because he definitely would have gone for necromancy before he went for the coin at the end of the day. Because corpses are gross but demon seductresses are frightening, so that's different. But it would be pretty cool and then all of Harry's friends would be dead.
How do you determine the powerscaling of all the different pantheons you use in the series?
I use the five dot scale from World of Darkness way back in the day. So basically if a normal human could do it or do it using tools and equipment that's one dot, if it's somebody who is clearly supernatural and could really whip up on regular mortals on a steady basis that's two dots, heavyweight white council folks they're three dots, like that. It's just different weight classes is what I do, so.
---
So we know that Giles De Rais was a winter knight, how does Joan of Arc fit into that whole scenario?
Joan of Arc was probably a knight of the cross and probably not terribly stable either. I mean her instability sort of fell in the direction of zealotry anyway, so. I think she was probably a knight of the cross for a while.
---
I know there's been some stuff come up with like shapeshifting and stuff like that, there's also communities of people that aren't comfortable in their own bodies, would the magic in the Dresden world... would it be possible to use that magic to change one's body without breaking the laws of magic?
Yeah probably. Shapeshifting is really hard, it takes a long time to learn unless you've got somebody who's like a really really good teacher. I think Billy and the Alphas did it in about a year and a half. But yeah no reason you couldn't, you would probably have to set something up so that- you would either set something up so there was a continuous stream of power going into whatever it was to hold your form in place or maybe build a magic focus or something like that to make it happen but yeah it could be done.
---
Could you use the Nevernever to travel to a different part of the galaxy, step out on another planet and talk to people on another planet?
Ooh that's a good question... I don't think it would be practical, I mean you would still be covering distance in the Nevernever, I mean it would be more practical than you know, trying to float there but it would still be- something like that would be have to be a hell of an epic journey and go through complete weirdness and I'm not sure you'd come out the other side sane but I think it's doable. You would just have to have somebody like- maybe if Margaret had had more time she could have tried something but at the moment the farthest that anybody has gotten in the Dresden Files world is the Moon, so nobody's tried farther than that yet.
---
Who's your favourite sidekick and who is your favourite villain?
I like Michael as a sidekick because I like writing- Michael's like the only person in the Dresden Files universe that really has a lot of moral authority that Dresden respects. There's Michael and there's Ebenezar and Dresden will scrap with Ebenezar but he won't scrap with Michael, he's too good, you can't scrap with Michael you're the bad guy if you scrap with Michael. He's probably my favourite to write as a sidekick as far as sidekicks go.
As far as villains I like most of my villains. Nicodemus is really creepy for me to write, getting into his headspace is weird because he's just so just sort of generic predator and he just doesn't care about things and people are like these little annoyances that flutter away before his eyes anyway so really killing them doesn't make any difference on a practical level as far as he's concerned. Mab is a fun villain to write, I enjoy the hell out of writing Mab she's just a good time. Trying to think which of the other villains... I mean Marcone is... I don't know if Marcone is a villain or an anti-hero, it's sort of hard to call depending on what kind of story I'm writing and how he's connected to it. Although I did enjoy writing Marcone's viewpoint and reading for it too. The voice director, apparently I just read through the story and did it and got to the end and the studio tech was like "was that it?" and I was like "yep last page" and he goes "okay" and I didn't think it was a big deal but then the voice director who's operating from New York I think came over to the intercom and went "hey Jim if you ever want a job voice acting or narrating I think we can work together" and I'm like "okay- wait was that unusual?" and he was like "yeah most people don't do it without stopping".
*laughter*
I'm sorry, I just knew the words that were coming next because they came from my brain.
Are you interested in doing anything else with the Oblivion war, maybe writing another short story or making Harry blow it up by accident? And if that were to happen what would happen to the Archive?
I'll tell you right now, people who are involved with the Oblivion war, the people you /don't/ want in the war to forget things so they go away is wizards. Because these guys they hoard information like gold is what they do and you're trying to make information go away to win this war, if you bring the wizards in you're never gonna win, nobody wants the wizards involved. "Say you think the White Council might be-" "NO", that's kind of the response from the folks fighting the Oblivion war. It's not something that Dresden can get involved with, in a story from Dresden's first person point of view the things people keep from Dresden I have to keep from you and the Oblivion war is one of them. It'll probably show up in the spinoff series because the Oblivion war is this weird thing, it'll get hot for a couple of days or a couple of weeks and then nothing happens for thirty years and then something else happens and you've got to jump on it. And so you can't really tell that story with a fairly limited young person like Harry who has a limited experience you have to have somebody's who's had like centuries of experience and then you can do the Highlander thing and skip through time following a storyline and that may be something that I do in the spin-off series which I'm tinkering with for after I'm done with the Dresden Files.
*the usual Monster LLC bit*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df_3c02lelg
Bob and Dresden, you broke up the band. What went into that decision was that something you knew you were going to do at the beginning of the story?
Oh gosh no. Well, Dresden was dead and as a result I had to do something with Bob I couldn't just leave him sitting there, he's too valuable, something had to happen and so it's like- what I did was something had to happen, either something fairly innocuous and okay to happen or something really awful had to happen so I flipped a coin and came up okay which I was dissatisfied with so I flipped the coin again and it came up okay.
*laughter*
I didn't like that answer so I flipped the coin a third time and it came up okay and I was like "alright alright the universe is telling me something so I'll find something else for you to do, let's have Butters mess with him because Butters is getting more and more into the whole supernatural thing and Bob would be a massive resource and then he could be a baby sorcerer". So that was something that I hadn't even considered but when I came upon it it was like "yeah okay I have to do something about this," I mean it's not like they can just pop him under Dresden's arm in the coffin or something. I mean that would be an awful thing to do to Bob, good lord.
*question about sex in the Dresden Files* That's actually a perfect segue into my question that I do not know if you will be willing or able to verify but I have to try. Are there exceptions to the restrictions that we learned about Molly's mantle placing on her in Cold Case?
Well I guess if you're good enough at hand to hand.
*ugh from the audience*
There you go there's your answer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6q3sZeg7u8
TheCuriousFan:
This is it, the final collection of interview bits from PHXCC, Dragoncon 2017 and Murder by the Book 2020 unless someone has some more interviews with interesting stuff in them.
Of the short stories points of view that Jim has written before, whose point of view does he like writing best other than Harry's and can we expect more in the future?
*snip Zoo Day teaser and Brief Cases mention*
But yeah I really enjoy writing from other characters' points of view because you never see Dresden from the exterior point of view you only see Dresden from his point of view. From his point of view he's this big goofy nerd, from the exterior point of view he's a frightening psychopath.
*laughter*
I mean he never makes eye contact with anybody, he's always mouthing off, you know he's this huge looming presence and you don't really get to see that from Dresden's point of view because he knows he's just a goofy nerd who would rather be at home reading a book, you know, so that's always a lot of fun. Writing from Marcone's point of view was very reptilian, that was unpleasant. Murphy's point of view is... I've done a couple with her and she's always fun. I did the Molly point of view story that came out recently, poor Carlos. *teaser for A Fistful of Warlocks*
---
How did you come up with the idea of... I'm asking for a friend.
Okay.
I'm so sorry I don't know what's going on. Denarii?
Denarians.
Versus the knights of the cross?
I don't know, I just did it. I mean I borrowed some from oh... Simon- not Simon.... no no no no no there's an author and I can't remember the name of his series now. It's a good series but I was reading it when my dad was dying so I've never been able to go back and read again. But he actually had- there was a magic sword in his series that was magic because it had a nail from something that paralleling the crucifixion in his fantasy world in it, only that wasn't actually the truth it was actually a magical sword that was magic because some wizard had magicked it. But I was like "oh wait I'm trying to work the power of faith and belief as part of the magical system in the Dresden Files universe so why not have one that actually is like that?" It was like ooh that'd be awesome that'd be fun. But if you're gonna have these monumental paladin good guys you also need to have enemies that basically make them almost irrelevant as far as Dresden is concerned, you know, because just having them there... I had to set it up so that whenever the knights of the cross were somewhere, their job was essentially to make it a fair fight. That was kind of their superpower is, you can't just overwhelmingly say "this is what's happening" no there's a knight of the cross here you're gonna have to fight for it, and that was the whole point of using them. So in that instance I'm like "so what I need to do is I need to have about ten times as many equally bad bad guys as there are good guys" so I need thirty something and it's like "well you know we've already got nails from the cross so we'll just take thirty silver coins and use those too", that's how that needed to work out, so that was where that came from.
---
I know it's from Harry's point of view but do you have a favourite character in the Dresden Files?
Um.... it's hard to say I mean... you're asking me about my favourite child. Um, it depends on what I'm doing with them. If you mean just like personal enjoyment in writing I love writing Bob because Bob can be irreverent at anyone and that's fun. I love writing Mab because she is just the funnest villain to write. For doing emotionally revealing stuff I like Michael and Father Forthill. It just depends on what we're doing. For sheer villainy Marcone still creeps me out more than anyone because he's just... he's not quite as ruthlessly mechanical as Nicodemus is (behold, the greatest bit of comedy in any Jim Q&A), Nicodemus is putting together a watch and if you're grit in the gears you're out of there and that's all there is to it there's no sense getting worked up about grit in the gears you just remove it and that's the kind of person he is so for just sheer villainy he's fun. Toot Toot is a lot of fun to write, he's all depressed because he keeps getting bigger, yeah he's kind of in an emo phase now in my head. But anyway it's all just different things for different reasons, there's characters that I love because they get to do different things for the story but it's not an issue of "this is the absolute best character ever" because if you don't think that about every character you do you probably can't do that as a writer. When you put characters together as a writer you sit down and you figure it out unless you're writing some ridiculous throwaway character who you'll only use for one book... Butters. But yeah I love writing all of them and if I didn't I wouldn't be doing it, well at this point I might be because there's a monetary consideration but I try not to think about that too much because I try to remember that I am a twenty five year old writing his dumb wizard books because that guy was onto something, he's kind of a stranger to me now I haven't talked to him in a long time but twenty five year old me was onto something when he started putting the series together. Way more enthusiasm than sense that's for sure but at the same time it seems to be working out so.
---
Harry's daughter Maggie was born from a woman who wasn't entirely human during it, is that gonna have any effect on her?
Oh I dare say. You can't just /not/, you know, so.
---
In Changes when Dresden is threatening to go into his green notebook, did you know in advance where he was going with that or did you decide at the moment?
Oh I didn't know. In Changes I didn't know what was gonna happen until I was writing it, there's some things that I decided ahead of time and there's some things that I have left to the story so that I can make the choices that make sense for the character as I come up on them so I don't know a lot of the things that are going to happen, I kind of know the general direction, I know which way the arrow of history points but I'm not sure about all the details along the way. So yeah Changes could have gone three ways, we could have gone with Mab to back him up to go after Maggie, he could have summoned Lasciel's coin and used that to go get his daughter or he could have picked up the Word of Kemmler which he still had in his memory and used the Darkhallow and gone and become this necromancer lord essentially and gone after his daughter. And depending on which road he took it would have been a very different story as we go along and I wasn't sure which one he was gonna do, he would up going with Mab. Which I thought made sense at the time, plus I really like writing Mab so. On the other hand I really like writing Lasciel, so it was a tossup. And zombies are awesome so we could have wound up with that too, though that would have been terrible because probably we would have had Murphy running around as a secret undead and that kind of thing, you know... That would be a really good story actually.
*laughter*
That's an awesome anthology idea.
No, you can go to hell sir.
*laughter*
Oh my gosh, more short stories, /no/. Practicing saying that, no.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CUtuL8JvnM
I was wondering how Harry manages to heal himself so quickly especially in the earlier books from a dislocated shoulder, gunshot wound to the thigh, etc etc
It's not so much that he heals quickly as that- typical healing patterns for humans are you get considerably better in fairly short order and then there's like this long trail-off period where it takes more time to recover from an injury. In the Dresden Files world wizards are a little bit better off than other people in that sense because they don't have the trail-off period, so it's not like- he heals faster than most humans but it wouldn't be remarkable unless you compared him side by side to somebody who was injured in the same way at the same time and then you'd look at Harry and go "wow he got better a /lot/ faster". That's a factor of wizards, it's a thing about their biology that makes them live so long is that they keep healing all the little things that the rest of us just have to live with. That's essentially how I did it because I wanted him able to get beaten up more and I wanted him to be able to recover in order to get beaten up more after that but I didn't want to give him enough healing to actually help in any of the fights. He gets just enough to get to the next fight and get beat up again, that's why it works like that.
---
Does Oberon still exist as a mantle?
Does Oberon still exist? No he died horribly around Shakespeare's time, Oberon tried to get between- he tried to run a game with Mab and Titania and you can imagine how that ended up. That was one of those things where Prometheus was like "oh poor guy".
*laughter*
With Brief Cases coming out next year have you ever considered writing a Donald Morgan focused pov short story?
I've thought about it, Morgan is such a harsh and rigid character it would be kind of cool to get inside his head because he's actually- as a person he's not all that bad a guy he's just a professional monster. There's a difference there somewhere. Morgan got to see a whole bunch of really really horrible things, Morgan's a guy who- his parents and family were killed by the necromancer Kemmler, he was rescued by Anastasia Luccio which if you haven't read the short story yet in the old west with Luccio, it's called A Fistful of Warlocks. And I'm writing that and I'm going "man this could be movies this is fun!", you know in my copious spare time I could do more. But it would be cool to write a story from his point of view because he's a guy who has seen horrible things and knows the kind of horrible things that can happen and so people look at him and go "oh you're too rigid, you're too mean, you're too harsh" and Morgan's like "you don't even know what harsh is, this isn't too harsh this is necessary to keep the real things out" which has always been his attitude and the attitude of many people who have to face horrible things that other people never have to see because they're out there facing it. He'd make a cool story but man it'd be kind of a downer because he had a bad life, it was a rough life.
So I had two quick questions, the first is whether the Archive or Ivy can receive digital data in addition to whatever's written down and the second is that it's been established that mortal names fluctuate so that it's not very useful to have them but Harry's worried about giving out his name to Chauncy in the second book.
Yeah giving out his whole name. Well yeah he doesn't want to give out his whole name to a frikkin demon from capital H Hell, not just some random hell but /the/ Hell, not generic hell, brand name Hell.
*laughter*
So yeah he didn't want to give his name to him. But the use of the true name for humans is different than it is for like other creatures, other creatures aren't as malleable as humans are, humans have free will, they have choice. And you go around your day every day as a human being making dozens or hundreds of choices that kind of inform who you are as a person. That's just what we do as humans and over time that can change you if you start making different choices and if that happens you don't think of yourself the same way anymore, you don't even say your name the same anymore necessarily. Not precisely, you'd have to get like a microphone and record it to see the digital thing changing but wizards just kind of get that part instinctively because they've been doing it for thousands of years.
Oh and as far as Ivy getting digital information, yes and she wasn't built for it and you'll get to see more of that at some point.
Something to look forward to.
These days Ivy is basically like *puts head in hands* "porn, so much porn".
*laughter*
Because let's be honest the internet is like- it's literally- the traffic on the internet is like fifteen percent of the entire traffic of the internet is porn, nine percent is League of Legends and then there's everything else.
*laughter*
No that's literally true I visited Riot games and between six and nine percent of the traffic on the internet at any one time is League of Legends all by itself. Yeah it's the largest intellectual property in the history of mankind. And I don't want to hear anything from you DOTA people you're not real gamers.
*laughter*
I have this fight with my nephew all the time, I can't not do it.
*snip the witch doctor story where he can't deal with eggs on a burger*
My question concerns Harry and Lasciel and I've always wondered what he would be fully capable of if he fully cooperated with Lasciel.
The Dresden Files at Changes- Changes was a huge crossroads for the series because I had a very limited view of what was gonna happen for the next eight or nine books after Changes. I mean I knew what Ghost Story was gonna be because that was the thirteenth book in the series and I've got a wizard PI so he's got to solve his own murder obviously. But it was a crossroads because Harry could have gone- taken three paths to go get Maggie. Well he could have taken a fourth path which would have been suicidally charge, that could have happened except I wanted to keep making money.
*laughter*
I had this thing where my kid was gonna go to school and perhaps he should have an education so I thought I'd do that. But his three choices were he could go with- because he still remembers all the stuff from the Darkhallow so he could have picked up Kemmler's work and become the new Kemmler in which case we would have had much more necromancy-ey series, he could have gone with Lasciel and summoned the coin and used whatever powers that she had given him or he could have gone with Mab. And he chose Mab as the most predictable evil, for what was gonna happen, not the least evil but the most reliable one. So he did that but had he gone with Lasciel, essentially she would have been his black magic tutor, Bob would have had a huge crush.
*laughter*
She would have been- she kind of would have been around him all the time, it would have been her keeping him alive over time over the next book, although it would have been a slightly different book. And then he would have been dealing with Nicodemus and company as frenemies rather than as enemies- on a consistent basis he still had to deal with them as frenemies in Skin Game anyway, so. But it would have been much different, he would have had different things that were temptations, Lasciel would have been trying to isolate him from his friends- I mean /actively/ trying to isolate him from his friends not kind of just entropy did the job for her the way Mab is planning on. But it would have been a much harsher story but a lot more sex too so I mean sales would have been fine.
*laughter*
The necromancer one I don't know how that would have flown with an audience so I'm kind of glad he didn't go that way. But I didn't know what he was gonna do until I was writing it, so.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQDTvMv1otI
Steven asks will we ever meet Mouse's other dark sibling?
Just because I talked about there being more of them and that there's at least one more out there, why would you think I would be foreshadowing anything?
---
Would you ever consider doing a non-canon Dresden where he goes full warlock?
Yeah I was actually considering doing like fanficcing my own work, my own universe and doing a fanfic universe with the Dresden Files version of covid and just sort of writing that up and putting it up for free over the year and I decided I just didn't know enough about what the hell was going on to do that in a very responsible way because the information war out there has been- there's just been so much chaff in the air (I'm going to assume that the US got absolutely flooded with bullshit from the right because it was pretty clear over here) you can't really tell what's going on, so.
---
Steven asks, is Cowl more powerful than Merlin?
Yet to be shown. Wait, the Merlin or /the/ Merlin?
The Merlin.
It's one of those things where it's sort of iffy who's more powerful. Who's more powerful Mike Tyson or Royce Gracie? It sort of depends on the kind of fight they get into so I think it would be that way for those guys as well. The Merlin is not a guy who kind of gets up in your face and fights, the Merlin is a guy who fights you with nations and banking systems he's that kind of fighter. He's kind of the opposite of Ebenezar who is the "no I'm gonna come up in your face and settle with you personally myself" kind of fighter and that's a very different sort of power.
---
Steven asks is it possible that Dresden's daughter will be magic? *Bru appears*
My buddy Bru. Yes the genetic possibility for it is possible it's not common for it to be passed down through male lineage though, it's most commonly passed from mother to child. But it is something that is possible I don't know exactly what's gonna happen with that yet I'm still figuring it out. I think I've got a good idea for where Maggie is going in the future and I don't think it'll be what a lot of people are expecting but we'll see.
---
Sarah wants to know how much research did you do on the Irish Fae mythology and how much of it did you just make up?
The problem with the Irish mythology is that Irish mythology is oral mythology. It has been passed down by word of mouth and so there are different strains and flavours of that mythology it's incredibly complex, if you want to get into studying real Irish and Welsh myth good luck because it is a briar patch. That said what I did was try and get as close as I could to the spirit of those myths while taking the- sort of updating it for what I was doing with it for the overall story. So a lot of the exact things are not gonna be bang-on but I sort of regard that as the inevitable result of human beings interacting with supernatural forces is that the legends we have told each other and passed on down to each other are the result of a game of telephone that's been going on for a couple of thousand years so we're gonna screw things up all the time. And that seems reasonable with how we would interact with an actual supernatural world if one actually worked in our world. We would be telling each other stories about it- just a few of us would survive and get away to tell stories and those stories would get stretched and distorted and contradicted by new stories and by things that look the same but weren't the same and I figured that would be confusing enough that it would give me plenty of leeway to play within the context of this story but I'm not trying to write the real world story of anybody's mythology man I'm just writing the Dresden Files mythology and how it happened in this world.
---
Gregory asks why does the cover of the books have a wizard with a cowboy hat? So can you talk a little bit about kind of the aesthetics of the book covers?
That was all the art department at Penguin that decided that. I mean I've never written Dresden with a hat although before the end of it I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to give him the /actual/ Indiana Jones fedora from the Smithsonian as one of the artefacts of the American pantheon for him to be able to wear it. I think it's special superpower will have to be like he gets a movie soundtrack that only he can hear but it's a John Williams soundtrack so it's awesome, you know.
Can you tell us a little bit about how your titles are now- except for Changes, are all kind of two words, do you have a title in mind when you're working?
When I was putting the series together as a series one of the things that we did in class was that we went and analysed series that were successful. We just looked at them and read through them and wrote down what they had in common and one of the things successful series have in common is that they have a structure scheme for their titles, you know, A is for Alibi etc. And so I wanted a structured them and what I wanted was puns so Storm Front was originally called Semiautomagic, they didn't like that so then I retitled it Abracadabra and they didn't like that and then I retitled it Storm Front in reference to the way they were using storms to- the villain was using storms to get his murders done. And they did like that and I was trying for more puns you know with Fool Moon and Grave Peril- I actually got- Grave Peril was gonna be a different title originally (it was Knightmare) I'm trying to remember what it was but I'm forgetting it now, it's been that long, good lord the twentieth year anniversary and it's slipping out of mind. I was originally going to title the fifth book, the one about the Shroud of Turin, Holy Sheet but they wouldn't let me call it Holy Sheet so what I wound up doing was deciding that I was gonna have a consistent naming scheme of same number of letters in the first and second words- two word titles so that they could be presented as sort of these blocky symmetrical chunks on top of the book and in the first several books that is indeed how they produced it you can tell a Jim Butcher book from across the bookstore because it would have that symmetrical bump-bump-bump across the front that would tell you what the title was. It was just a marketing thing, there was nothing more to it than that I mean I wanted a scheme, not just sort of random names for the books I wanted a naming scheme.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp9De75UN1E
I'm free.
TheCuriousFan:
What are some the favourite creatures that you have used in the Dresden Files? Some of the creatures that you've created?
I've gotta confess, mostly I like the creatures that just have a really good name that I really feel proud of so if I come up with a good name like Chlorofiend it's like "okay that's a good name I like that one." Mostly it works on that but I mean- I take so many things from folklore that I don't feel like I can take a lot of credit for anything. But occasionally when I make up something new though, it's like "okay, that's fun".
But the names are important.
Yeah yeah, /Octokong/, yeah like that. If they'd been more chimpy they'd have had to have been Octopong and that just sounds weird.
Yeah it sounds like a drinking game... Which series adversary do you think has been most difficult for him to beat?
*crowd voice says Marcone*
Well yeah Marcone he still hasn't got the better of Marcone, really, that's a pretty good one. Mab he hasn't really gotten the better of, Lara he hasn't gotten the better of. Really, Harry just tries to survive, basically I just write his worst weekend of the year every year and if he gets through it he's pleased with that.
Now from your perspective, do you think that Harry was more shocked to learn that he had a brother or a daughter?
*She asked this exact same question last year at DragonCon 2020 so skip, the answer is Maggie*
Would you say that there is a common thread that runs through all of your series or even just a couple of them?
Um well, if you want me to get all English major thematically-
Yes.
Well I would say the most common thread is the examination of power and how it's used. How you use it well and how you use it poorly and Dresden's been... he's used it well and poorly as he's gone along depending on his choices, but almost everybody he goes up against is somebody who's using power the wrong way, so.
Harry could write a book, couldn't he?
Probably yeah. And there's also a sub-theme of lifting up the people around you because increasingly as the series goes on it's the people that are around Harry that wind up helping him out- oh thank you very much guys, really very bright. Oh I can see everyone now! There are a lot of you! Hi. But yeah that's kind of one of Harry's- that's one of the recurring themes of the Dresden Files is the little people that he's helped grow up along the way that are now there to support him and help him.
This is from Randy, he says thank you, the last two books were phenomenal, was there anyone that you had planned to kill but didn't? If so, who?
*laughter*
I think I might have chickened out on Michael, I don't know, that was kind of a coin toss there.
*crowd groaning*
Geez.
Well I guess you know what the reaction would be.
What a room, my gosh. Are you sure you're here for /my/ panel? Wow. The imaginary people are so much more valued. But in the end I decided I could tell a better story of it going a different way, plus I got to have him go out for one last ride so that was cool as well.
This is from Daniel Parks.
Hi Daniel.
What piece of fiction do you enjoy that you think has an important story to tell?
I don't know. I don't read fiction for it's importance I basically read it for how much it's going to occupy my imagination and how much it's going to amuse me. Whether or not it's got something deep to say I think mostly comes from the person who's reading it anyhow. You can get just as much out of things that you really just find deeply and soul-satisfyingly entertaining. Lately I've been rereading the Belgariad.
*cheering*
Right? Such a good series. And he only wrote those five books.
*laughter*
It's kind of like Matrix 2 and 3 or Highlander 2, yeah I'm gonna put that follow-up series in the same hole as Highlander 2. But yeah I've been rereading that and I realised what a strong influence that had on me, I think I picked it up when I was about 13 and started reading that series and it really was formative for me. Another series that I read are the Spenser books by Robert B Parker because if you need a hardboiled private eye man he is the master of that genre. As a professional he's kind of my idol, he didn't start writing until he was in his 40s and he kept writing until he was in his 80s and then he died at the keyboard /like a man/.
*laughter*
And that's kind of the path I'd like to follow, I'd like that as well.
Before we get to the next question, I neglected to ask this in the beginning, how many Dresden Files cosplays do we have in the audience today?
Stand up everybody so folks can see you. All right... and there's a cosplaying dog over here too who I have christened Cute Cute so... it is adorable.
Very nicely done everyone.
Okay this is from Rob, do you ever plan to return to Alera?
I've got a couple of ideas about how I could go back, I might go back in like novellas or something like that that I can sell myself online, that might be a good way to do it. But I've got a couple different ideas I'm not quite sure where to go back because let's be honest the first Alera series was humans vs Zerg, it really was. So obviously the point to go back to that series is when the Protoss show up.
*laughter*
Which is like- they're like these crystalline beings (really more 3M tall treemen), point is, I could go back there. The other place I could go back is about five years after the first series and what we would be focusing on in that series is... Fidelias would be kind of Dumbledoring around in the background and Ehren would be McGonagalling around in the foreground. And then we would have the new class of cursors coming through, so I could write about them so it's gonna be the first Marat cursor, the first Canim cursor, and work with all of those folks and see what kind of story we can tell there because that would just be /fun/.
*applause*
Sounds like there's some support for the idea, okay, Karrin.
Okay this is from Mag, if you could be roommates with any character from the Dresden Files, who would you pick?
Oh gosh let me think... not Harry.
*laughter*
He would hit me in the mouth so many times, not Harry. Not Thomas, yeah I'd go with Mouse and Mister maybe, I think that'd be the right choice. Maybe Lara, briefly.
*laughter*
Or occasionally.
Oh yeah, Bob would be awesome, Bob would be the best Alexa ever. Kind of.
Now there's an idea for a short story.
Okay, William H asks, which magical being or beings are responsible for Covid-19 and what magical rites can we perform to end this pandemic?
Let's go ahead and blame this pandemic on the Jade Court. As far as curing it goes, that would be... that would have to be a White Council thing they would have to be on that, and I don't think they'd be too much better at it than any other government around. But yeah, they would jump on it, I don't know how well they'd do with it but they'd try.
They'd make an effort.
Well they'd look like they were making an effort.
Okay, Kevin Mathis asks who created the White Court of vampires and/or have we met them yet?
Who created them? They've just been around for a long, long time. I actually haven't gotten to- I actually haven't gotten myself into the origins of that too much, maybe I should do that?
*applause*
Would that be okay with you guys? Yeah Harry's gonna be hanging out with Lara a lot so you know I suppose they've got to talk about something. He's gotta date her once a month, it's a whole thing, the lawyers have to look at the contract for the date and make sure things are within certain prescribed limits and so on, it's a whole deal.
Lee Jordan asks. one of my favourite trademarks of the Dresden Files is the witty titles, if you had free reign, what's the title you wanted to used but couldn't?
Hehe, hey man, at first I wanted to name the first book Semiautomagic.
*laughter*
And they wouldn't let me, the second book was always Fool Moon, what was Grave Peril let me think of... it was a different title when I got started. It's been so long I'm forgetting now but I remember that Death Masks I originally wanted to call it Holy Sheet.
*more laughter*
They got upset about that. Blood Rites was originally going to be Family Matters and they said no that makes it sound like a Norah Roberts book and I was like "yeah, I don't wanna share that success". But there's been a bunch of them like that, these days they more or less let me do what I want to because I kinda know what they're aiming for so.
While we're on that subject though, title of the next book is gonna be Twelve Months or Twelve Dates I'm not sure which yet. But yeah I was gonna do Mirror Mirror next but I think it'll hit harder if we see a little bit more of what- I don't wanna go away to alternate Chicago when we've got Chicago Prime changing on us and I want to be able to show that first before we go to alternate Chicago. Yeah, kind of a big deal.
This is from Dez or Dezzie, have you ever regretted killing off a character somewhere down the line?
Gosh it's a good thing I didn't kill Michael I guess, I might have regretted that here and now. But no I don't really regret killing characters because unfortunately the way the world works is that we lose people and we lose them and they're gone and we just have to figure out how to go on, that's life, that's something that's common to humans. So I don't really regret it when I lose characters- occasionally I've gone "aww this character would have been perfect" for something or other while I was writing but then I think to myself "oh but you killed them" "oh right".
This one has no name but they ask how has your son's witch and partner idea been coming along?
Whoever asked that, thank you very much, so this is my opportunity to brag on my son. My son, James Butcher I named him after my father, he's got his first contract now and his first book comes out soon. He's here, kid, where'd you go? Stand up a second I want to show you off. But James has his first contract, his first book is called Dead Man's Hand and it's scheduled to come out next October so keep an eye on that as an urban fantasy. It's a great idea I wish I'd stolen parts of it but I can't, it's my son, anybody else yes but not my son.
Maybe in the future we'll have to do the Jim and James?- we'll work on that.
Yeah then you'll just get someone up here who runs me down all the time, he's awesome at that.
Okay this is from Chris K, are you planning on working on the next Cinder Spires or another Dresden book?
The next Cinder Spires is about 40% done and I anticipate finishing it before my birthday and then I'll start the next Dresden and I'll want to finish that in January or February or so. I do have- I've got a novella that I think I'm gonna try and publish independently, a Dresden Files novella called The Law. It's kind of about Harry getting back on his feet after the events of Battle Ground, it's a much more PI focused thing because essentially now that Marcone's got not just all the underworld power but also the Underworld power backing him up Dresden has to exercise his authority a little bit more carefully when he goes up against outfit guys, you know, so. Essentially him and Marcone come to an understanding that he's not gonna use any of his supernatural abilities in combating some injustice that he's finding. It's Dresden going off and doing almost all PI stuff until the other guys break the rules so.
Instead of him for once.
I've been reading a lot of Parker lately, I kind of had to.
Ray C asks, must the fae queens' mantles go to mortals and does the mantle change their dna?
Yes and yes. Yeah I mean there's a lot of power that's happening there and in the end the Dresden Files universe is one that's in the camp of free will and for that to happen you need mortals around because we're the only ones who have it.
Does Molly still technically have free will metaphysically?
Wow deep question. And I'm not sure what the answer to that question is, I'm still exploring that because a lot of the stuff I kind of know the outline of it, kind of the "guess that Pokemon" outline but I don't get to see the Pokemon until I get into it and start writing about it. Molly at this point is still very- she does have free will cause she is exercising it to change things. Whether she will continue to have it or not is kind of a question because as the roleplaying game pointed out to me that I didn't realise that I was writing, the more power you get in the Dresden Files universe kind of the more trapped you are by that power which is sort of the way it works in real life too. So even though you're able to do all these incredible things you also have all these limits that other people don't have because they're not wielding the same kind of power you do. Zuckerberg, he's got an awful lot of money and power but he can't just go out to the restaurant, he's trapped by that.
*laughter*
He could but he might have a few issues.
Buy the restaurant.
Next please.
The Merlin said he was going to destroy the Red Court root and branch, what was his plan?
Oh the Merlin, he turned Dresden loose on them, geez.
*laughter*
They got wiped out. I don't know if you noticed but there was a whole book about it. I'm still- I question the morality of the people in this room because I just wrote a character who committed genocide and y'all are still backing him up. But yeah, the Merlin is a guy who- he talks one way but the things he winds up doing are something else. He's one of those folks that you kind of have- you know the Sherlock Holmes phrase "look for the dog that is not barking"? There's somebody who fled the scene of a crime and Watson was trying to figure out which way he went and Holmes was like "listen we know he didn't go this way because there's no dogs barking over there, one of the dogs would be barking if he had fled this way". So when you're looking at the Merlin and his actions look for the things he could have done and didn't and then you kind of see a little bit more about who he really is. Dresden doesn't have a clear view of really anybody on the White Council because he's got such massive issues with them, so.
*continue at 22:30*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g6EbjOFxKY
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[*] Previous page
Go to full version