The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection

WoJ transcription help needed + mention new WoJ's here

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Crawker:
Notes:
-I can't make out animal name around 1:36, after turkey and rabbit. can someone check? Thanks Derek
-Can someone check I got Master Oyada's name right?


Jim: Yes sir, back there.

(Continued from part 2 about inspirations for Codex)

Audience: Have you gone back and gloated?

Jim: Oh, you know, I don't even remember who I was having an argument with now!
{audience laughs}
Jim: I've had so many computers blown out on me no! But I did go back and tell him "I'm not gonna share this with you, because this is actually turning into a good book and I'm gonna go ahead and write it", none of this was published yet, so he was just like "Yeah, that just means you lost!" And so yeah, I'm perfectly willing to admit now, yeah I lost! No, I don't have to much pride to do that. Yes?

Audience: I was just wondering, just how big and ferocious is your dog really?

Jim: He's extremely ferocious. He's 25lb. He's a bichon frise.
{audience laughs}
Jim: Shhh! He doesn't know that! Don't anybody tell him! He's sure he's a rottweiler! He grew up when we were living in Pennsylvania, like out in Amish country Pennsylvania when at the grocery store there were these horses and carts parked in spaces, literally. And where you couldn't go to Pizza Hut on Monday night because that was Mennonite night, and the Mennonites all came in and had pizza on Monday night. And you couldn't trust those shifty Mennonites! They used cars! There's something wierd about those people! But, that's where we were living, and we had all kinds of wildlife around the house, we had wild turkeys that would cross our property every morning, and the dog would chase them and they'd flee, and we had rabbits, and the dog would chase them and they'd flee, we have groundhogs and the dog would chase them and they'd look at one another and go "You know, we outweigh two of these things, just one of us, are we gonna have to run away?" {Jim mimes flicking through a book} "Well, yeah, according to the union rules...so yeah we have to flee." and they'd flee, and the dog became convinced that he was the ultimate macho. So he's 25lb, a fluffy french dog. But quite ferocious, and actually an excellent watchdog. You know there's a difference between a watchdog and a guard dog. A watchdog tells you what's going on, a guard dog tells you what's going on and then does something about it. My dog tells me what's going on, he says "Right, you're the guard dog, go! I'll be right here behind ya boss." I have no doubt he'd be crouched six inches behind my legs, ferociously unleashing his sonic initiative. So that's how big and ferocious my dog is. Yes?

Audience: Are any of your characters, do any of them have elements of people you know?

Jim: No, I'd have to be crazy to answer that question yes! Bits and pieces. Most of my female characters have got my wife in them, because I've been around her too long and I don't see how anybody else could exist, so... Really, I don't hang out with other people, it's just me and her most of the time, and...the boy.
{audience laughs}
Jim: What? Did you ever raise- OK, did anybody else here have a three year old that got kicked out of their school? For inciting a riot?
{laughter and clapping}
Jim: Yeah, my kid incited a riot at the age of three. Some kind of nap time rebellion. Everyone refused to go to sleep. "No! I am Spartacus!"
{more laughter}
Jim: No, I had to deal with him. Now he's 6'2" you know, so... But as far as people I know, I never grab anybody and just say "Here". Except for a character in White Night-
{Jim holds up book}
Jim: Called Anna Ash, who is there because I auctioned off that character, I was at a convention and I auctioned off a horrible death! It was at the Buffy convention, and I auctioned off a horrible death and they ran up the bidding on it, Julie Caitlin Brown was the auction person, and she ran up the bid on it. And so Anna wound up giving $3000 to a children's cancer foundation, and so she gets a horrible death in my book! So that's based on somebody I really do actually know. Harry Dresden is kind of losely based on my friend Charlie, who's 6'9", British, and Charlie and I, Charlie was an extremely comforting person to have with you in a dark alley. He and I hit a couple of dark alleys occasionally in the days of my foolishness, which are from about 1971 until now-
{audience laughs}
Jim: But back when I was in college being foolish, I had different things to be foolish about then. So Charlie would be with me, he's a very comforting person to have with you in a dark alley, 6'9". You know, skinny, glowering, very intense personality guy. And with the British accent he got all the girls too. He would just collect phone numbers, falling out of his pockets. But anyway, yeah, I don't really base them too much on anybody. I take that back. Shiro in the books, he's one of the Knights of the Cross, I guess maybe you've read that book.

Audience: Yeah!

Jim: Sometimes I forget! You know while you're all here I'm just talking. But he was actually based on a guy who opened a martial arts school in my town, and who was my teacher's teacher. So he was based part on my teacher, who was actually, I knew he was from Japan, I knew he was from a samuri family, that's all I knew. I didn't know he was from a big samuri family until I read an article about his $12 million full Shinto wedding on the roof of a building in New York.
{murmers of approvement, a whoop}
Jim: So like, golly! I didn't realise that! But yeah, he was the one who was a 6th degree, he was a national college champion of Aikido in Japan, he was a 6th degree blackbelt in a martial art he was studying which was called Ryu Kempo, I'd seen him catch arrows! Not arrows that were flying by like here;
{indicates past himself}
Jim: Arrows that were flying by like here.
{indicates towards his chest}
Jim: Pointy ones!
{laughter}
Jim: I'd seen him catch them, they shot three of them at him and he had to catch the blue one to break the red one, and he didn't know which stripe was coming at him until it was in sight, they didn't tell him.
{gasp}
Jim: Yeah. He was that kind of martial artist. And I remember he was teaching in a basic Ju-Jitsu class that I'd been to, and he says:
{Jim puts on bad Japanese accent}
"Though, really I feel I-" Because it's the Japanese accent, I'm not trying to insult anybody, it's just the way that in my head I remember him. " Really I feel I am not really very good at hand to hand martial arts, I think I'm begining to touch potential, but really I feel I am nowhere close to what I will one day be. However I do feel that I have a competent basic understanding of the sword."
{Jim and audience laughs}
Jim: OK! And then his teacher was this old guy from Okinawa who had learned martial arts in the power vacuum between the fall of the Japanese and before the Americans got there in WWII. The Yakuza came in to fill the power vacuum, they came in and they killed this kid's dad, and then they said "You're gonna pay us x amount of money by this time next month or we're gonna kill you." And the kid's family didn't have it, so he went to these two Chinese monks that were living up a mountain when the Japanese invaded, and they had taken shelter in Okinawa, and it hadn't worked out so well. And they were living in a cave up in a mountain, and the kid went up there and begged them to teach him to fight so that he could protect himself and his family. And they told him no, go away, and they started asking him about it, and they found out that actually the kid was a descendent of the last king of Okinawa, Shautai, and they're like "Oh my gosh, this kid's from a divine bloodline, we have to help him!" So they beat him unconcious every day for a month!
{laughter}
Jim: Which, you know, that was the level of martial arts they were operating at, they were teaching serious stuff. And the Yakuza sent an assassin to kill the kid, and the kid killed him, and left his body hanging over the fence in the front yard. The next week the Yakuza sent another assassin, who also got left over the fence, and so did the two that came after that! Then the Yakuza went to the kid and said "We would like you to work for us!"
{audience laughs}
Jim: And the kid said "No, I just want you to stay off my street." and the Yakuza said "Much better business!"
{more laughter}
Jim: It's a true story, and eventually he wound up moving to Independence, Missouri and I ask one of his students "Why does a guy like that wind up in Independence Missouri?" And the student says "Because he wants to."
{audience laughs}
Jim: Ahh! Yes. And that was Master Oyada, and between my teacher Shiro, and Master Oyada they formed Shiro in the books. Actually I ran into Master Oyada at the grocery store the other day, he was getting a perscription. He's this cheerful little Okinawa guy, he's about 5'2", big old broad shoulders, got a big old pot belly, he had a stogie in one hand and was there getting some medicine for something. But a nice guy. A really nice guy. All the really, really extremely... just the most deaadly skilled people I've ever met are the nicest people. You know, or so they seem to be to me, in my terror.
{more laughter}
Jim: But really, when you run into places like that, where the people are serious, they know they're confident, they know what they're doing, they often treat one another very well, they're very polite to one another because you never know when the little 5' nothing blond woman is gonna throw you through a wall! You know, maybe she can do that! So, long answered question, there you go, you've had my martial arts history in there, so.

Crawker:
Notes:
-The question where the guy asks about Bob, he mumbles the whole first sentence, I can't really hear it. Anyone? Ta again Derek
-And the bit about the number of people in Laurell Hamilton's house, eight, eighteen or eighty?


Jim: What else, yes?

Audience: So is Mouse actually a real breed or just a created breed?

Jim: No, he's not a created breed, he's a real breed. He's a Caucasian.
{audience laughs}
Jim: No, meaning he's a Cacuasian mountain dog. Actually, they were bred from Tibetan mastiffs by the Russians during the Soviet government. Really, if you get one, they're huge, they're extremely aggressive and they're guys that roll along the lines of {puts on gruff voice} "There's somebody, let me go knock them down!"
{laughter}
Jim: You know, they're not necessarily gonna rip you apart and kill you, but they're happy to come up and knock you down and hold you right there, like "Show me your ID!".
{more laughter}
Jim: Yeah, so that's what they do. But they're just huge, and incredibly powerful and I was like "Ooh! That would be really cool for Harry to have!" His life is getting increasingly dangerous, and he really needs to be able to go home, and sleep. So that was one of those things that I wound up giving him. Plus I just realised how great it was, I hadn't had a dog in the family in years and years, when we moved to Pennsylvania we promised to get a dog. You've moved away from all your friends and everything, but you have a dog! It was like great! It was a fantastic idea! And Shannon was like "I don't care what kind of dog we get so long as it's outdoors all the time", and so on and so forth, "it doesn't need to be in the house" so I was like we'll get an outdoor dog, it'll be alright around here, it's not gonna cause any trouble, I researched all these outdoor, high energy breeds, and then my stepmother-in-law got lime disease from a tick from a dog, and Shannon got to see how horrible that was, and she said "I want a dog that's gonna be inside. All the time."
{audience laughs}
Jim: "I want a dog that won't smell, that won't shed, and if a tick gets on it we'll be able to see instantly." And I'm like "OK, slightly different search parameters..." But I went and looked! And it turns out there was a couple of dogs we could get and one of them was a bichon frise. And we got a bichon frise which the boy named 'Frostbite Doomreaver McBane'.
{more laughter}
Jim: He was like nine, so Frost is my dog, my 25lb killer. Yes?

Audience: You like a lot of sci-fi stuff or fantasy whatever-

Jim: Yes, I am a nerd.
{audience laughs}
Jim: Goes with the territory.

Audience: Nothing to be ashamed of! So, if you could cross over the Dresden Files with anything-

Jim {instantly}:  Spiderman.
{audience laughs}
Jim: which is why I hope that the comic book thing goes through with the Dabel Brothers, they're being distributed by Marvel now, and if there was an actual Dresden comic book there literally would exist the outside chance of the Spiderman-Harry Dresden crossover.
{crosses fingers, audience laughs and cheers}
Jim: I've also been approached by somebody who's putting together a Kolchak the Night Stalker anthology of short stories-
{audience oohs}
Jim: and wanted me to do a Kolchak-Harry Dresden crossover. Yeah, I don't know if I have time to do it, it's the time issue that's really starting to get to me now, which is a bizzare problem to have. It's a good problem, but very strange! You know, people want you to be around. Pfft, maybe they should've married me then.
{audience laughs}
Jim: I joke, but I called my wife like 4 times today so... Yes sir?

Audience: How does Harry unscroll in your head? You're going back tonight to write, do you resume a dialogue with Harry?

Jim: No, I mean, I'm a little bit more cold-blooded and mercenary about the actual process of the craft when I go back. I've got a story to get told, and Harry's gonna have to do it.
{audience laughs}
Jim: Which is probably why he gets bludgeoned so often!
{more laughter}
Jim: We're at the first chapter of the next book, and he's already had his nose broken, and he's got whiplash.
{audience awws}
Jim: Big old bruises under his eyes, he looks like a racoon. So anyway, I'll just go back and I'll sit down, and I'll turn on some movie that I've seen a million times, so it won't distract me, but it's background stuff I'm familiar with, and then I'll start writing and eventually, sometimes I just have a bad writing night where I just plug along for six hours and I just wind up with three or four pages to show for it, and it's all kinda cruddy. Or at least it seems to be that way to me at the time. But then I'll go back and I'll read it later and go oh, that was fine. And sometimes I'll sit down, and it'll just take off, and I'll look up, and it'll be five in the morning, and I've gotten 22 pages written that night, and everything is wonderful. So I don't know, it depends on how much sleep I've had, and my attitude going in, and whether or not there's an editor with an axe out there breathing down my neck to get it finished. 'Cause that's a motivating factor! Yes sir?

Audience: Speaking of Bob. Where do you get you're inspiration for Bob? Is Bob like Dresden's Yin and Yang? dark side-light side?

Jim: Bob's an inside joke between me and my writing teacher.
{audience laughs}
Jim: I was putting it together and I told her, "Look, I'm gonna give Dresden this advisor figure, who he's gonna get together with to talk with about magic. And that way instead of just infodumping everything the reader needs to know about magic constantly through big paragraphs, I'll have bob the skull there, and Harry can talk about it with Bob, and the reader can get the information that way." and she says "Ok fine, you can do it that way so long as you don't make the character a talking head."
{audience laughs, Jim raises a finger for quiet}
Jim: Which is writing lingo for a character who comes on, spouts information and then vanishes again, you see them a lot in fifties science fiction movies, "As you know Bob, the african spider monkey"
{audience laughs again}
Jim: But if the guy knew that you wouldn't be telling him about it! It's bad writing. And "As you know, Bob" is the phrase that goes along with it, that was always the phrase that gets associated with it, so I wrote a literal talking head named Bob, just to tweak my writing teacher's nose. That's where Bob came from.
{more laughter}
Jim: I wish it was more complicated than that, I really do, I wish I had some sort of dark, I could reference proofs or something and say something cool, but no, bad joke. Yes?

Audience: You created a lot of characters surrounding Harry in the universe, and I think you've done a better job than most rationing them throughout the books.

Jim: Yeah, they can only show up a certain amount of time, and I always have a ratio planned out of how much you can be there as, you know, as a certain role in the book.

Audience: Thank you!

Jim: Oh! {looks suprised then grins} You're welcome!

Audience: Unlike Laurell Hamilton, who winds up having eighty people living in a house!

Jim: Yeah, I hate it when you see those episodes where they would kind of trot somebody across the stage; "look, I'm also in the opening credits so I'm also participating in this episode! Bye!" And that would be all you saw of them, I just hated that when you saw that. Although now I know a bit more about the business, I understand that maybe that was the week the actor had to be in rehab or something.
{audience laughs}
Jim: There's all kinds of things that can influence it that're just silly. But yeah, I try and keep that ratio moving, I'm itching for some more denarians here, we haven't seen them in too long, so...

Audience member: Here here!

Jim: Thank you. I'm kinda proud of those guys, I can't think of anybody who I ripped them off from.
{audience laughs}
Jim: Well really! I think I come up with these wonderful ideas, I go "Ooh! This is an original, brilliant, wonderful idea! I thought of this!" and two years later I'll be on Boomerang late at night {mimes flicking through channels on remote} and I'll be like "Awww... I stole that from Johnny Quest..."
{laughter, cheers}
Jim: Darn it! You know, the talking skull with the lights and everything? The opening segment of Scooby Doo. Also, third act of the last unicorn.
{audience laughs}

Praeceps:
Jim has had a recent posting spree (and before anyone asks I am making Jim's posts sound like philosophical texts for my own amusement).

On Harry not bluffing Mavra when threatening to use necromancy on her.
On Lasciel translating things without Harry's knowledge.
On Shagnasty being able to beat the Ick quite handily
On Stroker being killed because he was delicious
Further notes on Stroker's death and the Black Court's lack of knowledge about the White Court's involvement in their partial destruction until after the fact
On the importance of point of view and a confirmation of Gard's status
An extremely vague and short treatise about Margaret Gwendolyn LeFey's age in relation to the time difference in the Nevernever :P

Serack:
Ok, I've added Jim's recent posts.  I took the liberty of starting with your links, and tweaking them to what I wanted to put in the compilation.  I'll summarize the tweaked additions within my quote of your post, Bastian.


--- Quote from: Bastian on June 22, 2011, 01:49:05 PM ---Jim has had a recent posting spree (and before anyone asks I am making Jim's posts sound like philosophical texts for my own amusement).

Harry didn't bluff Mavra when threatening to use necromancy on her.
 8)Comment on the possibility that Lasciel translated the Word of Kemmler w/o Harry's knowledge
Shagnasty can beat the Ick quite handily
"Stoker was killed for being delicious"
More on Stroker's death and the Black Court's (then) ignorance that he was a WCV cat's paw
Gard's status compared to "Captain Jack"
"Time runs at varying speeds in the Nevernever, too.  Remember that there was a reason she was called "LaFey."  Ten minutes in some portion of the Nevernever where time runs at 10,000:1 or something could add up." :P

--- End quote ---

Oh, my I had already read the "Stoker being killed because he was delicious" WoJ, but hadn't realized it was a direct response to my WoJ guru post.

P.S.  I know I didn't get to this immediately, but the compilation is a comparatively new animal (that took me a little while to make), and having people like Bastian post them here helps this thread serve as a "what's new in WoJ," running update that everyone can contribute to and make use of, and I intend to treat the compilation as a more long term, (and thus proally not as quickly responsive to new material) work.  

Keep em coming, and don't fret, I'll see them.  Usually right away, even if I don't react to them right away.  Either way, they will be added as necessary to the compilation.

Serack:
Edit:  Woops!  Nothing to see here.

Edit2:  I am however starting the transfer of these transcripts to the WoJ section (I was using the quote function to get the original transcribers code, and accidentally hit save within this topic instead of the new one in the WoJ section)

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