The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
Questions
wyltok:
--- Quote from: Cozarkian on March 14, 2012, 09:24:48 PM ---I don't think most bearers take that first step of rejection. They probably slip the coin in their pocket and carry it around like a secret treasure. Without that first rejection, they would be open to the full temptation at the start.
No, I think once you touch the coin the Fallen can try to tempt you. It is only following an act of refusal (Harry sealing the coin) that the Fallen is forced to resort to more subtle means.
--- End quote ---
A system that allows Malcolm Dresden to appear to balance out Lasciel's Shadow "cheating" but allows the coin to tempt you fully from the word go unless you perform an act of refusal doesn't seem internally consistent to me. Particularly since the former was a smaller deal than the latter and (presumably) occurs less often. Neither does a system that only defends you when you make an informed choice (meaning, when you're most likely to not fall into temptation by mistaked in the first place) instead of defending you when you're making an uninformed choice (when you're more likely to be tricked). It would only really work in an universe where the bad guys are winning, methinks, or the good guys are dicks (Uriel doesn't seem to be one of those, at least). Unless I'm misunderstanding your logic?
Serack:
wyltok, coz already said most of what I wanted to reply for your earlier questions.
As to your latest questions, leme first quote the free will section of the WoJ compilation since it says some stuff that addresses your concerns about how the "system" works in the books. I'll italicize the stuff that I think is most pertinent.
--- Quote from: Serack on October 16, 2010, 03:10:17 PM ---Free Will
Very old, very long WoJ about free will
2008 ComicCon Playing God panel Q&A @~7:00
How do you come up with the bounds between Characters free will and the Divine Hand?
For the Dresden Files, the whole point of The Almighty positive good forces that are out there is that free will is important and they respect that and you've gotta have it and use it. That's the entire point. They are a force of freedom. And it's the bad guys who are going around doing whatever they can to abrogate free will. So for me, where you draw the line is what defines where good stops and evil starts is by how much you're taking away free will and how much you're enabling it.
2011 Marscon
Could you explain free will to us from Bob’s perspective?
Free will from Bob’s perspective? Bob thinks free will is a complete illusion, uh, since he doesn’t really have it. Um, it’s a conceit that mortals have to make themselves feel like they can be in control of things. Uh, but really, it doesn’t actually exist, that’s Bob’s take on it. But then again, Bob doesn’t really have free will, he’s sort of…
He said that Lash got it.
Lash isn’t Bob.
Well, no, but he [Bob] said that Lash got, obtained free will.
Yeah, Bob doesn’t have to tell the truth to Dresden! (Laughter) I mean, come on! Bob offered it as a possible explanation, but you know, Bob’s essentially…he’s a theoretician. That’s what he does… ‘Explain this’ , ‘Okay, maybe it was this, I don’t know.’ But yeah, he tries to stay out of the whole, anything like, anything that verges on morality, Bob tries to avoid speaking with any authority on because he doesn’t have any compass himself. It all depends on who actually happens to be in possession of the skull at the time.
2011 Fast Forward, Contemporary Science Fiction interview
There is a rather long discussion as to what constitutes free will as an element in the back end of this book (Ghost Story). Is what is presented and discussed as a concept, your own philosophy? How did that come about, the idea that free will is making your choices based upon truth.
Right, and in the Dresden Files universe it's a vital component. It's what devides mortals, human beings, from everybody else. Is that we're the ones that have elements of both good and evil inside us, we're the ones who get to chose what to do. And because that's who we are, we make the world around us through those choices. The forces of the universe, these cosmic forces are always ballanced against one another, and we're the ones who can tilt that see-saw one way or another with our actions. I think that is largely true in real life, but it is certainly a very fun, dramatic use of the concept of free will for writing with. It's very important in general, and that's why Harry, as he's gotten more mature, he's striven so much harder to make sure that other people have a choice, you know, he's not trying to make choices for people any more, he's trying to make sure that they know what's going on, and can make an informed choice.
2011 Bitten by Books Q&A
Lash was apparently able to gain free will from harry, a mortal. Can mortals potentially grant free will to other supernaturals like vampires and faries?”
That’s… a spectacularly complicated question, really. :)
Lash didn’t gain free will, per se. Lash gained individuality, became a singular entity, self-motivated and distinct from the personality of Lasciel the Fallen. That personality was strongly influenced by Dresden, who believes very strongly in individual choice and responsibility, but doesn’t necessarily equate to free will in the sense of what mortals possess.
You might note that Lash essentially committed suicide with her “free will.” A choice which rather strongly resembles another choice a few books later in the series.
--- End quote ---
You seem rather concerned about fairness and such, but it has already been well established in the series that just because you are ignorant of the consequences of your actions in the DresdenVerse does not give you any extra protection from making bad decisions and suffering their consequences. This is illustrated over and over with ignorant teenagers breaking the laws of magic and going down the slippery slope towards evil, thus showing the ignorant are vastly more vulnerable to the repercussions of falling to temptation.
Serack:
Some additional thoughts. These are inspired by some of the comments from one of the DFRPG developers with respect to Laws of Magic breaking.
--- Quote from: LCDarkwood on March 15, 2011, 11:19:44 PM ---Corruption Isn't Always About Evil
We have a tendency to look at the Laws as things that turn ordinary, nice wizards into MFing Kemmler. So, it's understandable that some players are going to have an issue with the idea of being a Lawbreaker, because they don't really want their character to be an Evil Jackass.
But all we really know, as a baseline, is that breaking the Laws fundamentally changes you somehow. There's a lot of room to decide how you're going to express that change. That's why you don't have to, if you don't want to, worry about intent too much - good intentions can cause corruption just as much as bad ones.
Let's look at another Joe Wizard. This is a young dude, just getting started, who fries a mugger in self-defense because he's afraid. First Law violation, period dot.
But what if we decide the aspect is "Crippling, Massive Guilt"? 'Cause clearly, Joe's not a bad guy, right? No one expects he's going to go from magical self-defense to setting kittens on fire just to listen to them shriek.
However, what could happen is that his guilt keeps him from using his magic, even when its arguably necessary. Even when it could help people and prevent harm. Even when an innocent is being held up by the throat by a loup-garou, and he could save that person, but God, what if something goes wrong? What if he misses? What if he kills another innocent? Better that they die by the loup-garou's hand than his, right? Better he doesn't have it on his conscience, right?
And soon, this Joe Wizard finds himself utterly incapable of risk and sacrifice. His decisions become inherently selfish, all centered around keeping him, at all costs, from having to deal with that guilt again.
How is that not a kind of corruption?
So, keep in mind that you don't have to characterize this process as a descent into blistering, making-soup-with-babies sadism. Anything that people can feel can be taken too far and become destructive.
--- End quote ---
Even though Harry was not subjected to diabolical temptation due to picking up the coin for a significant period of time afterwords, does not mean that he was not subjected to some consequences.
--- Quote from: PG ch 4 ---I thought about those who had fought beside me before. I thought about my friend Michael, whose kid had been the one about to pick up the coin.
I hadn't seen Michael since then. I hadn't called. He'd called me a couple of times, invited me to Thanksgiving dinner a couple times, asked if I was all right a couple of times. I had turned down his invitations and cut every phone conversation short. Michael didn't know that I'd picked up one of the Blackened Denarii, taken possession of a token that could arguably make me a member of the Knights of the Blackened Denarius...
I'd never told him about the coin. I didn't want him to know that I was sharing brain space with a demon. I didn't wnat him to think less of me. Michael had integrity. Most of my adult life, the White Council at large had been sure that I was some kind of monster just waiting for the right time to morph into its true form and start laying waste to everything around me. But Michael had been firmly on my side since the first time we'd met. His unwavering support had made me feel a whole hell of a lot better about my life.
I didn't want him to look at me the way he'd looked at the Denarians we'd fought. So until I got rid of Lasciel's stupid mental sock puppet, I wasn't going to ask him for help.
--- End quote ---
One more thing. My ideas on this topic are not set in stone. I have a general idea of things that is constantly shaped by the info I get on the subject. I just happened to finish reading Dead Beat last night, and the 2 books before it in the past few weeks, so the subject canon is particularly fresh in my mind. (I just read the above passage earlier today, having quickly started the next book after finishing DB)
Ms Duck:
Heres my idea on why harry resited for years; he has a ridculously strong will combined with a crippling fear of his own power. I seriously doubt the circle ever did anything - it was just harry. Hes that stubborn, and that guilty about the 'death' of elaine- and possibly justin as well. He peter parker y'know. Snarky, shy about women, and would rather stick his hand in a grinder than accept evil power.... Do you tthink most people are like that? I dont. And for another point, i doubt the coins need infromed consent..just consent.
wyltok:
Uhm, Serack and cozarkian, lemme try to return to the original point:
- If I'm understanding your position correctly, you believe there are constraints that limited how Lasciel's Shadow could interact with Harry's conscious mind, particularly between the events at the end of Death Masks and the beginning of Dead Beat. You believe these constraints are the reason why the background Rock & Roll music Harry had been hearing since picking up the coin stopped playing once his conscious mind chose to reject the coin. You believe these constraints are binding enough that Lasciel's Shadow didn't have any way of continuing to play the music, even if it wanted to.
- You then propose that these constraints were loosened by Harry's actions in Blood Rites, namely, his subconscious use of Hellfire. The (elegant) logic behind this belief is that we are told in Dead Beat that his conscious use of Hellfire was required in order to allow Lasciel's Shadow to communicate with Harry's conscious mind. One would expect, then, that Harry's subconscious use of Hellfire would be required in order to allow Lasciel's Shadow to communicate with Harry's subconscious mind.
My questions to you, I'm afraid, remain unanswered, by either you or cozarkian:
- How can the constraints be binding if Lasciel's Shadow managed to "cheat" around them?
- Why did Lasciel's Shadow appear to wait from Blood Rites until Dead Beat before "cheating"?
In all fairness, I did ask a third question that did get answered by both you and cozarkian, namely, how did Lasciel's Shadow fail after three years whereas other Shadows succeed in a few weeks at most (or presumably, fail completely in a shorter span of time). Cozarkian proposed that the temptation process was inherently different from Harry's in most cases, heavily skewed toward the Shadows' favor. When I suggested that such a system didn't seem consistent to me, you replied saying that there's no reason to expect the system to seem fair from our perspective. I can't really argue that point, so I shall concede it.
Still, my two questions above remain unanswered. My proposed answer to them is the following:
- At some point, Lasciel's Shadow was free to act in a certain way and chose to wait until her actions had maximum impact before acting. I believe we can all agree a time period like that existed between Blood Rites and Dead Beat. Just to clarify, by "free to act" I don't mean there would be no consequences for her actions; what I mean is, there were constraints stopping her from acting.
- The idea that Lasciel's Shadow was constrained from acting in a certain way ("cheating") during one time period and then later chose not to act in that exact certain way until a time of her choosing has more moving parts to it than the idea that she just chose to not act in that way ("cheating") until a time of her own choosing from the very beginning. Occam's Razor would suggest that maybe there was never any constraint on her actions in the first place.
- The fact that that it still counted as "cheating" when she finally acted means that she was either unaware that there would be consequences (unlikely) or she believed the consequences were worth it. Meaning, the consequences did not have the power to stop her from cheating at that point in time, which suggests that nothing had the power to stop her from cheating earlier, either. Since the act that has been defined as "cheating" is at the very least the same as playing music, and nothing could stop Lasciel's Shadow from cheating, nothing could stop her from playing music, either.
In other news, both sides seem to agree that the magic empowering the circle in and of itself did absolutely nothing to limit the coin or Lasciel's Shadow. Granted, you believe the act of empowering the circle did limit the access Lasciel's Shadow had to Harry's conscious mind, but at least we agree on something, no?
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version