The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
Questions
Serack:
--- Quote from: Ms Duck on March 15, 2012, 12:57:13 PM ---I think most of these arguments underestimate both lash and harry. why did lash sing at all? To let harry know she was ther. Why stop? To make him think shes gone. Why wait? She was studying him. Why did he resist? Well, why did he resist corpsetaker? Or nico? Or all the other offers? Hes just that stubborn. Hes the hero yall ;)
--- End quote ---
Honestly, I don't think the "singing" should be given any weight.
The way I read it Lasciel was not singing at all, but rather Harry was drowning out Lasciel's wispers by thinking about/singing Heavy Metal songs.
--- Quote from: DB Ch 33 ---I left the cookout without saying good-bye, and headed home. I heard something the whole time, something wispering almost inaudibly. I drowned it out with loud and off-key singing, and got to work.
Ten hours later, I put down the excavating pick and glowered at the two-foot hole I had chipped in my lab's concrete floor. The whispering in my head had segued into "Sympathy for the Devil" by the stones.
"Harry," whispered a gentle voice.
I dropped the coin into the hole. I slipped a steel ring about three inches across around it. I muttered to myself and willed energy into the ring. The whispering abruptly cut off.
I dumped two buckets of cement into the hole and smoothed it until it was level with the rest of my floor. After that I hurried out of the lab and shut the door behind me.
--- End quote ---
By the way, PG might have a little ret conning on the details of the prison. Either Harry dug up the coin and amped up the prison (unlikely) or Jim reworked the details of the prison after the fact.
--- Quote ---A ring of plain silver was set into the floor - my summoning circle. Underneath it lay a foot and a half or so of concrete, and then another heavy metal box, wrapped with its own little circle of wards and spells. Inside the box was a blackened silver coin.
--- End quote ---
Serack:
By the way, some of these concepts were only vaguely worked out in my mind before this discussion, so I am enjoying the opportunity to sharpen them through discussion, and the opportunity to wave around my DF nerd flag so vigerously.
Ms Duck:
The singing i refered too was the rolling stones. I think she was taking time to move in, was concerned about the possibility of getting evicted by a greater power (such as mab) and decided to lay low and be subtle. Lash had to be aware that mab was chasing him at this point.
Serack:
--- Quote from: Ms Duck on March 15, 2012, 02:41:09 PM ---The singing i refered too was the rolling stones.
--- End quote ---
I understood that you were referring to this. I still say Lasciel was not singing, Harry was.
He was taking Lasciel's nearly inaudible wispers and giving them off key theme music in an extreemly deliberate attempt to denigh any other message.
Actually, at the end, it looks almost as though Harry backed off of the theme music enough to actually hear the words of the wispering before finally cutting them off completely with the circle.
As too:
--- Quote from: Ms Duck on March 15, 2012, 02:41:09 PM ---I think she was taking time to move in, was concerned about the possibility of getting evicted by a greater power (such as mab) and decided to lay low and be subtle. Lash had to be aware that mab was chasing him at this point.
--- End quote ---
The true hurdle she had to overcome was not external to Harry. It was Harry's own stuborness. The singing is no evidence otherwise since it wasn't Lasciel/Lasciel's shadow doing it. Rather the fact that the wispering was a constant preasure that required the singing to drown it out until the spell cut it off is evidence that the spell was an effective way of exercising this stuborness in a way that severly limited Lasciel's influence over him.
wyltok:
--- Quote from: Serack on March 15, 2012, 12:46:57 PM ---Firstly, Id! Harry (is the ! necessary? I saw you using it I think) said that he had been communicating with the shadow for a few months.
--- End quote ---
Using and abusing memes amuses me. This one in particular comes from fanfiction websites.
--- Quote from: Serack on March 15, 2012, 12:46:57 PM ---So in attempting to directly answer your questions, the best I can do is that the Shadow was constrained from offering true corrupting power to Harry but "cheated" by building rapport with his concious mind as Shela before he conciously accepted power (Hellfire) from her. The pushing the envelope was only available to her because of his subconciously accepting the power (and his subconcious communicating with her in the time since), and she chose to pull that card dispite the consequences of "crossing the line" because she saw that he was undergoing some stressful situations that were likely to cause him to embrace the Hellfire she managed to offer his subconcious, and would thus give her lots of opportunities to offer him tantalizing power through the course of the events of DB.
[...]
The thing is, the story goes through a lot of trouble to describe how there were lines and limits on what the shadow could do (Ref, the 2 dream sceens, 1 with Malcome, the other with the shadow and hot tub. Interesting the symbolism in that in the Malcolm dream Harry was cold and uncomfortable, and Malcolm allowed him to mix his own Coffee to warm up... compared to Harry waking up in a luxurious hot tub he had never experienced before.) Your Occam's Razor argument is not strong enough for me to just throw away all that world building effort.
--- End quote ---
I agree with you, by definition, Occam's Razor is never a strong argument. It's more of a gut check than anything, namely "Am I adding this complexity because it makes sense with the evidence available, or am I adding this complexity because it appeals to me in some way?"
Basically, I believe there's two questions; we agree on one, but disagree on the other:
1. Why did Lasciel's Shadow wait from the actions of Blood Rites (or whenever Id!Harry started talking to her, makes no difference) until the actions of Dead Beat before "cheating"?
- My answer: she was waiting for the time where cheating would give her the most advantage.
- Your answer: she was waiting for the time where cheating would give her the most advantage (or as you put it, "[...]she chose to pull that card dispite the consequences of "crossing the line" because she saw that he was undergoing some stressful situations[...]").
2. Why did Lasciel's Shadow not "cheat" from the moment Harry empowered the circle until the actions of Blood Rites (or whenever Id!Harry started talking to her, makes no difference)?
- My answer: she was waiting for the time where cheating would give her the most advantage.
- Your answer: empowering the circle somehow makes cheating impossible for her until Harry's actions in Blood Rites.
You gotta admit, it's a little out of left field. To use a word I used previously, it seems inconsistent (I know, there's no reason to believe Lasciel's Shadow would follow fair rules, but there you go).
--- Quote from: Serack on March 15, 2012, 12:46:57 PM ---To me, those two statements are completely contradictory... My conceptualization of DV magic is the altering of reality with your will. So in those terms Harry's empowering the circle was a willful alteration of Lasciel's ability to influence him. Thus it was a sucessful magical spell, not an empty gesture that did absolutely nothing.
--- End quote ---
I have Doylist issues with this assertion, rather than Watsonian ones. You make it sound like the only reason Harry managed to cut the Shadow off from his conscious mind was because he'd been trained in the art of focusing his will to alter reality (A.K.A. magic). I want the aesop to be "Harry resisted Lasciel's Shadow because he's a good man"; I don't want the fantastic aesop to be "Harry resisted Lasciel's Shadow because he can do magic". I believe this is what Ms. Duck means by saying we are underestimating Harry.
(From a Watsonian perspective, we know one can renounce a coin without magic, since Sanya did it. So, I guess I have Watsonian issues with it, too.)
--- Quote from: Serack on March 15, 2012, 03:18:09 PM ---The true hurdle she had to overcome was not external to Harry. It was Harry's own stuborness. The singing is no evidence otherwise since it wasn't Lasciel/Lasciel's shadow doing it. Rather the fact that the wispering was a constant preasure that required the singing to drown it out until the spell cut it off is evidence that the spell was an effective way of exercising this stuborness in a way that severly limited Lasciel's influence over him.
--- End quote ---
The difference between what you say and what Ms. Duck is saying is that you believe that Harry's stubbornness somehow makes some of Lasciel's Shadow's options no longer available by reason of being impossible, while she (and I) believe his stubbornnes makes some of her options no longer available by reason of being dumb/counterproductive instead.
(Apologies to Ms. Duck if I misunderstood her.)
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