The Dresden Files > DF Reference Collection
Grand Unifying Cosmological Mantle Theory [Series spoilers including MM WoJs]
Quantus:
[Tag to read through when I have more time]
Serack:
Ok back in the saddle, I stepped back from responding last night, and I'll start again today with KC's post... I'll try to bold the two things that best represent the "breakdown" for me in KC's explanation.
--- Quote from: KG on June 23, 2014, 09:53:24 PM ---I'm not 100% sure I understand why the bolded portion gives you pause, but I'll try to clarify some more and you can let me know if I'm coming at it from the wrong angle.
Edna is the whole being, but in Harry's reality she manifests as 6 Queens to interact with mortals that help her do her Job. What Harry knows as the Queens is only a small portion of the true Edna. Think of Edna as the full entity/body. The Queens together might just be a hand (this is kind of a different way of describing Griff's Tree metaphor). In Harry's reality, a couple of Edna's fingers got infected, so the lopped them off to keep the entire hand from getting infected. However, Edna has sufficient power to "regenerate" her amputated fingers. This is obviously a metaphor for killing off the Nemesis-infected Queens and replacing them with new ones.
At first blush it seems a little too convenient to say Edna is so powerful she can just grow new digits, and that's why new Queens are made. But, if you think about it from the immutability standpoint, Edna /must/ have a full compliment of fingers because she, as the full being, cannot change. The only thing that can change is how Harry perceives her. However, in Harry's reality, he (and everyone in the know) perceives it as a law of nature that there are 6 Queens, so it /must/ be so that when one Queen dies another takes her place. Until some event takes place in Harry's reality that makes people start to believe the laws of nature/magic are changing such that there may no longer /have/ to be 6 Queens, there will always be 6 Queens. Over time the perception in Harry's reality might change, and Edna will manifest in that reality differently based on how mortal perception shifts. However, the full being that is Edna will not change.
So if there /must/ be 6 Queens in Harry's reality, then there /must/ be a mechanism to change who the Queens are, if needed. The Mantles are this mechanism. While I agree that it's pretty damned inconvenient for Molly to have received the Winter Lady Mantle, she made choices with her own Free Will that led to the circumstance. She wasn't fully drafted into the war against her will, but she didn't fully volunteer to serve, either. It's a weird grey area, but she made sufficient choices to open herself up to becoming a part of this interface system, and now she's got to deal with it. She's still Molly, to a degree, but the Mantle is also changing her some. She literally can't tell Harry when he asks about her new job, but she can use a cell phone. However, we have evidence that she will always retain a portion of her Free Will, because Maeve was slacking off on her job for 150 years. Unless we assume Maeve was infected for that length of time, we can deduce that she exercised Free Will in deciding not to do her job. This is similar to the way Mab can make Harry do some things, but she cannot make him /choose/ to do them. Free Will still exists in the being, but it might be a little more constrained by the Mantle.
I don't know if that addressed the issue that was bothering you or not, but I'm enjoying the conversation. Let me know if I got your concern all wrong and I'll regroup. :)
And please, no jokes about Edna's malformed, six-fingered hand! She's really quite sensitive about it. :P
--- End quote ---
You said in your first post:
--- Quote ---at the end of the day it all adds up to Edna just doing her thing.
--- End quote ---
You use the term "being" to refer to Edna, but we also have descrete, wholly formed beings with Free Will who end up being part of how Edna manifests. Which would constitute more than "just Edna" and makes the model turn all skelter in my mind. (I don't know why, but using the word "skelter" in a sentence like that was fun)
Let me propose a corresponding interpretation... Not exclusive, just an explanation that could flesh out how these "fingers" manifest.
Phenominal Cosmic Power (PCP... oooh, I like that acronym) wielded by static cosmically powerful beings can't be directly applied on the Free Will dominated planes where things can truely be dynamic. That's because these dynamic places are a bit squishy when it comes to that kind of power being wielded.
However, if say a free willed being were to come along and take on some Power/Responsibility that happens to be a portion of that PCP, then that Free Will will be a bit of a buffer that allows that PCP to act within that level of dynamic reality. Interestingly enough, frequently this taking up of power and responsibility also involves major changes to the individual with Free Will as well, sometimes including some loss of that indivual's mortality/Free Will.
We have seen this in many different varriances (and levels of power) in the DF.
* Susan gained some Rampire power, and if she chose to take it up fully by drinking lifeblood, she would have come into the full power of a Rampire.
* Standard Changelings
* Wampire's first kill
* Fae Knights (Harry is fighting so hard to retain himself)
* Denarians
* Fae Queen upgrades
* (In theory) The Blackstaff
* (in reverse) Vadderung (Jim says he can act on the mortal plane the way he does because he choses to be vulnerable to being killed)
However, it would seem that the more the individual wielding the Mantle becomes powerful, the more restrained they become or they could squishy things. In my coming up with my topic on how the Fae and Fae realm came into being, I started thinking that as a Race the Fae began taking on power and responsibility and such thus losing some of their mortality. As a result of these changes their entire Reality ended up responding to these choices such that it split off and became less mortal/dynamic and paralleled the Dresden reality across the NN veil. I created a section in "reply #2" dedicated to these ideas.
Ok, back to my hangup with your interpretation on things... You appear to be describing (with names) what I refer to as "Cosmicly Powerful Beings" as immutable, just manifesting in to mortals in... costumes (sorry that's my term, I couldn't come up with a better one) that make sense to them. However, I say that these costumes aren't your named cosmic being's costumes they are fully formed beings in and of themselves.
I might have some time to read through and respond to some of the other great posts since yours... lets see.
vultur:
--- Quote from: Griffyn612 on June 24, 2014, 02:32:58 AM ---He could have always been an Aeon serving a higher Aeon that he sees as the Creator Aeon. But that would mean he isn't aware of there being a higher Aeon. Yet we know there are different branches of this theoretical pantheon/tree of Aeons. Does that mean his memory if flawed, or shaped to be that way by TWG of the Dresdenverse?
--- End quote ---
Given this recent WOJ (my emphasis)
--- Quote ---Q: Is there a qualitative difference in the Dresdenverse between Christian mythology and any other kind, or is it just a matter of scale?
A: Let's see how to phrase this... I'm tempted to steal a line from [Cabinet??] “God hates when you call it mythology” … It's not just a matter of scale, it's a matter of where the books are taking place. Much of the story is focused in North America and in Western Europe where Christianity is the dominant religion ... which is not to say ... the way the Almighty in the Dresdenverse works is 'he's pretty cool, it's all of us who are stupid' so really there's a lot more crossover as far as someone with a viewpoint like Uriel, there's a lot more crossover between the religions than people who are on the planet think there is.
Generally speaking, mostly why other religions haven't come into it is because I'm not as well versed in them as I am in Christianity. I'm fairly sure I can do a reasonable portrayal of Christianity, I don't know if I can do as well with Islam because I don't know as much about it. I don't know if I can do as well with Hinduism because I don't know as much about it. I don't know as much about Buddhism … except that it's got a lot of really cool sayings. “No snowflake falls in the wrong place”
--- End quote ---
http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,41782.0.html
I have the feeling that the absolute highest level isn't divided between the different 'branches' if you will, that the Dresdenverse Christian God is actually the same being as the Dresdenverse Brahman, etc.
So Uriel isn't necessarily unaware of any higher levels, he may genuinely be one level from the absolute top.
Mith:
That was what I was thinking as well. I think a better reword of what I meant would be that Uriel may not have existed since Creation, but the being we call Uriel might have in different forms. After all he didn't say that he was fighting wars as Uriel since the solar system was an expanding ball of gases.
hamiltond:
@Serack
As I'm ready through your, quite frankly, beautiful and elegant theory I came upon a rather interesting parallel between human beings in the DV and quantum level interactions. Specifically the thought experiment of Schrödinger's cat.
In this scenario mortals are the cat existing in a sort of quantum state of indecision and any direct observation from the TRULY "PCPs" would irreparably damage the "experiment". (Predestination / quantum locked reality) Thus in order to affect change it/they must act through smaller and smaller instruments (emanations) AND in a roundabout fashion, thus why so many higher beings act in "mysterious ways" and cannot take direct action, in order to make a desired outcome. Meanwhile we lowly humans existing in a indeterminate state afforded to us by our infinitesimally small "size" that WE perceive as "free will". Am I anywhere near the ballpark?
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