The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Murphy in Peace Talks (WoJ spoilers)
Mira:
--- Quote ---Not only is Nicodemus a liar, Harry's strategy is based on it and Kringle agrees. Mark that if Nicodemus had not lied he would have had his favorite artifact and not the grail. Nicodemus lies even if it works against him.
--- End quote ---
That's true as to what he was really after, which wasn't the Grail... However it doesn't automatically follow that he was lying about his actions at Michael's house being a ploy to get a Holy Sword broken.. It just confirms how clever and tricky he can be, the ploy caused Murphy to panic, which was his aim. The ploy was made all the more effective because of the mistrust of Butters inadvertently helping to set it up .. That is why Nic gloated afterwards, he'd taken out the help Harry was counting on and he took out a Holy Sword without consequences to himself as far as the deal with Mab was concerned... What he hadn't counted on was Uriel lending his Grace to Michael, thus Harry gained the back up of a real Knight of the Cross.
--- Quote ---
The same in small favor. Harry's strategy is based on Nicodemus breaking the truce because denarians will always break their word, will always lie.
--- End quote ---
Harry's strategy was also based on knowing one of Nic's aims it to destroy a Holy Sword, so he offered one as a bargaining chip.. If you want to go that route, Murphy should have been smart enough to see though Nic's ploy, but she panicked.. Harry saw through it too, but too late to stop her, also he wasn't allowed to stop her...
" I saw it coming, what Nicodemus was doing. I tried to warn her, but as I began to speak, the Genoskwa rapped my head back against the minivan and nothing came out."
Again, if the aim was really to kill Harry in that moment, and if the excuse was Harry failed to kill Butters on his orders... Harry would have been killed, broken Sword and Murphy added bonus... But that didn't happen, as soon as the Sword was broken and the snot beaten out of Murphy, Harry was let go..
--- Quote ---So in a situation where Nicodemus has something to gain and is difficult to check he will tell anything that suits him and his words can not be used to prove anything.
--- End quote ---
That is really laughable since his aim has always been to break a Holy Sword or get one out of commission... That's no lie, and rubbing a little salt in Harry's wounds in the process by gloating about his success is typical...
Arjan:
--- Quote from: Mira on August 31, 2017, 02:01:47 PM ---That is really laughable since his aim has always been to break a Holy Sword or get one out of commission... That's no lie,
--- End quote ---
Prove? There is none.
--- Quote ---and rubbing a little salt in Harry's wounds in the process by gloating about his success is typical...
--- End quote ---
That is the whole point. He is saying these words to rub salt in Harry's wounds not because they are true. He would have said them if they were false as well if they were equally effective. So these words prove nothing.
peregrine:
Simple question. When Harry gives chase to Butters, is his goal to keep Butters from getting killed, or is his goal to silence Butters for the good of the mission? Not, "Can he do both" or "Is there a way to keep Butters alive without breaking Mab's word" but what is his overriding goal?
Is it "Keep Butters alive?" Yes. Yes it is. At no point does he consider how to do it without violating the agreement between Nic and Mab. He just wants to save Butters.
Which means that he WAS trying to break Mab's word. Which means that when Nic says his ploy was no more a true attack than Harry's actions were a violation of Mab's word, he's saying it's the exact same thing. He's just gloating over how he can spin it to get away with no repercussions.
dspringer1:
Just to be clear. Harry is commanded to help Nik with his operations. He is NOT commanded to obey Nik. The two are NOT the same thing, although most times they deliver the same results. Evidence:
* Harry refused to kill Butters
* Harry closed the portal back to the real world -- and Nik obviously did not order him to reopen it even those such an order was totally in Nik's best interests.
Mr. Death:
--- Quote from: DonBugen on August 29, 2017, 09:17:10 PM ---OK, don’t have much time, but I’ll quickly respond to each in turn.So, if Mab’s not watching, and the little folk aren’t reliable, and Nicodemus kills Harry AND Karrin AND Butters, and it’s just Nicodemus and the Genoskwa’s word… this somehow makes Nicodemus’ word more reliable?
--- End quote ---
Yes, by default.
Did Ortega need to provide a body of evidence when he justified the Red Court going to war?
Did Harry have to provide a body of evidence before turning Madrigal Raith into abstract art over killing low-level practitioners?
Nicodemus has the only real remaining witnesses to Harry's pursuit of Butters, and he has plain and simple logic on his side -- there are at least half a dozen ways Harry could have easily killed Butters and both he and Mab know that.
Mab can't just go, "I don't like you, so I'm not going to believe you." That would be tantamount to admitting she wasn't going to uphold her end of the favor, and that's something a Faerie can't do and expect to keep her power.
--- Quote ---Not all little folk are as completely ditzy as dewdrop faeries. The Cobbs who live at the Carpenters’ house, for example, are far more level-headed and intelligent but just have an extreme obsession with shoes. We just see a lot of ditzy faeries because that’s who seems to be attracted by Dresden’s pizza bribery. Lacuna has a bit more intelligence than Toot, for example, and her fairy death squad are a bit more capable than Toot’s as well.
--- End quote ---
The Cobbs who were all but blackmailed into scouting out a couple Black Court vampires? They're not going anywhere near a fight like Harry's.
The Little Folk are good at what they do when they're given very specific instructions and you're not expecting a lot. They're not little stenographers recording a play-by-play of a chase scene that goes across half the city.
--- Quote ---Remember that in Skin Game, when Harry asks Karrin if she’s going to bring in the swords, he still thinks that she sees him being turned into a monster. It’s not until his first talk with Michael that he realizes that the reason why Karrin only went to the island a handful of times is because it’s a terribly psychologically scarring place. Why would he ask to be the custodian at that point? From his point of view, what’s changed?
--- End quote ---
It's not about how he views it. It's about how he thinks and acts. Harry's not going to consciously think, "I don't want the Swords back, therefore I should have the Swords back," because that's self-contradictory.
From what I've seen, custodianship of the Swords is something that needs to be offered, not asked for.
--- Quote ---You’re getting the order wrong. When Harry confronted Michael in his workshop, he gave Michael no evidence that the shadow was gone. He just asked Michael to trust him, to have faith. Michael doesn’t actually see evidence that the shadow is gone until they’re on Demonreach, surrounded by Denarians, with Dresden holding a sword of faith and acting as if he’s going to make it vulnerable and break it. You don’t get to that point unless you have faith that your friend is telling the truth.
--- End quote ---
Michael also had the fact that Harry had been acting like Harry for the past several years; he didn't have, for instance, Harry having broken into a friend's house and injured someone to steal a powerful magical artifact.
--- Quote ---It’s stated several times in the books since Small Favor that the angelic guard is part of Michael’s retirement package. In other words, Dresden picked up the coin before there were a dozen angels poised to attack the yard. Otherwise, how could Gruffs have attacked in the beginning of Small Favor, or the Fetches in Proven Guilty?
--- End quote ---
Fair, I'd forgotten that.
--- Quote ---That’s a weak argument. It’s several orders of magnitude easier to prepare to pick up a Denarian’s coin than to have prepared for “If Butters follows us and listens in and is caught, and we follow him through the city in order to save him, and I’m showing up late to the stalemate between Nicodemus and Dresden because a taxi caused me to swerve into a swimming pool, how best should I approach the situation?”
--- End quote ---
"Murphy prepares for everything" is also a weak argument, because it's not exactly true. She prepares as best she can, in general and specific when she can.
Anyway, you're getting way too hung up on a parenthetical question I made and it's distracting from the point. I wasn't making an assumption -- I was posing a question, because I honestly can't remember if she was wearing gloves.
--- Quote ---So we agree on this, then? Again, not saying that this is sunshine, daisies, and clear skies ahead, and not saying that there might not be a Knight-level of miracle needed to pull their butts out of the fire. Karrin, holding the sword of faith, had no faith that doing the actions of a knight would save Dresden. If she had put her faith in TWG, she would have called Nick’s bluff and broken this stalemate, and brought them to a different sort of conflict. But if Karrin is actually acting as a knight should, then I think that she should have a knight’s superpower – that regardless of how difficult or dangerous the threat is, she always has the ability to overcome it.
--- End quote ---
The problem is still with your assumption that Nicodemus was bluffing at all. He's not. He has no reason to, because Harry absolutely did double cross him, and when Nicodemus talks about the "ploy," he is directly and explicitly likening his "ploy" story with Harry's "I was honestly trying to help stop Butters, honest," story.
Nicodemus knows he has the advantage in the situation, and like a cocky roulette player, he's letting it ride. He'd be happy with a "win" at any stage of it (Killing butters, killing Dresden, breaking the Sword, killing Michael, in order), so when he knows he's getting at least one, he goes for the others.
Honestly, though, if Murphy did "call his bluff" and it saved them, it wouldn't be because he was bluffing, but because Nic, Harry and probably even the Genoskwa would pause in sheer surprise.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version