The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers

White Court, Venatori and Kemmler

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Con:
Personally I think the Archive is flawed at best. Oral History works, sometimes even better than written history. Written history languages change, translations get changed people argue over minute nuance of meaning of a single word that can change the entire text. Think of your favourite song as a kid and think about how everytime that song comes on you find yourself singing to the words even though you had no conscious knowledge of having memorised it. It's muscle memory in your brain.

 Oral History is exactly like that it's the reason we know Homer's works so well. The reason why in my own country aboriginal dreamtime stories remember a time when the world was covered in ICE. They live in Australia people this is from tribes who haven't seen ice for centuries in the middle of the desert or rainforest. The description matches. Admittedly a lot of that knowledge of history and culture died out particularly in the last two centuries or so. But how the hell would the Archive know which Old Dark Gods of Aboriginal legends are still around. They haven't been written down ever to begin with and arguably this makes them more powerful as they are harder to forget well unless humanity forgets the tribe that remembers them of course.

Kindler:
Arguments over text are only possible because there is a record of it in the first place. We know the works of Homer because someone thought to write them down, not because they're still being performed and repeated (some date the first written records of the Iliad, for instance, to around 800 BC). Languages change, sure, but nuance and interpretation doesn't change that the text remains the text.

The real problems with oral tradition are that it's possible to alter or erase parts of the recitation over the course of a single generation, and that it's very, very, regional. The only way for oral histories to remain intact is to prevent interference, and as cultures interact with each other, that is less and less possible. The only practical way to store knowledge and spread it is by recording it somehow. If you're not really interested in spreading it beyond your community, that's fine, but its scope and impact will always remain limited to it.

I think you're arguing that it's possible for the names and stories of the Old Ones (or Elder Things, or whatever it is that's being prevented from coming down to Earth) to be passed down orally rather than writing them down to escape the Archive's notice. I'd say it's possible, but that the vast, vast amounts of time would have rendered generational recollections almost useless for it to matter in the Oblivion war. For instance, names need to be pronounced correctly, and regional dialects and accents would play merry hell with that. Even simple, monosyllabic names like "Bob" have difference pronunciations depending on where you go. I knew a guy from Kentucky who pronounced it with two syllables ("Bow-ahb").

It's perfectly possible within the Dresden Files universe, of course; someone like Bob the Skull would be perfect for recording this kind of thing, and I'm sure he'd be able to play it back as it was said to him like a recording.

The problem with the digital age, I think, is that I'm not sure whether the Archive knows about video and audio. Imagine some low-level warlock recording a summoning, posting it to YouTube, and the whole thing going viral. Warlocks going open-source would be... interesting. I know Harry says the White Council does that kind of thing intentionally, but I'd imagine the Old Ones don't care. You can't, you know, delete the Internet.

Anyway, would the Archive know about that when it was uploaded? Or would she only know about it when someone wrote about it on their Facebook page? Because there's a distinct difference, I think. I suppose, worst case, she'd know the machine code basis for the video file as it was created, and could compile it mentally, but that would be... taxing. And borderline impossible, considering that there is, like, several hundred hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute or something.

Anyway, if I seem like a jerk, I'm sorry; I have strong opinions about writing in general. I've heard way too many people tell me that they have a great idea for a novel, and I have to keep telling them it doesn't matter if you don't write it.

LordDresden2:

--- Quote from: Con on September 30, 2017, 06:47:25 AM ---Personally I think the Archive is flawed at best. Oral History works, sometimes even better than written history. Written history languages change, translations get changed people argue over minute nuance of meaning of a single word that can change the entire text. Think of your favourite song as a kid and think about how everytime that song comes on you find yourself singing to the words even though you had no conscious knowledge of having memorised it. It's muscle memory in your brain.

 Oral History is exactly like that it's the reason we know Homer's works so well. The reason why in my own country aboriginal dreamtime stories remember a time when the world was covered in ICE. They live in Australia people this is from tribes who haven't seen ice for centuries in the middle of the desert or rainforest. The description matches. Admittedly a lot of that knowledge of history and culture died out particularly in the last two centuries or so. But how the hell would the Archive know which Old Dark Gods of Aboriginal legends are still around. They haven't been written down ever to begin with and arguably this makes them more powerful as they are harder to forget well unless humanity forgets the tribe that remembers them of course.

--- End quote ---

The last few posts in this thread are superb examples of why the Oblivion War, as a concept, really doesn't make sense.

Kindler:

--- Quote from: LordDresden2 on October 03, 2017, 01:45:46 AM ---The last few posts in this thread are superb examples of why the Oblivion War, as a concept, really doesn't make sense.

--- End quote ---

I think it did when literacy was as rare as private bathrooms, but the last forty years have made it totally unwinnable. You used to be able to do things like burn down the Library of Alexandria, but you can't do that anymore, because everyone has access to limitless knowledge on their wristwatch now. The information age does NOT like information deletion.

If Oblivion makes it into the main books rather than just being a sideshow, I think it'll be in the context that it's over, and humanity lost.

kazimmoinuddin:
Just as Ivy has all that magical lore in her head, she also has everything about hacking. So she could potentially search and wipe out any tainted knowledge on the net. She would know the instant some one made a digital copy, so ready to attack when posted.

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