The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Proven Guilty: An update to my previous thoughts on the topic
raidem:
--- Quote ---Question, prior to CD, were Mab and Murphy ever in each other's presence or has Mab ever made reference to Murphy? While I believe that Mab knew of Murphy and her ties to Harry, I don't think that Mab credited her with much significance.
--- End quote ---
(click to show/hide)My thoughts, say Mab=Murphy or Mab=another character on stage that has yet to go into the past and ascend, then Mab would need to minimize her interactions and deals with her prior self as that would greatly complicate time travel related plots. So, it could be consistent that Mab would marginalize Murphy, or at least Jim marginalize Mab/Murphy interactions from Harry and ultimately our viewpoints.
***I moved this to Mab/Murphy Ironies
http://www.jimbutcheronline.com/bb/index.php/topic,50304.0.html
raidem:
@Namckas I agreed with everything you said except for this in your OP, which is where I sprang my post from. I guess you assumed that I didn't agree with you and was offering a totally different theory. I wasn't. Your theory and others like it are the predominant ones in my head. So, I kinda don't even argue them. I pretty much consider them fact at this point. Sorry that I didn't start by saying I totally agreed, but I did jump to the bottom issue with the point I disagreed with. I assumed that there would be assumption that agreed with everything up until that point. My bad.
--- Quote ---Finally, Ace likely is the one that hits Harry's car.
--- End quote ---
From this point I offered a different perspective one that had a side effect of bringing in Murphy into the equation who showed up at the accident site, and participated directly in helping Harry find out how to track Molly.
--- Quote ---Compare what I wrote to the text of the books and WoJ's, etc. The point of the exercise is to see how well what the Theory Wrote compares to the information that we have.
You have posted the same stuff for years about time travel and alternate realities and such. My theory is that NONE of that happened in PG. That there is NO Time Travel NOR is there any Alternate Reality NOR is there any Special Connection, except as I have spelled out. This was Mab saving Molly. In a Mab way.
--- End quote ---
All of that, is kinda wasted space because I agreed with your theory with the caveat that PG in many people's mind is probably one book where there will be a revisit of some kind which does include time travel.
I constantly think through my Mab/Murphy theory and try to see where/how it can jive throughout the books. It's a series spanning theory, so it touches on much. I also try to examine it in light of what others bring up. I'll try to cut and paste those discussions to more appropriate threads of my own. My apologies.
Kindler:
--- Quote from: namkcas on October 17, 2017, 07:19:11 PM ---
Finally, Time Travel is a horrible answer in this series.
--- End quote ---
I agree. I think it basically amounts to a cop out. It's too easy to wrap things up with time travel.
I don't know if any of you were into Marble Hornets when it was running, but there was a lot of theorizing that one of the characters who was always seen masked and wearing a hood (named "Hoody" by the fans) was actually the lead protagonist from the future. Whole forum threads were derailed with supporters and detractors of the "Hoody is Future Jay" theory. It worked in Tribe Twelve, but it would've been grossly out of place in Marble Hornets—and Tribe Twelve did the work foreshadowing it and leaving easter eggs for years so that it would make sense when it happened.
I didn't like it as an answer then, and I don't now, even accepting different mediums and stories. Pretty much any mystery in the series can be solved with time travel. As a series that was basically pitched as noir-style detective stories with a twist of wizardry, it wouldn't be consistent, in my opinion.
I'm sure there is a way to incorporate time travel into the series without it being too simple—an uncontrollable LSD style trip to the past, where Harry is thrown to various points in his life and forced to interact with things in order to close the stable time loop that put him on this path in the first place might work, for example. But time travel being the origin of other characters is... dicey. Regardless, if there is time travel, I don't think it should be voluntary, should be uncontrollable by Harry, and should be focused on a specific event.
For example, I could see Winter Lady Molly and Harry going back in time to chase after someone who was altering the timeline to prevent Molly from being saved (and thus ascending to Winter Lady several years later). That could be worked into the overarching Black Council plot, because Molly's been doing too good of a job and has been preventing the Outsiders and others from gaining too much influence.
No offense intended to you, Raidem; you aren't simply throwing this out there with no reasonable evidence. There are parallels between Murphy and Mab to be drawn. I just don't think they indicate time travel.
raidem:
--- Quote ---No offense intended to you, Raidem; you aren't simply throwing this out there with no reasonable evidence. There are parallels between Murphy and Mab to be drawn. I just don't think they indicate time travel.
--- End quote ---
(click to show/hide)I understand; And, thank you. I've struggled with the theory too. I've entertained one that doesn't need time travel, that Murphy becomes Mab in the future or alternate reality not distant past. It's definitely less cumbersome.
Spoilered and Moved to Mab/Ironies Thread.
beetnemesis:
I didn't go too much into the time travel thing because it could be done any number of ways. My thought is more along the lines of, "A villain gets a way to travel in time, he goes into the past to cause trouble. Harry has to follow him, drag him back to the present. Along the way, various things happen that cause little details we've noticed in previous books."
It's not lazy at all, done like that- it's just a time travel story. The inconsistencies aren't the POINT of the story, just a by-product of them.
Obviously it's not going to be "Harry gets supreme temporal power, he decides to go hang out in Proven Guilty."
____
Anyway, it doesn't matter. My main point was that the other theories for this thread would make for a terrible story. @namkcas, you said:
--- Quote ---Things come back 10 years later in this series.
--- End quote ---
Which... kind of misses my point. References to old things aren't bad. But a reference, by itself, isn't interesting.
I guess I'm presupposing two things:
1. The inconsistencies in Proven Guilty are numerous, and blatant, enough to have been done as a setup.
2. A setup needs a PAYOFF. Jim wouldn't put that much effort into something if it wasn't going to be part of a good story.
Do you see? There is no (non-time travel) way to make "10 years ago, Ace hit Harry's car" an interesting payoff. It would cover ground we've already seen in Cold Days. We already know Ace was still around, we already know he's kind of ineffectual. He took his swing at Harry in CD, and missed.
Same holds true for the popular Mab theory. We already learned, from Skin Game, that the fae can enter a home if they mean no harm. That information is stagnant, unsurprising. So, if in a book or two, Mab says, "Oh btw, I fixed your model for you 10 years ago. Thought you could use the help, nbd" it would make SENSE, but it would be completely and utterly BORING. It wouldn't make for a good story.
The reason I mention time travel is because it is one of the few ways to make the mysteries of PG interesting, give them some immediacy. After all, there isn't much at stake otherwise, is there? Molly was rescued, the fetches defeated, everyone moved on with their lives.
It doesn't HAVE to be time travel, but it does have to be interesting.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version