The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers

In Hindsight, These Story Choices Were a Mistake

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Warbird:
So my intention here is discuss story or setting choices that in hindsight were maybe not the best idea.  I like the series but it's been around for nearly two decades and 15 books (plus a lot of short stories)  As such, some things have not necessarily aged well and others turned out to not to have been such a good choice with how the story has progressed.  That said if people want to talk about things that occurred in recent books, that's fine too. 

Off the top of my head I have two:
1) As discussed in another thread, I find the idea that black magic inherently corrupts a person (and as such the Blackstaff is needed for the White Council's dirty jobs) a poor choice.  I think the idea works in Molly's disfavor and is honestly less interesting than the idea that such corruption is based on the person using the magic and not vice versa. 

2) Wizards inherently have issues with technology.  To be fair, this was presented in a pretty silly way from the start.  Harry talks about how he naturally can cause issues with firearms which is ridiculous (although the books do drop this as time goes on).  Like I can understand how Wizards can screw with electronics, especially delicate things like computers (as it is computers in our world can have issues with outside energy sources).  But guns are pretty simply machines, even the fancy one's.  It'd be like if being a wizard meant you'd have cause a bicycle to fail.  I could understand that a wizard could, if they try, bend the laws of nature.  I mean that's what they do.  But to inherently prevent things like combustion or lever or gear or springs (for example) from working is just silly. 

That said, for actual tech like cell phones and computers, I feel that wizards being unable to use them is kind of meaningless for the story.  Like, the White Council could still be behind the times simply because institutions are slow to change plus most of its members are pretty old (so no one would have thought of Paranet before Harry did).  Similarly, Harry can still be on his own early on because for instance no one can get to him in time or he's purposefully keeping them out (which is something I did not care for, but it seemed like Jim intended for it to be a flaw of Harry's so its not an issue). 

Bu the world now is significantly different from the world of 2000 (when the first book came out).  So much stuff is online now and even things like newspapers are dying out.  It struck me how Harry had to use a pay phone in Storm Front.  Now they're non-existent which for the series would make it so much harder for Harry to update/get in touch with others.  Like the only way for Harry to make calls is from his house or someone else's (or to do so magically).  This ends up cutting him off from his supporting cast to such a significant degree that it seems like it'll cause issues for the stories.  Honestly, this doesn't seem to add anything for the  story but does cause issues.  Plus other series in this vein let their wizards use tech and it doesn't seem to cut off any story potential.

peregrine:

--- Quote from: Warbird on July 13, 2018, 03:06:09 AM ---2) Wizards inherently have issues with technology.  ...  It'd be like if being a wizard meant you'd have cause a bicycle to fail. 

--- End quote ---
Bikes fail all the time.  I'm watching the Tour de France right now, and people have mechanical problems several times per stage, and that's with outrageously high end bikes maintained on a regular basis by professional dedicated mechanics.

groinkick:
The issue with the firearms was a mistake by Jim I think but he basically let it fade away, and doesn't really seem to be part of the book lore anymore.  He even had Carlos with a modern sidearm.  So one could walk away feeling that it was in fact Harry's misunderstanding of firearms that lead him to believe it was magical interference causing semiautomatic weapons to jam when in reality it was happening naturally (guns do jam sometimes after all).

peregrine:
Somewhere he even has Murphy call him out on it.  I forget which book but she basically asks him if he's ever seen a modern gun jam, and he says he's still sticking with the revolver.

vultur:

--- Quote from: Warbird on July 13, 2018, 03:06:09 AM ---So my intention here is discuss story or setting choices that in hindsight were maybe not the best idea.  I like the series but it's been around for nearly two decades and 15 books (plus a lot of short stories)  As such, some things have not necessarily aged well
--- End quote ---

I just re-read the series, and there's definitely a major shift in how things work between GP and DM.

The one I would complain about is Morgan. In Turn Coat the impression seems to be "basically a decent guy but burned out and seen/done too many hard things". But earlier he seems to be pretty evil, if committed to his duty, and doesn't even seem all that competent. OK, some of this is Harry's viewpoint changing, but definitely not all of it. Harry seems to have forgotten by TC that Morgan intended to kill him on the Merlin's instructions in SK...

Also the Laws don't seem to have been quite nailed down in the early books, which makes some of Morgan's stuff seem even more arbitrary.



--- Quote ---Off the top of my head I have two:
1) As discussed in another thread, I find the idea that black magic inherently corrupts a person (and as such the Blackstaff is needed for the White Council's dirty jobs) a poor choice.  I think the idea works in Molly's disfavor and is honestly less interesting than the idea that such corruption is based on the person using the magic and not vice versa. 
--- End quote ---

Well, given the emphasis on Free Will in the Dresdenverse, I don't necessarily think the White Council's view on this is correct.

Harry never shows any sign of corruption from tapping into necromancy to raise Sue (OK Luccio lets him get away with that, but it's still the same dark energy, so...) and he hasn't shown any effects from killing Justin since at least WN (if you think Lash was tapping into it) or since way earlier otherwise.

I think you can get a quite different view of the black-magic-corruption phenomenon if you just look at what we actually see happen, assuming the comments about it by White Council characters (including Harry) are biased/potentially inaccurate.

My view is that using certain kinds of magic does change you - that seems to be an "observable" phenomenon (by using the Sight/soulgazes and to beings like Ulsharavas in DM) so we have to accept it - but that that change isn't necessarily always something that someone not trained in the White Council's way of thinking would consider definitively negative.

I'm not at all sure Molly was "corrupted" in the latter sense - even in the GS/Bombshells era, when she has tons of other reasons to be crazy (psychic damage from Chichen Itza, her involvement in Harry's suicide, seeing tons of Fomor crimes and feeling inadequate to do enough about it, too much interaction with Lea) she is still basically a positive force in Chicago. I mean yeah technically she's a vigilante, but so are the Alphas and we never look at them as corrupted.

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