The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers

Some thoughts on Stormfront

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Bad Alias:

--- Quote from: Yuillegan on October 11, 2019, 06:39:20 AM ---[1]Why is Dark Magic, Mental Manipulation, Demonic Influence etc explain these out of character behaviors better than Nemesis.

[2]We have the Gatekeeper saying that Harry's actions over the past few years have resulted in a series of well-placed thumbs (as he puts it) in Nemesis' eye. We have Vadderung saying everything is connected and Harry is only just learning who the players are (in a talk that discusses Sells and the Red Court). And we have the Gatekeeper and Mother Summer's reveal that it is an Outsider, that is a sapper trying to open the gates from this side. We also have Lily saying it is an Outsider virus, and Titania confirming that it has a name (and that she would know if Mab was infected). And we learn of Outsiders in the very first Dresden Files case. The theory that Lily was wrong does not fit, considering the evidence.

[3]It is semantics at this point.

[4]Ok so hypothetically if we go with your definition for taint in this context, sure. But by that logic, Nemesis has tainted Harry and just about anyone else affected by it's actions. But Lily doesn't go "Dresden you have been tainted" even if her ability to check for Nemesis was bulldust. She clears him, even though his life has been greatly impacted by the actions of Nemesis. So has just about everyone in those cases, but Lily doesn't mention them either. She specifically mentions the villains. Food for thought.

[5]We don't know if his personality remains, if he would remember the incident. 

[6]If as you suggest, the power of Summer would blow up if combined into Winter, Aurora's entire plan to destabilize the Courts makes no sense. Which pretty much every powerful being thought was a credible threat.

[7]There is a WOJ answering a fan who said what they believed happens is that the Power in the mantle is transferred into the Court that holds the Stone Table, not the mantle itself. The energy therefore is not destroyed but changes. Which is consistent with physics. It is the Mortal form that is weak and cannot handle the energies, not the Courts. I believe that they often has stolen/eaten each others Power before. How else would anything change? The power-sucking Stone Table in Tir-Na Nog is there for a reason.

[8]Everyone - I sincerely apologise for the 2000 word essay. There was a lot to come back to after two days.

--- End quote ---
[1]I got the impression in Storm Front that Sells had always been an abusive husband. The kind of guy who would abuse any power he had. I would expect him to use black magic if he isn't told about the White Council and the Laws of Magic. As to the FBI agents, corrupt law enforcement doesn't surprise me in the least. The FBI has been pretty shady to full on corrupt for most of it's existence. We don't know enough about Kravos to know if he was even acting out of character. My point is that these people weren't acting well outside of ways I would expect them to. Perhaps better put as they wouldn't take much nudging to do what they did.

[2]We have a great deal of evidence that Harry has been in the middle of "it" in every or almost every case book. The question of "it" is somewhat debatable, but we should be pretty sure that Outsiders are in the middle of "it," perhaps to the extent that "it" is Outsiders. The question of how the Outsiders are involved in most of his cases is still a pretty wide open question in my opinion.

[3]My point is semantics should always be closely looked at when faeries are involved. Unless they say something very literal several different ways or one way incapable of multiple interpretations, no one can trust what they said. I'm not saying Lily is being deceptive; I'm saying it is basically always possible a faerie is being deceptive.

[4]The definition of taint can have a spectrum from direct infection to somehow affected the course of your life. There is a middle ground of "working towards Nemesis's ends." But my it doesn't really matter if we can agree to my point in [3].

[5]I took Cat Sith's final statement in Cold Days to mean that he couldn't be a covert asset anymore, even if he killed Dresden. It's open to interpretation.
--- Quote ---A pity. I would have been more useful to them as an active, covert asset.
--- End quote ---
Ch. 44

[6]I imagine an explosion or whatever would destabilize the Courts, and would be much worse than a simple imbalance in Winter's favor.

[7]Is there an answer in that WoJ?

[8]Apology rejected on the grounds of it being completely unnecessary.  ;)

Also, if anyone can find the purported WoJ that states that no one infected showed up until Grave Peril, that would be helpful.

Mira:

--- Quote ---[1]I got the impression in Storm Front that Sells had always been an abusive husband. The kind of guy who would abuse any power he had. I would expect him to use black magic if he isn't told about the White Council and the Laws of Magic. As to the FBI agents, corrupt law enforcement doesn't surprise me in the least. The FBI has been pretty shady to full on corrupt for most of it's existence. We don't know enough about Kravos to know if he was even acting out of character. My point is that these people weren't acting well outside of ways I would expect them to. Perhaps better put as they wouldn't take much nudging to do what they did.
--- End quote ---

 My impression is Sells was borderline, as long as things were going well financially etc, he was difficult to live with but tolerable.   However the tendency was always there, so plenty of tinder upon which to light a fire. 

Kindler:
Here's a very simple reason: one requires entities from Outside to be brought to some street-level nobodies. The other requires more understandable, human behavior.

We don't know how Nemesis infection even works. Is it instant? Is it a process? Is it a disease vector that takes time to incubate? How would he even have been Infected in the first place? Who would have noticed Sells? Because his behavior seemed to have changed when he started doing Black Magic, not "When he met that man in a Cowl" or something. There doesn't appear to have been a single event that caused the change. His shift to villain seemed more like a gradual degeneration, from Monica's description. That smells more like Black Magic than Nemesis, to me.

Kindler:
My argument against that is: Why would Lily bother to learn about a dead small-time warlock and a corrupt FBI agent? Grave Peril I can kinda understand, because that involves lots of major powers and explains a great deal about the ongoing Red Court War, which is important for a Queen to know and understand. But a guy selling drugs and a handful of werewolves killing mobsters? Who cares?

Even if she did make the effort to find out some more details about them, how does she know they're Infected? Did she spend the time to backtrace their movements to pinpoint the Nemesis vector that got them? Cuz remember that this is coming from the Lady who thought she could detect Nemesis infection with a simple test that takes seconds.

I think it's more likely that when Maeve clued her in, she simply told her about Sells + Denton. I think that particular move was designed to put doubts in Lily's head about Dresden. "Hey, he's been exposed to Nemesis... look at all the stuff he's done over the years... he's upset so many balances... now he's working for Mab, and is in a position of terrible power... maybe it's not just Dresden..." That kind of thing. Since Maeve can't lie, Lily takes her word as gospel.

Sells's behavior is perfectly understandable for a bastard. A petty abuser loses his job, which screws with his superiority complex, so he turns to the dark arts to get revenge and make a ton of money, roping in a handful of financial backers motivated similarly. Denton wants to take down Marcone, but can't, so uses the power offered to him to kill him rather than trust a system he believes has failed. I mean, we saw what the belts do to a mortal when they're used; there's no Nemesis necessary. In fact, Denton held it together a little too well for me to really buy him being Infected; he was way saner than the rest of his Pack.

Money and justice are all the motivation necessary for some people. None of their actions require Infection to be explained. And the only point to the contrary comes from a source that is extraordinarily untrustworthy, both because of her naivete and her own sources.

g33k:

--- Quote from: Bad Alias on October 11, 2019, 04:41:08 PM --- [1]... As to the FBI agents, corrupt law enforcement doesn't surprise me in the least. The FBI has been pretty shady to full on corrupt for most of it's existence...
--- End quote ---

No, Denton was trying to do the right thing, at least at first.  He was trying to keep a lid on things as he watched his team spin out of control.

Eventually, he was doing more harm than good, but so caught up in the press of the moment that I don't think he had stopped to see the big picture... or maybe he'd kinda-sorta noticed it, and was scrambling hard to keep his nose to the grindstone so he could keep denying to himself how bad it was...

He got into the Hexenwulf gig out of initial frustration with watching bad guys skate free on technicalities.
 

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