The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
The Soul Gaze in Blood Rites, Something Margaret Said to Harry About Justine..
LordDresden2:
--- Quote from: Mira on November 03, 2024, 07:51:52 PM --- I wouldn't call farming humans for food exactly civilized.
--- End quote ---
'Civilized' in this context does not mean 'moral'. The traditional root of the word 'civilized' is 'city dweller'. It implies large-scale social organization, complexity, sophistication, but by no means necessarily morality. The gladiatorial games in ancient Rome were quite 'civilized' entertainments, for all being organized mass torture and murder. When they enter decadent phases, civilizations often become very morally corrupt.
The White Court is all about decadence. The White Court nobles tend to have expensive, sophisticated tastes. They like fine wines, delicate foods, vintage cars, expensive clothes, silk and satin and fine carved furniture and woven rugs that cost more than a working-class family lives on in a year.
In Turn Coat, Binder points this out.
In a post-apocalyptic world, a lot of the luxuries the White Court so like simply could not exist. Yeah, they could have their little protected enclaves, but a lot of the delicious, luxurious products that they so love absolutely require a sophisticated world-wide economy and tech base to produce and maintain.
Such little protected islands would have no silver wraith cars, no super-expensive foods flown in from around the world, there'd be no movies and TV shows and so forth.
Every box of fine chocolates Lara indulges in implies cocoa farms, harvesting personnel, transportation to get the harvest to the factory, a factory to process it, a chocolatier to take the processed chocolate and make the expensive little tidbits out of it, more distribution systems to get that $1000.00 box of chocolates to Lara's bedroom. Which implies gasoline and jet fuel and communications, which imply refineries and oil wells and TV/radio equipment or at least telegraphs or systems of messengers, etc.
Magic can get around some of this, but not nearly all.
Life even in the nobles' protected fortresses would be a lot less delicious and rich and exotic than the nobles have now.
Yeah, the White Court loves civilization. Doesn't make them any the less predators who feed on people.
KurtinStGeorge:
LordDresden2 makes a really good point, but I would like to add something else.
A White Court vampire is an odd creature when compared to other types of vampires that we know of. Black Court and Red Court vampires take a human and literally transform them into something else. In a very real way they destroy the original human. However, a White Court vampire is a hybrid creature. It is human-being that had a demon implanted within it before it was born, but the human is still there.
We know a White Court vamp isn’t a simulacrum of a human because Thomas’ little sister Inari was able to kill her demon before it took hold of her. (Saying the Power of Love killed the demon sounds like Huey Lewis and the News killed the demon and I never really liked Huey Lewis.)
The White Court demon doesn’t originate from our world, so it isn’t really a part of human civilization. The human part of a White Court vampire can appreciate the finer things that come with human civilization. Though we don’t know very much about White Court demons, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are not interested in these luxuries; and the only benefit of human civilization they enjoy is that human civilization tends to create many more targets of opportunity to feed on and a larger crowd to blend in with to make hiding in plain site much easier.
It is this otherness of the White Court demon that I really wanted to talk about. Thinking about the soulgaze where Harry witnessed his brother fighting against the demon trying to come through the mirror, it reminds me of these other creatures who are also trying to enter our reality, Outsiders.
I am wondering if White Court demons are a lessor form of Outsiders or if they might be a failed attempt by Outsiders to enter our reality. Yes, they do get inside our reality but they remain trapped within their human host. When their host dies, they die. Unlike Nemesis, they cannot fully dominate their host. The demon wants to feed, to destroy, and they do that to a degree, but the human part of them channels most of that energy and supernatural abilities into human endeavors, like becoming wealthy, powerful or building a political empire.
Mira:
--- Quote ---A White Court vampire is an odd creature when compared to other types of vampires that we know of. Black Court and Red Court vampires take a human and literally transform them into something else. In a very real way they destroy the original human. However, a White Court vampire is a hybrid creature. It is human-being that had a demon implanted within it before it was born, but the human is still there.
--- End quote ---
But doesn't change the fact that that they kill humans to survive.
--- Quote ---We know a White Court vamp isn’t a simulacrum of a human because Thomas’ little sister Inari was able to kill her demon before it took hold of her. (Saying the Power of Love killed the demon sounds like Huey Lewis and the News killed the demon and I never really liked Huey Lewis.)
--- End quote ---
Actually Inari hadn't killed the Hunger Demon yet, it was the hope of both Thomas and Lara that she loved her boyfriend enough that that would be the outcome. So we won't know unless we meet up with Inari again in a future book.
--- Quote ---The White Court demon doesn’t originate from our world, so it isn’t really a part of human civilization. The human part of a White Court vampire can appreciate the finer things that come with human civilization. Though we don’t know very much about White Court demons, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are not interested in these luxuries; and the only benefit of human civilization they enjoy is that human civilization tends to create many more targets of opportunity to feed on and a larger crowd to blend in with to make hiding in plain site much easier.
--- End quote ---
Is why if it is true, it points to a possible connection between Outsiders and what is protecting Lord Raith.
--- Quote ---It is this otherness of the White Court demon that I really wanted to talk about. Thinking about the soulgaze where Harry witnessed his brother fighting against the demon trying to come through the mirror, it reminds me of these other creatures who are also trying to enter our reality, Outsiders.
--- End quote ---
Yes.
--- Quote ---I am wondering if White Court demons are a lessor form of Outsiders or if they might be a failed attempt by Outsiders to enter our reality. Yes, they do get inside our reality but they remain trapped within their human host. When their host dies, they die. Unlike Nemesis, they cannot fully dominate their host. The demon wants to feed, to destroy, and they do that to a degree, but the human part of them channels most of that energy and supernatural abilities into human endeavors, like becoming wealthy, powerful or building a political empire.
--- End quote ---
I think the Hunger Demon does fully dominate their host. Why? Because once the Hunger Demon has fully established itself, the host needs to feed it, i.e. usually kill, to survive. Remember how Lara and later Thomas talked after the Skin Walker was finished with him, they enjoy it.. There is another side to the strength that the host gains from the Hunger Demon, power. That is the most addictive power on earth.. Maybe because he was Margaret's son, Thomas never quite got to that point, he never was interested in empire building unlike his sister, Lara, who clearly is.
KurtinStGeorge:
--- Quote from: Mira on November 04, 2024, 06:12:20 PM --- But doesn't change the fact that that they kill humans to survive.
I think the Hunger Demon does fully dominate their host. Why? Because once the Hunger Demon has fully established itself, the host needs to feed it, i.e. usually kill, to survive. Remember how Lara and later Thomas talked after the Skin Walker was finished with him, they enjoy it.. There is another side to the strength that the host gains from the Hunger Demon, power. That is the most addictive power on earth.. Maybe because he was Margaret's son, Thomas never quite got to that point, he never was interested in empire building unlike his sister, Lara, who clearly is.
--- End quote ---
Yes, but I'm not implying that the human side of a White Court vamp is morally superior to the demon within it; and Thomas is an outlier, the human side is almost always corrupted by the drives of the demon and its need to feed. What I am saying is that the human need to socialize and the desire of the host to fit in with uncorrupted humans to ensure its own safety, ends up deflecting the goals of the demon from shear destruction into something that seeks to protect humanity in general, if only for its own selfish ends.
The corrupted human part of a White Court vampire who cannot love another or is afraid to try to do so because love is literal poison to them, can be likened to a psychopath or someone with narcissistic personality disorder, someone who lacks empathy for other people. Though I suspect that Jim would say my comparison falls short or misses the mark in some key way. None the less, a vanilla person like the types I named above will often try to fill up the empty space within them with sensation seeking, material possessions or building up an empire of some sort, perhaps in business or politics.
And empire building is the opposite of what Outsiders want to achieve. The want to destroy human order of any kind, even the morally decadent and corrupted civilization the White Court would create.
LordDresden2:
--- Quote from: Mira on November 04, 2024, 06:12:20 PM ---
I think the Hunger Demon does fully dominate their host. Why? Because once the Hunger Demon has fully established itself, the host needs to feed it, i.e. usually kill, to survive. Remember how Lara and later Thomas talked after the Skin Walker was finished with him, they enjoy it.. There is another side to the strength that the host gains from the Hunger Demon, power. That is the most addictive power on earth.. Maybe because he was Margaret's son, Thomas never quite got to that point, he never was interested in empire building unlike his sister, Lara, who clearly is.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: KurtinStGeorge on November 04, 2024, 11:34:43 PM ---Yes, but I'm not implying that the human side of a White Court vamp is morally superior to the demon within it; and Thomas is an outlier, the human side is almost always corrupted by the drives of the demon and its need to feed. What I am saying is that the human need to socialize and the desire of the host to fit in with uncorrupted humans to ensure its own safety, ends up deflecting the goals of the demon from shear destruction into something that seeks to protect humanity in general, if only for its own selfish ends.
--- End quote ---
We already can be pretty sure that the demon-parasites don't totally dominate their human hosts, because we've seen what that looks like when it does happen, the 'silver eyes' state. Remember Thomas in Turn Coat, when he was about to attack Molly: he wasn't acting like Thomas, he wasn't even acting like a sapient being. It was more like an animal.
I'm not at all sure how much actual independent intelligence the White Court demons possess. When they're in control, they seem to act primarily on predatory instinct. It might have the same sort of awareness that a hungry bear or tiger has, not purely mindless but not really thinking in any abstract or sophisticated way, either. Thomas' demon might perceive that he drew spiritual support from his relationship with Justine, but I'm not sure it has any grasp of why or what that means.
Remember, too, what Thomas told Harry: the demon tries to feed at any time when there is flesh-to-flesh contact with another human. Most of the time, the human host can suppress it, which is why a White Court vampire can shake someone's hand or something without feeding. They only go full silver eyes if they go too long without feeding.
Thomas mentioned that Madeline had never trained herself to suppress the reflex, but he was kind of contemptuous about it, apparently most of the WC do manage to control it most of the time.
That said, I agree with Mira that there is almost surely an Outsider connection of some kind with the parasites. It's interesting that Thomas and Lara both use 'empty night' as a swear phrase.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version