The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Elaine is the wizard the White Council should really be afraid of.
BugBear:
I noticed in White Knight is that Harry uses Elaine's True Name to make contact with her when she's under attack from the Skavis.
Harry makes a ritual conduit by conjuring up an old Sight memory of her, but it's 16ish years out of date. So he fills out his construct of her by trying to understand the pain she's gone through since they knew each other, and filling out/updating his mental image based on that.
Half of her life had gone by since she had given him that True Name, which supposedly stop working after your personality changes enough. And somehow it still worked. In retrospect, I find that kind of odd. It's a ~16 year old Name, founded on the solidity of the identity of an about-to-have-a-formative-trauma teenager. I can think of three explanations.
The first, least likely possibility to my mind is that Harry really did just figure out the last 16 years of her life well enough to update her Name with on-the-fly guesswork. What must have been near a decade of existing with the Fae somehow didn't come with it's own unique trials and scars that he couldn't personally imagine to insert into her Name. Even if Summer's got a better reputation, they're still Fae. It doesn't scan to me.
The second, what seems to be more likely outcome is that Elaine simply hasn't changed that much over the intervening time. Perhaps she hasn't changed at all, and any difficulty Harry had with the spell was because of his adjustments, not in spite of them. I don't know what Nemfection does to mortals, but dragging our ability to change to a halt seems perverse enough to qualify. Stasis would have also been very appealing to a recently freed thrall who would likely slip into madness over the coming weeks as her mind tore itself apart.
(Also, possible Kumori connection? Bringing change to a halt is the essence of how she saves that guy with necromancy.)
She would have then fled to the Summer Court, to have her "mind healed" by Aurora. If Aurora had such an ability, it seems to me like the White Council would have bargained handsomely to have that on retainer for themselves, if absolutely no one else. But even after Peabody screws up everyone's head, they have to rely on their own fumbling inexperience to fix things, instead of trying to even get lessons from a more powerful mind healer. Like the new Summer Lady who happens to be a huge fan of one of their wardens.
More likely, it seems to me that the Senior Counsel is aware that the Summer Lady has no such abilities. Probably after asking her directly and paying for that specific information in vain hopes of tackling this exact problem.
Currently the only people who have all of the information about how bad Elaine's mental whammy was, and the finer details of how much damage a mental whammy like that does, are Harry and Elaine. And Harry is Harry.
The third possibility is what Harry uses to shock her fully alert in White Night. He calls her Name once and her first name a few times and gets a response, but she's still drowning under the psychic assault. What fully snaps her out of it is when he gives his own name as part of a command.
--- Quote ---Elaine Lilian Mallory! I called, and in my head, my voice rumbled like thunder. I am Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, and I bid thee hear me! Hear my voice, Elaine!
--- End quote ---
It's very reminiscent of how he compelled HWWB in Cold Days, but the way it's written is ambiguous. It could be that throwing his will behind Elaine's full name is waking her up, or it could be that throwing his will beyond his own is doing the job.
Or it could be some combination of the above. Elaine's stasis allowing her Name to land, forming a conduit for Harry's Name to compel Nemesis to act.
Perhaps even, by sheer stumbling idiot fluke, screwing up one of Nemesis' plans by forcefully compelling it to blast it's own agent into the parking lot. That would be very Harry.
It's all circumstantial and speculation, but the lady is shady.
Mira:
--- Quote ---It's very reminiscent of how he compelled HWWB in Cold Days, but the way it's written is ambiguous. It could be that throwing his will behind Elaine's full name is waking her up, or it could be that throwing his will beyond his own is doing the job.
--- End quote ---
Yes, or he is relying on the love they once had for one another when they were children, soul gazed, knew and used each other's full name. It could also be because as a star born he has such power over Outsiders and Nemesis, thus he was able to over come any power they had over Elaine at the time and wake her up. This is before Lash clued him in about some of his power, so I'd say he was relying on the love they once had for one another to get through.
g33k:
--- Quote from: Mira on December 15, 2024, 03:25:55 AM ---That doesn't mean that the genes no longer exist in Charity's body to pass on to her children or that they don't have recessive genes for magical talent in their bodies that will show up in later generations.
--- End quote ---
Yes, Charity still possesses those genes; if the X-chromosome "salic Law" theory is correct, she may well have passed them to any (or all) of her kids; who (potentially) will pass them to theirs.
Epigenetics is more than a matter of "dominant/recessive" though: Jim has been clear that Molly has a talent because of Charity being magically-active so recently; and the other Carpenter kids have no talent because Charity had been non-magical for so long.
What Charity was doing (or not-doing) was what activated (or didn't activate) the magical talent in their genes.
For future generations, it will come down -- in large part -- to a question of how much magic the mothers are exposed to... though some postpartum (and even adult) experiences can maybe shake-loose some powers (as happened for the Alphas). I suspect there are a few other issues in play, that Jim hasn't yet revealed.
Mira:
--- Quote ---Epigenetics is more than a matter of "dominant/recessive" though: Jim has been clear that Molly has a talent because of Charity being magically-active so recently; and the other Carpenter kids have no talent because Charity had been non-magical for so long.
--- End quote ---
I don't think it works that way..
g33k:
--- Quote from: g33k on December 16, 2024, 08:10:31 PM --- ... Epigenetics is more than a matter of "dominant/recessive" though: Jim has been clear that Molly has a talent because of Charity being magically-active so recently; and the other Carpenter kids have no talent because Charity had been non-magical for so long.
--- End quote ---
--- Quote from: Mira on December 17, 2024, 05:42:40 AM --- I don't think it works that way..
--- End quote ---
That's how Jim says it works:
--- Quote ---Well, like many things in life, it just isn't as simple as positive/negative, either/or. Genetics /are/ a factor. However, they are not the /only/ factor. I think I've said that at least a couple of times before this, but I'm happy to reiterate. :)
Look, even the simplest genetic traits are way less simple than you get in basic biology classes when they're operating in the real world. Sure, you can inherit the gene for tallness, which is dominant, but if your mom is horribly sick, or starves during the pregnancy, it's going to impact your birth and development. So is your health, environment, diet, behavior, the behavior of those around you, etc, as you grow...
magical potential and heredity operates along those same lines. Charity was, essentially, stacking up environmental factors against her unborn children developing their genetic propensity for magic into a real, tangible gift to the point where the chances of them actually doing it were negligible. If Charity had been possessed of a monster gift, of if she'd been constantly around and involved in magic during the course of the pregnancy, it would have been more difficult for her to reduce it to practically zero like that. But instead, she was making a deliberate and willful choice to deny her children's potential a chance to find a chance to take root and bloom.
--- End quote ---
https://www.paranetonline.com/index.php/topic,5860.msg157767.html#msg157767
--- Quote --- ... what's critical to this particular equation is the fact that Charity was consciously and deliberately neglecting her talent--which hadn't been all THAT hot to begin with. She went through the time she got engaged to Michael, all the way through Molly's term, all the intervening time, etc, before she got to Daniel. It had been more than two, maybe three years since she'd done anything with her magic by the time Daniel was conceived.
--- End quote ---
https://www.paranetonline.com/index.php/topic,631.msg16946.html#msg16946
You are, of course, free to take your entire opinion from the stories, and ignore WoJ's.
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