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Messages - Mira

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So, it may be that a woman who uses a great deal of magic on a fairly regular basis can retain her fertility for quite some time. The more magic she uses, the more the "essence of creation" affects her. It doesn't seem like much of a stretch to me that one of the effects could be a longer period in which she could create life herself

There is a little problem of biology, though I guess that goes out the window because we are talking fantasy verses reality, but still there is a problem older female verses older male.  Men make sperm constantly, yes, the sperm count goes down and the libido slows as a man goes into his elder years, but still he should be able to father a child under the right conditions.  With women it is different, a woman is born with all the eggs she is going to ever have in her ovaries when she is born.  A woman's best years to reproduce are from her late teens to mid-thirties, after that is isn't so much a libido issue as her eggs begin to age.  The older the egg is when it is fertilized the greater the chance for genetic breakdown in the egg and birth defects.  So while women do have healthy children sometimes well into their fifties, it becomes rarer and they are taking greater risks with themselves and their baby. 

Back to fantasy, I can see the period of fertility being extended for wizard women to the point where their peak child baring years might be from forty to sixty or even seventy years of age.  I think what threw Luccio off was not just being in an immature [for a female wizard] female body, and having to deal with fertility issues again, but libido, she now had the sex drive of a young woman and not of a middle aged woman who had gone through menopause.

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I see no evidence that Kumori has actually misused wizard-magic in the ways that corrupt.  Or indeed that Cowl has; I would suspect Harry could have sensed it from the touch of their magic if they had.

  There was a greasy taste in the air around them which Harry associates with black magic, ether that or the Chicago air was bad that night.

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Does Eb not say she broke Laws including the First ? Killing people with magic seems pretty bad to me.

As we've seen with Harry, some "breakings" can be gray areas.  Truth to be told, we only have one side of the story on Margaret LeFay. 

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How does this datum fit with Luccio's observations in WN on the return of fertility being a major change for her once she got Alicia Nelson's body ?  Are we counting those as entirely part of her being enthralled ?
It doesn't, Luccio did give the impression that a wizard woman's fertile years were the same as that for a vanilla female.  However if that is true, and Margaret was between 25 and 45 when she had both Thomas and Harry, it says that wizard men have libido and stay fertile for a very long time, because that says Eb had to be well over 200 closer to maybe 250 when Margaret was born.  It also blows out of the water that Eb met his vanilla mortal wife during the French and Indian War and married her.

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  I think that is why the White Council routinely chops off the heads of all young warlocks with Harry and Molly being the few exceptions.  It isn't just because so few full wizards have the guts to step up and take the responsibility and the possible punishment with them, but the belief that black magic is habit forming addictive magic, it corrupts completely and cannot be rehabbed.  So the White Council believes it is only the kindest thing, but the safest thing to do is to lop off the head before more people get hurt. 

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Or, an alternate way of looking at is they were both giving accounts from different points in Margaret's life.  If Eb's account is true then both likely were.  Or Eb may have known quite a bit more about her towards the end what with being her father and the blackstaff both.  Or Luccio may have been giving her the benefit of the doubt seeing as there hadn't been a hearing yet while Eb wasn't.  Or it may have been the old "multiple eye-witnesses with no two accounts matching" syndrome.

Too many or's to say for sure at this point I think.

Yes, Margaret most likely did some bad things, or were they all that bad?  Yes, she rebelled against Eb, and she rebelled against the White Council, she ran with a rough crowd, most likely the Black Council for a while, ran with Justin, took up with Lord Raith and had a child by him.  No doubt she was punching her ticket to hell, old Chez confirms that, but she wasn't past redemption, that is the important part.  That is the part we never hear about, I think it was more than just falling in love with Malcolm Dresden, a lot has to do with the conception of Harry, the why of it, that last part is still very very vague.  I think the key to the whole series is Margaret's redemption and why she conceived Harry//

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So I strongly distrust the idea that Margaret was just a misguided but well-intentioned idealist.  Maybe it started out that way...

In the history of the world you will find that most of the murderous dictators and religious fanatics who are responsible for the death of millions started out as well-intentioned idealists.  Now you can argue about what exactly their ideals were, but there it is. 

In the Sixties, the anti-war movement was filled with well-intentioned idealists, most of them remained that way, others got splintered off into violent groups such as the Weathermen, while most took drugs, some got into the business of dealing drugs big time. 

The point I am getting to, is we know Margaret LeFay daughter of Eb, had a bit of a strict upbringing and apprenticeship, Eb admits to pushing her too far and hints at inflexibility on his part, and his daughter ran away.  Luccio hints and even the WC has dropped some hints that Margaret didn't care for the White Council system, too many constraints in her opinion, her youngest son shared some of those beliefs.  It is easy for someone angry, young, idealistic, full of herself [arrogant as only the young can be] like Margaret LeFay was,to get led astray or corrupted by someone older more powerful, like Nick would be perfect to take up her mentorship, then someone like the handsome urbane Lord Raith..  She'd even have a child by him, but in the end, Maggie LeFay found that she valued her own free will more, and Lord Raith found that he could never fully enthrall her to his will.  She escaped, eventually hooked up with Malcom a truly good vanilla human, from his example, realized with horror what she had helped in her angry idealism to unleash, so she devised a plan to counter it, that plan was to conceive a child under a special alinement of the stars with a truly good man, that child was Harry.

It could be that she did help to found the Black Council, but I suspect they have been around as long as the White Council.

I think that I may also have come up with a motive for why Malcom Dresden was murdered.  He was the only one who knew the full story of the how and the why of Margaret LeFay's redemption.  Only Malcom had the first hand knowledge, others had first hand knowledge only of her rebellion and her evil period, this is most of what has been passed on to Harry.  Even his grandfather, who wouldn't even tell Harry he was his grandfather, could have told him a heck of a lot about his mother, but didn't. Out of fear of what the knowledge might do to Harry maybe, or because nobody but Malcom knew the full story.

That full story would help erase doubt in Harry about his mother, make him less easy to lead astray by others, so Malcom had to die.  What is interesting, is Harry himself doesn't quite get the importance of knowing that part of the story, otherwise he would have asked Lea more about it, instead he pressed her to tell him who murdered him. Something he knew she really wasn't going to be allowed to tell him.
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OK, Chaunzoggoroth is a demonic entity, and as such by definition untrustworthy.  Still, the only sucker bait it has to offer practitioners to summon it is useful truthful information.  So lying is highly risky, it needs a reputation for truthfulness to do its damage.  I suspect the only lie it told Harry was about St. Patrick being the source of the loup-garou curse.  For that, it suddenly switched from direct declarative statements to second-hand comments, "It is said..." etc.

I doubt he was telling a lie about any of it, what he was doing was putting bait on a hook to try and catch Harry.  What better bait than to tempt Harry with the full story of what happened to his mother and father?  Harry almost was willing to give up his full name for that, but not quite. 

Just as a side note, old Chez didn't have Harry's full name, wouldn't, unless Harry gave it to him, in contrast both Uriel and the Angel of Death had not only Harry's full name, but all the inflections needed to hold power over him.

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Oooh, first thought on hearing Fitz's name was that means bastard (I only know from a different series FitzChivalry as a name) but didn't give any thought to it. Ooooh new SotC theory, good one guys. Or Hendrick's bastard child  :D

Yes, fitz does mean bastard, my husband's aunts were big into genealogy, and my husband was waving a coat of arms around smugly but then I pointed out the "fitz" part of the name on it and what it meant. 
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To me that is telling me that she agreed to what he was doing, earlier she'd said she didn't think she could do it, she couldn't feel her hands, she needed his help.  Though he'd given her the "ammo" to change, she still, in the little bit of sanity she had left, was giving her consent right there, telling him it was ok (at least to this reader).  Maybe she knew what he had done and just wanted to help him finish it, knowing how hard it would be for him, because she knew him so well.  She wanted him to save their daughter, and to her, at least in that point of time, it didn't matter how.

In the Dresdenworld, oh yeah anything is possible.. Or it could simply be a shortened version of Fitzgerald given as a nick name.  I saw a movie once called "The Luck of the Irish,"  the hero's last name was Fitzgerald, everyone called him "Fitz."

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Yeah, that bit really bugged me too! In Death Masks as well, Mort was described as "...A dumpy, balding man in his late forties..." which also does not translate to "self-destructively obese." Could it be that Harry was just trying to be nice in his descriptions of him before, and that now that he's dead he doesn't care as much about the potential for offending someone with an honest description? Or maybe now that he's dead he's seeing and remembering things with less self delusion. (Of course that doesn't in any way cover the house changes, but whaddaya do?)

Here's another thing: Every person that Harry has encountered since he died seems to have become a sort of idealized version of themselves. Take a look at the descriptions of Carmichael and Captain Jack, as well as Mort. (Obviously, since we've never met Sir Stuart before we have nothing to compare him with.) It made sense to me when we were just dealing with the dead guys; you've got that whole frozen at 30 thing going on and all. But it seems like he's seeing Mort (and Mort's yard, and Mort's house and its furnishings) in idealized forms as well.

If it isn't just one huge continuity flub (and it seems as if it's much too big to be one) then I'm guessing it's a 'dead' thing.

LML

  No one has taken Harry's age into account when we first meet Mort.. Harry was still in his twenties, his body type runs to thin and runner, even if his diet was crap.  So he sees Mort though the unforgiving eyes of a twenty something year old, so being a little heavy is " "self-destructively obese." " to someone who has never gain an ounce.  The whole bald thing and trying to hide it to look younger etc may not be seen in a charitable manner by a twenty something wizard who might live to the age of 300 and beyond.  

Harry was pushing forty at the time of his death, that waist of his is now or was harder to maintain, and in the last two books before he died Harry is suddenly aware that he is no longer a kid..

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Display Case / Re: DISPROVE THIS
« on: June 01, 2010, 12:01:38 PM »
Molly. Is. Harry's. Mother.  :o :o :o :o :o


Oh ick... :o

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DF Books / Re: Did you discover the books because of the TV Show?
« on: October 18, 2009, 02:53:15 PM »

  I didn't know about the books because I read more pure science fiction than fantasy type novels.  I didn't look for many fantasy/wizard types because so many of them were unoriginal in my opinion.  The television series introduced me to Harry Dresden, then of course I had to read the books and was thrilled to find some really original work.  However one thing the television series did do better, the character of Bob..

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DF Reference Collection / Re: Dresden Files: Series Timeline
« on: August 03, 2009, 02:45:59 PM »
Just to clarify a touch. Yes and no. Harry finds out in Blood Rites, but Thomas had already known since before they met in Grave Peril.

 Yeah, I believe that Maggie told him, and also instructed him to look out for his little brother.  Which he has, ever since he and Harry met.

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DF Reference Collection / Re: Dresden Files: Series Timeline
« on: July 18, 2009, 12:31:34 PM »
Guys, if you want to talk about cat lifespans, just ask, and I'll happily split off a thread for you.  Otherwise, try to keep the Timeline thread free of chit-chat.  Thanks!

 Sorry, what started this is if the series goes on another ten or thirteen years, how old will Mister be? Or will he die?  So it does have to do with the timeline sort of..

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DF Reference Collection / Re: Dresden Files: Series Timeline
« on: July 16, 2009, 03:37:52 AM »
The oldest cat I've met was 25, and I've known several who were in their twenties.  I believe the world record is something like 38 years old.  Remember, age itself isn't a disease, it just increases the likelihood of various diseases occurring.  If a cat dodges the bullets of kidney disease, diabetes, hyperthyroidism, and arthritis, they can be quite active for a lot longer than you'd think.

Or maybe he's just part kneazel... ;-)

  I recently lost my beloved old cat, she lived to be 19..

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Display Case / Re: Things Harry Dresden Is No Longer Allowed to Do
« on: May 11, 2009, 10:36:14 PM »


 Sell ice cubes to Mab..

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