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The Dresden Files => DF Spoilers => Topic started by: TheCuriousFan on November 25, 2020, 07:29:18 PM
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We know from the end of Battle Ground that the US government decided to conceal the events of Battle Ground. A large number of the corpses like the Octokongs and various other creatures dissolve into ectoplasm and other forms of goop on death which would help a lot in any coverup. There's at least one giant exception though.
Flesh and blood exploded from the Jotun in a cloud of aerial chum. I could see Svangar’s cracked and blackened collarbone and his freaking spine through the hole in his neck. The Jotun staggered, his shoulder smashing into a building, raised his axe one last time—and fell as it dropped from his suddenly nerveless fingers.
The giant’s body crushed two cars and knocked over a streetlight as it came down. One outflung hand landed not three feet from my toes.
And suddenly the street was silent and very still.
I got up and walked toward her, taking slow steps, wide around the fallen Jotun.
This body (and the bodies of the other jotun) doesn't really seem to be dissolving into ectoplasm which means it's gonna be lying there right when a legion of journalists arrive on the scene (and they'll have started moving the moment Chicago ate an EMP) followed by a bunch of emergency workers with smartphones. How exactly is this story going to get buried when there's at least a dozen pieces of proof requiring construction equipment to move lying around? Photos and videos of the corpses would be all over the internet with no hope of suppression within the hour.
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You're absolutely right. That, and the likelihood at least some people in the helicopter squadron would talk, are going to make the whole "Chicago believes but the coverup worked outside" thing go plot-holey if it lasts more than a few days to weeks in-universe.
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That's generally a problem. I think also overall DF can be bit wonky about material vs spiritual status of certain beings.
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I agree, and I think that's why the Accords need Harry. It was foreshadowed after all - the cover-up felt like a bit of a backtrack to imply the truth isn't quite coming out, it's just seeping out.
Major news networks will cast doubt on the images because someone else had the scoop, others will say it's true, the whole thing gets talked to death, and in the end everyone will know the truth.
But - what truth? Non-human humans exist is quite a different truth than 'there is a whole supernatural world'. The former should become clear if strange, the latter will take much longer outside Chicago.
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Yes. It was clear from their post battle meeting that the Accords do not intend to include humanity. I wonder if Marcone hadn't taken up the coin, if he would have been included?
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Yes. It was clear from their post battle meeting that the Accords do not intend to include humanity. I wonder if Marcone hadn't taken up the coin, if he would have been included?
Yes, because none of the others knew he had the coin, until Harry subtly outed him with the "Sir Baron"?
(Well, Vadderung maybe knew beforehand, but he wasn't talking).
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Yes, because none of the others knew he had the coin, until Harry subtly outed him with the "Sir Baron"?
(Well, Vadderung maybe knew beforehand, but he wasn't talking).
Notice though, the most important bit, Marcone did not speak up for the people of Chicago. He was going along with the "war" against humanity argument. I think the other members know more than you think, having the coin would account for Marcone's "leadership" in Peace Talks.. Would Baron Marcone have stood up so bravely if he had been sans coin?
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Wasnt the whole border between the real world and the Nevernever thin during that time? I think that was mentioned
I think that since the border was thin, the bodies of some things didn't dissolve until after the whole thing
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Wasnt the whole border between the real world and the Nevernever thin during that time? I think that was mentioned
I think that since the border was thin, the bodies of some things didn't dissolve until after the whole thing
But these are also guys who primarily spent their time in the physical world underwater (that's why no one saw the Fomor coming) and physical stuff means having actual bodies instead of needing to cobble together some ectoplasm.
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Valid point
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Seems like more of the unbelievable path that Jim is going down that mortals wouldn't notice anything.
Insanely ridiculous. Ethiopia's capital has just been invaded by it's own army and it made headlines. If a sizeable conflict happened in the most powerful and visible country on the planet....I think the jig would be up. Look at 9/11 and that was only two buildings and 3000 dead. 60,000 dead and a few hundred buildings destroyed? I don't buy it. Chicago would be placed under martial law, there would probably be a war with "someone" assuming that there were no supernaturals to be found. It would also probably cause an enormous market crash, just like after 9/11. It's like Jim didn't even bother to research what happened after the single greatest attack on American soil, and then decided to write about a fictional event that is several thousand times bigger and just say "life wouldn't be too different".
Jim had a golden opportunity to break the masquerade and naturally progress the series along. Instead he seems to want to regress and give Harry some downtime to be a Dad. It's just beggars belief.
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The Masquerade is over in Chicago which means that it is test bed for the rest of the world.
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The Masquerade is over in Chicago which means that it is test bed for the rest of the world.
Yes and no. Apparently the world thinks chemical weapons caused mass hallucinations. I'd say it's on the threshold of being out in the open, but I'd expect a lot of Inquisition-style "there's no such thing as magic" rather than "RUN! MONSTERS!" for the mean time. Doesn't mean there won't be lots of people, everyday people, who will know that the supernatural is out there and will be much more involved. Plus the Librarians are going to show up now which should be fine.
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In fact, this thread was made to point out that there will be tons of people with an easy source of evidence (to say nothing of the rest of the battle) that's really difficult to hide for common people coming in from out of town thanks to smartphones and jounalists. Once they see the obviously non-human bodies and the damage in no way caused by chemical weapons it's an easy step from there to accounts from Chicago getting out into the world from a trustworthy source.
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Depends on if the Feds have a tech wizard that can take out evidence as soon as it's posted online. Not a literal wizard, but your typical i-can-do-anything-you-imagine guy-in-a-chair. Or they work with Athena, who can connect to any device on the web.
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Depends on if the Feds have a tech wizard that can take out evidence as soon as it's posted online. Not a literal wizard, but your typical i-can-do-anything-you-imagine guy-in-a-chair. Or they work with Athena, who can connect to any device on the web.
That's pretty much what a coverup would take, sousveillance is fun to deal with.
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Or they work with Athena, who can connect to any device on the web.
wait what? As in the Goddess Athena? Where did this idea come from??
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Tl;dr: I think a somewhat successful coverup of the supernatural would be a lot more probable than is easily believable in a truth is stranger than fiction sort of way.
In fact, this thread was made to point out that there will be tons of people with an easy source of evidence (to say nothing of the rest of the battle) that's really difficult to hide for common people coming in from out of town thanks to smartphones and jounalists. Once they see the obviously non-human bodies and the damage in no way caused by chemical weapons it's an easy step from there to accounts from Chicago getting out into the world from a trustworthy source.
Emphasis added. Finding a trusted source to distribute the information on this level of incredibility would be difficult when you're definitely going to have other sources saying it's not real. Especially if there is a large scale operation to discredit anyone making such claims. Another thing is that people might not pay attention. A good example of both of these is the government admitting it had alien space craft this summer.
(An earlier version of the Times article said Reid believed “crashes from other worlds” had indeed occurred, and that retrieved materials had been “studied secretly for decades, often by aerospace companies under government contracts.” The Times has corrected Reid's account, and Reid has since clarified his statements in a tweet, below. Popular Mechanics has updated this section of the article accordingly.)
This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
I have no knowledge—and I have never suggested—the federal government or any entity has unidentified flying objects or debris from other worlds. I have consistently said we must stick to science, not fairy tales about little green men. https://t.co/TcGxe0W43M
— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) July 24, 2020
The astrophysicist Eric Davis, who consulted with the Pentagon’s original UFO program and now works for the defense contractor Aerospace Corporation, told the Times that after he examined certain materials, he came to the conclusion that “we couldn’t make [them] ourselves.” In fact, Davis briefed a Department of Defense (DOD) agency as recently as March about retrieving materials from “off-world vehicles not made on this earth.”
https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a33413777/pentagon-ufo-program-materials-vehicles/ (https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/research/a33413777/pentagon-ufo-program-materials-vehicles/). (I was looking for a different Popular Mechanics article about a Pentagon press release in which the Pentagon claims to have possession of an alien spacecraft).
The U.S. government has admitted that UFO's are very much a thing, that they're not of this world, and that they have them. The response from the public has been pretty underwhelming. And the former U.S. Senate Majority leader may have back pedaled a statement about it. I'm not so sure a Fox News or CNN field correspondent wouldn't backpedal really fast too.
Not to get into touchy topics, I'll avoid any specific real world examples, but I think most people can think of a newsworthy story that they haven't heard or have barely heard from the media, or one that the media reports really poorly to the point where what they are saying is almost, if not actually, the opposite of the truth. The media's coverage of science is a pretty good non political example of this.
That's pretty much what a coverup would take, sousveillance is fun to deal with.
New word of the day.
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wait what? As in the Goddess Athena? Where did this idea come from??
I don't know, it's come up here and there. Nothing official, just speculation. Might have been a non-Dresden idea thread floating around here somewhere.
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You mean like Butters?
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You mean like Butters?
Except in this case the bodies are big enough that you can toss your boss into their mouth if they insist on denying it.
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The U.S. government has admitted that UFO's are very much a thing, that they're not of this world, and that they have them. The response from the public has been pretty underwhelming. And the former U.S. Senate Majority leader may have back pedaled a statement about it. I'm not so sure a Fox News or CNN field correspondent wouldn't backpedal really fast too.
Not to get into touchy topics, I'll avoid any specific real world examples, but I think most people can think of a newsworthy story that they haven't heard or have barely heard from the media, or one that the media reports really poorly to the point where what they are saying is almost, if not actually, the opposite of the truth. The media's coverage of science is a pretty good non political example of this.
Seriously? Quit reading Popular Science, it'll rot your brain. Most people couldn't find the "truth" with a 100 man working party of PHD's. Now having just canceled my subscription to my local paper for rampant idiocy I find that I now gotta dump the Time's. On the bright side I'll save money. If it's a successful conspiracy then by definition you can't know about it. No truth to be found there. And since I can't prove a negative(that they don't exist) it's a colossal waste of time discuss it.
If however you want to remove a body or bodies that are too big to be human use lots of gasoline then a match. Of course Jim made fun of us if you consider it carefully. He stole Murphy's body and left the giant.
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@Morris: I don't read Popular Mechanics. I just came across the article. There were plenty of stories about it from respected news outlets.
I'm not saying that there are aliens. I'm saying the government said there were, and it wasn't even a big story. Whether the media believes it or not, I'd have expected it to be a big story.
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My post was meant to be humorous not serious.
If you are ever interested in talking about the nature of "truth" message me. We could waste a whole afternoon talking about it while resolving nothing.
In the case of the Dresden Files once the debris was cleaned up and the bodies carted off, every second that passed would introduce uncertainty about what actually happened. Some would believe and some wouldn't. Jim has actually used this idea in the books, it's his central conceit.