ParanetOnline
The Dresden Files => DF Spoilers => Topic started by: Stiletto on August 04, 2018, 11:01:47 PM
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Cool, I just realized the board was back up!!! Yay!
I’ve been rereading the books in preparation for going to Chicago in April for Star wars Celebrations. :) In reading Proven Guilty, it occured to me that only Harry could have fixed the mistake in his model. Whoever fixed it had to 1) Know LC existed, 2) Know its inner workings, 3) Get through the threshold, 4) get through Harry’s wards, and 5) Not be seen by Bob. Only future Harry could have done all of the above, and warn Bob not to say too much about the intruder.
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You might find this similar thread interesting. Juxtaposition, Who fixed LC? (https://www.paranetonline.com/index.php/topic,51479.0.html) Welcome back.
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Thanks! :) Though not much discussion there of time traveling Harry.
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Harry, the Calvin and Hobbs book says it all for the creation behind it. The creator named Clavin after a 16th century theologian who believed in predestination and Hobbs was based upon his own house cat's personality, who would barrel into his legs when he came home(sound vaguely familiar that one? :) ) His view point from Calvin(being alive) vs others(doll) is not to denote a separate fantasy, but that reality is a perspective of the viewer. This reps the observers effect applied to TT, reality shifts based upon you knowledge or lack of it.
So Calvin and Hobbs represent Harry and Mister(also Bob?) and the comic is from Harry directly. It's the cluebat time travel was there, not who left it, but the hidden meaning behind what was left!
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I think it would be a mistake to conclude future Harry is the only one who even could have. Mab doesn't do altruistic freebies, but she's plenty capable of getting through the wards and preventing Harry from blowing himself up if she had a utilitarian, Mab-centric reason for preserving him. Given WOJ that the resolution to PG was favourable to Mab, making sure he lived to get there was probably consistent enough with her rational self-interest to justify intervening.
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Could Mab get through the ward, the threshold, and have the knowledge and skill to tinker with complicated mortal magic? While treating Lea at the same time?
Do we have WoJ the Calvin and Hobbes book was “left” there for Harry to find? I assumed it was a sign of Harry’s lack of organization.
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Yeah, I like Mab for the deed. And Harry had a back door to fairy in his subbasement. Since Lea was playing
and Ice princess Mab could have entered.
Having never read Calvin and Hobbes I had to research and turned up this. One is left to wonder, does Mab have a since of humor?Calvin often creates horrendous/dark humor scenes with his snowmen. He uses the snowman for social commentary, revenge, or pure enjoyment. Examples include Snowman Calvin being yelled at by Snowman Dad to shovel the snow; one snowman eating snow cones scooped out of a second snowman, who is lying on the ground with an ice-cream scoop in his back; a "snowman house of horror"; and snowmen representing the people he hates. "The ones I really hate are small, so they'll melt faster," he says. There was even an occasion on which Calvin accidentally brought a snowman to life and it made itself and a small army into "deranged mutant killer monster snow goons."
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Could Mab get through the ward, the threshold, and have the knowledge and skill to tinker with complicated mortal magic? While treating Lea at the same time?
Yes, as seen by Cat Sith being able to enter past a threshold as long as he meant no harm to the occupants. She's got the skill to tinker with it, the only likely issue would be if, like Toot and languages, she has a more instinctual knowledge of magic that makes mortal magic on a different wavelength (like Bob and faith). As for Lea, possibly she could just put her on ice for a few moments.Do we have WoJ the Calvin and Hobbes book was “left” there for Harry to find? I assumed it was a sign of Harry’s lack of organization.
We have no such thing, anything anyone says about it is pure speculation.
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Could Mab get through the ward, the threshold, and have the knowledge and skill to tinker with complicated mortal magic? While treating Lea at the same time?
Easily. Lea has expended significant effort on making sure Harry's dwelling maps to her garden when making Ways between earth and the NN. Mab can just step through, inside the wards and the threshold, and do anything compatible with behaving as a good guest (which also explains why, if she was there, she didn't destroy Bob ... although I suspect she's more interested in keeping him scared enough to lay low and stay quiet about the immortality loophole than sincerely committed to destroying him).
And mortal magic is mostly similar to fae magic. The ability to teach him to be far better at it than he is was one of the perks she dangled in one of her earlier offers to try to recruit him for the Winter Knight. For that matter, she's probably far enough ahead of Harry to seamlessly disarm his wards and go in through the front door, if she wanted to.
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Mab was Harry’s acting godmother with all Lea’s obligations.
Mab could enter Harry’s apartment as easily as the brownies who cleaned it as long as she behaved like a good guest.
Mortal magic and Sidhe magic don’t differ that much.
Motive, opportunity and means.
Oh and Calvin and hobs are clearly winter based. Winter wonderland based.
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Stiletto,
Cool, I just realized the board was back up!!! Yay!
I’ve been rereading the books in preparation for going to Chicago in April for Star wars Celebrations. :) In reading Proven Guilty, it occured to me that only Harry could have fixed the mistake in his model. Whoever fixed it had to 1) Know LC existed, 2) Know its inner workings, 3) Get through the threshold, 4) get through Harry’s wards, and 5) Not be seen by Bob. Only future Harry could have done all of the above, and warn Bob not to say too much about the intruder.
That's my take too. Couple that with the fact that this book seems to deal with the back side of Time Travel with the warning that Harry received from the Gatekeeper at the start of the book. Harry is the most likely candidate for having fixed "little Chicago".
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I had always assumed that it was Uriel that did it, all things considered.
It's ... totally something that he'd do.
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I had always assumed that it was Uriel that did it, all things considered.
It's ... totally something that he'd do.
If he wants to fall. It is totally something he is not allowed to do.
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Drashna,
I had always assumed that it was Uriel that did it, all things considered.
It's ... totally something that he'd do.
Urial gifts power and knowledge to people we haven’t seem him act directly.
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Drashna,
Urial gifts power and knowledge to people we haven’t seem him act directly.
And even that he can only do under certain circumstances.
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If he wants to fall. It is totally something he is not allowed to do.
Unless the other side broke it to start with?
but thats a whole new level of conspiracy
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Unless the other side broke it to start with?
but thats a whole new level of conspiracy
Not the same topic, but back to the LC topic. This made me muse that maybe LC was broken by a foe and that no one actually fixed it, per se. If a time trazel foe arrived and broke it (I remember Bob saying the flaw was previously unseen despite prior scrutiny), then Dresden could have also time travelled and stopped the foe through interference. The overlapping timelines would all still require cause and effect It’s all a bit fuzzy, but maybe LC was never fixed because it was never broken in the final version of that timeline. :o
To illustrate.
Timeline 1 (TL1)- LC is fine, not broken
TL2- foe or foes time travel and, through some method, cause flaw in LC which Bob notes
TL3- timeline now contains ramifications from TL2. Future Dresden goes back and defeats foe or foes and, in so doing, negates flaw from occurring with LC and whatever else foe or foes achieved to a greater or lesser extent
TL4- this is the timeline we are viewing when LC is “fixed”. Many other things from future Dresden’s TL3 will also have changed, but this is not TL1
The text of the books could have contained a bit of all the above timelines without alerting the reader.
Where’s raidem? Look, I’m talking about time travel!
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:)
I've been going to they gym, swimming, and walking. After they finally/recently diagnosed low B12 and sleep apnea for me and treated me for it, I've gotten lots better.
“And I’m sorry,” she growled. “Jerk.”
That had cost her something. Murphy has more pride than is good for her. And yes, I am aware of the proverb about glass houses and stones. So I didn’t give her any more of a hard time than I already had. “Don’t go all romantic on me now, Murph.”
She smiled a little and rolled her eyes. “If we ever did get together, I’d kill you inside a week. Now, go get some rest. You’re useless to me like this.”
What did Mab try to do to Harry when she brought back Harry to Arctis Tor for training, try to kill him daily. Just wanted to throw that in. :)
It doesn't necessarily pertain to this topic but I was listening to the audiobook while walking at the park and heard that and tied it into Cold Days beginning where Mab puts him through rehab training.
Now as to the timeline, I like what you did with it. It's plausible, understandable. I like the idea that there are multiple timelines and team bad and team good, or at least multiple players, are doing things in the background that we won't find out about until later.
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:)
I've been going to they gym, swimming, and walking. After they finally/recently diagnosed low B12 and sleep apnea for me and treated me for it, I've gotten lots better.
Nice! Congrats. I’m about to rejoin my gym. I used to go 4-5 days a week, but stopped for a few years after a bad running injury. I really miss it. Have you seen Primer yet? You gotta see it if you haven’t! It’s the best time travel film, ever.
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Yeah, I've watched it. I got a bit confused toward the end, but got the gist of it.
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Heck, I was just diagnosed with sleep apnea. Spent my first night on the CPAP and it's like night and day.
I strongly believe that either time traveled or universe-displaced Dresden fixed it, but that's a theory on top of a theory on top of a theory on top of vague hints. The book itself flags Rashid as the most likely suspect, so I'm willing to go with that as most unlikely, as the rule of inverse literary probability means that the longer a mystery has gone unanswered, the more improbable the outcome will be.
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The book itself flags Rashid as the most likely suspect, so I'm willing to go with that as most unlikely, as the rule of inverse literary probability means that the longer a mystery has gone unanswered, the more improbable the outcome will be.
Rashid was actively suspicious Harry was playing for Team Outsider until confronting him with his suspicions in Turn Coat and clearing the air. I can't see him having gone out of his way to interfere with Harry maybe blowing himself up while not being sure which side he was on. (Plus, as Harry put it, keeping a voodoo doll of the city in your basement would look instantly creepy to any other wizard - Rashid finding out about that probably would have pushed any suspicions he had of Harry over the edge)
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Rashid was actively suspicious Harry was playing for Team Outsider until confronting him with his suspicions in Turn Coat and clearing the air. I can't see him having gone out of his way to interfere with Harry maybe blowing himself up while not being sure which side he was on. (Plus, as Harry put it, keeping a voodoo doll of the city in your basement would look instantly creepy to any other wizard - Rashid finding out about that probably would have pushed any suspicions he had of Harry over the edge)
I do not think he would be that disturbed by it. Bob however would have been problematic.
I do not see the gatekeeper entering and leaving Harry’s apartment uninvited without leaving a trace however. The Sidhe can do so as the brownies regularly did.
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I do not think he would be that disturbed by it. Bob however would have been problematic.
I do not see the gatekeeper entering and leaving Harry’s apartment uninvited without leaving a trace however. The Sidhe can do so as the brownies regularly did.
Why not? Rashid has literal centuries of experience on Harry, AND a magic eyeball. One that possibly allows him to follow patterns of energy. You don't think he can penetrate the wards of a kid with power but not a ton of finesse?
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The question to answer for anyone is how did they know? And Bob isn't always in the basement in the events of Proven Guilty. So JB created a moment when someone could have entered.
You could assume that a Rashid(or someone) is from a timeline where Harry is killed during the first use of Little Chicago. It is possible that in that timeline Rashid ended up possessing Bob. If Harry dying in that timeline leads to the outsiders passing the gates, then that Rashid may be trying to change that possible future. That Bob would know what went wrong and how to fix it. And he could lower the wards.
In this scenario you could plug in the name of any of the powerful ally of Harry's who could time travel. Bob is the true locus. All you have to assume is that Bob survives when Harry dies and ends up in the hands of someone able to use him, and that some dire event will happen in a future where Harry existence is critical. Such as the BAT. This ticks all the boxes pointed out by Harry and Bob, since obviously Bob knows all of those things.“No it isn’t,” Bob said. “Just really, really, really, really, really, really difficult. And unlikely.
1.) He would have had to know that you had a lab down here.
2.) And he would have had to know how to get around your wards.”
3.) “Plus intimate knowledge of the design to tinker with it like that,” I said.
4.) “To say nothing of the fact that he would have to know it existed at all, and no one does.”
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Those four points are exactly why I believe it's a previous version of Dresden.
There's one other possibility that no one has explored.
Having just formed the Za Lord's Guard, Toot Toot and company have one of their first epic battles against the mice and rats and ugly spiders that might crawl into Harry's bed. One battle with such a dread creature takes them down to the basement, where the gang land in Little Chicago. There, they have an epic Kaiju-style Godzilla battle, leaving much of Little Chicago in ruins.
Not wanting to displease their new lord before he even knows of the organization's existence, Toot Toot and company quickly repair all of the damage done to the table, completely by accident also repairing the transition coupling. 'Cause you know, Faeries, they just live and breathe magic and so it's totally possible that was done unintentionally.
It seems at least as probable as any other idea to me.
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Don't forget though anyone with the knowledge level to produce that sort of thing and enough power to scry through his wards could become aware of it and know how to fix it. And thats assuming the same person who realised the error was also the one to fix it. Someone else with no interest in interfering could have seen the error and then somehow, (probably by accident), handed that info over to someone with an interest in interfering.
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1) Know LC existed,
Remember, if we are talking time travel, the person who used it didn't have to learn about it until after PG. Thus, for example, anyone who found remnants of LC after Harry's place burned down might travel back in time to use it before it was destroyed. Harry could tell somebody about it in the future and send them back to use. Or Harry could send a message back from the future to somebody in the past to have them use it.
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Personally, I chalk it up to Harry having to head back to Proven Guilty, with Bonnie in tow, maybe to ensure that Molly gets taken by the Scarecrow. Harry has to find something or do something, and he goes to use LC, when Bonnie (who has Harry's memories, along with Lash's) realizes that Little Chicago is broken, so Harry spends the time to fix it. This is after he has an emotional reunion with all of his stuff.
If there is time travel, I tend to think it's going to be a "Harry has to ensure the integrity of the timeline" situation, not an "I have to go back and prevent X" thing. He'd probably go on and on about the morality of erasing failures, and how it would be too easy to undo everyone's sacrifices, and how that would undermine the meaning of their lives, et cetera, et cetera.
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Personally, I chalk it up to Harry having to head back to Proven Guilty, with Bonnie in tow, maybe to ensure that Molly gets taken by the Scarecrow. Harry has to find something or do something, and he goes to use LC, when Bonnie (who has Harry's memories, along with Lash's) realizes that Little Chicago is broken, so Harry spends the time to fix it. This is after he has an emotional reunion with all of his stuff.
If there is time travel, I tend to think it's going to be a "Harry has to ensure the integrity of the timeline" situation, not an "I have to go back and prevent X" thing. He'd probably go on and on about the morality of erasing failures, and how it would be too easy to undo everyone's sacrifices, and how that would undermine the meaning of their lives, et cetera, et cetera.
I'm confident that Harry is the one who fixed Little Chicago. Very Confident. Heck PG is explicitly set up as a story with time travel in the background.
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Magic is life and life evolves. Little Chicago fixed itself ;D
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Magic is life and life evolves. Little Chicago fixed itself ;D
That's actually pretty creepy. What else did it do "by itself" if that is the case?
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The only person I think we have seen play with time at all has been Rashid. Perhaps he either fixed it himself, or alerted Harry who fixed it but because of the consequences needed to have his memory wiped to avoid some sort of time paradox of seeing himself or something like that.
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That's actually pretty creepy. What else did it do "by itself" if that is the case?
Probably got tired of sitting in a dingy basement with a horny skull and a grumpy wizard, so it set on motion the firing, destruction, and subsequent building of a freaking castle by a much richer patron, and is now happily serving Marcone.
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If this topic interests you there is an interesting post on Reddit. Shows video of a model of New York at close to the scale of Little Chicago. Covers the area of two basketball courts. Harry's basement must have been tremendous!!!!! :D
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Perhaps someone else used Little Chicago for whatever reason? They repaired it to avoid destroying themselves.
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In one of the shorts Thomas mentions knowing about Little Chicago, and he also knows about Bob (so might be able to blindside him). Of course I have no idea how he would know what to do to fix it, but you know, why not?
Also he might be only the source for the actual fixer.
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I still vote for Evil Bob!!!
APG
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If Mab and Harry level with each other after BG, maybe we'll get an answer to this.....
.....maybe......
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If this topic interests you there is an interesting post on Reddit. Shows video of a model of New York at close to the scale of Little Chicago. Covers the area of two basketball courts. Harry's basement must have been tremendous!!!!! :D
Yeah... This was always a problem. Combined with the sheer scale of the project as described.
Rule of Cool, though. It's such a cool idea, it's worthy of a bit of suspension of disbelief.
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Yeah... This was always a problem. Combined with the sheer scale of the project as described.
Rule of Cool, though. It's such a cool idea, it's worthy of a bit of suspension of disbelief.
I wouldn't be shocked if Marcone stepped forth with a fully functional Little Chicago to be used
as a topo map for stradagy in the fight against the Titan.. Upon which time, Vadderung will say he
fixed it because it is needed.
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If Mab and Harry level with each other after BG, maybe we'll get an answer to this.....
.....maybe......
There is actually a WOJ on this, book 20 now book 21.