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The Dresden Files => DF Spoilers => Topic started by: magnuskn on August 30, 2019, 04:34:12 PM
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I hope Priscilla brings some spare batteries for her camera. That's a lot of panels Jim will be participating in!
Of course the Q&A, the one with Michael A. Stackpole and the one with David Weber are the most important ones to record. ;)
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And I hope that afterwards the Peace Talks book trailer will be out including the release date.
8)
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Thank you, Priscilla!
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Wow, cool, she uploaded some new videos. I will watch them tomorrow after some sleep. Thank you very much, Priscilla.
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Wow, cool, she uploaded some new videos. I will watch them tomorrow after some sleep. Thank you very much, Priscilla.
What's her channel called?
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What's her channel called?
https://www.reddit.com/r/dresdenfiles/comments/cz4und/dragoncon_panel_videos/ (https://www.reddit.com/r/dresdenfiles/comments/cz4und/dragoncon_panel_videos/)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVD-1HTsYQZNEbqe7KbHLxQ (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVD-1HTsYQZNEbqe7KbHLxQ)
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@Priscelle!!! Thank you!
The solo Jim panel was great, original questions and great answers. Highly Reccomend.
~M
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Yup, new questions but sadly not too many new answers. Nice to at least not hear the same old answers time and time again.
Found at least two things interesting:
1) that he characterized Harry as the stay at home nerd (expected) but Eb McCoy as the go out drinking and fighting type. Sort of makes sense.
2) That the Word of Kemmler included a spell directly on how to... wreck a Black Court Vampire. I had always interpreted his prior answer as to either Bravado or "I could apply that..." but no its and outright Make That BC Vamp Your Nelly spell.
The Cinder Spires bit was very interesting but I'm not as involved in that series as Dresden. (have read it obviously but didn't feel the need to read again unlike the DFs)
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Thanks Morris!
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Thinking back to the BC Vamp spell, since its outright there and presuming Mavra knew it, she was being truly deferential at the moment then... I was always wondering if she was playing a game or what not... but that would also suggest that she now has to take Dresden out due to the threat level he represents to her going forward...
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Thinking back to the BC Vamp spell, since its outright there and presuming Mavra knew it, she was being truly deferential at the moment then... I was always wondering if she was playing a game or what not... but that would also suggest that she now has to take Dresden out due to the threat level he represents to her going forward...
If she's aware of how risky it would be for him to actually do, she can probably guess he's not going to hat up and use it unless pressed. I figured there had to have been some downside to Harry actually using it, or he would have just opened a can of whoop-ass on the BCV's in It's My Birthday Too instead of sneaking around backstabbing them with gravitus and spitting garlic on them.
So Mavra probably thinks she can leave him on the back burner for the short to intermediate term, but taking him out is going to have to happen before she starts making any big moves that would really piss him off.
I also kind of want to know which of the crack theories really bothered him.
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I'm also curious what fan fiction disturbed him...
I'm hoping its the Mother Winter/Mavra bit ;)
That requires brain bleach.
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The playlist answer was interesting. I wonder how long "Gone Away" has been Harry's theme. Has he mentioned this before? If it's a recent context, then things don't look good for Murphy.
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“There’s also that thing about white court vampires and wizards...” tease also sounded like it was eluding to new information. That probably has a direct tie to whatever Harry’s mom was up to with Lord Raith. I think we are 100% getting the Eb/Thomas blowout this book and I cannot wait.
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I figured there had to have been some downside to Harry actually using [the spell from the Word of Kemmler making BCV's your "bitch"].
Jim mentioned taking a negative 18 hit to [something] in [some game] to cast the spell. Apparently, from the way Jim said it and audience reaction, that's bad. I didn't catch the something or the game, and I'm not very experienced in RPG's outside of 90's Nintendo games.
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Jim mentioned taking a negative 18 hit to [something] in [some game] to cast the spell. Apparently, from the way Jim said it and audience reaction, that's bad. I didn't catch the something or the game, and I'm not very experienced in RPG's outside of 90's Nintendo games.
I would take that to mean you need to think about it as rolling a 20 sided dice. If you roll a 19 or 20 it works anything else you are at zero or less meaning it does not work. In other words you have a 1 in 10 chance of pulling off the spell. Guessing a bit but it may well mean 9 out of 10 times the vampire gets to tear you apart because you are so tired from the failed spell you have no chance and had to be near the vamp to cast it.
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I think it might of been some kind of alignment shift. It sounded more like a character stat than a die roll.
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The "Male Stars of Fantasy/SF" panel with Jim, Michael A. Stackpole, Brandon Sanderson, Kevin J. Anderson and Robert J. Sawyer was great as well, with very useful advice for aspiring writers. Jims advice was especially good and encouraging for someone like me, who aspires to write his first novel.
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I think it might of been some kind of alignment shift. It sounded more like a character stat than a die roll.
Being a Kemmler spell, it's pretty much guaranteed to use dark magic. So even if it's not a technical violation of the seven laws to use necromancy to wreck blampires since they're not human, it makes sense for there to be a serious risk of mental / spiritual corruption.
If Harry lives long enough to graduate past Rashid's warning that he's not ready to tap the Demonreach prisoners' leyline without it changing him, though, he might also be less vulnerable to being changed by using necromancy against the black court. Or if he inherits the Blackstaff, he's covered to use it at will.
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If she's aware of how risky it would be for him to actually do, she can probably guess he's not going to hat up and use it unless pressed. I figured there had to have been some downside to Harry actually using it, or he would have just opened a can of whoop-ass on the BCV's in It's My Birthday Too instead of sneaking around backstabbing them with gravitus and spitting garlic on them.
So Mavra probably thinks she can leave him on the back burner for the short to intermediate term, but taking him out is going to have to happen before she starts making any big moves that would really piss him off.
I also kind of want to know which of the crack theories really bothered him.
There are some pretty awful ones that get thrown around on Reddit. There was a particularly uncomfortable one that received tons of negative replies and downvotes, and was universally rejected. I'm going to spoil it because it's pretty gross. Basically, this person wrote a 1,000-3,000 word post that insisted Marcone is a
I've read a lot of WAGs, some good and fun, some kinda dumb and/or boring, some just ridiculous. That one was just wrong, on many, many levels. There are alternate character interpretations and then there are alternate character interpretations. I pop over to Reddit and see what other people are talking about because there are usually a couple of threads that are interesting, but there's also a fair amount like the one I'm talking about. I don't know if this is the one that bothered Jim or not, but if Jim did read it, I'd understand being bothered or disturbed.
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The "Male Stars of Fantasy/SF" panel ...
WaitWHAT?
...
but
WHY?
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WaitWHAT?
...
but
WHY?
Isn't that... most stars for that genre? Are they separating the panels by gender now?
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I believe there was at least one woman on every other panel I saw. Maybe they happened to have a panel that ended up with just guys on it, so they gave it that name? It struck me as odd, and I don't care about any of that equity stuff.
On an unrelated note, does anyone recall which panel it was that Jim said that the White Council's interpretation of the Laws of Magic was overly strict? It makes me wonder what's really going on with the laws. Maybe the borders of the laws aren't what we've thought or maybe there is gray area where, for example, killing but not murdering with magic is only a little bit corrupting and is something that can be "easily" recovered from.
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I would take that to mean you need to think about it as rolling a 20 sided dice. If you roll a 19 or 20 it works anything else you are at zero or less meaning it does not work. In other words you have a 1 in 10 chance of pulling off the spell. Guessing a bit but it may well mean 9 out of 10 times the vampire gets to tear you apart because you are so tired from the failed spell you have no chance and had to be near the vamp to cast it.
I think Jim said it was rolling a -19 on sanity by using the spell.
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I think Jim said it was rolling a -19 on sanity by using the spell.
I think that's right.
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WaitWHAT?
...
but
WHY?
Uh, because they booked male stars of Fantasy/SF, I guess? I mean, what's the question here?
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Uh, because they booked male stars of Fantasy/SF, I guess? I mean, what's the question here?
Just odd that they have a panel dedicated to male stars of Fantasy/SF, when they're genres typically dominated by men in the first place. Most conventions either A) wouldn't name the panel that (just "stars of Fantasy/SF," or B) would go the opposite route and have a female stars panel. It's an unusual choice in today's climate.
It'd be almost (not quite, but almost) like having an African American NBA Player panel.
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Well, the moderator was female. All in all, it was a panel very much worth watching.
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Uh, because they booked male stars of Fantasy/SF, I guess? I mean, what's the question here?
Maybe I misunderstood, and it was just the only panel (of several such) that had all-male presenters, and colloquially id'ed that way.
But if it was titled & presented as the one where only male authors would be on the panel... That seems weird.
And not in a good way. Like it'd be extra work to prevent it from being weird-in-an-actively-bad-way.
<shrug> But I wasn't there.
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Still don't get it. They had some of the most accredited popular authors in SF/Fantasy on and they happened to be male. It was a very informative panel on the technical side of writing.
Here's a link to Priscilla's video of it. I highly recommend watching it if you want to get into writing:
https://youtu.be/AJV4E0eNO-0? (https://youtu.be/AJV4E0eNO-0?)
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It's weird to point out that all your panelists are men in this day and age where many object to white men generally. The panel skirts this issue of ever present political correctness/identity politics when discussing "sensitivity readers" in YA fiction. Sensitivity readers are beta readers who "review unpublished manuscripts with the express purpose of spotting cultural inaccuracies, representation issues, bias, stereotypes, or problematic language." Think of them as political officers. See https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThePoliticalOfficer (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThePoliticalOfficer).
Basically, they are incentives for straight white authors to only include straight white characters as they don't even stop controversies over "insensitivity" anyway.
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Hm, yeah. I found those stories about the YA publishing world pretty upsetting when I heard about them. One controversy was over a novel called "The Black Witch", where the author was accused of all sorts of terrible things because she depicted racism, even if it was in a completely negative way.
Anyway, aside from I guess one sentence from Kevin J. Anderson about him not being wild about those "sensitivity readers" being required by some publishers for some genres, the panel was, as I've stressed already, very informative and really helpful for me. Especially some of the stuff Jim said, but then again he is always awesome and informative on his panels.
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Still don't get it. They had some of the most accredited popular authors in SF/Fantasy on and they happened to be male.
And ... ? I got no problem with what you present in that.
I mean, if you took the 50 top-selling names from fantasy (say, from the Amazon ranking, or NYTimes Books, or any other large pool) and put their names into a hat, and drew a panel's worth of names... sometimes you'd end up with an all-male panel. Sometimes all-female. Sometimes both genders.
I got no questions or doubts about any of that.
But on the theme of "words mean something" and with the notion that "titles should convey some substance..." actually titling the panel specifically as "Male" hits all sorts of problematic notes.
<shrug>
If you don't see what I see in that, then I don't suppose this tangent to the conversation has any real future.
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Since I don't have a fundamental problem with male or female members of the race of humankind, I'm pretty chill about the whole topic.
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But on the theme of "words mean something" and with the notion that "titles should convey some substance..." actually titling the panel specifically as "Male" hits all sorts of problematic notes.
I can only see a few reasons for naming the panel as such. 1. You wanted an all male panel to get a male perspective on something(s). This panel didn't appear to be that. 2. You happened to have all males on the panel and went with the name because you were completely oblivious to the current woke call out culture. 3. You happened to have all males on the panel and went with the name because you were aware of the current woke call out culture and wanted to thumb your nose at it. 4. You also had a "Female Stars of Fantasy/SF" that we didn't see because, obviously, Jim wouldn't have been on it. 5. You wanted an all male panel because ... reasons?
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Here's the schedule of events: https://static.coreapps.net/dragoncon19/documents/4f019d71816b2582716609117e2a2a90.pdf
There's no direct "Women Stars of Fantasy/SF" mirror panel that I can see, but there are many "women of..." panels on genre subjects. It's really hard to see the overall atmosphere or agenda of the event as exclusionary given the mix of panel subjects and invited speakers, regardless of the reason for this specific panel's naming. In the interest of assuming good/naive intentions in the absence of evidence to the contrary, I'm going with attempt to be merely descriptive backfired or didn't want to just say "Stars of Fantasy/SF" when, in fact, the panel only had a handful of writers, so qualified the title with something these stars all had in common as possible explanations.
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I thought naming the panel "male stars of fantasy" was one of two things. Either it was a rather lame ironic joke, poking fun; well, trying to poke fun, at current zeitgeist of "wokeness" or SJW concerns; or, it could have been due to availability and scheduling constraints of guest authors, that DragonCon organizers realized that any really well known female authors who were invited to appear, simply wouldn't be available at that day and time.
I looked at the DragonCon website last weekend and saw that Patricia Briggs was a guest author and that Mercedes Lackey had to cancel her appearance. (I didn't memorize the guest list. Those are two authors whose work I know, so I noticed their names.) Assume for a moment those were the only really well known female fantasy writers who were expected to be at DragonCon this year and Patricia Briggs was set to do a different panel at the same time. In that case you have to call your panel something, so without really thinking about how it might be perceived, the title "male stars of fantasy" sounded like an accurate description of the panel and nothing more.
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Whatever they meant, the outcome was a shout out to the fact there were no women on the panel. Implying that there are female stars, which of course there are. But that they weren't represented.
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"Her-storically Speaking: Meet the Women of War"
"Her-storically Speaking: The Lost Women of History"
"A Woman's Guide to Rebuilding Civilizaton"
"Women in Illustration"
"Awesome Women in Digital Media"
That's just panels from one third into that guide, after which I gave up because DragonCon apparently is a black of hole of a thousand panels. Quite overwhelming.
In any case, is anybody offended by those women-centric panels staffed by (surprise) only women? Of course not. So why would anybody be offended by an all-male panel? Though the panel was clearly not about anything male-related, anyway, except the gender of the participants.
In any case, if somebody here got offended at the title of the panel, please also get equal-opportunity offended at the title of those panels mentioned above. Otherwise, go a little more spare on the hipocrisy.
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Could be they caught the current statistics on depression and serious increase in male suicide. There has been a major malaise that has really hit 18-30 year old men. The New York Post did an article on it and presented it as a womens problem. I won't go any further into TT areas, but I am thinking maybe it was just a move to make some people feel better.
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So why would anybody be offended by an all-male panel?
Are you not aware of the "current zeitgeist of 'wokeness' or SJW concerns," as Kurtin put it? Pointing out that it exists is as far as I'm willing to go on that issue because explaining why the zeitgeist is, is not an appropriate subject for the forum.
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I don't know if anyone was offended by it. I'm not. I couldn't care less. It's just an odd choice in the current climate to tag some panels by gender, but not all of them. I mean, adding "Female," "Male," and "Mixed" tags would, theoretically, circumvent any potential "outrage."
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I don't know if anyone was offended by it. I'm not. I couldn't care less. It's just an odd choice in the current climate to tag some panels by gender.
Agreed.
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Are you not aware of the "current zeitgeist of 'wokeness' or SJW concerns," as Kurtin put it? Pointing out that it exists is as far as I'm willing to go on that issue because explaining why the zeitgeist is, is not an appropriate subject for the forum.
Of course I'm aware of it, but I don't get it in relation to this panel. As I pointed out a few posts above, there were quite a lot of "Women of..." panels and no one bats an eye at those.
Unless it's now socially taboo to have something be labeled "male something" or "Men of", when it's socially acceptable when it correlates to the female gender. And that would be quite the sexist double standard, wouldn't it now? So I hope people are better than that.
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Of course I'm aware of it, but I don't get it in relation to this panel. As I pointed out a few posts above, there were quite a lot of "Women of..." panels and no one bats an eye at those.
Having those panels does indeed make a significant difference to the context of having a "male-" labeled panel. I hadn't seen that 'til the info came up just a bit upthread.
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This, while somewhat relevant to the topic, feels like a diversion from the OP. And while I am sure it is important as a discussion, let's stay on topic if we can. This is starting to feel like it might approach an issue, which does no one any good.
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Right. I think I've only mentioned twice or thrice already how helpful that particular panel was for aspiring writers, so I think I'll mention it one more time, since I think it was that good.
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Don't misunderstand me, I thoroughly enjoyed that panel - being an aspiring writer myself. Personally, whilst I understand the arguments by those who take issue with the title of said panel, I am not particularly bothered by it. But that's just me. I think we all need to not sweat the small stuff as much, myself.
But it wasn't a dig at you in particular magnuskn - I more meant for everyone just to move on. This isn't the right area for such a discussion as there are other areas of the boards for this - and it is just good form to stick to the main discussion in the thread, in general. Which is not me trying to silence good debate either. Just there is a place for it and it isn't here. That's all I will say on the matter. But let's not get this locked.
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I wasn't taking it as a dig, so no problem here. I just wanted to once again say how great the panel was. If anybody hasn't watched it yet, they should. Another panel by Jim Butcher from some years ago was the final push which got me to working on a book and this panel would have done the same if I hadn't watched that other panel some 15 months ago.
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Coming back one more time to that particular panel, one of the things Jim said was that he writes very detailed chapter outlines and then this makes it easy for him to write that chapter in one go.
I wonder if he ever has published one of those detailed chapter outlines, because I think it would help me a lot with my process. If any anybody has a link to that, I'd really appreciate it if s/he could share it (if it exists at all, of course).
If there is no such published chapter outline, then if there is to be a Peace Talks AMA on Reddit, like the one he did for the release of Brief Cases, I think I will ask if he can publish a detailed chapter outline for one of his prior books (or for Peace Talks, after publication) on the website.