This topic has been moved to [Recycling]. due to being unrelated and pure bait.

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I remember that passage from Ghost Story, and it wasn't so much that Uriel thought one way or the other, but though Uriel is an archangel, it isn't his place or job to judge Harry or anyone else.

I don't think he was judging. I think he can see which way the river is flowing though, and he commented on it. A warning to Harry. Don't forget, Harry's did go "On" and low and behold went to the person he had sold himself to. A big part of the whole exercise was to warn Harry that he was on a slippery path.

I haven't seen Parks and Rec, but Harry does allow himself to be governed, as Winter Knight, he is governed by Mab.. Yes, he wiggles as much as he can with in her rules and the rules that govern the Winter Court, but he respects them and obeys most of them.

I mean, he "allows" it because she he often gets reminded she has him by the throat. If he obeys the rules, it's because he has no other option. Hence why he tries to wiggle out of them every. single. time. If that's a not a disrespect for authority, I don't know what is.

Mab often outplays him too, and for all his small victories against her, I'd say she is winning the longer battle. She told him he would be her Knight one day, she told him he would be her weapon. Everything has worked in her favour in the long run.

It isn't a simple problem of the White Council being infiltrated by the likes of the Black Council.. Harry wants to reform, not to abolish the White Council.  I don't ever remember where Harry was arguing with Eb that there should be no White Council.  However there is a bit of a problem when a large percentage of future wizards lose their heads because they make mistakes when their talent awakes and the fear that they may go warlock.. And then there are those that do go warlock because there aren't enough wizards to take them under their wing.. You see the problem here, wizards live a long time, but new blood is needed, and the rules that worked great six hundred or so years ago might not work quite as well in the 21st Century.

I agree Harry would prefer to reform them, but he did actually suggest at one point that it wouldn't be so bad if the White Council didn't exist and Ebenezar chewed him out over it. He even said it would be worth as much as Dresden's life to say such things, in times gone by. It was during the discussion when Ebenezar reveals himself as Blackstaff.

"Ever since the founding of the White Council, ever since the first wizards gathered to lay down the Laws of Magic, there has been someone interested in tearing it apart," he said. "The vampires, for one. The faeries have all been at odds with us at one time or another. And there have always been wizards who thought the world would be a nicer place without the Council in it."

"Gee," I said. "I just can't figure why any wizard would think that."

Ebenezar's voice lashed out, harsh and cold. "You don't know what you're talking about, boy. You don't know what you're saying. Within my own lifetime, there have been times and places where even speaking those words could have been worth your life."

Blood Rites, pg 216.
Harry understands the sentiment that the world "would be a better place without the White Council" and it implies he feels the same, at least sometimes.

Harry has never chosen to be a loner, he isn't a social butterfly, but he never was a loner.. He has always had friends, Michael for one.. There have always been those who have sacrificed themselves not just for his causes, but for him because of their love for him.

Are we talking about the same guy who prefers to stay in reading books than going out? Who prefers the peacefulness of farms and homesteads to the big smoke? Who willing didn't see or tell any of his friends about his return from death? At least, until he had to. Yes, Harry has had friends. But that doesn't mean he hasn't chosen many, many times to be alone.

Just because he doesn't attend the White Council's meetings doesn't mean he has no respect for them.  Yeah, he didn't wear the proper robe to the meeting once but his good robe was covered in puke, blood, or cat poop I cannot remember which... That was also at a time when Harry was suffering clearly from severe depression his person and apartment reflected that.  Learning any language takes time, Harry didn't know the White Council existed until he was arrested by them and they nearly took his head. He never finished high school though he did eventually get his GED.. He was still of high school age when he went to live with Eb.. Eb could have made him finish high school and take Latin, but he didn't.  His argument with the Merlin was out of respect for the very rules of the White Council, and it was under those very rules he was able to save Molly.. If he had no faith in those rules he wouldn't have advised her to surrender to the Wardens in the first place..  Harry was under the Doom for years, and after many on the Council didn't want him, it was only out of nessesity that Luccio drafted him.

He began to respect them more over time, but he eventually ended up hating them all the more when they failed him. Is it any accident, that when they failed to help him when he needed them the most, he stopped going to Council meetings? He only recently returned to warden duties, and then got kicked out of the White Council. Wearing his "formal" attire (which often was just a bathrobe rather than a proper robe) covered in dirt and grime and filth...is hardly respectful. If he were a cop or soldier, he would be reprimanded. If he did it repeatedly, he would be fired. It's disrespectful to the role that you hold. Yes, he might have been depressed. But either you deal with it and try and get better, or you quit. You can't compromise your job and expect everyone to pick up the slack indefinitely - and that's just a normal workplace. There's a lot less tolerance in things like law enforcement. Let alone a magic society.

I quite agree, the warlock problem is complex and multi-faceted. Apparently there are not enough wizards to train warlocks properly (although, what is stopping a wizard taking on multiple students?). A bigger problem is then each wizard would be under the Doom of Damocles. Hard to enforce that if you end up killing more wizards than wardens. Yes, the rules that were invented during the early days of the White Council are probably not as relevant or sophisticated to deal with the more complex issues that exist in the 21st century. But as Harry has shown, information being shared and early intervention is helping (although the wizards don't like that idea much, too dangerous in their eyes). Perhaps a less punitive approach and a more rehabilitative approach would work better. But only time will tell, and Dresden's world is only getting harsher and more chaotic. We ARE moving towards the apocalypse after all (which for some reason lots of readers forget Jim has said that's where the series is going - the Big Apocalyptic Trilogy).

He isn't deciding what the rules of the White Council should be, but he does question whether or not they are all that they could be.    Governments of any form are not perfect, sometimes bad laws are made, ineffective laws are made, some laws that worked great a hundred years ago, no longer apply now, the smarter governments recognize this and evolve.. Actually what has happened in Harry's life and what he has seen has made him very expert in these things, he nearly was a victim.

 
He would be deciding the rules if he made a new White Council, which was your suggestion. He is right to question if the rules need updating, that's fairly clear. But also Harry has seen over time the need for the Council's policies and procedures - things he didn't understand for a long time. He's seen what happens when things go wrong. Of course governments are not perfect! Some would say by definition they cannot be. I suspect Harry is somewhere in the middle of that. He sees the necessity, yet also wishes a lessening of the reach and authority of government. It's an incredibly complex topic that has been debated forever. I doubt Harry Dresden will solve it. Harry being a product of the failings of the White Council's policies and structure don't make him qualified to make a new one, in my opinion. If Harry has the right to make a new Council and decide new rules, it will be because he has earned it through trials of blood and sacrifice. It will be because he has learned the real dangers of unrestrained magic (which he still has yet to fully understand). It will be because he has defeated enough enemies of humans that they will respect him. It will be ultimately because he becomes strong enough that the wizards cannot say no to him, and as we know, a wizard's strength comes from his knowledge.

He isn't the only one, Rashid is another who has isolated himself from the Council, but he has years of experience on how to do it without alienation of the Council.  However that isolation is a two way street, the Council's own prejudice against Harry because of who his mother was has gone a long way to isolate Harry.

Indeed, Rashid has isolated himself. But Rashid is also the oldest wizard on the planet - maybe the oldest human alive. He's a thousand years old or more. So, just by virtue of that, it isolates him. Not to mention his work requires him to be about as far from the mortal plane as you can go. The literal farthest reaches of the Nevernever. Perhaps Rashid was isolated by Mab or others but it's impossible to say. I would say Rashid is a bit alien to the Council, but he's so quiet and mysterious the don't get worried about him. And as we know, age and experience and mystery are the big things in wizard society, and Rashid has the most of all three.

Not just prejudice because of Margaret Le Fey, but also because of Justin Du Morne being his teacher, not to mention those who know about Harry being star born, and Harry murdering his master in highly unusual circumstances. The first most of the council hear about him is this warlock who killed a highly respected warden who supposedly went dark side according to the account of the very person who killed him. Harry didn't start off well at all, and has only made it harder on himself. Not all his fault, but that's just how it is.

And should he?  Really? Who was in control in Peace Talks, Eb or Harry?  Who understood from the beginning that he didn't have a chance toe to toe with Eb and figured out a way around it?

Oh no, I don't think Harry should hold back at all if they push him. But it will play into the hands of those who wish the Council to fall. I am not so sure he built his little decoy to defeat Eb specifically so much as have a decent chance of fooling whatever horrible fight he knew he would encounter. I don't see how he could have known he was going to duel Ebenezar.

  If Harry dies, it will be at the end I hope surrounded by his children and grandchildren.  I don't want to see Harry made into some kind of immortal of any stripe.  He does deserve peace, and after it is over, if he is surrounded by friends and family, he will have it.

I more meant Heaven - which while we don't know for a fact exists in the Dresden Files (Uriel was exceptionally tight lipped on the subject) - I think it is heavily implied to exist. Uriel wasn't so sure Harry would end up there either, when Harry last flirted with death. I wonder where Harry is on the scale now.

It doesn't make him a libertarian, it just makes him an ordinary human who wishes to have the freedom to mostly live his life as he sees fit.  That's no different from the rest of us, and most of us understand there are still laws we all have to abide by or there would be anarchy.  Harry understands that also.

Not all people in the world do actually hold that as a central idea. Many places do not have the luxury of the kind of freedom we enjoy. Some places and societies even believe that they prefer a lessening of one's personal freedoms for the "greater good" of their society. I am sure you can work out which places those are. But even in countries like the US, not everyone holds liberty as highly as others. Hence all the politics. But Harry does hold liberty highly, higher than most. He might not be Ron Swanson (if you have ever seen Parks and Rec) and not believe in no government etc but I would say he is less likely to allow himself to be governed than ever before. I will concede that he seems to have more respect for mortal governments than supernatural ones...which is highly interesting.

I don't think anyone disagrees with that except maybe some of the old fossilized wizards, however having said that I don't think for the most part that the White Council is corrupt so much as it needs to be reformed and updated to fit better into the 21st  Century.

I mean, it's hard to say. Depending on your definition of corruption - is it simply corrupted by its own political power, or has black magic corrupted their purpose etc. At one point, Harry thought that the White Council was so corrupt and infiltrated by the theoretical Black Council, that he needed to help create a Grey Council (whatever happened to them, by the way, haven't heard a peep from them in 5 books). Ebenezar constantly would chastise Harry for suggesting there should be no White Council, even suggested that it might be worth Harry's life for suggesting such a thing in days gone by. I think the question becomes does Harry think the current White Council is too corrupt to exist?

However that isn't an isolation of choice on Harry's part.. That kind of isolation isn't the same as choosing to be a loner.

Oooh, I am not sure I agree with that. One of the clearest parts of the series is about how much individual choices matter. Harry has chosen his path, no one walked it for him. The consequences of it are on him. Earlier in the series he chose to be a loner, but these days it's worse than that. He made deals with vampires and faeries and other monsters, he pushed against the White Council's restrictions and even got himself in political fights with them, he has lied and pushed away many of his former allies in order to "save" them but also to protect himself, and he has done a LOT of questionable stuff that without context doesn't look great from the outside (and even with context some of which still is pretty questionable). Most of all, he has gathered a hell of a lot of personal and political power in a very short amount of time. That's the sort of thing that scares people. It's not for nothing that Mab loves Harry's rise to power.

Again, I disagree, Harry has reason to distrust authority, but that isn't the same as having a disdain for authority.  His clashes with authority in most of the books is about what the rules should be and living by those rules, not about disregarding the rules.

 
Are you sure about that? His disdain for the White Council is fairly evident. He refused to attend regular Council meetings, barely visits HQ in Edinburgh (to the point that only Rashid, the most mysterious wizard, visited less), refused for the longest time to learn proper Latin or wear a formal robe (he literally wore a dirty bath robe - if that isn't disrespectful I don't know what is), argued publicly with the Merlin and actually beat him politically, refused for the longest time to be a Warden (openly hated them until he was forced to be one), and after "dying" ended up with a powerful new role in a shady group (the Winter Court) and refused to tell the White Council what was going on until Rashid did it for him.

Look at it this way - if he were a rogue soldier in the army, who often wouldn't follow orders, refused to learn proper army lingo, argued with superiors openly and disrespected the Commander-in-Chief openly by arguing with him, wore a dirty uniform openly, and wouldn't take on higher duties when heavy losses by a war he started needed him to, and then is supposedly KIA and doesn't bother to tell his bosses what happened and where he is - all they hear is that he actually is alive and involved in major combats outside their control and he actually might be playing for another (and very shady) organization (like a mercenary group for example, or even another sovereign entity). Plenty of that would get him discharged, if not court marshalled. He might even get executed.

But really, who is Harry to decide what the rules of the White Council (or any form of government) should be? What has he done in his life to show that he should be trusted with good governance and is an expert on such things? I don't think you want the human wrecking ball deciding on public policy.

Well, that is a technique as old as when mankind first began to organize into groups.  In this case it isn't Harry doing the isolation, the White Council is it's own worst enemy.  The enemy plays upon the White Council's own fossilized view of the world, not much Harry can do about that.  He has clashed with the White Council at Molly's trial, and Rashid has foretold that he will clash with them again... However that doesn't mean that it is a bad thing if he does.

As above, I think Harry has done plenty to isolate himself. That's what Ebenezar was warning him about. Yes, the White Council is its own worst enemy. Yes, Harry has been pushed and manipulated and yes, their were plenty of extenuating circumstances to the things Harry has done. But. Harry's distrust and fear of the White Council and some of his own allies has kept them in the dark, and that is why they don't know why he is doing what he is doing. He might even be right to keep them in the dark - but that's the choice he made, and the consequences are on him.

I believe Rashid wasn't predicting Harry's future arguments with the White Council. He was predicting a civil war, in my opinion. Considering that if Harry defeats the Council, Cowl and his allies get what they want - no more White Council (something they have been trying to achieve since before the series started), I don't know if that would be such a good thing.

Like many civil wars, these things start based on ideology and progress into an increasingly violent and unforgivable tit-for-tat.

For example, let's say hypothetically Harry does something like use magic in a way the Council don't like. Warden's show up to arrest him. Harry resists arrest, maybe hurts or kills a Warden. The White Council treat him as an active threat and ask Ebenezar to kill him. Maybe Ebenezar tries and fails, Harry retaliates and brings his allies into it. Or maybe Eb sides with Harry and factions emerge and full-scale war breaks out. In the end, there is no White Council and Harry emerges the victor. Cowl is victorious.

Except I cannot see Harry doing that, nor does the series point to that happening in my opinion.  Harry is too logical a being, that's part of his makeup as a good private detective.

Well, the Black Council has made Harry look as bad as possible (not that they needed to do all that much). They certainly have managed to turn his allies against him - he is literally off the White Council due to their interference. They have been targeting his friends and family for years - they took took Susan (which ended up killing her), they took Molly (which ended up with her as Winter Queen), they took Maggie (which she survived but is traumatised by), they killed many of his friends and possibly his parents (strongly hinted at), they manipulated his brother and stole Thomas' partner and baby (which resulted in Thomas being sentenced to death and Harry having to fight the White Council for him AND having to lock Thomas up himself in the most awful prison in the world), and they killed the woman he loves, Murphy.

Each time, Harry has been pushed to act more impulsively by these moments. Each time, he has been driven further away from the White Council and "good" allies. The Black Council have been manipulating Harry for years. Even before he was born, that's implied too. Harry has even realised that he might have been pushed for a very long time. He talks about it with Lea.

Harry is highly logical at times, but he is also incredibly emotional. Look at what he has done when emotional. He even knows and admits how little he is in control during those moments. Even so, logic alone won't be enough to stop him being manipulated. It's too late - he already has been manipulated. He is already outside the Council and prepared to fight them. It's a power keg scenario. Do you really think Harry Dresden, paragon of self-control, will hold back when the White Council does something harsh and unfair like try and arrest him for trumped up charges or perhaps attack those he loves? What if they arrest or kill friends of his? What if they took Maggie away? Harry would burn them to the ground. He's done it before. He's way stronger now, far more dangerous.

I like this train of thought. Harry could build a new council of wizards when all is said and done.

Assuming he survives "when all is said and done".

I think what's particularly interesting to consider is how long Harry will live, and how much will we see of his whole existence. Wizards live several hundred years, and given this story goes into the End of Days and is titled "The Dresden Files" one might assume we see his whole story. Jim has openly said in previous interviews that he isn't sure if Harry will survive the series.

Harry may well form another White Council after the inevitable collapse of the current one. But if the White Council collapses around the various apocalypses, is there even much point?

Not only that, I think it should be noted that Harry fundamentally rejects authority. While he has matured and become less abrasive, he ultimately still dislikes the idea of any governing body being in charge of him or anyone else. He's quite the libertarian. So, in the event the White Council does dissolve, I don't know that Harry would be the one to rebuild it. That's more of a Carlos type-of-thing.

Dresden is an outsider (not the monster...probably...that's another theory for another day). But he doesn't want to be part of the establishment. He likes being on the outer. Look at his last conversation with Carlos.

This topic has been moved to DF Fan Creations.

https://www.paranetonline.com/index.php?topic=54966.0

While Jim said Nemesis is a shapeshifter, that would be a surprise given how the mechanism apparently seems to work.

To me, I think it's more likely he was talking in a literary sense. Rather than the magical ability that Nemesis has. The literary figure that is Nemesis in Jim's book uses the literary device of "shapeshifting" i.e. a character that can impersonate other characters. Sherlock Holmes did this from time to time, but we know he was not a magical character. Obviously this is more confusing because in Jim's story world, we have a magic system that is both real and everpresent. The other problem is that the "shapeshifter bad guy" archetype is already taken in the series (ad yes, you can have more but to what end?) Naagloshii have clearly already done that well enough in the series, so what does Nemesis add that they do not?

So I think it's more likely that Nemesis "infects" or possesses other beings. He has described it this way both in books and interviews, and this is the first time he has said or hinted at anything else. Given that he also said Nemesis has a limit to how many it can infect at any given time, this makes more sense from a possession/corruption angle than anything else.

That said, if Nemesis is a shapeshifter like the Naagloshii that would raise all sorts of questions. What happens to the original being after Nemesis replaces them? Are they dead? If so, what is Lea doing and how is she "back"? Mab seemed quite confident she had "cured" Lea, after all. And why does Nemesis need to shape into them when possessing them would be more effective and more flexible? What advantage does this Walker gain from such an ability? And can it "shapeshift" into multiple beings at once? We know it can "infect" multiple beings at once...so does it create multiple bodies from ectoplasm? And wouldn't these bodies be less effective and more noticeable (given bodies made of ectoplasm can't cross thresholds etc) which Nemesis seems to have less problem doing etc.

My current theory is the Mab is Morganna, and that part of the reason Lea took Morganna's Athame was not just the power that it held, but the insult to Mab personally it represented by her holding it.

Also, Merlin isn't BP. Jim confirmed Merlin wouldn't be speaking modern day English. Further more, Corb and Mab seem to confirm that Merlin is dead in Battle Ground (when Corb specifically says "If he were among the living"...seems to imply that Merlin is no longer alive.

Of course, we know there are many levels to existence...and even the space between "alive" and "dead" is considered grey and a spectrum by Mab, not a black line.