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Messages - CrusherJen

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16
DF Spoilers / Re: Some personal theories I want to get feedback on.
« on: April 18, 2023, 06:13:44 AM »
Quote from: Yuillegan on April 18, 2023, 04:57:39 AM
Also, while Anduriel can hear and sometimes see out of any shadow, he can't do this out of every shadow. I highly doubt he can do it on consecrated ground like that of a church, given how hard it is for spiritual entities to even get onto church ground. Talk about a threshold.

It's not impossible, considering Lashiel was able to whisper her poisonous words in Harry's ear while he was sheltering at the Church. (Unless I'm misremembering.) I do agree that it should be a lot more difficult; maybe Harry's former link to her made enough of a connection for Lashiel to breach the threshold.

I like the Kim Delaney = Kumori theory. I'm not 100% sold on it, but there's a symmetry to it, and it would definitely cause Harry pain.

17
DF Spoilers / Re: A notion...
« on: June 28, 2022, 04:14:04 AM »
Oooh! I want this story now!  ;D

18
DF Spoilers / Re: General Ramblings and Questions after re-listening to Battle Ground
« on: June 16, 2022, 06:13:47 PM »
@Mira: Since I preferred Sinclair too, I agree that some of the reworked beats might not have worked quite as well with Sheridan... but I still appreciate how JMS was able to change course and still get basically the story he wanted told without the lead actor he started with.

Though if I might suggest, we could take this conversation to the Media Favorites thread, if you like? As much fun as this is for you and me (and it is fun!) it is a little off-topic in a Dresden thread... ;)  ;D ❤

(No offense is intended, I just don't want to get smacked by the mods for derailing...  )

19
DF Spoilers / Re: General Ramblings and Questions after re-listening to Battle Ground
« on: June 16, 2022, 06:57:15 AM »
I watched pretty much the whole thing during its first run (except for the last year when it jumped to cable, but I caught up later)... and I've seen the whole thing many times since then.

I don't remember when I originally saw the quote from JMS. Before I made my post, I went to double-checked and found it referenced on Wikipedia. The source it listed was The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5 (http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/misc/cc-leave.html), and that site says it's from 1997:

Quote
From JMS, August 14 1997
How can the story continue without one of the main characters?
One of the first things I had to do, in plotting out the storyline, was to set aside trap doors for *every single character*, because you never know when or how the real world is going to impinge upon you. An actor can quit, or get hit by a car, or slammed by a meteor...there's no way to control the characters the way you do in a novel. That's a given. But you can't bring X-million viewers along to a certain point, then say, "Well, all the stuff we were going to do we can't because X isn't here."

So in a way, the structure of the story is kind of like a computer game tree...pull out a piece along the way, and it goes down a different path, but ends up at exactly the same point at the end. It's the difference between different *results* and different ways of *getting* there.

You can do a story about a platoon in WW II, for instance, and some of the platoon may live, die, be injured, whatever...but the story of WWII is the story of WWII.

Beyond that, a challenge is just that: a call to see just how good you *really* are, kid. If you've ever seen GLORY, there's the scene in which one of the Massachusetts 54th is being taught to shoot. He does just fine, hits the target, reloads fine...when nobody's shooting at him. At which point the colonel starts firing a revolver right next to his head, teling him to try and do it NOW, and do it FAST, with ten thousand guns firing at him.

That's when the art comes in, that's when the skill comes in...in dealing with what you *don't* expect.

Like I said, it's hard to say which parts of the narrative were planned and which were on-the-fly, but the man himself said there were "trap doors" from the beginning, and I've got no reason to doubt him. >shrug<

I wish I'd been around those boards then, it must have been so much fun to be able to interact with the creator of the show as it came out!

(I also prefer Sinclair to Sheridan, but what really curdled my spoo was Marcus and Ivanova...)

20
DF Spoilers / Re: General Ramblings and Questions after re-listening to Battle Ground
« on: June 15, 2022, 03:03:14 AM »
While that's true (poor Michael O'Hare!), it's not quite the whole story. Knowing actors might drop out of availability during the shooting process, Straczinski has admitted to writing "trap doors" so that characters could be written out without too much impact to the main storyline, which was plotted out in advance. Of course, there were still unexpected things that had to be worked around-- the Vorlon/Shadow arc was wrapped up quickly due to looming cancellation after the fourth season, and then the show got renewed for a fifth year... But for the most part, as far as we know, the main arc worked out more-or-less as planned.

21
DF Spoilers / Re: Adaptation Do's and Don'ts
« on: May 19, 2022, 10:50:57 PM »
Quote from: vincentric on May 19, 2022, 05:38:08 PM
I'd want the showrunners of Lucifer. And it so happens they're just about to finish the 6th and final season on Netflix.

Oh hell no.

That last season broke the fandom; quite a number of people are not happy at how that show ended, feeling that the conclusion was forced rather than a natural growth of the storyline, and that the season in general forgot, ignored, and/or directly contradicted characterization and themes established through the previous five seasons. If you don't believe me, check out the subreddit. There's still disagreement on whether or not the ending was good, over six months after it aired. We don't need showrunners who alienated a huge chunk of their loyal fanbase in charge of any Dresden Files adaptation (and I'd refuse to watch with them in charge, knowing they wouldn't stick the landing.)

If you mean the original Lucifer showrunner, who left after the first two seasons, then I'd agree with you. I don't think anyone would argue that those episodes were a good, solid start of a great show.

22
DF Spoilers / Re: How the hell did Blood on his Soul survive being mulched to a pulp
« on: April 19, 2022, 03:57:25 PM »
Quote from: morriswalters on April 18, 2022, 12:36:20 PM
Murphy got killed. Butcher uses it for the emotional punch.  And then he resurrects her.  The whole scene with Rudolph turns out to be about Harry losing his shit because Rudolph made his girlfriend go away. Not because she died, because, well, she didn't.

To be fair, at that point in the story when Harry loses it, he had no idea Karrin would be Chosen. As far as he knew in that moment, she was D-E-D, dead. So Harry's Roaring Rampage of Revenge really was about her dying, not just "going away." He (and the readers) don't know better until pretty much the end of the novel. It may change the perception of the act in retrospect, but not the initial motivation for it... if you catch my drift.

Yeah, I know it's a tiny point to quibble over, but I think the nuance is important. We're supposed to see Harry stumble in a moment of extreme strain, when he's experiencing one of his worst losses in the series so far. He loses love, he loses faith, he loses hope; all that's left is pain and hate, until he gets a wake-up call from Butters' Sword. I think we're meant to take that seriously, as a warning of what Harry could become if he steps off the "path of Good." I don't think that really changes when we learn things weren't exactly as dire as Harry thought they were at that point.

Does it cheapen death as a threat in the series when Murphy isn't really D-E-D dead? Well... kind of, yes, depending on the reader's perspective. Coming back from the dead isn't unusual in fantasy works. We've seen Harry do it, more or less; we also got enough hints sprinkled through the narrative foreshadowing the concept (Murphy as an avenging angel in Dresden's Sight; her training with the Einherjar; her call sign "Valkyrie") that this wasn't a total shock. I'm kind of neutral on it until I see what Butcher does with this set-up. I have a feeling we're just about out of get-out-of-Death-free cards, this close to the Endgame... and the next heroic deaths are going to hurt that much more because of it. But as always, YMMV.

23
DF Spoilers / Re: How did you find The Dresden Files?
« on: March 12, 2022, 04:32:28 AM »
I was working in a bookstore when the books came out. Several of my regular customers recommended them to me so enthusiastically that I had to see if the series was really that good... and it was. I was hooked from that point on.  I think that was around the time Grave Peril came out, but I'm not sure. I've read and reread them many times since then, and made sure to get as many others hooked as I could.  ;D

24
DF Spoilers / Re: Who is Thomas talking to?
« on: February 26, 2022, 06:07:52 PM »
Quote from: Conspiracy Theorist on February 26, 2022, 01:45:10 PM
Odin is a Necromancer and he is beloved of children everywhere (he must be VERY conflicted when a child asks for relative or pet to be brought back as their Christmas wish, one slip and a little girl has an Einenjharen hamster terrorising the local cats over Christmas. Now that’s a children’s book I would like to see.)

 :o I didn't know I needed this book before today. Now I know, and I want it.  ;) ;D

25
DF Spoilers / Re: There is no such thing as "Black" Magic in the Dresdenverse
« on: December 18, 2021, 08:23:31 AM »
Some food for thought, from the Word of Jim website:

Quote
The Laws of Magic don’t necessarily match up to the actual universal guidelines to how the universal power known as “magic” behaves.

The consequences for breaking the Laws of Magic don’t all come from people wearing grey cloaks.

And none of it necessarily has anything to do with what is Right or Wrong.

Which exist.  It’s finding where they start or stop existing that’s the hard part.

Jim

(Link: https://wordof.jim-butcher.com/index.php/word-of-jim-woj-compilation/woj-on-magic-in-the-dresden-files-part-2/ )

What I get from this is: black magic exists, but the White Council's (and by extension, Harry's) understanding of it is incomplete and/or somewhat inaccurate. We can only trust what Harry says to a point... and I suspect he (and us readers) will discover more about the truth of black magic in a future book, likely Mirror Mirror, since we're going to see an Evil Harry in that novel.

26
DF Spoilers / Re: Harry should have trusted Ramirez
« on: December 09, 2021, 08:16:47 AM »
Quote from: SerScot on December 09, 2021, 01:38:10 AM
Understood.  I simply dislike leaving comments like that unanswered.

The moderator answered it. 🤷‍♀️ Rank has its privileges.

(I get it, though. It's why I rarely visit my family's Facebook group. Avoiding it gets me in less trouble than participating in it would...)

27
DF Spoilers / Re: Thomas's Cell
« on: October 16, 2021, 07:54:45 PM »
We've been told it's not Merlin:

Quote
The original Merlin, does he sound British?
He’d probably sound so unintelligibly British that you wouldn’t be able to tell he was speaking English.  No, he’s not the guy in Demonreach.

Via https://wordof.jim-butcher.com/index.php/word-of-jim-woj-compilation/woj-on-harrys-mortal-allies/

No word on if it's Harry... though I'm not sure why Harry would have an accent. IIRC, Chandler does, but I'd think Harry would recognize his voice, so it's probably not Chandler either.

28
DF Spoilers / Re: Did Rashid kick Harry out of the White Council with an ulterior motive?
« on: July 15, 2021, 12:35:49 AM »
If I'm remembering correctly, Harry doesn't know what happened between Molly and Carlos at all. I think he made a couple of innocent references to her in front of Carlos (don't have the books handy to confirm), but of course, Carlos took them in a different way than Harry intended... it didn't help them get along any better.

29
DF Spoilers / Re: Nemesis can only be in 13 places at once?
« on: June 18, 2021, 11:21:40 PM »
Harry needed a crystal from Demonreach and blood from Ethniu to bind the Titan from afar, off-island. On the boat, Harry didn't have a crystal, and he was exhausted, so any battle with Nemfected!Justine was likely to go poorly.

Once they reached the island, it's possible Alfred could directly intervene and grab N!Justine (based on Harry's threat to Mab in Cold Days.) He probably could have brought Harry a crystal, if it was still needed, but could Harry get N!Justine's blood before she did major damage to the island's defenses? This is something I'm not sure about; we haven't seen exactly what Nemfected humans are capable of just yet. But N!Justine felt she had pretty good odds once she'd gotten to Demonreach... so preventing her from getting to the island was likely the best move. And as vincentric says, it keeps the storyline open for future books, which from a writer's perspective is valuable.

30
DF Spoilers / Re: The Barabbas curse
« on: April 04, 2021, 05:48:30 AM »
Quote from: Phygers on April 03, 2021, 05:58:14 PM
There's also the fact that if it was Molly or Lara ,Mab or other people favorite's had been killed in what some feel was a ham fisted way that Murphy was most of the fan base I think would not be so accepting of their death they way everyone seems to be okay with Karrin being killed and there would be more backlash toward Butcher

I think anyone might be upset if their favorite side character died, especially in an unexpected way. And I know Murphy wasn't that popular around here. I'm just not sure other character deaths would cause more of a fan-riot than Karrin's... except for Mister and Mouse, of course. (They can't die. We'll never let them die.)

And I wouldn't say everyone's okay with it either-- I know Murphy wasn't that popular, but she did have fans, and like I've said, I've seen some epic rants and backlash from them. I don't know if that's a huge part of the fanbase or not, since my fandom hang-outs are a pretty small sample of the total picture.

I'm not 100% sure how I feel about it yet. Murphy's been around since book one, and she became a major source of support for Harry... not to mention the relationship-tease that went on for so many books. Jim decided the character needed to be gone, for some purpose we don't know about yet. I guess I'm suspending judgement until we see how that plays out in future books... I think Jim's got a plan, and from what I've seen so far, I'm willing to wait to find out what it is.

But I can't say I'm not a little troubled by how it came across on the page. Apparently it was a deliberate narrative choice to have Murphy "accidentally" killed, but it did feel a bit ham-fisted to me. Other important characters' deaths (Shiro, Morgan, Susan) felt like natural consequences of the storyline. For me, this seemed more abrupt, like, "well, the plot says it's gonna happen now, so here it is, boom." Maybe that's because there were so many other things going on that there wasn't time for Harry to really deal with it, and we'll get more resolution in Twelve Months, or in future novels. (Or maybe it's because I read both books really fast-- I devoured each in less than a day. I want to re-read both when I have more time to appreciate all the details.) I guess I just expected something different in such a major character's death scene, something bigger and more meaningful. :shrug: YMMV.

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