*points out that Jim makes a big deal that such a backlash would not be remotely mystic or sentient, but rather something "which obeyed certain universal laws that governed its interaction with reality."*  Not that your wording implies otherwise, but I want to keep that point firm, because I might not have done enough to emphasize that in my posts.

Although in Backup Thomas introduces himself with, "and I'm a monster," Jim has said that unless a Wampire is really vamping out, they are hardly affected by a threshold because they are too mortal.  In Thomas' case not only is he a typically grey area wampire, but he tries reeeealy hard to hold onto his humanity, and I think this really matters when addressing your question.  This ties into my first possible reason why "Black Magic" vs Mortals matters."  If Thomas already had given into/embraced his hunger, he could already be so far twisted by it that some black magic would not make much difference.  Think Madeline.

Here is what Jim said:
Bingo.  It hardly seems fair, does it?

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

If you read it carefully though, Jim appears to have said that Council's Law doesn't necessarily reflect the true nature of how [dark] Magic can effect your mind (my way of rephrasing his comments in this context). 

The below quoted post I made a couple weeks ago [edit, oh hey look, it's reply #26 of this very topic] goes through a lot of effort to outline how I think the books have explicitly shown how something like this (Harry killing non mortals) has effected him WRT the "actual universal guidelines to how the universal power known as "magic" behaves" Jim referred to in the above WoJ.
[/spoiler]

Edit:  Some context for that quote from the White Night scene where that passion was born:

I think this is pertinant because it directly shows Harry's empathy for a class of magical beings getting destroyed in a fit of rage.  To these beings Harry's the monster.

Note how this flashback happens near the end of the ghoul attack in the harbor in WN, and when he returns to the main narrative, Harry is going psychotic trying to strangle a goul, ignoring his own survival.  He would have drown without Thomas rescuing him.  Seems like a strong argument for the paradigm that even though killing non mortals isn't breaking the "Law" it can constitute black magic that warps the mind.

Also, the DFRPG forum mod made a truely excellent post on how "lawbreaking" can effect a character here, that I always recommend when people are discussing the topic of how "dark magic" effects the caster.

Finally, holy cow those DFRPG guys talk about law breaking a lot.

If it helps, I remember Ramirez remarking that he gets his soulgaze info in the form of music. I believe that's in TC.

We also know there have been Ramirez/Luccio and Ramirez/Molly soulgazes.

WAIT a second here.

Harry committed no crime.

Winter Law, which is where Harry was operating at the time allows such displays of power.  There was no crime.  Mab, the ruler of said realm, even approves.

Now from a human point of view and from a Human Morality view, it may have been wrong, but it in no way was a crime.

But Harry was able to do the same thing to the ghost, and we're as sure as we can be that that was just a regular old ghost, nothing souly about it.

The origional YLC thread

In brief, for the amount of buildup that was put into YLC, as a potential "Chekov's gun" (tvtrops warning) it sure didn't have much of a proportionate bang.

So my new thought was born from thinking about this recent comment from Tami Seven

Which made me wonder if Harry would, in the future find it advantageous to put his GS experiences to work by wandering around Chicago disembodied like he did in GS.  And then I remembered.  Harry's already done that!  He tracked Malvora in White Night in disembodied form via Little Chicago.

So what could this mean for the YLC question? Possible answers would run like...

• Harry's experiences with LC helped prep his soul for his GS experience
• Harry's GS experiences helped him gain a new paradigm that would allow him to utilize a new LC like spell/foci more effectively
• I still haven't completely* ruled out the idea that whoever fixed LC saved it before the burndown in Changes (see #2)
• Maybe we'll come up with more

*not that I think it's likely or anything.

I've made the change, and you were right, it does look a lot better and easier to use.

I'm also thinking of dropping the following due to age:
BM = Bolshevik Muppet
CF = Chlorofiend

GG has been dropped, once we found out it's identity it seemed to go out of use.